Knowledge Management - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - The Diigo Meta page

practice of KM, to include the following perspectives:



• Techno-centric with a focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing and creation.
• Organisational with a focus on how an organisation can be designed to facilitate knowledge processes best.
• Ecological with a focus on the interaction of people, identity, knowledge, and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system akin to a natural ecosystem.

Different KM schools of thought include various lenses through which KM can be viewed and explained, to include:



• community of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Synder 2001) ^[2]
• social network analysis ^[3]
• intellectual capital (Bontis & Choo 2002) ^[4]
• information theory ^[5] (McInerney 2002)
• complexity science ^[6]
• constructivism ^[7] (Nanjappa & Grant 2003)

• DIKW
• Enterprise

Approaches to Knowledge Management




There is a broad range of thought on Knowledge Management with no unanimous definition. The approaches vary by author and school. Knowledge Management may be viewed from each of the following perspectives:



• Techno-centric: A focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing/growth.
• Organisational: How does the organisation need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes?
• Ecological: Seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system.



In addition, as the discipline is maturing, there is an increasing presence of academic debates within epistemology emerging in both the theory and practice of knowledge management.

Schools of thought in Knowledge Management




There are a variety of different schools of thought in Knowledge Management. For example:



• The Intellectual Capital movement with Professor Nick Bontis, Professor Leif Edvinsson and Tom Stewart
• A body of work derivative of information theory associated with Prusak and Davenport.
• Advanced practice and leadership of tangibles & intangibles, living networks, co-creation and whole systems through value networks and value network analysis.
• Complexity approaches associated with David Snowden (see Cynefin).
• 'Narrative' with Denning, Snowden, Boje and others.

A key distinction made by the majority of knowledge management practitioners is Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The former is often subconscious, internalized, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge -- knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have codified.

Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) argued that a successful KM program needs to, on the one hand, convert internalized tacit knowledge into explicit codified knowledge in order to share it, but also on the other hand for individuals and groups to internalize and make personally meaningful codified knowledge once it is retrieved from the KM system.

Knowledge capture stages

Knowledge may be accessed, or captured, at three stages: before, during, or after knowledge-related activities.

Ad hoc knowledge access

One alternative strategy to encoding knowledge into and retrieving knowledge from a knowledge repository such as a database, is for individuals to access experts on an ad hoc basis, as needed, with their knowledge requests. A key benefit of this strategy is that the response from the expert individual is rich in content and contextualised to the particular problem being addressed and personalized to the particular person or people addressing it. The downside is, of course, that it is tied to the availability and memories of specific individuals in the organisation. It does not capture their insights and experience for future use should they leave or become unavailable, and also does not help in the case when the experts' memories of particular technical issues or problems previously faced change with time. The emergence of narrative approaches to knowledge management attempts to provide a bridge between the formal and the ad hoc, by allowing knowledge to be held in the form of stories.

Considerations driving a Knowledge Management program might include:



• making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services
• achieving shorter new product development cycles
• facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning
• leverage the expertise of people across the organization
• benefiting from 'network effects' as the number of productive connections between employees in the organization increases and the quality of information shared increases, leading to greater employee and team satisfaction
• managing the proliferation of data and information in complex business environments and allowing employees rapidly to access useful and relevant knowledge resources and best practice guidelines
• managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals) as individuals retire and new workers are hired
• a convincing sales pitch from one of the many consulting firms pushing Knowledge Management as a solution to virtually any business problem, such as loss of market share, declining profits, or employee inefficiency.
• increasing the responsiveness or resiliance of organisations to environmental change

There are also a variety of organisational enablers for knowledge management programs, including Communities of Practice, before-, after- and during- action reviews (see After Action Review), peer assists, information taxonomies, coaching and mentoring, and so on.

Another aspect would be the creation of an incentive-system not only to provide the organisation with knowledge but also to manage and handle ideas of employees.

Knowledge Management lexicon

Knowledge Management professionals may use a specific lexicon in order to articulate and discuss the various issues arising in Knowledge Management. For example, terms such as intellectual capital, metric, and tacit vs explicit knowledge typically form an indispensable part of the knowledge management professional's vocabulary

See also





Terminology extraction Battle Command Knowledge System Community of practice Competitive intelligence Complexity theory and organizations Computer-supported collaboration Corporate memory e-learning Enterprise content management Enterprise social software Expert system Intellectual Capital Knowledge Knowledge Ecosystems Knowledge base Knowledge management for development KM concepts KM Journals Knowledge Management System Knowledge representation Knowledge transfer Knowledge visualization Meta-knowledge Morphological analysis Organizational learning Organizational empowerment Personal knowledge management Public sector knowledge management Procedural knowledge Self service software Sensemaking Semantic Web Social network Skills management Tacit knowledge & Explicit knowledge Value network Value network analysis 23 May 07 Eric Wettstein knowledge 23 Mar 07 Mike Nall KnowledgeManagement 13 Feb 07 Skyward Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific outcomes, such as shared intelligence, improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation. 25 Jan 07 mindfulness FastInfo 26 Nov 06 Aviva Gabriel Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge for reuse, awareness and learning across the organization. Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organ 05 Sep 06 Andrés Silva knowledgemanagement management wiki 09 Jan 06 Broadus M 05 Nov 05 James Burke knowledgemanagement organisationalagility 02 Feb 05 tadej zontar Knowledge Knowledge management From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Knowledge management (KM) is the organization, creation, sharing and flow of knowledge within organizations. Contents [showhide] 1 Definition 2 First and second generation Knowledge Management 2.1 First generation Knowledge Management 2.2 Second Generation Knowledge Management 3 See also 4 Finding related topics 5 References 6 External links [edit] Definition A widely accepted 'working definition' of knowledge management applied in worldwide organizations is available from the WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management (http://www.kmnetwork.com/): "Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings." In simpler terms, Knowledge Management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge, increasing awareness and understanding in the process. "The goal of commercial knowledge is not truth, but effective performance: not 'what is right' but 'what works' or even 'what works better' where better is defined in competitive and fincial contexts" Demarest, M, 1997. Long Range Planning 30, (3) pp 374-384 Personal_knowledge_management - PKM pays attention to the organization of information, thoughts and beliefs. In this approach, the responsibility for knowledge creation lies with the individual who is charged to learn, connect and share personal insights. Enterprise knowledge management - EKM is concerned with strategy, process and technologies to acquire, store, share and secure organizational understanding, insights and core distinctions. KM at this level is closely tied to competitive ad Knowledge management From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Knowledge management (KM) is the organization, creation, sharing and flow of knowledge within organizations. Contents [showhide] 1 Definition 2 First and second generation Knowledge Management 2.1 First generation Knowledge Management 2.2 Second Generation Knowledge Management 3 See also 4 Finding related topics 5 References 6 External links [edit] Definition A widely accepted 'working definition' of knowledge management applied in worldwide organizations is available from the WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management (http://www.kmnetwork.com/): "Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings." In simpler terms, Knowledge Management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge, increasing awareness and understanding in the process. "The goal of commercial knowledge is not truth, but effective performance: not 'what is right' but 'what works' or even 'what works better' where better is defined in competitive and fincial contexts" Demarest, M, 1997. Long Range Planning 30, (3) pp 374-384 Personal_knowledge_management - PKM pays attention to the organization of information, thoughts and beliefs. In this approach, the responsibility for knowledge creation lies with the individual who is charged to learn, connect and share personal insights. Enterprise knowledge management - EKM is concerned with strategy, process and technologies to acquire, store, share and secure organizational understanding, insights and core distinctions. KM at this level is closely tied to competitive ad 1 more annotations... Knowledge management From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Knowledge management (KM) is the organization, creation, sharing and flow of knowledge within organizations. Contents [showhide] 1 Definition 2 First and second generation Knowledge Management 2.1 First generation Knowledge Management 2.2 Second Generation Knowledge Management 3 See also 4 Finding related topics 5 References 6 External links [edit] Definition A widely accepted 'working definition' of knowledge management applied in worldwide organizations is available from the WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management (http://www.kmnetwork.com/): "Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings." In simpler terms, Knowledge Management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge, increasing awareness and understanding in the process. "The goal of commercial knowledge is not truth, but effective performance: not 'what is right' but 'what works' or even 'what works better' where better is defined in competitive and fincial contexts" Demarest, M, 1997. Long Range Planning 30, (3) pp 374-384 Personal_knowledge_management - PKM pays attention to the organization of information, thoughts and beliefs. In this approach, the responsibility for knowledge creation lies with the individual who is charged to learn, connect and share personal insights. Enterprise knowledge management - EKM is concerned with strategy, process and technologies to acquire, store, share and secure organizational understanding, insights and core distinctions. KM at this level is closely tied to competitive ad Page Comments osnat Benari on 2008-12-27 When building KM allow installers to add tips related to the line of work Would you like to comment? Join Diigo for a free account, or sign in if you are already a member. Top Tags knowledgemanagement project reading Other bookmarks from the site en.wikipedia.org » Check out another URL