Thank you, Ken. This braces the conversation nicely. I see an old
familiar refrain. "Those consultants". They sell "it" before it's
time. Some years back, "it" was quality mangement. Now, "it" is
knowledge management. Have we not been chatting lately about closing
the gap between practitioners and academics? I agree that we have an
opportunity, if not a responsibility, to dig for those deeper issues.
But, in the meantime, practitioners turn to consultants for answers
to how they can refuel the engines of their flagging businesses. Ropes
are being thrown and grabbed. How do we accellerate our process of
tying those ropes to something solid? Or, perhaps, it is easier to
tell our students beware of consultants bearing old wine in new bottles
and say the "fad" work with a knowing wink?
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Ken Friedman [mailto:
ken.friedman@bi.no]
Sent: Friday, January 03, 2003 8:57 AM
To:
MG-ED-DV@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU
Subject: [MG-ED-DV] Knowledge management ...
Dear Colleagues,
Some of the uses and appeals to knowledge management have taken on
the fashionable dimensions of a fad, but there are deeper issues and
values in the field.
The difficulty is that the term "knowledge management" refers to
three things: a research field, a professional practice, and a set of
social and technical systems that support them. As a research field
linked to issues in philosophy, economics, and organizational
learning, knowledge management has much to offer. Deep inquiry into
the relevant issues has only begun.
As a consulting practice, knowledge management focuses on selling
products and services. Thus arises the problem. A careful look at
knowledge management demonstrates that the philosophical and
practical value of knowledge management is not easily captured in the
sorts of technological support systems being sold under the same
label. Technical systems should properly be labeled knowledge
management support systems. Services sold for billed hours often
involve a loose range of consulting services or ideas that could just
as well have been called any of the other kinds of things that
consulting firms sell to pay the bills. I suspect that many of the
overheads and Power Point slides offered in knowledge management
presentations are simply older packages with new labels.
These issues call for serious distinctions. To dismiss a field out of
hand without examining the issues seems unfortunate to me. I have not
yet acquired T. D. Wilson's article, but I will read it. In the
meantime, I enclose a summary of my view on knowledge management.
This is a short article just published in the Encyclopedia of New
Media. It is hardly comprehensive, but I've tried to capture the
major themes.
Best regards,
Ken Friedman
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management
Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University
--
This is a copy of the text to the entry on knowledge management that
appears in The Encyclopedia of New Media. I am the author of this
text, but I am not the copyright holder. You are receiving this as a
courtesy draft in the context of a discussion on knowledge management.
Friedman, Ken. 2002. "Knowledge Management." In Encyclopedia of New
Media. Steve Jones, editor. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage
Publications, Inc.
This article is copyright ( c ) 2002 by Sage Publications, Inc.
--
Knowledge management refers to three things. It is a research field,
a professional practice, along with social and technical systems to
support them.
The research field examines human knowledge as a central factor in
producing goods and services. Now a distinct field with a
philosophical perspective and an applied focus, knowledge management
began with work in many fields. These include management studies,
organization theory, communication, philosophy, sociology, and
information science.
Knowledge management develops systematic policies, programs, and
practices to create, share, and apply knowledge in organizations.
Practice is linked to theory through an explicit philosophy of
knowledge and learning.
Working with knowledge implies understanding organizations as
systems. Using knowledge requires individual and organizational
learning. This means working with people. As actors in a system,
human participants enable the organization to learn. Individuals
share, improve, and effectively recycle existing knowledge.
Social and technical systems support the process by helping
organizations to identify, select, acquire, store, organize, present,
and use information for problem solving, learning, innovation,
strategic planning, and decision-making.
Knowledge management involves two parallel streams. The first stream
is social. Philosophical, interpersonal, and organizational in
perspective, it involves human dynamics, dialogue, and organizational
learning. Such concepts as storytelling, communities of practice,
reflective practice, and behavioral modeling characterize what is
sometimes called a "person-to-person" approach. This approach to
knowledge management employs both tacit and explicit knowledge.
The second stream is technological. Based on information technology
and data processing, it uses information systems to harvest, gather,
codify, and represent knowledge. Such concepts as data warehousing,
data mining, knowledge mapping, and electronic libraries
characterized what may be termed a "people-to-documents" approach.
Because it is mediated through information systems, it is almost
exclusively explicit.
Knowledge management is a consequence of the information society. In
1940, Australian economist Colin Clark classified economies as
primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary economies extract wealth
from nature, secondary economies transform extracted material through
manufacturing, and tertiary economies engage in service. In 1967,
Daniel Bell built on this to describe three kinds of society.
Pre-industrial society extracts, industrial society fabricates, and
post-industrial society processes information. Bell argued that a
significant change in the character of knowledge was taking place,
with professional knowledge elite developing to manage it.
Knowledge has always been a key factor in productivity. The earliest
manufacturing took place over two and a half million years ago when
homo habilis made the first weapons and tools. The search for
productivity focused on scarce material resources and the challenges
of understanding the physical world. All manufacturing was handicraft
until the industrial revolution gave rise to mass manufacturing in
the nineteenth century. The wealth created in the industrialized
economies of the twentieth changed this.
By the 1940s, a focus on knowledge became inevitable. The ideas of
knowledge management have been emerging for several decades. For
example, W. Edwards Deming's work in post-war Japan reflects the
principles of knowledge management and organizational learning.
Economists such as Harold Innis and Fritz Machlup have gained
increasing importance, along with psychologists such as Abraham
Maslow and sociologists such as Daniel Bell and Manuel Castells. The
shift to knowledge management emerged in many places during the
1990s. Central figures include Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi
in Japan, Mats Alvesson and Bo Hedberg in Sweden, George von Krogh
and Johan Roos in Switzerland, Max Boisot in England, Lawrence
Prusak, Peter Senge, and Karl Wiig in North America.
Effective work demands creating, sharing, and distributing
information as the raw material that individual and organizations
process into knowledge. The administrative principles of Henri Fayol
and Frederick W. Taylor restricted the flow of information and power
in vertically stratified organizations. The management principles of
a knowledge economy encourage the flow of information and knowledge
within dynamic networks.
The earliest example of knowledge management philosophy is found in a
book written circa 1,000 BC by Egyptian public administrator named
Amenemopet. From that time to our own, thinkers have articulated
knowledge management issues in such fields as philosophy, economics,
and management. Some are surprisingly contemporary. For example, a
1776 description of a pin factory by Adam Smith is now a case study
on intellectual capital.
3,000 years separate Amenemopet and Deming. The philosophical themes
of knowledge management have been remarkably durable. Theoretical
reflection and behavioral action form the substance of knowledge
management. This was true before knowledge management emerged as a
specific field. It remains true for any endeavor where human beings
add value to goods and services.
Related Topics
Argyris, Chris
Artificial intelligence
Bell, Daniel
Clark, Colin
Communities of practice
Customer capital
Data Mining
Data warehousing
Decision support system
Distance learning
Drucker, Peter
Electronic collaboration
Electronic data interchange
Electronc libraries
Enterprise resource planning
Executive imnformation suystem
Expert systems
Explicit knowledge
Extranet
Human capital
Hybrid capital
Information science
Innis, Harold
Intellectual capital
Intellectual property
Intranet
Knowledge
Knowledge base
Lattice orgnization
Learning history
Learing orgnizastion
Machlup, Fritz
Management information syatem
Network orgnization structure
Neural Network
Nonaka, Ikujiro
Organizational learning
Senge, Peter
Simon, Herbert
Social capital
Structural capital
Tacit knowledge
Takeuchi, Hirotaka
Virtual organizations
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