Knowledge management (KM) is the collection of methods relating to creating, sharing, using and managing the
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as Descriptive knowledge, awareness of facts or as Procedural knowledge, practical skills, and may also refer to Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called pro ...
and information of an organization.
It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieve organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
An established
discipline
Discipline refers to rule following behavior, to regulate, order, control and authority. It may also refer to punishment. Discipline is used to create habits, routines, and automatic mechanisms such as blind obedience. It may be inflicted on ot ...
since 1991,
KM includes courses taught in the fields of
business administration
Business administration, also known as business management, is the administration of a commercial enterprise. It includes all aspects of overseeing and supervising the business operations of an organization. From the point of view of manageme ...
,
information systems
An information system (IS) is a formal, sociotechnical, organizational system designed to collect, process, store, and distribute information. From a sociotechnical perspective, information systems are composed by four components: task, people, ...
, management,
library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
, and
information science
Information science (also known as information studies) is an academic field which is primarily concerned with analysis, collection, classification, manipulation, storage, retrieval, movement, dissemination, and protection of information. ...
.
Other fields may contribute to KM research, including information and media,
computer science
Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...
,
public health
Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...
and
public policy
Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public ...
.
Several universities offer dedicated
master's degree
A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice. s in knowledge management.
Many large companies, public institutions, and
non-profit organisations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their
business strategy
In the field of management, strategic management involves the formulation and implementation of the major goals and initiatives taken by an organization's managers on behalf of stakeholders, based on consideration of resources and an assessmen ...
,
IT, or
human resource management
Humans (''Homo sapiens'') are the most abundant and widespread species of primate, characterized by bipedalism and exceptional cognitive skills due to a large and complex brain. This has enabled the development of advanced tools, culture ...
departments.
Several consulting companies provide advice regarding KM to these organizations.
Knowledge management efforts typically focus on organisational objectives such as improved performance,
competitive advantage
In business, a competitive advantage is an attribute that allows an organization to outperform its competitors.
A competitive advantage may include access to natural resources, such as high-grade ores or a low-cost power source, highly skilled ...
,
innovation
Innovation is the practical implementation of ideas that result in the introduction of new goods or services or improvement in offering goods or services. ISO TC 279 in the standard ISO 56000:2020 defines innovation as "a new or changed enti ...
, the sharing of
lessons learned, integration, and
continuous improvement
A continual improvement process, also often called a continuous improvement process (abbreviated as CIP or CI), is an ongoing effort to improve products, services, or processes. These efforts can seek "incremental" improvement over time or "breakth ...
of the organisation.
These efforts overlap with
organisational learning and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and on encouraging the
sharing of knowledge.
KM is an enabler of organizational learning.
The most complex scenario for knowledge management may be found in the context of
supply chain as it involves multiple companies without an ownership relationship or hierarchy between them, being called by some authors as transorganizational or interorganizational knowledge. That complexity is additionally increased by
industry 4.0 (or
4th industrial revolution) and
digital transformation
Digital transformation is the adoption of digital technology by an organization to digitize non-digital products, services or operations. The goal for its implementation is to increase value through innovation, invention, customer experience or e ...
, as new challenges emerge from both the volume and speed of information flows and knowledge generation.
History
Knowledge management efforts have a long history, including on-the-job discussions, formal
apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system for training a new generation of practitioners of a trade or profession with on-the-job training and often some accompanying study (classroom work and reading). Apprenticeships can also enable practitioners to gain ...
,
discussion forums
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...
, corporate libraries, professional training, and mentoring programs.
With increased use of computers in the second half of the 20th century, specific
adaptation
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the p ...
s of technologies such as
knowledge base
A knowledge base (KB) is a technology used to store complex structured and unstructured information used by a computer system. The initial use of the term was in connection with expert systems, which were the first knowledge-based systems.
...
s,
expert system
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if†...
s,
information repositories, group
decision support system
A decision support system (DSS) is an information system that supports business or organizational decision-making activities. DSSs serve the management, operations and planning levels of an organization (usually mid and higher management) and ...
s,
intranet
An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in c ...
s, and
computer-supported cooperative work have been introduced to further enhance such efforts.
In 1999, the term
personal knowledge management
Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities and the way in which these processes support work activitie ...
was introduced; it refers to the management of knowledge at the individual level.
In the enterprise, early collections of case studies recognised the importance of knowledge management dimensions of strategy,
process
A process is a series or set of activities that interact to produce a result; it may occur once-only or be recurrent or periodic.
Things called a process include:
Business and management
* Business process, activities that produce a specific s ...
and
measurement
Measurement is the quantification of attributes of an object or event, which can be used to compare with other objects or events.
In other words, measurement is a process of determining how large or small a physical quantity is as compared ...
.
Key lessons learned include people and the cultural norms which influence their behaviors are the most critical resources for successful knowledge creation, dissemination and application; cognitive, social and organisational learning processes are essential to the success of a knowledge management strategy; and measurement,
benchmarking
Benchmarking is the practice of comparing business processes and performance metrics to industry bests and best practices from other companies. Dimensions typically measured are quality, time and cost.
Benchmarking is used to measure performan ...
and incentives are essential to accelerate the learning process and to drive cultural change.
In short, knowledge management programs can yield impressive benefits to individuals and organisations if they are purposeful, concrete and action-orientated.
Research
KM emerged as a scientific discipline in the early 1990s.
It was initially supported by individual practitioners, when
Skandia hired Leif Edvinsson of Sweden as the world's first
Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO).
Hubert Saint-Onge (formerly of
CIBC, Canada), started investigating KM long before that.
The objective of CKOs is to manage and maximise the intangible assets of their organizations.
Gradually, CKOs became interested in practical and theoretical aspects of KM, and the new research field was formed.
The KM idea has been taken up by academics, such as
Ikujiro Nonaka (
Hitotsubashi University
is a national university located in Tokyo, Japan. It has campuses in Kunitachi, Kodaira, and Chiyoda. One of the top 9 Designated National University in Japan, Hitotsubashi is a relatively small institution specialized solely in social sci ...
), Hirotaka Takeuchi (Hitotsubashi University),
Thomas H. Davenport (
Babson College
Babson College is a private business school in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Established in 1919, its central focus is on entrepreneurship education. It was founded by Roger W. Babson as an all-male business institute, but became coeducational in ...
) and Baruch Lev (
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, t ...
).
In 2001,
Thomas A. Stewart, former editor at ''
Fortune'' magazine and subsequently the editor of ''
Harvard Business Review
''Harvard Business Review'' (''HBR'') is a general management magazine published by Harvard Business Publishing, a wholly owned subsidiary of Harvard University. ''HBR'' is published six times a year and is headquartered in Brighton, M ...
'', published a cover story highlighting the importance of intellectual capital in organizations.
The KM discipline has been gradually moving towards academic maturity.
First, is a trend toward higher cooperation among academics; single-author publications are less common. Second, the role of practitioners has changed.
Their contribution to academic research declined from 30% of overall contributions up to 2002, to only 10% by 2009.
Third, the number of academic knowledge management journals has been steadily growing, currently reaching 27 outlets.
Multiple KM disciplines exist; approaches vary by author and school.
As the discipline matured, academic debates increased regarding
theory
A theory is a rational type of abstract thinking about a phenomenon, or the results of such thinking. The process of contemplative and rational thinking is often associated with such processes as observational study or research. Theories may be ...
and practice, including:
* 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
An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...
.
Regardless of the
school of thought
A school of thought, or intellectual tradition, is the perspective of a group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement.
...
, core components of KM roughly include people/culture, processes/structure and technology. The details depend on the
perspective. KM perspectives include:
*
community of practice
A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educat ...
*
social network analysis
*
intellectual capital Intellectual capital is the result of mental processes that form a set of intangible objects that can be used in economic activity and bring income to its owner ( organization), covering the competencies of its people (human capital), the value rela ...
*
information theory
Information theory is the scientific study of the quantification, storage, and communication of information. The field was originally established by the works of Harry Nyquist and Ralph Hartley, in the 1920s, and Claude Shannon in the 1940 ...
*
complexity science
* constructivism
The practical relevance of academic research in KM has been questioned
with
action research suggested as having more relevance
and the need to translate the findings presented in academic journals to a practice.
Dimensions
Different
frameworks for distinguishing between different 'types of' knowledge exist.
One proposed framework for categorising the
dimensions
In physics and mathematics, the dimension of a mathematical space (or object) is informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify any point within it. Thus, a line has a dimension of one (1D) because only one coordin ...
of knowledge distinguishes
tacit knowledge and
explicit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge represents internalised knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of, such as to accomplish particular tasks. At the opposite end of the spectrum, explicit knowledge represents knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form that can easily be communicated to others.

Ikujiro Nonaka proposed a model (
SECI, for Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination, Internalisation) which considers a spiraling interaction between
explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.
In this model, knowledge follows a cycle in which implicit knowledge is 'extracted' to become explicit knowledge, and explicit knowledge is 're-internalised' into implicit knowledge.
Hayes and Walsham (2003) describe knowledge and knowledge management as two different perspectives.
The content perspective suggests that knowledge is easily stored; because it may be codified, while the relational perspective recognises the contextual and relational aspects of knowledge which can make knowledge difficult to share outside the specific context in which it is developed.
Early research suggested that KM needs to convert internalised tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge to share it, and the same effort must permit individuals to internalise and make personally meaningful any codified knowledge retrieved from the KM effort.
Subsequent research suggested that a distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge represented an oversimplification and that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory.
Specifically, for knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated into information (i.e.,
symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different co ...
s outside our heads).
More recently, together with
Georg von Krogh and
Sven Voelpel, Nonaka returned to his earlier work in an attempt to move the debate about knowledge conversion forward.
A second proposed framework for categorising knowledge dimensions distinguishes embedded knowledge of a
system
A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a unified whole. A system, surrounded and influenced by its environment, is described by its boundaries, structure and purpose and expresse ...
outside a human individual (e.g., an information system may have knowledge embedded into its design) from
embodied knowledge representing a learned capability of a human body's
nervous and
endocrine system
The endocrine system is a messenger system comprising feedback loops of the hormones released by internal glands of an organism directly into the circulatory system, regulating distant target organs. In vertebrates, the hypothalamus is the ...
s.
A third proposed framework distinguishes between the exploratory creation of "new knowledge" (i.e., innovation) vs. the
transfer or exploitation of "established knowledge" within a group, organisation, or community.
Collaborative environments such as communities of practice or the use of
social computing tools can be used for both knowledge creation and transfer.
Strategies
Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities.
Organisations have tried knowledge capture
incentive
In general, incentives are anything that persuade a person to alter their behaviour. It is emphasised that incentives matter by the basic law of economists and the laws of behaviour, which state that higher incentives amount to greater levels of ...
s, including making content submission mandatory and incorporating rewards into
performance measurement plans.
Considerable controversy exists over whether such incentives work and no consensus has emerged.
One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy).
In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided (codification).
Another strategy involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy).
In such an instance, expert individual(s) provide
insights
Insight is the understanding of a specific cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings:
*a piece of information
*the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of seeing intui ...
to requestor (personalisation).
When talking about strategic knowledge management, the form of the knowledge and activities to share it defines the concept between codification and personalization. The form of the knowledge means that it’s either tacit or explicit. Data and information can be considered as explicit and know-how can be considered as tacit.
Hansen et al. defined the two strategies (codification and personalisation).
[Hansen et al., 1999] Codification means a system-oriented method in KM strategy for managing explicit knowledge with organizational objectives. Codification strategy is document-centered strategy, where knowledge is mainly codified as “people-to-document” method. Codification relies on information infrastructure, where explicit knowledge is carefully codified and stored.
Codification focuses on collecting and storing codified knowledge in electronic databases to make it accessible.
[Smith (2004), p. 7] Codification can therefore refer to both tacit and explicit knowledge. In contrast, personalisation encourages individuals to share their knowledge directly.
Personification means human-oriented KM strategy where the target is to improve knowledge flows through networking and integrations related to tacit knowledge with knowledge sharing and creation. Information technology plays a less important role, as it only facilitates communication and knowledge sharing.
Other knowledge management strategies and instruments for companies include:
*
Knowledge sharing (fostering a culture that encourages the sharing of information, based on the concept that knowledge is not irrevocable and should be shared and updated to remain relevant)
** Make knowledge-sharing a key role in employees' job description
** Inter-project knowledge transfer
** Intra-organisational knowledge sharing
** Inter-organisational knowledge sharing
** Knowledge retention also known as Knowledge Continuation: activities addressing the challenge of knowledge loss as a result of people leaving
** Mapping knowledge competencies, roles and identifying current or future predicted gaps.
** Defining for each chosen role the main knowledge that should be retained, and building rituals in which the knowledge is documented or transferred on, from the day they start their job.
** Transfer of knowledge and information prior to employee departure by means of sharing documents, shadowing, mentoring, and more,
* Proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be either conducive or obstructive to knowledge sharing)
*
Storytelling
Storytelling is the social and cultural activity of sharing stories, sometimes with improvisation, theatrics or embellishment. Every culture has its own stories or narratives, which are shared as a means of entertainment, education, cultural p ...
(as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)
* Cross-project learning
*
After-action reviews
*
Knowledge mapping requires the organization to know what kind of knowledge organization has and how is it distributed throughout the company, and how to efficiently use and re-use that knowledge. (a map of knowledge repositories within a company accessible by all)
*
Communities of practice
* Expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the experts)
*
Expert systems
In artificial intelligence, an expert system is a computer system emulating the decision-making ability of a human expert.
Expert systems are designed to solve complex problems by reasoning through bodies of knowledge, represented mainly as if†...
(knowledge seeker responds to one or more specific questions to reach knowledge in a repository)
*
Best practice transfer
* Knowledge fairs
* Competency-based management (systematic evaluation and planning of knowledge related competences of individual organisation members)
* Master–apprentice relationship, Mentor-mentee relationship,
job shadow
Job shadowing (or work shadowing) is a type of on-the-job learning. It may be a part of an onboarding process, or part of a career or leadership development program. Job shadowing involves following and observing another employee who might have a ...
ing
*
Collaborative software
Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".
As re ...
technologies (
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
s, shared bookmarking, blogs,
social software
Social software, also known as social apps or social platform, include communications and interactive tools that are often based on the Internet. Communication tools typically handle the capturing, storing and presentation of communication, usu ...
, etc.)
* Knowledge repositories (
database
In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases sp ...
s,
bookmarking engines, etc.)
* Measuring and reporting
intellectual capital Intellectual capital is the result of mental processes that form a set of intangible objects that can be used in economic activity and bring income to its owner ( organization), covering the competencies of its people (human capital), the value rela ...
(a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)
*
Knowledge brokers (some organisational members take on responsibility for a specific "field" and act as first reference on a specific subject)
*
Knowledge farming (using
note-taking
Note-taking (sometimes written as notetaking or note taking) is the practice of recording information from different sources and platforms. By taking notes, the writer records the essence of the information, freeing their mind from having to rec ...
software to cultivate a
knowledge
Knowledge can be defined as Descriptive knowledge, awareness of facts or as Procedural knowledge, practical skills, and may also refer to Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called pro ...
graph, part of
knowledge agriculture)
* Knowledge capturing (refers to a process where trained people extract valuable or else desired knowledge from experts and embed it in databases)
Motivations
Multiple
motivation
Motivation is the reason for which humans and other animals initiate, continue, or terminate a behavior at a given time. Motivational states are commonly understood as forces acting within the agent that create a disposition to engage in goal-dire ...
s lead organisations to undertake KM.
Typical considerations include:
* Making available increased knowledge content in the
development and provision of
products and
services
Service may refer to:
Activities
* Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty
* Civil service, the body of employees of a government
* Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a p ...
* Achieving shorter development cycles
* Improving consistency of knowledge and standardized expert skills among staff
* Facilitating and managing innovation and organisational learning
* Leveraging
expert
An expert is somebody who has a broad and deep understanding and competence in terms of knowledge, skill and experience through practice and education in a particular field. Informally, an expert is someone widely recognized as a relia ...
ises across the organisation
* Increasing
network connectivity
Connectivity may refer to:
Computing and technology
* Connectivity (media), the ability of the social media to accumulate economic capital from the users connections and activities
* Internet connectivity, the means by which individual terminals, ...
between internal and external individuals
* Managing business environments and allowing employees to obtain relevant insights and
idea
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of bein ...
s appropriate to their work
* Solving intractable or
wicked problems
* Managing intellectual capital and assets in the workforce (such as the expertise and
know-how
Know-how (or knowhow, or procedural knowledge) is a term for practical knowledge on how to accomplish something, as opposed to "know-what" (facts), "know-why" (science), or "know-who" (communication). It is also often referred to as street smart ...
possessed by key individuals or stored in repositories)
KM technologies
Knowledge management (KM) technology can be categorised:
*
Collaborative software
Collaborative software or groupware is application software designed to help people working on a common task to attain their goals. One of the earliest definitions of groupware is "intentional group processes plus software to support them".
As re ...
(
Groupware)—Software that facilitates collaboration and sharing of organisational information. Such applications provide tools for
threaded discussions,
document sharing, organisation-wide uniform email, and other collaboration-related features.
*
Workflow system A workflow management system (WfMS or WFMS) provides an infrastructure for the set-up, performance and monitoring of a defined sequence of tasks, arranged as a workflow application.
International standards
There are several international standards- ...
s—Systems that allow the representation of processes associated with the creation, use and maintenance of organisational knowledge, such as the process to create and utilise forms and documents.
*
Content management
Content management (CM) is a set of processes and technologies that supports the collection, managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium. When stored and accessed via computers, this information may be more specifically referre ...
and
document management
A document management system (DMS) is usually a computerized system used to store, share, track and manage files or documents. Some systems include history tracking where a log of the various versions created and modified by different users is r ...
systems—Software systems that automate the process of creating web content and/or documents. Roles such as editors, graphic designers, writers and producers can be explicitly modeled along with the tasks in the process and validation criteria. Commercial vendors started either to support documents or to support web content but as the Internet grew these functions merged and vendors now perform both functions.
*
Enterprise portal
An enterprise portal, also known as an enterprise information portal (EIP), is a framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries in a manner similar to the more general web portals. Enterprise portals p ...
s—Software that aggregates information across the entire organisation or for groups such as project teams.
*
eLearning—Software that enables organisations to create customised training and education. This can include lesson plans, monitoring progress and online classes.
* Planning and
scheduling software—Software that automates schedule creation and maintenance. The planning aspect can integrate with
project management software
Project management software (PMS) has the capacity to help plan, organize, and manage resource tools and develop resource estimates. Depending on the sophistication of the software, it can manage estimation and planning, scheduling, cost control a ...
.
*
Telepresence
Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance or effect of being present via telerobotics, at a place other than their true location.
Telepresence requires that the us ...
—Software that enables individuals to have virtual "face-to-face" meetings without assembling at one location. Videoconferencing is the most obvious example.
*
Semantic technology such as
ontologies—Systems that encode meaning alongside data to give machines the ability to extract and infer information.
These categories overlap. Workflow, for example, is a significant aspect of a content or document management systems, most of which have tools for developing enterprise portals.
Proprietary KM technology products such as
Lotus Notes defined proprietary formats for email, documents, forms, etc. The Internet drove most vendors to adopt Internet formats.
Open-source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized s ...
and
freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the ...
tools for the creation of
blog
A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
s and
wiki
A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...
s now enable capabilities that used to require expensive commercial tools.
KM is driving the adoption of tools that enable organisations to work at the semantic level,
as part of the
Semantic Web. Some commentators have argued that after many years the Semantic Web has failed to see widespread adoption, while other commentators have argued that it has been a success.
Knowledge barriers
Just like knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing, the term "knowledge barriers" is not a uniformly defined term and differs in its meaning depending on the author.
Knowledge barriers can be associated with high costs for both companies and individuals.
Knowledge retention
Knowledge retention is part of knowledge management. It helps convert tacit form of knowledge into an explicit form. It is a complex process which aims to reduce the knowledge loss in the organization. Knowledge retention is needed when expert knowledge workers leave the organization after a long career.
Retaining knowledge prevents losing intellectual capital.
According to DeLong(2004) knowledge retention strategies are divided into four main categories:
* Human resources, processes and practices
* Knowledge transfer practices
* Knowledge recovery practices
* Information technologies used to capture, store and share knowledge.
Knowledge retention projects are usually introduced in three stages: decision making, planning and implementation. There are differences among researchers on the terms of the stages. For example, Dalkir talks about knowledge capture, sharing and acquisition and Doan et al. introduces initiation, implementation and evaluation.
Furthermore, Levy introduces three steps (scope, transfer, integration) but also recognizes a “zero stage” for initiation of the project.
See also
*
Archives management
Archives management is the area of management concerned with the maintenance and use of archives. It is concerned with acquisition, care, arrangement, description and retrieval of records once they have been transferred from an organisation to ...
*
Customer knowledge
*
Dynamic knowledge repository
*''
Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management''
*
Ignorance management
*
Information governance
*
Information management
Information management (IM) concerns a cycle of organizational activity: the acquisition of information from one or more sources, the custodianship and the distribution of that information to those who need it, and its ultimate disposal throug ...
*''
Journal of Knowledge Management''
*''
Journal of Knowledge Management Practice''
*
Knowledge cafe
*
Knowledge community
*
Knowledge ecosystem
*
Knowledge engineering
Knowledge engineering (KE) refers to all technical, scientific and social aspects involved in building, maintaining and using knowledge-based systems.
Background Expert systems
One of the first examples of an expert system was MYCIN, an appl ...
*
Knowledge management software
Knowledge management software (KM software) is a subset of enterprise content management software, which contains a range of software that specializes in the way information is collected, stored and/or accessed. The concept of knowledge management ...
*
Knowledge modeling
Knowledge modeling is a process of creating a computer interpretable model of knowledge or standard specifications about a kind of process and/or about a kind of facility or product. The resulting knowledge model can only be computer interpretable ...
*
Knowledge transfer
Knowledge transfer is the sharing or disseminating of knowledge and the providing of inputs to problem solving. In organizational theory, knowledge transfer is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to ...
*
Knowledge translation
*
Legal case management
*
Personal knowledge management
Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities and the way in which these processes support work activitie ...
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Information systems
Business terms
Hypertext