science

Knowledge management

Knowledge management is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Knowledge management rather than just read about it. In short: Knowledge management (KM) refers to a range of processes focused on organizational awareness, learning, collaboration, and innovation. It involves using and sharing knowledge to support an organization's goals.

Key takeaways

Knowledge management belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Knowledge management to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Knowledge management from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Knowledge management (KM) refers to a range of processes focused on organizational awareness, learning, collaboration, and innovation. It involves using and sharing knowledge to support an organization's goals. Courses in business administration, information systems, management, libraries, and information science are all part of knowledge management, a discipline that gained prominence in the 1990s and centered on the "Knowledge Workers" that Peter Drucker first identified in his 1954 book, The Practice of Management. Information and media, computer science, public health, and public policy are some of the other disciplines that may contribute to KM research. Numerous academic institutions provide master's degrees specifically focused on knowledge management. As a component of their IT, human resource management, or business strategy departments, many large corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations have resources devoted to internal knowledge management initiatives. These organizations receive KM guidance from a number of consulting firms. Organizational goals including enhanced performance, competitive advantage, innovation, sharing of lessons learned, integration, and ongoing organizational improvement are usually the focus of knowledge management initiatives. These initiatives are similar to organizational learning, but they can be differentiated by their increased emphasis on knowledge management as a strategic asset and information sharing. Organizational learning is facilitated by knowledge management. The setting of supply chain may be the most challenging situation for knowledge management since it involves several businesses without a hierarchy or ownership tie; some authors refer to this type of knowledge as transorganizational or interorganizational knowledge. Industry 4.0 (or 4th industrial revolution) and digital transformation also add to that complexity, as new issues arise from the volume and speed of information flows and knowledge generation.

History Knowledge management efforts have a long history, including on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeships, discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training, and mentoring programs. With increased use of computers in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technologies such as knowledge bases, expert systems, information repositories, group decision support systems, intranets, and computer-supported cooperative work have been introduced to further enhance such efforts. In 1999, the term personal knowledge management 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 and measurement. 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 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. The ISO 9001:2015 quality management standard released in September 2015 introduced a specification for "organizational knowledge" as a complementary aspect of quality management within an organisation.

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), Hirotaka Takeuchi (Hitotsubashi University), Thomas H. Davenport (Babson College) and Baruch Lev (New York University). In 2001, Thomas A. Stewart, former editor at Fortune magazine and subsequently the editor of Harvard Business Review, 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 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. Social-psychological, with a focus on how social networks contribute to a transactive memory system Ecological with a focus on the interaction of people, identity, knowledge, and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system akin to a natural ecosystem. Regardless of the school of thought, core components of KM roughly include people/culture, processes/structure and technology. The details depend on the perspective. KM perspectives include:

community of practice social network analysis intellectual capital information theory 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.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Knowledge management

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Knowledge management claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Knowledge management before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Knowledge management ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Knowledge management

In research: Knowledge management appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Knowledge management in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Knowledge management is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Business terms, Hypertext, Information systems, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Knowledge management outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Knowledge management in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Knowledge management means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Knowledge management out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Knowledge management in simple terms?

Why does Knowledge management matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Knowledge management?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Knowledge management.