Introduction - The Essentials of Knowledge Management Introduction: Setting the Scene (original) (raw)

The activity that we now call knowledge management has been practised for thousands of yearsprobably ever since the first "organizers" in tribes or villages tried to think of ways to stop repeating the same mistakes. Coming up with new knowledge, sharing it with others, making sure it is retained for the future, refining it (learning from experience), understanding how to apply it and deciding when to discard it are all important parts of the human experience. Nevertheless it was only in 1986 that the explicit attempt to direct and combine these activities was given the name knowledge management, by Karl Wiig. Most of the work on knowledge management in the generation or so since then has been set in an organizational context, and that is the emphasis we take in this book. It is nevertheless worth bearing in mind that many of the principles of knowledge management apply at levels all the way from the individual (personal knowledge management) to nations or even (say) science itself. Knowledge management sits at the intersection of several disciplines, including organizational learning, computer science, human resource management, economics, psychology and strategic management. As a result, it is not very surprising that there is no single agreed view of what knowledge management is. 2 Indeed, some would go so far as to say that managing knowledge is not possible, and that the best that can be achieved is managing human "knowers." Perhaps the only aspects that everyone agrees on are that knowledge management is (at best) difficult, and that any knowledge management initiative in an organization has to be tailored to the particular context of that organization at that time. Knowledge management as a field acquired the status of a management "fad" in the mid-to late-1990s, with an explosion in the number of books and articles published about it, and it is fair to say that it has both benefited and suffered from this status. Nevertheless, unlike some other management fads, it has demonstrated its staying power, and is widely practised and studied worldwide today, even if not always under the precise name knowledge management. The aim of this book is to review the field of knowledge management with an operational research/management science mindset, encompassing both "soft" and "hard" aspects. This implies a holistic approach that gives a broader perspective than one based on any single viewpoint such as that of computer science or organizational learning. The various chapters represent the best knowledge management articles published in the 21st century in the journals Knowledge Management Research & Practice and the European Journal of Information Systems. All have undergone a rigorous double-blind review process, and the contributing authors include Ikujiro Nonaka, perhaps the biggest name in the knowledge management field, as well as others with equal reputations in associated fields such as George Huber (decision support) and Richard Baskerville (information systems). The contributing authors are based in nine different countries on four continents, showing the global nature of knowledge management.