People who view Knowledge Management from outside the field often make the mistake of viewing KM as much more homogeneous a field than it in fact is. They tend to think that “KM” means something very specific, and that what it means is the understanding of it they may have gained by reading one or two articles introducing them to it, or by talking to personal contacts they consider well-informed. But one of the first things anyone who “goes into KM” and begins to review its literature learns, is that beyond having something to do with relatively non-directive managerial activities aimed at indirectly improving the quality of decision making through manipulating knowledge, the meaning of the KM meme can vary wildly across a very broad spectrum of ideas.
A recent survey of definitions of KM by Ray Sims
initially reported 43 on in his blog. Aided by comments from others, his list soon grew to 62. Sims’s research provides a picture of the many and differing meanings of the KM meme, while explicitly rejecting the idea of arriving at a single synthetic definition. Stephen Bounds performed an evaluation of Sims’s survey when the list had grown to 53 definitions.
Here is Bounds’s analysis of the attributes identified by the definitions.
KM Activities
– Knowledge Distribution (26)?
– Knowledge Creation (21)?
– Learning (14)?
– Knowledge Classification (9)?
– Collaboration (7)?
– Knowledge Harvesting (6)
– Knowledge Discovery (2)
KM Outcomes
– Improved Execution (28)?
– Value from Knowledge Assets (12)?
– Knowledge Codification (11)?
– Knowledge Retention (3)?
– Continuous Improvement (2)?
– Cultural Change (2)?
– Improved Knowledge Processing (1)?
– Improved Resource Assignment (1)?
In this analysis, the numbers in the parens indicate the number of definitions out of the 53 that include the named attribute, and a glance at those numbers indicates that there’s a great deal of disagreement among those who have offered definitions. A review of Sims’s blog post also shows that most are quite distinct from one another.
The impression left by this and other surveys of KM definitions suggests the true state of affairs about this field – namely that
- there is a broad measure of disagreement among its practitioners about what its core is;
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KM is a meme with many meanings, and also
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KM is a heterogeneous, rather than a homogeneous, movement targeted on many different ideas about how to improve the quality of knowledge informing decisions.
This has an important implication for analyses that attempt to relate KM to any other phenomenon, and specifically to relate the idea of KM to any or all of the 2.0 cluster memes; or to relate any of the sub-groups within the KM movement to any 2.0 cluster movements or sub-groups. That implication is that any such analysis must be very clear about what conception of KM is at issue in the analysis, or also, or alternatively, about what sub-group in the KM movement or 2.0 movements is the object of the analysis.
In later posts relating “KM” to the “2.0 cluster,” I’ll use the following definition of KM in my analysis. KM is the set of activities and processes aimed at enhancing knowledge processing, where knowledge processing includes: problem seeking, recognition, and formulation; knowledge production (i.e. knowledge creation, knowledge discovery, and knowledge making); and knowledge integration.This definition is one of the “outliers” identified by Sims and Bounds cited earlier. It was developed by Mark McElroy and I in 1999 and has received a good deal of discussion since then. It’s unique in making a distinction between KM and knowledge processing activity, and is embodied in our well-known three-tier model (see above), which distinguishes among KM and its outcomes, knowledge processing and its outcomes, and business processing and its outcomes.
Specifically, if one acknowledges that all the “KM activities” identified in other definitions by Bounds, are really all knowledge processing activities, then it follows that our definition recognizes all of these activities as targets of Knowledge Management, or, if enhanced, as KM outcomes, rather than as KM activities. Further, only four of the KM outcomes listed under that category would be viewed as direct KM outcomes namely: enhanced “knowledge codification,” enhanced “knowledge retention,” “improved knowledge processing,” and “cultural change.” The other “KM Outcomes” are only indirect impacts of KM from the viewpoint of the three-tier model.
Why use this definition and the three-tier model? I think the answer to that question is that the scope and boundary problems of KM are greatly alleviated by this definition, because KM starts and stops with a much narrower class of activities, which are clearly management activities targeted at enhancing knowledge processing activities. The orderly development of KM as a discipline is much more likely if the field is defined in such a way that its activities minimize overlap and turf battles with other management disciplines.
To Be Continued