Talk:Knowledge management/Archive 1

Page Cleanup?

This page is long, contains some old material, and is not easy to find material in. I propose we clean it up by listing here what we think can go and seeing if we all agree to it. LMackinnon 02:13, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree to discussion page clean-up. It may be easier to just propose a specific block as being no longer useful. I would remove my own previous unproductive diatribe, except Snowded has recently (11 Sep) interspersed responses. Either he can remove it himself or give me a thumbs up and I'll kill that section. ThreePD 21:24, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

My first post for a couple of years, and I cannot get into my user name (Jeffrey Newman)but just to say that keeping this page allows those who know little about KM to have a confusing and illuminating tutorial, which is entirely consistent with KM learning. So I am so pleased it has been kept. Please excuse this illiterate Wiki scrawl, but I have not the time to relearn all the jargons and shortcuts etc at this time.

Tacit knowledge section

The following on the current version of the page is really confusing:

"A key distinction made by the majority of KM practitioners is Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. The former is often subconscious, internalised, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge - knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have codified.

Is the "former" meant to be Polanyi or Nonaka? Also, I don't think it nails what the "popular" conception of tacit knowledge is. The popular conception of tacit knowledge is not just "what is in our heads" it also knowing internalised as habits, social norms, etc, contextual know-how, etc (c.f. Hayek, F. A. (1945). 'The use of knowledge in society', American Economic Review, XXXV (4), pp. 519-530.). It is knowledge and know how that we have that we may, or may not, be able to formulate consciously.

However lets discuss it. The original form made assumptions which are no longer universal in KM.

And your references / evidence for this claim is?

Sorry there are very few references or backups to any material that you have posted.--Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The view that we shoud have three perspectives on KM: what we know but cannot say, what we can say but cannot write, and what we can write is a respectable, established and referenced position.

I'd point out that there are also degrees of variation in what you can write - writing about physics or economics in an English language essay is different to writing about it in technical, mathematical language used by the profession.

shows the vallue of reading not reactiing. The more simple statement "We always know more than we can tell and will always tell more than we can write down" is much quoted and used and is an attack on Nonaka --Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I would associate that phrase as stemming from O'Dell's "If only we knew what we know" (1998). Correct me if there are earlier works I should be associating this with. But O'Dell (pp. 3, 4, 19) explictly endorses rather than attacks the Polanyi/Nonoka approach to tacit knowledge rather than using the above as an attack on tacit knowledge. Similarly, Davenport and Prusak (1998: 81, 84) articulate the SECI model, rather than attack it. Could you point me towards where/when/by whom in the literature you believe this phrase became an attack on the SECI model? In addition, why do you take this phrase to be in conflict with Nonaka? On the face of it, there would appear to be no reason to think so - it seems to me to sound more like a statement of the importance of tacit knowledge than an attack on it. Thx. LMackinnon 01:37, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

O'Dell derives that phrase from the DEO of HP and its a different one. Davenport and Prusak and most authors in the 90's work from the SECI model. O'Dell's comment certainly supports it. The full phrase parly originates in Polanyi and was first extened by me in 1998 although the better citation is in Complex Acts of Knowledge. Polanyi and Nonaka have different views of the nature of tacit & explicit by the way so it is an error to couple them. So. One the phrase is not related to O'Dells and two the reference is the Complex Acts of Knowledge. Now I am not the only way. M&Firestone also attack (and I disagree with them in other areas but not this one) and if you look through the journals (I am on the editorial board of three) you will see a growing discomfort.

ok, so it's your own views and a few other people's and unspecified discomfort on the part of unspecified others. As to the other part of the question: could you please describe what conflict there is between the phrase you cite and Nonaka's SECI model? I don't see any issue from what you've said so far.

As Nonaka's views as his and those of other peoples. The point is that you have asserted Nonaka's defintion as the approach (without citation other than to Nonaka), when it is the majority, but not the only approach. Hence the qualification. The conflict between the phrase and SECI is covered in "Complex Acts of Knowing" but in summary it says that a view of knowledge purely as a "thing" that can move between tacit and explciit states is both wrong, and also dangerous. I think by the way that my first use of the phrase was at one of Carla's conferences and there are ealy publications but the 2002 article is the best expression.

ok. So we are moving in to debating epistemology. We might as well throw in Kuhn's paradigm's, Wertheimer's notion of gestalt, Bourdieu's habitus, Berger & Luckmann's social construction of reality, Searle's brute/institutional facts, Popper's third world, etc while we are at it. What exactly do you think should fit within the scope of an introductory article on KM?

to do that might be interesting and I could trot an equally impressive list to impress. However the issue here is simpler. If you say Nonaka's use T/E then its OK, the minute you introduce Polyani then the statement needs qualificaton and possibly extension. It is probably better to keep it simple--Snowded 03:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

btw, in passing, I would suggest that the argument as you have phrased it does not invalidate tacit knowledge as used by Nonaka, it just extends the discussion. LMackinnon 03:03, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

noted but I am afraid I disagree. Nonaka takes a systems perspective on this and its necessariliy limited.--Snowded 03:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I think Nonaka took a systems perspective to a far greater extent in his follow up work, not so much in the Knowledge Creating Company.

and of course Polanyi and Nonaka have different takes on tacit knowledge, no disagreement there - part of the problem is that very few people go back to read Polanyi in the original, and they take a soundbite of what he said as being reprenetative of a considered philosophical position. LMackinnon 01:58, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

good so we are agreed - so don't couple them

The issue is the converse - it's beyond the scope of an introductory article such as this to decouple them. I would suggest you'd be better off putting that discussion in the tacit knowledge article or some other article, and just linking to it from here

See my comment above - if you keep it to Nonaka then its introductory, add Polayni and the landscape canges--Snowded 03:39, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure whatyou mean. Could you elaborate?

Sure. If it says "Most people adopt Nonaka's distinction between T&E" then that is fine. If you say Nonaka/Polanyi then it needs to be qualified, and then extended and then it all gets too long (as you rightly point out).

Perhapsa a new article 'Tacit Knowledge and KM'?

I have just got involved in this section having used the KM Entry of the Wikkipedia as an example of its dangers. Partial and incomplete representation of a complex field.

Duh! It's an article, not a book. How would you ever expect it to be complete? What did you expect? The idea is to highlight the main themes. Also, it is not a commissioned scholarly article. It is an open-source amalgam of various contributions from various people with various backgrounds.

The sheer number of leaders in KM who were not referenced made it a nonsense.

Read the above again, and tell me exactly how long you think this one article should be?

Not to long but to have even a short article that does not reference Stewart, Prusak etc is not good enough if it is targeted as an introduction--Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Someone challenged me to take part and modify it so I am (and learning in the process). At the moment it seems to be the personal fiefdom of one LMackinnon.

It's the domain of whoever wants to make a meaningful contribution that meets Wikipedia standards and reflects an adequate level of knowledge and scholarship. So far, you haven't demonstrated that, only (strongly held) opinions.

and that is not an opinion!

Of course it is. Did I try to represent it as anything else?

Your post is littered with unsupported assertions and a part of my criticism is that the complete neglect of whole parts of the field with which you are either unfamiliar or disagree represents a problem with the "level of knowledge and scholarship"

It's an evolving article. What my opinions are or aren't isn't the issue. If you or anybody else has useful contributions to make, the idea is to make them. If I or anyone else thinks your views are simply wrong, unsupported, badly written or in any way not up to appropriate Wikipedia standards, we will jump in and edit accordingly, e.g. roll back to a previous version or edit the content. That's the way it works without having any hierarchy of editors for Wikipedia. LMackinnon 01:52, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

agreed, although I assume you intended to say "they will jump in" not "we will jump in" as I assume you do not see yourself as part of a hierachy of editors.

So a suggestion - there is a real need for a section on the history of KM

I don't have a problem with that

(that would correct your Nonaka and nothing else approach)

That's not my approach. Personally I would see value in discussing other early generation contributions from Dixon, O'Dell, Stewart, Collison and Parcell, etc (I personally don't find much value in the complexity approaches - it just seems like a bandwagon with little extra value - but that's just my take). However, you can only have so much in the one article, and you can only add so much at any one sitting. I happened to add the Nonaka stuff first, as histoically it was a core contribution to the field and you can't really understand what followed without understanding that first, and because discussing Knowledge is a good place to start talking about Knowledge Management.

and for key sections (such as tacit/explict and the issue of intellectual capital) where there are known different views. Those should be summarised.

Well why don't you summarise on this talk page what you think those 'known different views are', who and where they came from, and who thinks they are important?

Equally there is a strong link here to the (very good) entry in Wikkipedia on epistemology as those debates are coming accross into the practice as well as the theory of KM. Again something that can be worked on.

I haven't seen epistemology come useful into the KM debate. Every contribution Ive seen motivated by epistemology is, like epistemology, abstract and lacking practical real-world relevance.

and that is not an opinion? Theory informs practice and not having knowledge of theory can lead to poor practice (even HBR has picked up on this)--Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

IN the meantime, if nothing else you made my day yesterday by saying that I (Dave Snowden) did not understand my own or Nonaka's work in a public forum so thanks for that, I can use it!--Snowded 23:58, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

<g> I can see the humour there.

But also, you could probably see that you are then very explicitly pushing your own point of view, can't you?

Regards, and I hope this moves towards a constructive conversation that improves the article. LMackinnon 00:21, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, for the record, the article was in a very poor state when I started contributing. My initial idea/intention was to provide something along the lines of the APQC "Stages of Implementation: A Guide for your Journey to Knowledge Management Best Practices"by Carla O'Dell, or Rumizen's "Complete Idiot's Guide to KM" (in my view one of the best practical introductions for someone starting from scratch). These are both reasonably represntative of best practices within KM - and practical. Summarising the whole field of KM and all the strands of practical and scholarly thought was not my intention at that time. My original intentions were outlined in the 'some changes' section below on this page. LMackinnon 00:30, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I know Carla and Mellissee well and they know me. They come from a process school of KM and yes they are practical (but so are many other schools including the one I belong to). --Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, of course, my contributions to the article only reflect some tiny portion of the material I know for KM. The fact that I didn't write about something here doesn't necessarily mean I didn't know it (I may or may not). The issue here is which things to focus on first, as most important in introducing people to KM. LMackinnon 00:43, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you here in that you cannot do everything, but there are some things you have to do in order to be taken seriously. I've made some general amendments and made sure that I maintained the same level of citation and authority as your text.--Snowded 01:10, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, apologies if I seemed a little steamed up in the conversations of the last couple of days. I had been in an earlier conversation/debate with Daniel who put forward similar views to yours without any justification, just assertions, and you are probably copping a bit of the outcome of that. I am sure you will be able to provide references / support for your positions/claims to a much greater extent than Daniel did. :) LMackinnon 01:05, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

More than able to look after myself don't worry abou it

This is, in fact, the section, which because of (not despite) the personal content allows the newcomer to begin to gain a 'tacit' understanding of KM. It is also worth recognising the importance and allied concept of Wittgenstein- the 'imponderable'. See Morse's recent Intro to W

Critique

Here is a short critique based on text as of 07/30/06

blog post

Fair enough. Commented there. One thing I will mention is that people keep changing the KM article. I had a definition for KM a few months ago as

Knowledge Management or KM is the activity undertaken by organisations as they institute processes, practices and supporting technology infrastructure to manage the development, capture, transfer, and retrieval of expertise, know-how, tacit and explicit knowledge and other intellectual capital from within the organisation in order to fully leverage existing knowledge and expertise in the pursuit of business objectives.

Wordy perhaps, but to my mind it focuses on what KM is about. The current version has been washed down a tad.

Ok, I made the changes now. LMackinnon 00:32, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

KM generations

This section seems to be very long. An equally important view is the many KMMM (KM maturity models) that provide a framework for KM assessment, capability and implementation evaluation. Knowledgeboard's review Dgrey 07/30/06

You are speaking here of knowledgemanagement out of a social view. There is more than this but? This article is confusing. It is listing conecpts and is mixing them with "populare discurs". It is giving opinion rather than facts?

Further Reading (was References section)

I don't see that splitting references into "notes'and "further reading" - and removing citations from the body of the article - is particularly helpful.

Just my opinion. LMackinnon 12:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

I've added ISBN's to the books and moved the articles out to a sub-heading. Should we remove all articles, as there can be hundreds? It would also be nice if we could list the "important" books. Again, the list gets long. Jackvinson 04:05, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Personally I don't mind the articles being there - some important material appears in articles.

But my questions is: why add all the ISBNs? What is their value? If you write for an actual encyclopedia, I don't think you add ISBNs next to every refernce used, do you? Just curious why you (and others) think this is important . . . LMackinnon 11:06, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

BTW, listing the important books is a great idea, but impractical . . . Everyone will have different ideas about what's important . . . LMackinnon 11:12, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

The main thing I was attempting to do was clean up the references. I added ISBN's because Wikipedia has that groovy ISBN-search feature. I don't think it is particularly important. Jackvinson 05:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

More on Nonaka and tacit/explicit (latest changes)

Critics have however argued that Nonaka and Takeuchi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is oversimplified, and even that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory.[3]

First, I think "critics say" and "one critic says" are two totally different things, especially when the "critique" is in the context of communication rather than Knowledge Management and a summary of the actual criticisms made is ommitted from the reference. The authors may or may not have been criticising the tacit/explicit distinction per se. Certainly the last person to "cite" acriticism of it turned out to have just misunderstood the reference he was citing.

ok, I read the paper that the poster's quote came from, and I think it's irrelevant here. The article had no concrete objections to the SECI model - at the most claiming it was översimplified"without giving solid arguments to why they think so - and then moved on to critiquing Polanyi (not very effectively). It's basically quibbling over a fine detail from a thirdhand perspective, hardly worth adding in to an encyclopedia article on knowledge maangement. LMackinnon 14:25, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

Second, it is besides the point if one or two people of a handful of people quibble with the validity of the tacit/explicit distinction. It is hardly worthy of mention here in this short article unless the criticisms are foreceful and widely accepted, and I doubt that that is the case here.

Thirdly, as presented here, I disagree with the claims made. The tacit/explicit distinction is widely accepted and I do not think the notion of explicit knowledge (just to be clear, remember Polanyi actually used the term focused knowledge) is particularly controversial. Perhaps the cited article wants to run an objection along the lines of the Duhem-Quine thesis, but in any case I can't see it as much more than quibbling - and, in this context, as particularly worth mentioning.

In any case, if you must mention it, perhaps it would be appropriate to mention more than one critique, and to include critiques from *within* the knowledge management literature among the references cited in support of the claim.

Anyway, you would have got the gist of my objection - it strikes me as a dubious claim, lacking authority, and a wate of article space. LMackinnon 12:01, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Previously . . . Nonoka and tacit/explicit knowledge

Following the discussion of Nonoka and tacit/explicit knowledge, someone citing someone from IBM said something along the lines of:

<< Conversely, it has been argued that attempts should not be made to 'convert' tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, as often the context is lost in the process - and it is the context that provides the true value of the knowledge. >>

No reference was given to any written work where this argument was made was given.

I have deleted it for now, on the basis that

(1) Nonoka et al is an authoritative work, widely accepted in the KM literature,

(ii) The fact that tacit knowledge is contextual is by the by - so what? The point of Knowledge Management is to share what knowledge you can. Nonoka gave case examples, like for example the baking machine, where tacit knowledge of the expert baker was usefully captured and codified in the baking machine technology, and subsequently shared within the organisation and refined. It was obviously useful to do so. Similarly, going the other way, Nonoka argues that one must make explicit knowledge contextual by learning to use and apply it - by socialising oneself into it, making it contextual. So, I don't think the argument that tacit knowledge is contextual conflicts with Nonoka's widely accepted framework.

I think that the proposed change was (a) weak in substance and (b) lacking any argument to show that it constitutes a substantial and accepted point of view in the Knowledge Management literature, as opposed to being an opinion of one person.

If you want to keep it in, please suggest why the argument should be considered substantive in relation to Nonoka's work. I am easily persuaded by a solid argument! :)

LMackinnon 14:42, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

<REPLY: By 'the someone' who made the change> I'm not sure if using 'EDIT' is the best way to enter into a discussion, but it is the only way I know how for now. I appreciate your comments. I will provide full citation and argument shortly. Being someone who is obviously very clued up on KM, I am very surprised that you are unaware of Dave Snowden's work. He provides important critique to activities in the KM arena over the last decade. The critiques are important because, for the most part, KM has not delivered on its promises.>

User:Daniel Maree 14:21 [CAT], 24 April 2006 (ZAR)

Hi Daniel,

That's what this talk page is for! :) Talking about it is much better than editing each others comments on the article - this way I get to learn something and, hopefully, we reach a point where we agree.

No, I didn't know Snowden. I googled though, and got this:

<<

He is Director of the Cynefin Centre for Organizational Complexity which focuses on the development of the theory and practice of social complexity. The Centre spun off from IBM in July 2005 to allow it greater freedom to explore new trans-disciplinary and participatory approaches to research and the creation of an open source approach to management consultancy. The Cynefin framework which lies at the heart of the approach has been recognized by several commentators as one of the first practical application of complexity theory to management science and builds on earlier pioneering work in Knowledge Management. ... Dave Snowden has an MBA from Middlesex University and a BA in Philosophy from Lancaster University. He is adjunct Professor of Knowledge Management at the University of Canberra, an honorary fellow in knowledge management at the University of Warwick, Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and MiNE Fellow at the Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore in Italy. He teaches on various university programmes throughout the world. He regularly consults at the board level with some of the world's largest companies as well as to Government and NGOs and was recently appointed as an advisor on sense making to the Singaporean Ministry of Defence. In addition he sits on a number of advisory and other bodies including the British Standards Institute committee on standards for Knowledge Management. >>

He must travel a lot!

I had encountered Mark McElroy's writing and heard he was 'the complexity / knowledge management guy'but I guess there can be more than one of them!

Anyway, there is a lot to read for KM, and I hadn't read Snowden. But my point was not to question Snowden's authority, it was to question the argument, because I didn't buy it. I (now) know that Snowden was the guy behind the 'ages of knowledge management'argument - that first it was the knowledge age where information = knowledge in an unquestioned and unproblematised way, then Nonaka's SECI model where knowledge can be tacit or explicit and knowledge rtansfer is important and the social context of knowledge matters and knowledge is more than codified information, to a third age where context matters organizations are involved in sense-making, and there is a rejection of mechanistic models of management. The proposed third age, in short, one where the complexity view of knowledge management rules.

My take (from a very brief internet browse - e.g. http://www.kwork.org/Stars/snowden.html) is that what Snowden was about (like McElroy) was that the third generation of knowledge management must look at knowledge ecosystems, and enabling those systems to function effectively. I don't think he rejected the Nonaka SECI approach on the basis that knowledge is contextual because, as I mentioned previously, this claim does not conflict with Nonaka's work. It is consistent with it. That's what rang alarm bells in my head about your account of Snowden's criticism of Nonaka's SECI model.

For the record Snowden does reject Nonaka's SECI model. The whole of this entry is very limited in its coverage of the field, and its somewhat naive and uncritical acceptance of the ideas of a limited number of thinkers in the field. It is an opinion piece of limited value and should be deleted or at least qualified to the effect that makes no attempt to survey or define the field.

(i) if you think this is what Snowden says (and I don't agree with you from what I read of him - Frankly, I think you just don't understand one or both of Snowden or Nonaka properly) then why don't you provide links/references to back yourself up (ii) If you want to make bald statements without references, why do you think your view is not just another opinion and (iii) your assertion that the whole article is just an opinion piece of limited value is simply nonsense.

well as Snowden I think I have some valid opinion as what what I think.

Well, yes and no. A lot of postmodern / continental philosophers will disagree. Would Keynes be the best authority on Keynesian economics (people interpreted it differently to how Keynes meant it) or Marx the best authority on Marxism? But this is not the best place and time to get into discussions of the limits of authorial intent. LMackinnon 00:36, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I have added two references to your very sparse book list which will back that up. Secondly anyone with any knowledge of the field would back my opinion on the limitations of this piece. Most of the founders of KM are not mentioned or discussed. The range of your discussion is very limited. You given extensive treatment to one school of KM (and a small one) but mention no others. I think my statement stands.--Snowded 14:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Also, please try to format your contributions to this page better, to make it clear where what you are responding to ends and where your comments begin. I changed this for you today but perhaps you could do it yourself next time? Also include your name (use four tilda symbols and Wikipedia will stamp it four you) LMackinnon 14:03, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Apologies new to this - first time I have edited it so I may still get it wrong. --Snowded 14:20, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

---

So, I was looking for clarification about that article - when he made it, why he said, how it was received. Maybe the original argument in the original context might make more sense to me.

I guess what you had in mind might have been something like (from the above link)

<< What we can say and what we know are respectively covered by Narrative and Context Management. Context management in contrast focuses on connecting and linking people through, for example, expertise location, social network simulation, apprentice models of knowledge transfer and the retention strategies for key staff. Managing context involves the recognition that knowledge cannot be disembodied from human agency either as giver or receiver, content is the exact opposite. Context Management takes control of what we know, but cannot fully say or write down. Content Management organises that which can be written. >>

Where clearly he means something more specific than context in the general usage of the word. In any case, in the above paragraph he asserts, just like Nonaka, that contextual (including tacit) knowledge can be transferred, e.g. "apprentice models of knowledge transfer".

Anyway, perhaps the best way to discuss Snowden in this article might be to describe his 'three ages of Knowledge Management'argument?

Also, I am interested in your claim that KM has not delivered on its promises. What is your basis for this, and by what set of criteria do you think KM programs have fallen short?

LMackinnon 14:24, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Some changes

The following by LMackinnon 02:31, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

ok, I'm in the process of making some changes along the lines indicated below (sections A-C). I'm going to use this discussion page as a scratch pad while I put my thoughts together - which offers the additional advantage that if anyone wants to chip in or object, they can do so at an early point! :)

In the meanwhile, I added some references and a 'reading further' section, so if someone wants to really know anout KM, they know some good introductory resources to access (most of the books are on Amazon if your library does not have them).

What I have in mind is the following sections:

A. Historical roots

B. Core concepts of Knowledge Management

B.1 Tacit and explicit knowledge

B.2 personalisation vs. codification strategies

B.3 the life cycle of knowledge: when to capture

OK, these have been worked into the page. LMackinnon 13:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

C. Implementing a KM program

C.1 Business drivers for a KM program

e.g. retaining knowledge as people leave, fostering innovation, raining performance, organisational learning and adaptation

C.2 Identifying the business context for the KM initiative

linking the KM program to business objectives, e.g. the business plan, strategic context, etc.

C.3 KM enablers

e.g. communities of practice, content management, etc.

C.4 Pilot programs

prove the concept and ROI

C.5 Measuring KM - metrics and measures

LMackinnon 02:16, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Knowledge technologies

Hi. I had created Knowledge technologies, and the baby has been immediately redirected and included into Knowledge management.

I'm not sure that was the right move. KT and KM are clearly related and widely overlapping, but none is including the other. KM uses technologies, but also methods and concepts, and KT are used for management but many other things.

See e.g. http://www.ktweb.org/

So I would like to see the two pages kept distinct. Is that possible? universimmedia

Hi, maybe you should revisit the article and separate the two, making it clear how they're distinct. Possibly whoever merged them didn't recognize the distinction. Best, Koyaanis Qatsi 22:11 3 Jun 2003 (UTC)

I would suggest an article on Knowledge Management Technologies covering Wikis, Blogs, Content Management systems, document management systems, etc might be useful. HTH 203.214.56.12 01:40, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me too. LMackinnon 13:45, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Koyaanis Qatsi - Maybe I should give *whoever* the chance to do it :) universimmedia

I just want to test the technoglogy

---

Moved from article

The following stuff is more about MIS management than KM. It is also somewhat problematic (see my comments). Perhaps someone would like to start a KMS article? Banno 18:50, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Para 1 is not too bad, but fails to differentiate between information management and KM, and so is in essence first-generation KM. In other words, it's old hat.

Para 2 is a silly paragraph. By definition, if you can collect, record, organize, filter, analyse, retrieve, and disseminate it, it is not implicit knowledge. Again, this reflects the misunderstandings implicit in first gen KM.

Para 3 and 4 are a combination of weasel words and wishful thinking. Banno 18:50, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Advantages of KMS to the organization

The business value of knowledge management systems (KMS) are:

1. They facilitate the collection, recording, organization, filtering, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of explicit knowledge. This explicit knowledge consists of all documents, accounting records, and data stored in computer memories. This information must be widely and easily available for an organization to run smoothly. A KMS is valuable to a business to the extent that it is able to do this.
2. They facilitate the collection, recording, organization, filtering, analysis, retrieval, and dissemination of implicit or tacit knowledge. This knowledge consists of informal and unrecorded procedures, practices, and skills. This "how-to" knowledge is essential because it defines the competencies of employees. A KMS is of value to a business to the extent that it can codify these "best practices", store them, and disseminate them through-out the organization as needed. It makes the company less susceptible to disruptive employee turnover. It makes tacit knowledge explicit.
3. They can also perform an explicitly strategic function. Many feel that in a fast changing business environment, there is only one strategic advantage that is truly sustainable. That is to build an organization that is so alert and so agile that it can cope with any change, no matter how discontinuous. This agility is only possible with an adaptive system like a KMS which creates learning loops that automatically adjust the organizations knowledge base every time it is used. Examples : business management systems p2p; business workflow analysis.
4. These three benefits mentioned above can be extended to the whole supply chain with the use of extranet based knowledge portals.

More problems: The following are problems within first gen KM, not with KM, as the title implies. And again it confuses KM with MIS management. Banno 18:53, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

What do you mean by First gen? I have seen multiple defintions of generations of KM all controversial (including mine). KM took over a lot of the MIS and DSS agenda so there is bound to be an overlap. ALso the problems remain with KM no matter what generation --Snowded 07:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Problems with KMS

1. There is a reluctance to share knowledge and use KMSs because employees feel that their exclusive control over knowledge gives them power. If they are the only person in the organization that knows how to do a task, they are less likely to get fired, and are more likely to get a raise in pay. Even if they have not taken a microeconomics 101 course, they know that a restriction in the quantity supplied of a good (or skill) will result in a higher price (or wage) for that good (assuming competitive markets and no change in quantity demanded). From an individual's point of view, it makes no sense to share their unique knowledge and skill with others in a competitive situation.
2. The immaturity of the technology can be a problem. There are problems with integration with other management information systems, particularly older legacy systems.
3. The immaturity of the knowledge base industry can be a problem. There are few experts and even they are learning as they go.
4. Cost - a knowledge management system can be expensive.
5. People thinking in terms of technology first rather than concepts. This will only create confusion. Define first where you are and where you want to go with clear concepts before selecting any tools to implement it.

Implementing an KMS

1. Make it clear that management is 100% behind the project.
2. Make it clear that this is a permanent addition, something that employees have to deal with.
3. Set up a cross-functional team to implement the system.
4. Set up a much larger cross-functional team from all regions to proselytize, train, mentor, and monitor the transition.
5. Use numerous incentives. Senior management could have some of their bonus tied to the use of the system. Mid level managers received bonuses if they used the system to generate additional sales. Employees could get prizes if they contributed knowledge that was subsequently useful to someone else.
6. Encouraging a co-operative corporate culture - As long as the culture is fundamentally competitive there will be an incentive for individuals to withhold knowledge. An employee's decision will be one of comparing the financial incentives to cooperate (bonuses for system usage and commissions from additional sales) against the institutionalized incentives to compete (security of tenure and importance to the firm). The company must stress not how to divide up the rewards, but how to grow more opportunities. This can be done by shifting the incentive system from an individual basis to a team basis. This will make it clear to employees that cooperation, is in their best self-interest. It will mitigate any incentive to compete with other employees. In a non-competitive environment, the principles of microeconomics 101 mentioned above, do not apply. There is no reason to withhold knowledge.
7. Among sales staff and senior management, highlight the sales-generating abilities of the system. An incentive should be given to an employee when either his/her team uses the system to generate additional sales revenue or another team uses his/her contributions to generate additional sales revenue. In the first case, this could be a double incentive (additional sales commissions, plus KMS bonus). In either case, revenue-generating incentives are spread throughout the whole firm; they are not limited to managers and sales people.
8. An introductory contest could be useful in getting employees involved. A two-week, all-expenses-paid holiday for two would be enough to get most employees interested. To get a chance at the prize, an employee would have to describe an important part of their work process. This would start people using the system and would "kick-start" the creation of the knowledge base.
9. Increase the scope of the system - There are network economies associated with this system : the more people use it, the more valuable it is to each user. It should be phased in at all divisions and all functional departments as soon as is feasible.
10. Incorporating a knowledge portal into the system - The system could be employed on an extranet. This knowledge portal could be used to obtain important information from suppliers and key customers, making it more useful for everybody. Some of the information could also be disseminated to suppliers and key customers.
11. Incorporating a DSS or AI - The system would be more useful if it drove a decision support system (DSS) or an expert system. Computational and analytical models could be applied to the information in the knowledge base so as to support decision making. An inference engine could be applied to the knowledge base so as to make recommendations. Because some questions are better answered with DSS and others with AI, both types of systems should be used to get the most benefit from the knowledge base..

There is some good material here, but it needs to be put in a better context. The distinction between first and second generation KM is pretty well received now; re-grouping this stuff into an argument for this distinction would make the article more understandable and readable.Banno 19:00, Aug 12, 2004 (UTC)

Please explain what you mean by 1st/2ned generation. I am not aware of any generally accepted defintion thereof --Snowded 07:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

new edits

Not sure we have the correct structure here. Would prefer Principles, practices, places, people and patterns as a way to organize our writings. I'm missing links to important web sites on KM, mentions of social software, blogs and wikis as KM tools, scripts that highlight approaches to KM e.g. communities of practice, expertise finders, social networking, KM in CRM and SCM, KM its links to e-Learning, competitive intelligence

Here are some of the core concepts I have collected in my travels around KM http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmConcepts - I would like to see these worked into this page somehow. Dgrey 03:53, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

hey, someone is cutting out all my bad jokes!!!

seriously, it is good to see some work going on here. I'd left it with a few rude comments, just to see if anyone would bite - no one did. Banno 05:55, Dec 23, 2004 (UTC)

Knowledge Management, Packaged Solution?

Knowledge Management is something that i've recently got into. It's immensely fascinating, it isnt restricted to any space and that's the beauty of it. You can use it anywhere , from a multi-billion dollar S/W company to a grocery shop.

The one thing iv'e figured out is that technology is just an aid , not the solution.Most KM solutions come as pre-packaged tools , TV dinners essentially. Each organization is different , and their KM solutions should be custom made. Most of these KM tools manage just the information and not the knowledge. Calling them KM tools can be misleading.

Designing a KM system is an immensely challenging task. The most important phase is ofcourse the user requirements gathering phase. Once you've got that figured out , you've completed the most challenging phase of designing the system. Note : this will only allow you to share information.

So after long hours of planning you finally designed the frame work , now you choose the software you want based on your requirements and after enless hours of testing you now have the structure. The true "knowledge exchange" takes place not across document libraries but places like this where information is freely available, accessible and modifiable.

Ever wondered whether those gargantuan "Knowledge" products actually help you achieve your goals ?? - something to think about.

"Information is useful and Knowledge is power but understanding the difference is where the money is......"

Policy on Removal of External Reference to specific external links

I understand that removals can be contentious. It seems a sound idea to solicit views first. Therefore I am awaiting responses for a reasonable period before taking any action. --Philopedia 15:03, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Brint at one time was a great source for ongoing discussion of knowledge management in their forums. They are a shadow of their former selves, but it can't hurt to keep the reference there.

Discuss links here

Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!)

- you mean external links? LMackinnon 12:51, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Just A Thought!

Isn't knowledge an individuals comprehension and interpretation of information?

As soon as it leaves that individual, it becomes information for another individual to comprehend and compute. However this other individual's experience and existing knowledge may process this information is such a way that there is a differntiation between the "knowledge" of the two individuals, and thus a disjoint! How do you capture that and more importantly, base line the differentiation???

Just a thought!

I'm very new to this, and investigating for an assignment on Corporate Strategy, and in an effort to investigate discussion surrounding a move from an individuals reputation to a business reputation (in the small business concept) I stumbled up KM.

If KM is trying to "manage" this, then perhaps George Orwell's "FICTION" in 1984 is the future, by minimising, or even removing, the differentiation which would result in Information Management!!! That scares me! [personal opinion]

Interesting article: "http://informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html#sve01a"

I agree that there is a need to discuss the spectrum of approaches from the individual to the small group to the distributed group to the corporate entity. Jackvinson 16:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

• • • • • • • • • • Some feedback: Do not get too hung up on the definition of "knowledge" or that KM is some attempt at control. In practice, "managing" knowledge aims to cognitively capture, store, and share knowledge that has been gained by individuals or by the organization. This knowledge may be explicit or tacit. For example, in Research & Development we do not want to keep "reinventing the wheel" because some learning or knowledge has been lost or forgotten. Knowledge is lost when members leave the organization, or when one member is unaware that some knowledge already exists either on paper, electronically, or in some other person's head. In my view, the hope of a successful KM environment will be knowledge sharing.

Multiple viewpoints

One of the troubles with a single article about knowledge management is that there are many viewpoints on what it is. I like the list of links to related articles, as those provide an appreciation of a wider body of knowledge from which KM draws. Would it help if we talked about some of this in the article to give readers an overview?

• Techno-centric: Focus on technologies, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing / growth, frequently any technology that does fancy stuff with information.
• Theoretical: Focus on the underlying concepts of knowledge and truth.
• People view: Focus on bringing people together and helping them exchange knowledge.
• Process view: Focus on the processes of knowledge creation, transmission, transformation, and others.
• Organizational: How does the organization need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes?

Yes, many of these viewpoints are inter-related. Jackvinson 16:09, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree, actually. I don't think there is even a common definition, other than in pretty vague terms. Just zis  Guy, you know? ^[T]/_[C] 21:19, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Add a section on KM Education?

Would it be worthwhile to add a section on KM Education? There aren't many universities that offer KM-specific education. There are several consultancies / institutes that offer variations on KM Certification, which are controversial all in themselves.

One of the things I've seen is that education in KM comes from Librarianship, Information Technology or Business schools. Each has a different perspective on KM, based on where their students end up working. Maybe this could inform the larger description of KM as well? Jackvinson 20:22, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Drivers of KM

This needs to be rewritten, as evidenced by the snarky comment about "Anything a KM consultancy can dream up" as a driver for KM. Jackvinson 05:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Buzzwords

I removed the following statement from the article

as it is a statement of opinion. I think the article needs a lot of improvement and I made some amendments to at least correct some of it. However one persons expert langauge is another persons jargon.

I suggest a discussion here on what needs revision and then lets try and sort it--Snowded 13:43, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

I will be frank here: I am seriously concerned with the perceived proliferation of buzzword bingo articles on the encyclopedia. I've made a general statement of my concerns at Template talk:Buzzword, which I won't repeat here. One of the few concrete and informative sentences in this article mentions "a convincing sales pitch from one of the many consulting firms pushing Knowledge Management as a solution to virtually any business problem, such as loss as market share, declining profits, or employee inefficiency," and that's what I am afraid the chief purpose of this article seems to be. I'm afraid of stealth spam in these articles, especially when they seem to be about very little, and consist mostly of language chasing its tail. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:14, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

but if you looks at the comment in Drivers of KM you will see an objection ot the one sentence you like. Now I agree with that phrase, but it is opinion! Now this is not an article I would have written (and I work in the field with some reputation) but it is a starting point. A lot of the words are relevant to the field and known by experts. If you look at some the entries in Philosophy (to my mind one of the best written and maintained sections of the Wikipedia) then you will see more specialist lanaguage. In all management "science" there are some stock phrases which carry significance (rather like a chinese character you have to understand the history to understand the use) and some that just get trotted out all the time. Rather than blasting a general statement with a few perjorative statements why not take one section and post it here with the buzzwords identified for discussion? Lets get practical not general--Snowded 23:09, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

The view that Knowledge Management is consultancy-driven was published in a peer-reviewed paper. See Wilson's "The Nonsense of Knowledge Management," cited in the articles section.YeahIKnow 02:46, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Peer-review or not its still an opinion. Its one I agree with mind you in the main, but its not a universal statement. Peer review in social sciences can often mean ideological conformity rather than truth or accuracy

My note that Wilson's statement about KM was published in a peer reviewed article has little to do with the statement's "truth," or larger questions about the value of peer review. This discussion presumably is about a Wikipedia article, which is a knowledge object with its own rules and conventions. One of those conventions is the use of peer-reviewed articles as source material.YeahIKnow 17:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

That's what the article itself needs to do. Statements like this:

Knowledge may be accessed, or captured, at three stages: before, during, or after knowledge-related activities.

are what I call tautologies: they are obvious, true by definition, and nobody knows any more after being told this than they knew before. This sort of sentence is entirely filler.

Putting aside the fact that you evidently do not know what a tautology is (a self evident truth is not a tautology) and that the stages of knowledge capture do not follow from some axiomatic definition as you seem to be suggesting, I take issue with your claim that this does not tell us anything. It highlights that in practice you have three possible intervention points for capturing and working with knowledge in an organisational context. The statement has real content (therefore is not a tautology), is operationally meaningful (and therefore can be differentiated from a range of highly respected theories such as general equilibrium theory in economics that are not even operationally meaningful) - and is even practically useful. LMackinnon 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

What the article seems to me to be about is businesses attempting to capture the lore and knowhow of its employees, so that the individuals who possess this know-how become dispensible and their experience can be imparted to others.

What that clearly is is a statement of your opinion. You are assuming it is about 'capturing lore' (it may or may not be), it is about making people redundant (it usually isn't), etc. LMackinnon 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Stating this clearly at least lets the employees know what's at stake when confronted with a "knowledge management" plan, and my vehement suspicion is that the blizzard of words here is to deflect awareness of what is truly at stake.

Hmm. Knowledge Management as a field has been around since at least the mid 1990s. Wouldn't it be better for you to read up on the field to some extent first . . . ? LMackinnon 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Isn't that the purpose of Wikipedia? This is an encyclopedia entry. People should not have to consult primary texts in order to understand it. While the conjecture about "what truly is at stake" in knowledge management may be incorrect, it remains that KM has not been explained to the reader. Ironically, when you say, "Knowledge Management as a field has been around since the 1990s," you've made a statement *about* Knowledge Management: one that actually provides information about what KM is, to the outsider looking in. I suggest it be included in the article.YeahIKnow 17:21, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Assuming that this is the focus of the article, what purpose is served by the "definitions of knowledge management"?

• Techno-centric: Focus on technologies, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing / growth, frequently any technology that does fancy stuff with information.
• Theoretical: Focus on the underlying concepts of knowledge and truth.
• People view: Focus on bringing people together and helping them exchange knowledge.
• Process view: Focus on the processes of knowledge creation, transmission, transformation, and others.
• Organizational: How does the organization need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes?
• Ecological: seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system

The short answer is that some contributor thought this was useful.

Someone actually involved in this is unlikely to ask along with Pontius Pilate, "What is truth?" Unless there's some great mystery here that I in my uninitated stupidity fail to grasp, this strkes me as almost entirely verbal padding. I'd edit out what seems tautological or extremely and excessively verbose, and leave a stub. If someone can explain to me why all these seemingly empty words are significant, that would be a start. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:10, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes the obvious needs stating and KM is an established management discipline. If you took the same to the entries on BPR etc you would have a lot of editing to do. That said I'll be intesting to see what you do. The title "defintions" is poor I will change it. The list of approaches is a fairly accurate summary of different theoretical and consultancy approaches and they are distinct each of which has a fairly substantial body of literature. Either way as I have siad elsewhere I think the overall article is poor and narrow and needs work. I made some changes to broaden it a bit but it needs some radical surgery. It would be nice if that was done by the wider KM community who have worked in the field for years however. --Snowded 08:36, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It would be indeed helpful if someone in the field were to rewrite this in terms of what their actual duties are, in plain English, rather than go on and on about "processes" and "interactions." It's the flurry of abstractions that makes this hard to follow.

What do you find so abstract about "process" and "interaction"? People actually do business process analysis both for IT work and for business benefits. Working with processes is central to improving quality. People are actually working with real "things" in organisations when they work with organisational processes. On the other hand, equilibrium in the marketplace in the economics is an abstraction that does not exist, but that does not seem to stop economists talking about it. ;) LMackinnon 11:11, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

The Wilson article mentioned above suggests that there is no real definition, though, and that it's all a pitch for consultancy businesses; for the time being if someone is going to rewrite this I'd suggest that this perspective be fronted. Stealth spam is my biggest concern with articles like this, especially when they are not written in plain English. - Smerdis of Tlön 14:35, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. My view is that this is not a technical article for practitioners in the KM field, but an introductory article for the general public. The danger of having the article edited primarily by people 'active in the field' is that they may or may not keep in mind and in the fore-view what is of most interest and accessible to the lay public. Perhaps you might want to keep a main page and then create new sub-pages that go into more detail about various technical topics of interest? LMackinnon 05:44, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I have never encountered such a wonderful example of saying much without saying anything. Don Watson where are you now. What a breathtakingly awful article - I found it pretty much unreadable. But alas my native language is English and not jargon-laden corporatese.203.55.112.230 06:33, 29 November 2006 (UTC)gUt

Rewrite approach

Ok. It seems to me that even this thread is becoming a bit cluttered. Do the good people here agree that this article should continue to exist, as already voted upon? Yes? Good. Do the good people here agree that there need to be some changes made to this article? Yes? Good. So then, lets summarize the issues raised above (extracting out the heat and flame) and then go from there, shall we?

Main Issues with Article

• Issue 1 - Select primary audience for article
  • Option 1 - General Audience article (2 Votes)

I added my vote to this. This does not preclude adding additional technical articles and linking to them from here. LMackinnon 02:16, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

• • Option 2 - Technical Article for Practitioners (0 Votes)
  • Option 3 - Both - Split Article (0 Votes)
• Issue 2 - Improve clarity of language
  • Option 1 - Identify unclear segment and propose specific change
• Issue 3 - Reduce tautologies and other nonsensical statements
  • Option 1 - Identify specific nonsensical statement and propose specific change
• Issue 4 - Acknowledge the existence of opposing views, such as the "Nonsense of Knowledge Management"
  • Option 1 - Yes, definitely acknowledge opposing views, that's just good Wikiquette (2 Votes)
  • Option 2 - No way, There is only one point of view, and it's my way or the highway! (0 Votes)
  • Option 3 - Some views are "better" than others (more accurate, more representative, better researched etc) and consensus should be reached around the "better" views. (1 vote).

I voted for option 1 and option 3, as they are not incompatible with each other. LMackinnon 02:01, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Steps Forward

• Step 1 - Is it agreed that these are the issues? If not, add, modify, or delete as appropriate.

Nope.

I'd remove a few. But perhaps instead if you changed them, for example from "remove buzzwords" to "improve clarity of language" you might build more support for the initiative, as people wouldn't be just attacking things they didn't like. LMackinnon 11:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

OK. Just remove or change the issues I outlined, right in that issues section. That's essentially what I asked for; I won't be offended. It's only a talk page section, and I'm just attempting to foster some forward movement on an article that I agree needs clean-up. I haven't seen anyone yet who states outright - "Hey this article is an excellent example of Wiki prose, leave it just the way it is!" Until that moment, I'd favour being more bold ThreePD 16:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

• Step 2 - Can we agree on a priority issue? I suggest agreeing on the intended audience first. This has some material bearing on the other issues. There's few enough people here to just insert yay or nay on this point.

I do think agreeing on the intended audience is a central point. Good suggestion. What are your thoughts? LMackinnon 11:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

My thoughts are that the first main article should write to a general audience. Assume a reader of average intelligence has just heard the phrase "Knowledge Management" and is coming to Wikipedia to find out what it's about. Subsequent spin-off articles can then add details about validity, organizational roles and structures, methods, or tools of the practice that are more oriented towards practitioners. ThreePD 16:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

• Step 3 - Act on points of agreement. Agree to further discussion on points of disagreement.

Agreed?

Depends on what you mean by "agreement". Certainly act on unanimous agreement - that seems to go without question. I'm not so sure that democratic vote between people with varying perspectives, agendas, and levels of knowledge is the ideal path to the best article content. I suggest instead to discuss it until such point as the proposal gets to the point where nobody objects to the change going ahead (which may be different to them agreeing with it) then do it. LMackinnon 11:03, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

By "agreement" I mean general consensus, not unanimous agreement. In this particular case, my read so far is that no one is arguing that this article is already in excellent shape and should simply be left as is. So, I would generally allow for a bit more boldness at this stage and say that if three or more people think something should be done, I would just go ahead and do it. But, if someone subsequently objects or reverts - as in this instance of the important opening para - then we of course agree to be civil and talk the issue out here - one point at a time preferably - in order to achieve a higher degree of consensus. Personally, though, I couldn't agree more with Smerdis of Tlon's comments below. I find the original text too abstract and waffly, and the proposed change to it is a no-brainer in my opinion. But if you can offer something that is clearer but still captures the essence, then I'm certainly willing to take the time to read it and offer an opinion on that as well. For example, if you feel "techniques" is too limiting, then how about the good old, "people, methods, and tools used to..." - or offer your own concrete alternative in response. I will state outright, though, that overall, I do feel the article style needs to be more concise. ThreePD 16:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

ThreePD 16:39, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Opening Section Rewrite

Proposed Opening Sentence Rewrite

A general tightening up of the prose style to make it less waffly and vague would be my first order of business here. For example, the lead section:

Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a range of practices and techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning across the organization.

might read better (IMO) were it recast as:

"Knowledge management" describes the techniques used by organizations to obtain and keep knowledge developed in the course of business and transmit it to others in the organization."

but far less rich in nature. The first could be neater - but this looses meaning. Get rid of leverage and the obviouls jargon however--Snowded 07:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

"Range of practices and techniques" is vague and wordy; "techniques" alone is enough to specify that there are more than one, and there is no significant difference I can tell between "practices" and "techniques" in this context. The long lists of semi-synonyms have been reduced, which to some extent removes vagueness, and buzzwords like "leverage" are omitted. This is a small scale of the sorts of edits that this material needs in order to not read like total bafflegab.

The difference IMO is that your proposed version is a generic motherhood statement that does not adequately describe KM. For example, what is meant by knowledge, what kind of knowledge are we talking about? Is it in documents and databases or people's heads? Another example of how your proposed defintion is flawed: KM is not necessarily about "techniques", it is typically about building organisational infrastructure, culture, practices, etc that promote knowledge retention and sharing.

It may well be that the definition in the article can be improved, but IMO dumbing it down without sensitivity to what KM is does not necessarily accomplish that aim. HTH. LMackinnon 10:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

fully agree --Snowded 07:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd make more suggestions, but life is too short to wade through reams of this stuff, and I'm not sure that my new version might not somehow omit something essential to this mystery. - Smerdis of Tlön 19:21, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that you ommitted "something essential to this mystery." LMackinnon 10:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

---

How about

"Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify, represent, create, and distribute [knowledge] for reuse and learning across the organization.

This proposed opening sentence preserves much of the original text but trims the excess that is better elaborated elsewhere in subordinate explanatory text and within the Wikipedia "Knowledge" article itself. Preserving the phrase "range of practices" rather than the semi-redundant co-located "techniques" term reduces the readers initial terminology overload while avoiding an implied "techniques" school of thought bias? ThreePD 17:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

add "create" and I would agree with that --Snowded 07:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Comme ca? ThreePD 21:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that the proposed re-definition is a bit clumsy in that organisations might not both identify and create knowledge at the same time (they may do both at different times), and I'd put represent after both identify and create as presumably in many cases one identifies/creates knowledge before representing it for distribution, but other than that, I'm fine with it as well. I prefer the original, but that's just me. I'm not overly attached to the wording as long as the phrase communicates what KM is effectively. LMackinnon 09:29, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed and incorporated as such. ThreePD 01:42, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

---

Proposed Second Sentence Rewrite

Another proposed edit for conciseness and clarity:

Instead of:

Knowledge Management programs are typically claimed to be tied to specific organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific targeted results such as improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.

which distracts by an early caveat and a near redundancy, I would hope the following statement should be clear and relatively non-contentious:

Knowledge Management programs are intended to achieve organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.

"Organizational objectives" and "targeted results" are by and large the same thing. Furthermore, the hedge formulation, "programs are typically claimed to be tied to", seems to incorporate someone's reactionary cynicism and is not NPOV. Now, if someone wanted to argue that KM is intended to "reduce staff" and "make some people irrelevant", I might even agree. But then I would simply counter-argue that the root objective is likely "competitive advantage" for the organization, rather than intentionally "ruin some peoples lives", as may be felt by objectors to KM programs - notwithstanding that "achieving competitive advantage" embodies no intrinsic ethical value, and may indeed "ruin some peoples lives" . If that statement gets into a bun-fight then I suggest people who want to pursue that thread of discussion move off to an appropriate Talk Politics forum. It may well be a legitimate arguement, but it does not help in article development. I would not object to incorporating objections to KM in a later section of the article clearly entitled "Objections to KM", but such objections, however valid they may be, do not belong in opening statements, in my opinion. ThreePD 18:47, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

1. The original sentence I wrote did not have "claimed to be" in it. As you noted, adding that makes the sentence sound weak and prevaricating. Someone who disagreed with the proposition that KM is (typically) tied to organisational objectives simply watered the sentence down to suit their agenda. LMackinnon 02:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

2. Objectives and outcomes are not the same thing, therefore the original sentence is not completely redundant. Granted, objectives might be naturally related to outcomes, but in organisational development the connection is not always made and followed through ;) LMackinnon 02:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

3. That said, I don't really have much of an issue with your proposed change. I'd prefer to keep the word "Objectives" in there, as it is vitally important that KM initiatives be tied to strategic objectives. But really, your sentence does not seem all that different from the original, apart from getting rid of the watering down phrase someone added - "claimed to be". LMackinnon 02:11, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I agree with your comments. I prefer "organizational objectives" as well, and in my opinion it is standard Management terminology. Is my revision above now better? ThreePD 21:49, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Proposed Third Paragraph Rewrite

But first, a few questions. After the very, very, very long opening segment of the para, how does the final segment differ from the introduction line?

Also, in part, this paragraph may be difficult to read because it jumps right into one particular aspect of Knowledge management - [Knowledge transfer] - without identifying or edifying on any other aspects of knowledge management. What are some other "aspects" of knowledge management? Knowledge Acquisition? Knowledge Representation? [Knowledge Visualization]? Perhaps the reader would be better served by a brief list of such aspects? Is there a generally accepted list of such "aspects"?

Last, but not least does it have to wander around like that before making the final point or can it be broken down to slightly smaller, more digestible chunks? ThreePD 01:41, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Capitalisation, initialism and acronyms

In the midst of redrafting the introduction the page has been edited to remove 'KM' and change 'Knowledge Management' to 'Knowledge management' which is indicative of the whole debate - i.e. is the article about managing knowledge or about the discipline (practice but probably not science) of Knowledge Management (KM).

Within the discipline, KM is a common acronym and (IMO) should be used in this article (that has let out which side I'm on).

Should I suggest that the title of the page also changes? I won't as that raises even more WP convention difficulties. Johnmarkh 16:20, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the acronym "KM" is central to the article, however one feels about it as a discipline. In all probability, people are coming here to read the article because they heard the specific phrase "Knowledge Management" somewhere and are coming to find out some basic information about it. I personally believe this is a fair assumption to go forward with, and any objections to KM as a practice, or its methods, tools, and effectiveness, can be handled as straighforward statements, such as "Some people dispute the effectiveness of KM". ThreePD 22:08, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Opening Phrase

I removed the following "Knowledge management today is frequently focused on personal and organizational change by accelerating the diffusion within and across organizations of proven practices, process improvements and innovations to achieve measurable organizational goals and objectives." as it seems to replicate the earlier general defintion, but in effect restricts KM to that perspective. I would agree that today some KM follows this approach but not all. This should therefore go later in the article to exp[and on a perspective. I have made some minor edits to include PKM (personal knowledge management) which I do not like, but is a part of KM as a whole and was not mentioned before, --Snowded 00:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi

I thought that

Knowledge management today is frequently focused on personal and organizational change by accelerating the diffusion within and across organizations of proven practices, process improvements and innovations to achieve measurable organizational goals and objectives.

was largely a repetition of what was previously said, albeit with an additional emphasis on both the personal and organisational aspects of change. To me, that seemed to be pointing towards the relationship of structure to agency, as indicated for example in Edgar Schein's conceptualisation of cultural change, or in the various structure/agency theories (Bourdieu, Bhaskar, Giddens, Berger & Luckmann, etc).

I think that your edit seems to focus on the personal side of the change (personal KM) but reduce the focus on the organisational side of change. Perhaps you see the organisational side as inherent in the notion of KM anyway? Anyway, I have no problem with the changes you made, I just thought that (to me) DigitalDoug seemed to be pointing at the structure/agency relationship and how the organisation and individual are inter-related in KM. Perhaps I read too much into it . . . LMackinnon 09:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

RECENT CHANGE Just to say that I fully support the reversal back to a single paragraph of the opening phrase. The insert seemed to attempt to redefine knowledge management into a particular academic discipline or approach (linking human and machine cognition for example) which added no value and confused things. Some of the subjects raised in that might be better as new articles, rather than confusing something which is focused on the way people user KM as a term in government and industraly alike

WIKIPEDIA as a Knowledge management TOOL?!

We can include topics or sub-article!?

• Wikipedia as a network of related concepts is a very good form of "Ecological Approach" to KM.
• Many "original research" is original only about "Knowledge organization" (taxonimies, tables of cases, selection of relrevant topics, etc.), that is, Wikipedia DO AND NEED a little original research from the KM point of view! We need EXPRESS HERE this important point of view. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.43.54.214 (talk) 15:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC).

Yes, it is a important KM tool, see also "KM enablers". -- 201.83.160.133

Spelling

Sometime ago someone "corrected" English spellings to their American version. To make a point I changed them back and they have just been reversed. Now this could get silly. However I object to the idea that one version is "correct" and the other "incorrect". For the moment I changed some organization to organisation, left those which were references and also did not change any program to programmes.

I think that the best approach is to leave whichever version of the spelling is used by the person making the change. Any comments?--Snowded 19:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I am certainly fine leaving items in their original "dialect" spellings. :) Sometimes some of us rubes are unaware of the spelling variants in other locales. -- RayBirks 20:44, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

interesting question as to what is a "dialect" of what, in practice English and American derive from similar origins. However I would not use the word dialect. That said someone feels strongly about this and is changing "z" to "s" and hiding their posting name. Hopefully they will come to this space and discuss the subject. Snowded 15:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#National_varieties_of_English on maintaining the same style throughout an article. Since the subject of the article is not associated with any nationality, you should try to choose words and expressions that are common to all; otherwise (according to the Great Wikipedian Compromise) everyone should follow the dialect of the first major contributor to the article. GUllman 21:41, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

My assumption was the the first style should be followed, which is why I reversed the corrections. I like the idea of trying to use common words though. I must admit my main frustration was that whoever made the changes had no identifier and has not taken part in this discussion. --Snowded 23:01, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I assume that many Americans are not familiar with the English spellings and therefore might change them without realizing what they are doing. I would lean towards the American spelling, because I think it would cause less problems. Then again, I'm probably biased. Betaeleven 16:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I would concur with your assumption - most of these spelling spats erupt out of a good-faith attempt to 'correct' the unfamiliar variations. I've done it myself with some of the more obscure ones (say, yogurt or tyre). It should be consistent in the article, but I just can't see why people get worked up over it one way or the other. Kuru ^talk 02:21, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Vocabulary

"They are many and various and it would be invidious for an encyclopedia to list one without covering the others. Readers are commended to the reading list."

I looked up "commended" at www.m-w.com. These were the definitions: 1 : to entrust for care or preservation 2 : to recommend as worthy of confidence or notice 3 : to mention with approbation : PRAISE

I'm not sure the usage in the entry reflects the connotations conveyed by "commended" as defined by m-w. Commended seems familiar to recommended, such as, "The bright child was commended to the village elders." Commending readers to a reading list doesn't seem to make sense?

---

Knowledge Management In Scientific Communities Of Practice

THE FOLLOWING TEXT HAS BEEN ADDED TWICE. CAN WE PLEASE TALK ABOUT IT HERE BEFORE WE GET INTO THREE REVERSALS ETC.

March 9, 2007 Response Note To Above Editor: We are interested in making the explosion in KM technologies & theories relevant to the day-to-day scientific operations: This is not possible without formally addressing the central constraints that impact upon the creation and management of scientific knowledge. As the U.S. formally enters the Science & Technology Economy, this is a solvable barrier that merits thoughtful consideration.

Stevenson-Perez 02:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)stevenson-perezStevenson-Perez 02:25, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

As I said earlier the subject of knowledge in scientific work is probably appropriate (as a paragraph and not country specific). If you want something more specific at this level of detail then it seems to me that it should attempt to stand on its own as a separate page. Even there I think you are going to have difficulties. The authority for arguing CoPs here is a brochure branded by IBM based on three case studies. It does not justify the claims you make below. The DIKW model is controversial in KM and I see no evidence of its being adopted as a given by the scientific commmunity (even in the US). Constraints in terms of peer review are I think producing some abnormal responses patterns in acdemics and are worth of discussion, but that may be a list serve or blog rather than an entry in an encyclopedia. If it is an entry then different opinions and perpectives need to me mentioned. Your comentary and description of scientific method ignores a hige body of literature, the debate around Khun is only one example of many. You also need to expand what you mean by SKM tools (is this a disguised technology sale? So you have any interest of commercial connection here? I make no assertion that you do, but often this stule of posting ends up being a sales pitch which is not appropriate. Hopefully others will now contribute to this discussion --Snowded 04:55, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

The tools of science are not the same as those used by other disciplines for ‘knowing’.

Knowledge management tools, when applied to the various disciplines of science (particularly in the United States), are subject to three very powerful constraints, giving rise to a specific set of Scientific Knowledge Management (SKM) tools.

The three central knowledge management constraints in science are:

1. All grant-funded science, and particularly in medicine, in the United States is conducted in a community-of-practice setting, which provides rigid restraints on the creation and use of scientific knowledge;

2. All scientific knowledge derives from scientific information, and all scientific information derives from scientific data; and

3. All scientific knowledge must be created, maintained and improved by use of the scientific method.

Since the publication of the landmark “Communities of Practice” research paper by William Snyder and Xavier de Souza Briggs in 2003, it has been recognized that all grant-funded and/or government-supported scientific endeavors in the U.S. are conducted within the context of a scientific community of practice (CoP) ( [1] ): Scientific CoPs steward the knowledge-assets of scientific organizations. The quality of these scientific knowledge-assets can be measured scientifically. Thus, effective scientific organizations must be aware of the CoP constraint upon their operation , and they must learn to manage knowledge accordingly. The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has recently acknowledged the validity and the power of the scientific communities of practice approach to measuring the 'value' of its accumulated scientific knowledge with the launching of the new Office of Behavioral & Social Science Research intiative (see page 5 of the NIH "Healthier Lives Through Behavioral & Social Sciences Research" Report { [2] }

All scientific organizations depend upon scientific knowledge for their proper operation: After all, the Latin root word for ‘science’ means ‘having knowledge’. Scientific organizations are constrained by obtaining knowledge via the DIKW ( [3] ) scientific learning pathway. In their 2004 “Data, Information, Knowledge, and Wisdom (DIKW)” paper, Gene Bellinger, Durval Castro, and Anthony Mills outline the basic steps of the DIKW learning pathway. In scientific CoPs:

1. Scientific knowledge constitutes ‘the ability to predict the pattern of responses’ and is derived from a specific cluster of scientific information.

2. Scientific information functionally operates as ‘a new insight about relationships that places a demand on the attention of the scientific-observer’, and is derived from a specific grouping of scientific data.

3. In turn, scientific data are simply the infinite facts of the universe itself, which serve as the basis for all scientific inquiry and discovery.

Thus, effective scientific organizations must be aware of the DIKW learning pathway constraint upon their operation, and they must learn to manage knowledge accordingly.

Finally, all scientific organizations, by definition, must adhere to the scientific method in the process of creating, maintaining and improving scientific knowledge. As reviewed by W. L. Jerome in a 1994 scientific research article entitled “The Scientific Method”, ( [4] ) the scientific method is a structured thought & action process that leads to the creation of new scientific knowledge, and it contains the following basic steps:

1. Questions;

2. Hypothesis generation;

3. Predictions;

4. Design of controlled experiments;

5. Proper collection of experimental results;

6. Appropriate interpretation of evidence;

7. Honest sharing of new knowledge and pertinent methodologies with others; and

8. Checking for reproducibility of results and scientific conclusions by others.

Thus, effective scientific organizations must be aware of the limitations and constraints imposed by the scientific method upon their operation, and they must learn to manage knowledge accordingly.

Scientific knowledge management (SKM) tools operate cleanly within these three constraints. Expressed in visual terms, SKM tools are designed to operate in the space where the scientific CoP constraint, the DIKW scientific learning pathway, and the scientific method intersect. The beauty and the performance of the SKM approach is that the use of SKM tools does not place the user(s) in conflict with any of the core tenets of the discipline of science itself.

At the same time, SKM tools are still in their infancy. It is reasonable to expect further refinements at this level of scientific understanding, as Western economies transition out of their former Industrial/Manufacturing traditions into the new Science & Technology Information Age.. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Snowded (talk • contribs) 21:07, 9 March 2007 (UTC).

apologies forgot to do so --Snowded 21:40, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

What is this page about?

As a user unfamiliar with consulting terminology, this page is - well, it's nonsense. There's no clear explanation of what 'Knowledge Management' is, and I mean that in the sense of how Knowledge Management is applied and by whom, rather than a generic handbook-style introduction heavy on words but light on meaning.

The page makes no attempt to establish why 'Knowledge Management' is notable or the history of the term - simply treating it as if somehow this concept should be obvious and fully-formed in the mind of even a toddler. If there wasn't such a overwhelming list of references and clear discussion on the talk page, I'd be tempted to believe this was merely a fictional puff-piece by a consulting agency somewhere attempting in a very roundabout way to convince their customers that their 'techniques' were a legitimate science. 58.168.68.67 11:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Seconded, with a vengeance, I'm afraid. Awesome if you're in the business, but I'm not - I deal with other things for a living! I've added appropriate tags, I don't understand enough about the subject to risk taking it apart into simpler pieces. Hawker Typhoon 23:56, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

It has been an established discipline since 1995 with University Courses on the subject established by 2000 and now almost universal. There are established practitioner and academic journals. HBR has articles on the subject. I could go on and generally agree that the article needs improvement and additional introductory material. However with a ten year pedigree, journals, books and multiple world wide practitioners you can hardly call it fluff.--Snowded 06:36, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Look around at most large companies these days. More and more are establishing Knowledge Management teams within the organization. It's not necessarily an outsourced business like you're implying. Jauerback 12:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I reviewed the page today and inserted one paragraph at the start to establish importance. Otherwise while the article would benefit greatly from editing and additional material, it has had effort from many people who understand the field. If you compare it with other entries in the Management Science field it is has no more specialist language than is normal. There are plenty of refernces to basic text books etc. SO while encouraging all attempts to improve the readability I have removed the lables.

it is an established discipline, but it would be a good idea for a through edit. My first proposed step is to remove the less significant of the sources given--a general article isnt usually the place for a full bibliography. I'm a member of ASIST & I do know at least a little about the fieldDGG 04:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree, one of the things that has happened recently is that people have been adding in their own articles regardless of significance. It might be an idea to start a discussion here and see what agreement can be reached. I am reluctant to initiate that as my own material is there, and I am a recongnised leader in the application of narrative and complexity and would thus be seen as partisan. Happy to engage in the debate. --Snowded 04:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)