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Wilson

Management > Organisational Knowledge and Information Systems > Lectures > Independent Research > Wilson

 

Wilson - The Nonsense of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is a paradox.

Information can be managed, as it exists outside the mind, whereas knowledge cannot, being that it resides within people’s heads and within each person’s head the knowledge base is different. Knowledge is full of flaws, as people are often unaware of everything they actually know and they can forget things, or think they have forgotten them, only to have the knowledge emerge if needed. Thus there is little control to be had over knowledge.

Too many people use “knowledge” instead of information management.
Does not think that tacit knowledge can be made explicit, as that is what defines tacit knowledge.

Seems all to be about IS
Implication that there is no such thing as knowledge management, that lots of people use the term because it is the current management fad term, to describe lots of different things. Like the term, “runcible”

Sveiby (2001), a management consultant and seen as one of the founding fathers of the term, KM, states that it is a poor term. He argues that “knowledge focus” or “knowledge creation” would be better, because they describe a mindset, which sees knowledge as an activity, not an object.

Knowledge walks out the door with its owner, no matter how much that person has shared. It cannot be commodified.

This guy is horribly pernickety about the use of words. For example, he rambles on about the exact definition of tacit knowledge and how that if it can be codifiable then it was never tacit in the first place. Arguing against Polanyi (1958), who coined the term

 

 Copyright Heledd Straker 2006

Go placidly amid the noise and haste