What is Knowledge Management (KM)?

A common theme flowing through the various definitions I have found is summarized well by Avery(2008) which defines KM as :


“Practices deployed by organizations to identify, create, represent, classify, and disseminate knowledge for reuse, awareness, and learning to the benefit of information users”[1]


From an academic perspective this all sounds wonderful, but after further investigation people in the workplace seem to have differing viewpoints influenced by several factors: the size of the organization; organizational culture; business sector; management perception of KM and worker perception of the knowledge they can or are willing to share. Understanding the concepts of KM and actually implementing it can potentially be worlds apart due to the potential misuse of the term when compared to the definition I referred to above.


An interesting study [2] on KM in SME’s which identifies the difficulties in constructing sustainable KM initiatives and suggests that the main obstacle to KM is usually the culture of the organization and the realization of the time and effort needed to make it successful. This clash can come from both the perspective of the management and the worker and if neither have a clear KM definition, or understanding of the benefits to the organization, within their own organizational boundary (and that’s a contested issue!! see previous post) then the development of KM will be disjointed and difficult to manage.


[1] Avery, J P (2008). A Different Kind of Web-Based Knowledge Management, Defense & AT-L; Vol. 37 Issue 3, p30-33

[2] Chan,I,.Chao C (2008), Knowledge Management In Small Medium Enterprises, Communications of the ACM ,Vol. 51 Issue 4, p83-88

What is an organization?

I found several definitions of what an organization could be including those outlined in the text by Laudon and Laudon[1]. In summary an organization can have one or many members in a hierarchical structure that will adopt a particular culture, value set and rules. The organization can be either traditional or virtual and will operate within organizational boundaries, although research suggests that there are several types of boundaries that can be considered: efficiency; power, competence and identity[2] Santos, Eisenhardt (2005).This is were it all starts getting interesting as this paper suggests that an organization’s boundary doesn’t just identify what the organization is but also what is in the environment.

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[1] Laudon, J., Laudon, K. (2007). Management Information Systems- Managing the digital firm, 10^th edition. Harlow, Essex: Pearson Education

[2] Santos F,M.,Eisenhardt K,M. (2005), Organizational boundaries and theories of an organization, Organization Science Vol. 16 Issue 5, 491-508

That winter feeling

Hi Fellow eagles ! Sorry not posted much but been suffering from a nasty cold for last few days . I will try and get some research done ready for Thursday's meeting. See you all then.

The Eagle(s) has landed ! So just a quick note to describe the initial purpose of this blog is to discuss matters relating to knowledge management. A small team has formed consisting of Ginika , Yemi, Azam, , Christos (please correct my spelling on this and I will edit and add link to blog when I have it !) and myself . We have named our team The Eagles, for no apparent reason, and if we are half as succesful as the californian group of the 70's we might just make it through our course and come up with a few interesting and controversial discussion points along the way concerning the role of knowledge management within organizations.
More to follow shortly so watch this space or the others listed. If you need a break to digest things you can always check out the movie!

A little about me:

I have a Bsc Computer Electronics and a PGCE, 10 years Programming experience and 4 years teaching experience.
Outside of work I spend a lot of time playing in a band called The Stabilisers that has a record deal with an American label called wicked cool records run by steven van zandt. We also have an area on myspace where you can listen to various tracks from the albums we have released and you can check album reviews and band photos at our website.