Explaining the Diffusion of Knowledge Management: The Role of Fashion
| Author | Harry Scarbrough,Jacky Swan |
| Date | 01 March 2001 |
| Published date | 01 March 2001 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.00182 |
Introduction
This paper provides evidence on the emergence
and popularity of knowledge management (KM).
This evidence is analysed with the aim of explain-
ing the widespread diffusion of KM across a large
number of different groups and organizations,
especially in the UK. In particular, we consider
how far this pattern of diffusion can be explained
in terms of the management fashion model
(Abrahamson, 1996), and whether an alternative
view might provide a more complete account of
the emerging impact of KM.
KM is not easy to define and many definitions
supplied in the literature are highly ambiguous.
The ambiguity of the concept, however, is itself
a clue to the fashion-setting possibilities of this
discourse; ambiguity makes KM amenable to
multiple interpretations and remouldings which
potentially extend its relevance across different
communities of practice. In this paper, therefore,
KM will be defined broadly and inclusively to
cover a loosely connected set of ideas, tools
and practices centring on the communication and
exploitation of knowledge in organizations.
In the first section of this paper, we will apply
data from a review of the management literature
to understanding the intellectual development of
KM. This review highlights the distinctiveness
of the KM discourse even when compared to the
apparently related notion of the ‘learning organ-
ization’. At the same time, the phenomenal growth
of interest in KM poses an important test for our
ability to explain the underlying dynamics of the
process of its diffusion. The remaining sections of
the paper will develop this argument by seeking
to explain KM’s diffusion in terms of the existing
management fashion model. Comparison of that
model with evidence on the spread and assimilation
of KM tends to highlight the importance of the
reflexive and locally situated processes through
which management discourse is deconstructed
and (re)applied within organizations. Taking this
into account, the influence of the KM discourse
seems to spread not through ‘waves’ of fashion
but through a ‘ripple’ effect caused by the distrib-
uted triggering of such processes over time and
across different communities. We conclude by argu-
ing that this interpretation of KM is not only a
more suggestive account than the fashion model
British Journal of Management, Vol. 12, 3–12 (2001)
Explaining the Diffusion of Knowledge
Management: The Role of Fashion
Harry Scarbrough and Jacky Swan*
University of Leicester Management Centre, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH and
*Warwick Business School, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
This paper provides evidence on the emergence and diffusion of the discourse of know-
ledge management. A literature review of the knowledge management and learning
organization literatures demonstrates the lack of learning from one discourse to another
and major differences in the concerns and issues that they address. At the same time,
evidence on the level of interest in each discourse shows a tendency towards a normal
curve distribution. Analytically, these findings suggest that the widespread diffusion of
knowledge management might be explained in terms of the management fashion
model. However, further consideration of the professionally-differentiated appropriation
of knowledge management concepts by the information systems and human resource
communities suggests that the fashion model provides only a partial explanation for the
observed diffusion of knowledge management.
© 2001 British Academy of Management
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