Managing knowledge
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040776 |
| Pages | 52-54 |
| Published date | 01 April 2000 |
| Date | 01 April 2000 |
| Author | Patricia Hornby‐Atkinson,Susan Hornby |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
Managing knowledge
by Patricia Hornby-Atkinson, Principal
Lecturer, Bolton Institute and
Susan Hornby, Senior Lecturer,
Manchester Metropolitan University
Historically the profession of information work
has been related to the collections or where
they are
stored,
for example, librarians worked
in libraries; today this idea is becoming more
complex and is changing and developing.
Information work is more about a process, the
collection, dissemination and utilisation of
information and knowledge.
The increase in the use of information technology
and information management within the recent
past has lead to the development of the theoretical
perspective and practical application of what we
now call knowledge management - a term that has
been used in a imprecise and ambiguous way.
Knowledge management has been characterised as
the organisation and history of
idea,
that is, using
the technology to record and store an idea develop-
ing over time. It is the concept of the corporate
brain, the mapping of
the
way that ideas change
over time.
While these processes are not new - one only has
to look at how the individual treatment of a patient
is added to and developed by many members of the
health care team and recorded on the patients
notes,
from diagnosis to treatment and cure - the
development of the technology that is used to
gather together information from disparate sources
is more recent. Knowledge management owes
much to the development of Intranets and shared
working spaces. Implicit in knowledge manage-
ment and the use of
the
technology is the
assumption that individual knowledge will be
shared and that this will result in profit for the
organisation. Although this is the ultimate purpose
of utilising knowledge management skills and tools
there are ethical questions to be addressed:
• Who owns the knowledge?
• Who has the right to profit from this shared
expertise?
• What about the issues of intellectual
property rights and copyright?
Whereas the use of the technology is central to
knowledge management it is not the only focus of
interest for practitioners and researchers who are
also concerned with the characteristics of the
learning organisation.
Organisational concerns
In considering the relevance of knowledge man-
agement in the organisational context it is useful to
reflect on the distinctions made by Drucker (1988)
between data, information and knowledge. He
regards information as 'data endowed with rel-
evance and purpose' and knowledge as
'specialised'. Knowledge, from this perspective, is
information that has been transformed by an expert
into something that has the capacity to enhance
future action. What is striking about this observa-
tion is its recognition of the importance of people
in creating knowledge. The effective 'manage-
ment' of knowledge in organisations, therefore, is
contingent upon the existence of
expertise,
the
location of information where it is most likely to
be acted upon and the transformation of data into
something that is relevant and purposeful. Good
knowledge management, we argue, is a creative
rather than a bureaucratic act. Neither the com-
plete acquisition nor the systematic dissemination
of data alone can guarantee effective knowledge
management.
Drawing on organisational theory, and more
particularly organisational decision making theory,
we identify what we believe are the defining
characteristics of knowledge management in
organisations likely to determine its effectiveness.
Organisational decision making is the process
through which data, information and ultimately
knowledge are employed in order to bring about
the most effective outcome for the organisation.
Decision making theory as it applies to the organi-
sational context (see for instance Koopman & Pool
1991 and Eisenhardt & Zbaracki 1992) has pro-
duced a variety of explanatory models which seek
to clarify the actions of individuals and groups
engaged in the decision making process. Amongst
the approaches two stand out as particularly useful
in relation to knowledge management. Cognitive
models of decision making emphasise the impor-
tance of
the
process as an information processing
activity whilst political models stress the relevance
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