AlaviLeidner(2001)Knowledge Management.pdf
In the past few years, there has been a growing interest in treating knowledge as a significant organizational resource.
Researchers have begun promoting a class of information systems: KM Systems (KMS). The objective of KMS is to support creation, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations.
In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it. Drucker 1995
The knowledge-based perspective populates that the services rendered by tangible resources depend on how they are combined and applied, which is in turn a function of the firm’s know-how (ie, knowledge).
The knowledge-based view of the firm posits that these knowledge assets may produce long-term sustainable competitive advantage. I is here that information technologies may play an important role in effectuating the knowledge-based view on the firm. These systems can be used to systematize, enhance, and expedite large-scale intra and inter-firm knowledge management.
It’s useful to consider the manifold views of knowledge as discussed in the IT, strategic management, and organizational theory literature. This will enable us to uncover some assumptions about knowledge that underlie organizational knowledge management processes and KMS.
A commonly held view with sundry minor variants is that data is raw numbers and facts, information is processed data, and knowledge is authenticated information. Yet the presumption of a hierarchy rarely survives scrupolous evaluation.
Knowledge is information possessed in the mind of individuals: it is personalized information (which may or may not be new, unique, useful, or accurate) related to facts, procedure, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations, and judgements.
Tuomi (1999) makes the argument that the assumed hierarchy from data to knowledge is inverse: knowledge must exist before information can be formulated and before data can be measured to form information. As such, “raw data” do not exist — even the most elementary piece of data has already been influenced by the thought or knowledge processes that led to its identification and collection. Knowledge does not exist outside of an agent: it is indelibly shaped by one’s need as well as one’s initial stock of knowledge.
We posit that information is converted to knowledge once it is processed in the mind of individuals and knowledge becomes information once it is articulated and presented in the form of text, graphics, words, or other sumbolic forms. → for individuals to arrive at the same understanding of data or information, they must share a certain knowledge base.
Knowledge may be viewed from several perspectives:
Three major points emerge from this: