The focus of the course: How can knowledge can be managed in order to make an organization successful?

Defining Knowledge

Data, information and knowledge hierarchy is used for defining knowledge and differentiated it from information and data.

Knowledge is often defined in terms of information, Information is often defined in terms of data.

The data, information and knowledge hierarchy assumes that concepts higher up in the hierarchy are providing higher value than concepts lower down, from an actor’s perspective,

Sometimes other concepts are added in the hierarchy, for example:

• Signal
• Understanding
• Wisdom (thereby called the DIKW hierarchy, which stands for data, information, knowledge, wisdom)

• Ref

An example of the hierarchy

Ackoff (1989):

• Data: symbols
• Information: data that are processed to be useful. Answers who, what, where, and when questions
• Knowledge: application of data and information. Answers how questions
• Understanding: answers why questions
• Wisdom: evalueted understanding, judgement