Adding to the Body of Knowledge: The Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management

A few years ago, I was asked by the Army's Material Command to travel to Huntsville, Alabama to facilitate a discussion on knowledge management (KM) with a group of senior military engineers. After two hours of in‐depth discussion around knowledge management; the theory, the principles, the processes, and the systems, one of the gentlemen put me on the spot. He said:

I have been listening to all that you have said, but I am a man of few words, give it to me in ten words or less.

I paused a moment and answered:

Know what you know, to do what you do – better.

Assuming the seasoned engineer did not expect me to really explain everything there is to know about KM in ten words or less, I believed he was looking for something short he could grab and think about. The purpose of The Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management is not to tell you what or how, rather it is designed to broaden your mind and make you think about KM in a way you never imagined. Designed to be used by student and researcher alike, this large volume is a compilation of never before published work from over 170 contributors from 23 countries, intended to add to the body of knowledge that is KM.

The overwhelming desire to have a “one size fits all” KM approach is not a viable option when taking into account the diverse cultural, experiential and business imperatives that drive our complex organizations. At this point in the evolution of KM there is no “one picture” that encompasses the discipline of knowledge management. Therefore, the readers' egos must be put on the shelf and they must be willing to open their minds to an expanded view into the past, present and future of this discipline. KM is a journey that takes on a very personal perspective for each knowledge worker and their organization. To aide organizations, researchers, practitioners and students in that journey, The Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management is set up with an easy cross‐ reference system to allow the reader the flexibility to locate topics as needed. The book is divided into six logical categories:

1. 1.

   “Theoretical aspects of knowledge management” deals with a variety of foundational aspects and philosophical underpinnings. In “Aristotelian view of knowledge management”, Schwartz parallels the five virtues of thought from Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to the levels of knowledge and the layers of KM. Additional articles in this section cover the types of knowledge, KM models, and the effects of knowledge management.

2. 2.

   “Processes of knowledge management” discusses creation, discovery, gathering, calibration, modeling, integration, dissemination, reuse, sharing and synthesis. In “Creating knowledge for business decision making”, Khan, Ganguly and Gupta state “the ability to anticipate, react, and adapt to market trends and changes are the characteristics of a successful company.” Through planning and forecasting tools they examine new decision paradigms and make a case for predicative modeling as a standard tool in the corporate strategic tool box.

3. 3.

   “Organizational and social aspects of knowledge management” is considerably larger in content and complex in subject matter due to the unpredictable human aspect. Traversing organizational learning, organizational memory and organizational structure, this section also moves through transfer, corporate culture, motivation and social network analysis (SNA). Dekker and Hendriks take an interesting stand on SNA relevance to KM research in their “Social network analysis” detailing brokerage, centrality, cohesion and equivalence as cornerstones of the knowledge‐based view for organizational success while building their case. Community‐based, innovation processes, intellectual capital and privacy issues finish up the list of topics that add considerable thought provoking discussion.

4. 4.

   “Managerial aspects of knowledge management” details KM strategies, KM systems, managing the KM environment, metrics, operational, governance and mobility. Much of this section points the discipline to areas of future research. In “Competitive advantage of knowledge management”, Cepeda‐Carrión takes over a decade of research prior to hers and purposes a framework for competitive advantage consisting of the elements; critical knowledge areas, value creation, capability differentials, sustainable competitive advantage and infrastructure elements (people, process, technology).

5. 5.

   “Technological aspects of knowledge management” delineates representation, artificial intelligence in KM, data mining, meta‐knowledge and metadata and mobility. While the focus of this section is technology, Pachet's “Musical metadata and knowledge management” takes a refreshing look at developing a metadata framework using music content management.

6. 6.

   “Application‐specific knowledge management” features 11 articles encompassing applied KM in the areas of healthcare, safety critical systems, customer knowledge, engineering design knowledge, professional services KM, mathematical knowledge and military knowledge.

In a discipline as young as KM, the future depends on the addition of books like The Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management to gain support, interest and spur the imagination of future workforces to enable the leveraging of organizations' intellectual assets to increase their performance and help them move toward becoming a “knowledge‐based enterprise”.