Knowledge management

Knowledge management

1. Thinking about knowledge

   • Best way to decide what it is is by deciding what it is not
   • Bell (1970); can differentiate between data, information and knowledge
   • Data: Ordered sequence of given items or events
   • Information: A context based arrangement of items whereby relationships of items are made visible
   • Knowledge: Requires a judgement to be made of the significance of events and items, this can come from a particular context or theory

2. Judgement requires 2 thing;

   • The ability to draw distinctions
   • The ability to draw distinctions
   • Examples of where judgements are made; optical illusions

3. All about communities

   • One of the worlds 'feel goods'
   • Can often make you feel good because of the meanings that they convey
   • We feel like we can relax in communities
   • We feel like we are able to relax
   • Stands for the kind of world that we wish we belonged to
   • Can be a world where people share the same views and expectations
   • Can refer to a paradise which we have lost or wish we could permentley have

4. The dark side of communities

   • Can deprive us of our freedom
   • Can deprive us of our right to be ourselves
   • Secuirty and freedome rarely reconcile
   • Belonging to a community may not always be a postivie thing (The Cutteshowe Wall

5. The new production of knowledge

   • Mode 1: knowledge production
     • Is governed by the largely academic interests of a specfic community
     • Disciplinary
     • Homogeneous
     • Hierarchial and seeks stability
     • Quality control is largely an internal concern
   • Mode 2: Knowledge production
     • Carried out in a context of application
     • Trans-disciplinary
     • Hetergeneous
     • Heterarchial and transient
     • Soically accountable and reflective

6. Is knowledge management about knowledge or management

   • Management
     • Search for a competitve advantage
     • Why spend more on creating new knowledge when you work become more efficent (less is more
     • About making things known, visible, controllable and manageabel
   • Knowledge
     • Historically about the pursuit of knowledge 'for its own sake'
     • Seen as 'public' rather than 'private' good
     • The more people know the less valuable it is

7. The knowledge creating spiral

   • 4 modes of conversion identified
   • Tacit 2 Tacit
   • Tacit 2 explicit
   • Explicit 2 explicit
   • Explicit 2 tacit