KNOWLEDGE ENABLEMENT

Knowledge is not only critical to an organisation’s ability to innovate, it is also essential to competitive advantage.  It has even been suggested that “it is the organisation’s knowledge, rather than its physical assets, which differentiates it from its competition,”.  Knowledge management, as a movement or management concept, finds its origins in the early to mid 1990s although term was apparently coined by Dr Karl Wiig in 1986. 

Its basic premise, as described in numerous books and a considerable literature, holds that organisations need to find ways to nurture, create, record, codify and transfer knowledge, and to secure against the threat of knowledge loss.  The emphasis is on the creation of new knowledge: according to some, new knowledge is the product of an interaction between people with different views and experiences.

A major criticism of the knowledge management movement is that it has been too absorbed with systems and systems’ approaches.    In other words, in searching for more effective methods of leveraging organisational knowledge, there has been concentration around systems-based solutions.  Some argue that technology is essential to capturing and sharing knowledge, while others deplore the use of technologies, open plan offices and online directories of experts as being largely a waste of time and resources.

Our approach to knowledge enablement is based on knowledge as a social activity, constructed by people in interaction with one another. Consequently, it is the discourse within organisations which is of paramount interest. But we cannot ignore technology: we apply an ergonomics-psychosocial factors approach to human interaction with technology. Collectively, this represents a new paradigm in knowledge enablement.

This is the subject of a major new research study that Lesley is embarking on, working towards a PhD. Read more...