This issue of Knowledge Management Research & Practice (KMRP) features two noteworthy theoretical papers. One of the aims of KMRP is to provide solid foundations for the subject area, and we trust that these two – not to neglect the theoretical contributions of all the other papers as well – are helping us towards that objective. In total, there are six regular papers in this issue, plus a position paper.
We lead off with the two theoretical papers. The first is ‘The Theoretical Foundations of Knowledge Management’ by Richard Baskerville and Alina Dulipovici, and the second is ‘Nonaka Meets Giddens: A Critique’ by Zhichang Zhu.
Baskerville and Dulipovici set out to track and analyse the theoretical foundations of knowledge management, based on the literature for the period 1995–2005. In view of the scope of this activity, we were naturally willing to allow the article to run to twice the normal length of KMRP papers. Their paper demonstrates the breadth of the theoretical foundations, and also shows a vibrant field with progress in many areas. We are confident that there will be something in this paper to attract everyone's interest, whether experienced or new to the field. The foundations, as many KMRP readers will know, range from information economics to quality management, and from organisational culture to artificial intelligence, taking in both strategy and operations on the way. All are given careful treatment. We were especially interested in the connections between different theories shown in Table 6.
Zhu's paper, by contrast, has a much narrower scope, but is equally concerned with connections between different theories. Zhu examines and critiques the ideas of Nonaka, especially as described in the first paper to appear in KMRP (CitationNonaka & Toyama, 2003). Nonaka has gradually extended his theories on knowledge creation from their original exposition in the first half of the 1990s. Part of this extension has, naturally enough, seen the incorporation of the theories of others. Zhu's critique centres on Nonaka's use of the work of Giddens. In particular, the partial use of Giddens's ideas leads, in Zhu's opinion, to an overly simplistic extension of Nonaka's previous model. We have invited a response from Professor Nonaka to this critique.
The third paper in this issue is ‘Making Knowledge Work: Five Principles for Action-Oriented Knowledge Management’ by Heather Smith, James McKeen and Satyendra Singh. Again, this focuses on theory, this time informed by the results of an empirical study. Smith et al. reverse what they see as the usual relationship between knowledge and action – at least in the knowledge management field. This relationship begins with knowledge and then proceeds to action: we know something and act upon that knowledge. By contrast, a focus on the actions that an organisation is taking, or is willing to take, may shed light on an organisation's knowledge management needs. Smith et al. use this position, and the results from their focus group study, to develop what they call the five principles of action-oriented knowledge management. The second of these makes an important point about learning: ‘The KM function must continually derive knowledge from organizational actions and incorporate that knowledge back into the future actions’. Without this, the knowledge management initiative will inevitably decay over time, which has certainly happened in several organizations that we know about.
The fourth paper, ‘Using Decision Support Systems to Facilitate the Social Process of Knowledge Management’ by Gilberto Montibeller, Duncan Shaw and Mark Westcombe, demonstrates KMRP's close links to the operational research community. Montibeller et al. review three software packages for supporting facilitated group work: Compendium, Group Explorer and V*I*S*A. From the viewpoint that knowledge should be considered as a social process, then the group is the natural context for (for example) the legitimation of knowledge in an organisation. Montibeller et al. compare and contrast these three methods, and examine their uses and limitations in knowledge management work.
The fifth paper in this issue is ‘Knowledge Sharing in a Cross-Cultural Context: Nordic Expatriates in Japan’ by Vesa Peltokorpi. Culture and cultural differences are a vital aspect in any knowledge management initiative, but especially in international projects. Peltokorpi studies the ‘meeting’ of two groups, which are very divergent on the normal cultural measures: the Nordic countries and Japan. (e.g., the paper notes the contrast between ‘Nordic linear logic and Japanese holistic logic’.) Status hierarchy is found to be a significant impediment to knowledge sharing in the Nordic subsidiaries examined, as well as the possibly more obvious factors such as language barriers. Significantly for knowledge management research methods, a semi-structured interview approach was effective with the Nordic expatriate managers, but yielded little useful data from the Japanese managers interviewed. (The author's background is Nordic.)
The final regular paper is ‘Live Capture and Reuse of Project Knowledge in Construction Organisations’ by Hai Chen Tan, Patricia Carrillo, Chimay Anumba, John Kamara, Dino Bouchlaghem and Chika Udeaja. This paper describes the results of the first stage of the CAPRIKON research project (‘Capture and Reuse of Project Knowledge in Construction’). Tan et al. present six cases of current practice in the capture and reuse of project knowledge, and demonstrate the importance of what they term ‘live’ knowledge capture. ‘Live’ means capturing the knowledge once it is obtained or created, as the project goes along, rather than waiting for some form of after-action review once the project has been completed. Existing methodologies for knowledge management projects do not achieve this very well, and Tan et al. propose a methodology to achieve this more effectively.
In addition to the regular papers, this issue includes a position paper, ‘Knowledge Creation for Science and Technology in Academic Laboratories: A Pilot Study’ by Quamrul Hasan, Marcelo Machado, Masatoshi Tsukamoto and Katsuhiro Umemoto. Knowledge creation by research is one of the core processes in academia, and the management of research is becoming ever more important. Research management has its own literature, but the topic has been relatively little studied by knowledge management researchers. Hasan et al. describe their intentions in using knowledge management systems to help graduate students in materials science with their research, and present the results of a pilot study.
Heiner Müller-Merbach's series on great philosophers and knowledge management turns to Heraclitus, described as the first great philosopher of change. Heraclitus gave the world the quotation ‘You cannot step into the same river twice’. While many practitioners will no doubt immediately see the relevance of this sentiment to knowledge management, Müller-Merbach develops the propositions of Heraclitus to coin a phrase for a new aspect of knowledge management projects: ‘strife management’.
We are especially pleased to see that two of the articles in this issue build directly on articles published in KMRP's very first issue, less than 3 years ago.
As usual, KMRP welcomes articles on any topic relating to managing knowledge, organisational learning, intellectual capital and knowledge economics.