The theoretical foundations of knowledge management

Abstract

Knowledge management has emerged as an important field for practice and research in information systems. This field is building on theoretical foundations from information economics, strategic management, organizational culture, organizational behavior, organizational structure, artificial intelligence, quality management, and organizational performance measurement. These theories are being used as foundations for new concepts that provide a rationale for managing knowledge, define the process of managing knowledge, and enable us to evaluate the results of this process. Based on articles published between 1995 and 2005, new concepts are emerging, including knowledge economy, knowledge alliance, knowledge culture, knowledge organization, knowledge infrastructure, and knowledge equity. An analysis of the theoretical foundations of knowledge management reveals a healthy arena with a strong foundation and clear directions for future work.

Keywords:

• knowledge management
• organizational learning
• knowledge infrastructure
• organizational memory
• intellectual capital
• information systems strategy

Notes

1 McKelvey also called these ‘Phyletics’ and ‘Speciation’, respectively.

2 Knowledge Management publications appeared even before 1995. According to the ABI Inform database, their total number is around 57 publications, while just in 1996 alone there were 59 publications. Therefore, we decided to set 1995 as the starting point, which is consistent with other studies (Wilson, 2002).

3 While keywords such as ‘organizational learning’, ‘knowledge transfer’, or ‘knowledge sharing’ could also have been used, we ultimately relied on the researchers to use the term ‘knowledge management’ at least as a keyword and on librarians to label such work in the broader ‘knowledge management’ category. This reliance on researchers' and librarians' definitions is not without risk. A limitation incurred with this approach includes the distortion of such definitions of Knowledge Management that may result from the imperative to publish.

4 ‘Knowledge Transfer’ is used here in a general sense and no distinction is made vs ‘knowledge sharing’ or ‘knowledge dissemination’, which are two other terms frequently used in the literature to express the exchange of knowledge between the source of knowledge and the recipient of knowledge.

5 We used the Web of Science Citation Index to identify studies citing the examples from Table 1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Richard Baskerville

About the authors

Richard L. Baskerville is professor and chairman of the CIS Department in Georgia State University. His research and authored works regard security of information systems, methods of information systems design and development, and the interaction of information systems and organizations. Baskerville is the author of Designing Information Systems Security (J. Wiley) and more than 100 articles in scholarly journals, practitioner magazines, and edited books. He is an editor of The European Journal of Information Systems, and associated with the editorial boards of The Information Systems Journal and The Journal of Database Management. He is a Chartered Engineer, holds a B.S. summa cum laude, from The University of Maryland, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from The London School of Economics.

Alina Dulipovici

Alina Dulipovici is a doctoral student in Computer Information Systems at Georgia State University. She holds a B.Com. and an M.Sc. in Information Systems from HEC Montreal (Canada). Her research interests focus on knowledge management, virtual teams, and database design.