A comparative study of knowledge management research studies: making research more relevant and creative

ABSTRACT

To address current knowledge management (KM) research critically and constructively, this paper analyses the research papers in an essential, recurrent KM forum, IFKAD (International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics). Our approach compared all research papers (N = 491) from three annual KM conferences providing complementary insights to past journal-based reviews. We offer a new combination of philosophy-of-science frameworks, which allowed us to categorise the findings into four representations of knowledge, two typologies of concepts, and four paradigmatic classifications. All the papers heavily emphasised the existing knowledge and accepted methodology. Their state of the art revealed that less than ten percent of the papers represented new scientific contributions at all. Less than three percent contributed to a better understanding of the essential sustainability areas or the climate crisis. Our novel cross-paradigmatic framing supports our concluding pluralistic framework, emphasising practice-near, curiosity, and problem-driven studies for improving future KM research. A relevant and engaged research.

KEYWORDS:

• Paradigms
• concepts
• perspectives
• knowledge creation
• knowledge accumulation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In Lakatos’ perspective, we do not falsify theories but built upon the degeneration programs, not exploring and explaining new solutions.

2. The expression is from the fairytale (1837), The Emperor’s New Clothes, by H.C. Andersen (e.g., https://andersen.sdu.dk/vaerk/hersholt/TheEmperorsNewClothes_e.html).

3. It is beyond the present paper to test this argument; we argue that some imbalance may be fruitful to advance new thinking. An imbalance will allow the acceptance of mainly problem-based research papers.

4. A classical case of overemphasis of established knowledge and instruments is the high percentage of afterbirth fever (puerperal infection) around the 1840s, caused (unintentionally) by doctors walking straight from the dissection theatres to the obstetrics clinic. Today’s current handwashing routine of high value in the pandemic and surgical practices is thanks to critical questioning and alternative trial-and-error explorations by the Hungarian medical doctor Ignaz P. Semmelweis (see, e.g., https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ignaz-Semmelweis, visited October 30, 2020).

5. The International Forum on Knowledge Asset Dynamics (IFKAD) brings together “research students, young researchers, academics, managers and policy makers interested in understanding the knowledge foundations of performance improvements, business success and wealth creation. (…) The forum’s hope is to create an occasion to acquire and develop managerial insights and innovative ideas” (Source: IFKAD website, visited October 29, 2020).

6. Cf. after-the-fact construed opinions of science development (see, Kuhn, 1962/1996; Van de Ven, 2007).

7. There is also a potential Matthew effect at work (Merton, 1968) – those who do it the most accepted way shall get more, and those who do not do it the accepted way shall not be published or getting tenure (Mintzberg, 2004).

8. The critique also applies to the authors of this paper as participants in KM conferences.