Background Bibliographic
Analysis of knowledge management
One
measure of the influence of a discipline is to track the “formal
communications” or published works in that discipline [Koenig,M., 2005, Ponzi,
L., 2004]. Ponzi observed that “knowledge management is one emerging discipline
that remains strong and does not appear to be fading”[Ponzi, L., 2004, p. 9].
Almost certainly underestimates the size of the KM literature. In the early
years of KM, it was probably a very safe assumption that almost all KMarticles
would have the phrase “knowledge management” in the title, but as the KM field
has grown, that almost certainly is no longer a safe assumption.
The
significance of the KM growth pattern becomes much more apparent when one
compares it with the pattern of other major business enthusiasms of recent
years. The difference is dramatic. Quality Circles, Business Process
Engineering, and Total Quality Management all show an almost identical pattern
of approximately five years of dramatic, exponential, growth, then they peak
and fall off to near nothing almost as quickly.
The
number of scholarly papers and dissertations devoted to KM demonstrates that
there has been and continues to be a scholarly interest in knowledge management
even if that research has taken a small downturn.An examination of the types of
research being conducted shows that over the years the subject matter of KM
studies has changed somewhat from an emphasis on technological systems to a
focus on communication and interaction among people.
In
the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, scholars have adopted terms such as
‘knowledge sharing,’ ‘communities of practice,’ and ‘learning organizations’ as
knowledge management processes became more mainstream in organizations. As the
twenty-first century has progressed, searches on ‘knowledge management’ have
revealed that scholarly works on knowledge sharing have increasingly been
combined with research on social networking and social media.in figure 2.2
The
data seem to indicate that there continues to be a lively interest in research
and writing about knowledge management, and presumably that scholars and
ordinary people are interested. in reading about KM as well. The specific
departments and disciplines in which the dissertations were written range from
mathematics to mass communication, with business administration being strongly
represented. See Figure 2.3 for the publication pattern.
An
interesting observation is that there was a very brief spurt of articles about
KM in journals devoted to education, but that interest soon waned. This is
likely a function of the fact that KM, as mentioned previously has a very
corporatist and organizational emphasis, while for most academic principals,
the faculty, their commitment to their field, their discipline and
sub-discipline, their “invisible college” comes first. Their commitment to
their nominal home institution is quite secondary. And, for most of those
faculty, their invisible college already functions as their community of
practice.
