Chapter 7: Knowledge Management

This chapter will examine the nature of knowledge and knowledge management. It will also consider the process of knowledge tracking, which explores situations and their environments in terms of dynamic knowledge processes. Also, modern theories of knowledge management will be explored within an epistemological context. A stress will be placed on the importance of knowledge management to modern organizations.

Knowledge management is being seen as an important part of the organization. It traditionally involves two types of knowledge, tacit and explicit. The former is basically experiential, while the latter has been formalized in some way through language. Nonaka and Takeuchi offer a fundamental relationship between tacit and explicit knowledge, which they develop into a theory of knowledge creation. However, the cycle that results would appear to have rational schizophrenia. Their theory is not abandoned however, but is rather adopted to condition an alternative model, a cycle of knowledge migration within which all knowledge transfer between people is a catalytic process that engenders local knowledge creation. The knowledge migration process is also one that operates through important feedback control processes.