--This is my philosophical muse on the Epistemological views of Knowledge versus Information and the Theoretical Application of Knowledge Management--
To me the fundamental practical question of applicability is: “Is there a difference between knowledge and information – and if so – what is it?”
After all of the reading in this class I have been struggling with the applicability of all of the philosophical theories (whether tongue in cheek, sincere, or way out there). I always try to find an application of my readings / studies in my business or personal life – which in many ways might be a contradiction from what someone in academia or a sociologist might find. To me the theories of “organizational knowledge” and “organizational information” are connected, but also individualistic. To me the knowledge is what exists between the ears of the human capital of the organization or the historical developments, processes, and systems the organization has developed over time due to the intellect of the members, and the “knowledge management” is how we manage the information from these efforts within our systems. I believe Wilson supports this premise in his theory (Wilson, 2002).
When something is to be managed many people feel that in order to do this it must be quantified, counted, organised and measured (Glazer, 1998); it must be
able to be built, owned and controlled if its value is to be maximised
(Allee, 1997). As a result, approaches to KM have tended to concentrate
on attempts to capture and control what is sometimes termed 'structured knowledge'
(Hildreth & Kimble, 2002).
Is there a “real” difference between knowledge and information? I guess in order to answer this for the sake of all of the “philosophers” we would have to agree on a definition of the word “real”. I choose not to placate to the neural nonsense of that pacification and will only say that in my humble professional opinion the difference is much more semantics that theoretical.
I am more a believer of the “capture theory” than most of the theories we have been exposed to in the relevant readings. Markus, McElroy, Dalkir, and Alavi have all written about the relativity of capturing the knowledge from our human assets and placing it into a system that allows us to manage and protect the information from that “capturing process.” To me in my business, the knowledge is what each member of my team owns and how we utilize it is based on the method, amount, and quality of the information we are able to extract from that knowledge and make it applicable to our operations and human development programs within our organization’s operations.
References:
Alavi, M. and Leidner, D.E. (1997). Knowledge management systems: emerging
views and practices from the field. Fontainbleau: INSEAD. (Tech. Rep. No.
97/97/TM)
Allee, V. (1997). The knowledge evolution. Expanding organizational
intelligence. Boston, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Dalkir, K. (2005). Knowledge management in theory and practice. Burlington, MA: Elsevier Butterworth-Heinemann
Glazer, R. (1998). "Measuring the knower: towards a theory of knowledge
equity." California Management Review, 40(3), 175-194
Hildreth, P., Wright, P. & Kimble, C. (1999). "Knowledge management: are we
missing something?" in: 4th UKAIS Conference, York, UK pp347-356. London: McGraw Hill.
Markus, M. L. (2001). “Toward a Theory of Knowledge Reuse: Types of Knowledge Reuse Situations and Factors in Reuse Success.” Journal of Management Information Systems, 18(1), Number1/Summer 2001.
Mark W. McElroy, (2000) "Integrating complexity theory, knowledge management and organizational learning", Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 4 Iss: 3, pp.195 – 203.
