Recent Trends in Knowledge Management Blogging Alone takes a brief look back at the recent trends in Knowledge Management(pdf) and summerize some of what we are learning from the work of David Snowden. From this review we identify three recent stages of knowledge management starting around 1990 through present in order to set the stage for a deeper examination of the dominate role that web logs will soon play in knowledge management and learning.
Inspired by the perceived benefits of process reengineering in 1990 knowledge management focused on using communication technology, computer and networks to get information to flow to support the decision makers. During this stage we saw the rise of large enterprise resource management applications like SAP R3 and database companies like Oracle. The promise was to increase the efficiency of the systems so that you could reduce cost by allowing the enterprise to work with far fewer people. The efficiencies were realized and the downsizing did occur but what effects did this have on managing the knowledge of the enterprise. Only after the fact was it recognized that in downsizing the enterprise much of the institutional knowledge, the history of decisions making was lost.
The next stage of knowledge management recognizing the damage of the past sought to classify knowledge into two categories, tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge or intuitional knowledge needed to be preserved or saved out explicitly so that it wouldn't be lost. This was around 1996 just as the Internet arrived and a big push to create explicit knowledge bases resulted. Growth in email, group ware application development like lotus notes, and the creation of company intranet's became common methods of knowledge management. After only a brief time it became clear that this form of knowledge management was actually only content management.
Today this stage recognizes that knowledge is not only a thing and not only a flow but actually has the dual nature of both thing and a flow. Likewise today the process of learning and teaching also has a dual nature of the consumer as producer in the knowledge creation process. More and more people are and talking about how the science of complex systems also called emergent systems best describe knowledge management as we see it in web logs today.
My reading in web logs have lead me to combine current research in social influence networks, organizational behavior and the statistical mechanics of complex networks in order to find answers to these questions. If we build it will they come? Under what conditions will people choose to participate in the value creation process in future knowledge management systems like web logs and Wiki's? How does norm formation take place in these social influence networks?
4:46:19 PM 
|
