Ruth, Stephen
--05.5.17, Ruth et al., 2003--
They compare KM to expert systems, CASE, reengineering. They say that
formal teaching lag many years behind the active usage and leveraging
of these practices in the real world (sic).
KM focuses on management processes dealing with knowledge to improve organization's performance and create value.
Formal KM education started as survey classes dealing with broader
information technology and management practices. Now some universities
are offering more focused curricula and degrees at MS and PhD level.
They introduce five overlapping KM foci that an academic department could provide in a formal degree:
- leadership, management and culture
- organizational learning
- information technology
- library/information sciences
- innovative or novel approaches to diffusing knowledge
Leadership, management and cultural focus
Focus on the impact of KM on leadership and managerial problem solving
and the importance of enhancing an appropriate shared organizational
culture.
Organizational learning, innovation and change focus
Addresses the wide variety of issues and methodologies that
organizations must deal with to encourage an appropriate level of chaos
and overcome the generally stifling effects of structure (rules,
policies, traditions, and history).
Information technology focus
Emphasize the use of technology for dealing with information and knowledge.
Library information sciences focus
Educate information professionals to an organizational environment.
Innovative or novel foci
Many alternatives, e.g. knowledge diffusion through storytelling and the creation of the KM roundtable.
They describe seven approaches to teaching KM:
- Current industry practices: industry practices and real world experience.
- KM concepts and theory: historical perspectives, new tools, techniques, and theories of KM.
- Human factors and personnel issues: human resources, personnel development, human dimension.
- Knowledge creation: creating, processing, transferring knowledge.
- KM systems: information systems analysis and design of KM tools.
- Expert systems: knowledge-based expert systems and applications to problem solving.
- Data mining: database systems, knowledge-based systems.
The authors list many schools that offer KM courses. This is important,
they are focusing on courses, not degrees. Surprisingly, they give LIS
schools a minor role, which doesn't seem to be the case. They also list
KM research centers, but with no obvious purpose. They also describe
very briefly KM training by non-academic organizations.
The authors then discuss KM roles, first the CKO (history,
qualifications, hierarchical position, compensation). Also, they
briefly list some KM-related positions:
- knowledge architect
- knowledge engineer
- knowledge analyst
- knowledge department manager
- knowledge coordinator
- knowledge administrator
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