Knowledge management
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Introduction
"Knowledge Management" has been an important term and event in organizational and management contexts for a number of years. The basic terms of knowledge management, such as the division between "implicit" and "explicit" knowledge, the importance of human and social capital, and the new value of communication and learning to production have been familiar themes.
Knowledge management is issued from both business practice and an emerging theoretical field of study. Sharing knowledge is a very natural desire that it seems very surprising that knowledge management has emerged as something newly invented by corporations. In fact, KM thinking has resided in commerce and industry, and that is where most of the writing on the topic has been published, but recently knowledge management literature has begun to cross boundaries, and scholars in many disciplines have shown an intense interest in the creation of knowledge and its value and power when it can be shared across the organization. Because knowledge management theory is still developing, it is especially appropriate for those in the information and technology professions to examine KM and offer analytical frameworks that can guide thoughtful and human knowledge practices.
Information and library science, information systems, computer science, engineering, communication, cognitive science, and organizational science have all laid claim to some aspects of knowledge management. Despite their differences, the practioners of these disciplines have a common interest in knowledge and knowledge sharing; consequently it is reasonable that the study of knowledge management should begin with a definition of knowledge itself.
Knowledge is the awareness of what one knows through study, reasoning, experience or association, or through various other types of learning. It is "acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique" (Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 2002)...