Knowledge Matters™

The actKM list serve has had much discussion in recent months on the meaning of knowledge and knowledge management. Some of this discussion is banal, and some posters were heated in their exchanges. I think knowledge management practitioners would do themselves and their discipline a service if they read some philosophy, and in particular some epistemology.

Epistemology is the philosophy of knowledge and justification. A person’s epistemological stance is determined in part by their ontological position, or world view of reality. Epistemology is regulative – that is it seeks to prove or disprove that something is knowledge. Knowledge management theory tends to be generative – that is it tends to try to understand how knowledge is grown and fostered.

Unfortunately the knowledge management discipline has focused on the generative aspects of knowledge with little regard to the regulative aspects defined by questions like ‘What is knowledge?’ and ‘What kinds of knowledge are there?’ This is an obvious weakness in the state of the art.

It is my view that if knowledge management as a discipline is to mature we need an agreed definition set. This is necessary so everyone has shared understanding and common meaning. Definitions matter, and there is no better place to begin than by reading some epistemology. For those of you who want to take up the challenge type epistemology into the search engine on this web site for a list of readable publications .

Regards, Graham.