The Definitional Conundrum

I've been reading a lot about management, knowledge management and project management lately. Instrumental accounts of management are dominant in the literature. By this I mean management is viewed as a rational technical activity consisting of the skilled application of authority and "scientifically-based" techniques to achieve a desired end purpose. One definition of management could be:

"Management is a trans-disciplinary approach that integrates tools, techniques, and strategies to retain, organise, share, analyse, improve, and apply business expertise (Groff & Jones 2003, p. 2). It is disciplined, deliberate, purposeful, and conscious, and of necessity involves the design, implementation and review of processes to improve knowledge creation and sharing behaviours" (Standards Australia 2005, p. 2).

Now here's the problem.  The definition above is actually for knowledge management, but how does it differ in any way from management?  Now insert the word project:

"Project management is a trans-disciplinary approach that integrates tools, techniques, and strategies to retain, organise, share, analyse, improve, and apply business expertise (Groff & Jones 2003, p. 2). It is disciplined, deliberate, purposeful, and conscious, and of necessity involves the design, implementation and review of processes to improve knowledge creation and sharing behaviours" (Standards Australia 2005, p. 2).

This is a perfectly acceptable definition for project management.  About all that is missing is the time component that many project management definitions include: that is a project has a definite start and end point.   This begs the question as to what is the difference between knowledge management and project management!  Is one simply a subset of the other, or are they synonyms?  And apart from the time element how does project management differ from management? 

I think the difference comes down to transformation.  Project management is fundamentally a knowledge and transformational activity, and cannot exist without a business context.   Knowledge management is about knowledge and may or may not involve transformation, but also cannot exist without a business context.  

But how do we differentiate knowledge management from management?  After deep reflection I have to admit I think knowledge management is just management!  Help me.  Working out what the difference is matters!

Regards Graham

Refrences:

Groff, T & Jones, T 2003, Introduction to knowledge management: KM in business, Butterworth Heinemann, Amsterdam.

Standards Australia 2005, AS 5037-2005 Knowledge management - a guide, Standards Australia, Sydney.



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Re: The Definitional Conundrum

Submitted by Stephen Bounds on Thu, 20/11/2008 - 22:01.

Graham,

If you haven't made the time to read Joe Firestone's theory of KM yet, then you really should. See:

http://kmci.org/media/New_Knowledge_Management.pdf

His key breakthrough is to separate business processes, and the routine knowledge needed to undertake these processes, from knowledge processing. Knowledge management is the art of managing knowledge processes, not business processes.

Paraphrasing from a recent post I made on actKM:

___________________

Business processes are how we execute a task. "Standard management" is therefore thinking about that process and trying to make it better, stronger, more robust, etc.

Knowledge processes are how we think and learn. "Knowledge management" is therefore thinking about how we think and learn -- finding smarter and more robust ways to learn, transfer knowledge, etc etc.

The tricky bit is -- and this is where people often get tripped up -- the act of changing an organisation's structures, processes or culture to facilitate better "standard management" can be a KM activity.

___________________

 

Does this help clarify things at all?

Re: The Definitional Conundrum

Submitted by Joe Firestone on Sat, 22/11/2008 - 14:38.

Graham and Stephen,

Stephen, thanks for pointing to my definition a a way of clarifying things. I'd like to add that the generic term "management" is used in many ways that go way beyond the Groff and Jones definition of KM, even assuming that this definition is worth consideration.

More specifically, "Management" as a general term refers to ongoing, persistent, purposeful activity by human-based agents, through which the agents handle, direct, govern, control, coordinate, plan, organize, facilitate, enable, and empower other agents components, and activities involved in business, knowledge, or KM processing. KM is a kind of management activity, a subset of the whole set. So, I think KM can be distinguished from management in general. One just has to define both of these ideas in such a way that it can be done. The fact that you've had trouble doing this with the Groff and Jones definition, Graham, speaks more to the question of the adequacy of that definition, than it does to the question of whether such a distinction can be made.

Best,

Joe

Re: The Definitional Conundrum

Submitted by Graham Durant-Law on Sun, 23/11/2008 - 08:21.

Stephen and Joe,

Thanks for your insights. I not sure I completely agree but there are words and ideas for thought.

Stephen I've given up monitoring actKM because of the volume of email I am getting. I therefore missed your post and the context. My take on your reply is that knowledge management is a transformational learning activity!

Joe I understand that definitions are limiting, just as models are, but they do aid understanding and at least get those involved in the discussion to a common and shared start-point.

Try this exercise and see what happens:

  1. define management as the overarching concept.
  2. define the following as sub-sets, knowledge management, project management, risk management, change management, etc, etc.
  3. draw the schema, showing where they overlap.

I suggest it is very difficult and potentially impossible. Knowledge is an essential compent of all forms of "management".

Regards Graham