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.