The Knowledge Life Cycle and the Business Processing Environment

Abstract

Knowledge Management is natural. Function in human organizations, and it is being done all the time in an informal distributed way by everyone undertaking activity to enhance knowledge production and integration tasks. But whether formal interventions claiming the label "KM" are bona fide instances of KM practice is another matter entirely. To answer that question, we need to have clear, non-contradictory ideas about the nature of knowledge, knowledge processing, and Knowledge Management. And to have those, we need to get beyond the notion that we can do KM by just doing anything that may have a positive impact on worker effectiveness while calling that thing "KM." Instead, we need to recognize that the immediate purpose of KM is not to improve either worker effectiveness (though it may well do that) or an organization's bottom line. Its purpose is to enhance knowledge processing in the expectation that such enhancements will produce better quality solutions (knowledge), which, in turn, may, when used, improve worker effectiveness and the bloom line. And when we undertake projects, we must evaluate the contributions of our interventions to the quality of knowledge processing and knowledge outcomes. That calls for tough, precise thinking about knowledge processing, knowledge, and the impact on these that our interventions are likely to have. In this paper we will begin by providing an account of our view of KM, knowledge processing, information, knowledge, and Knowledge Management.