ARTICLE SUMMARY & Review (Week3-Class4) by Torrance Mayberry
(Group: Pennie, Ian, vijay, Helen Ng )
Author: Paul H. J. Hendricks
Audience: Academics, Knowledge Management Change Agents.
Theme: ICT acts as catalyst for knowledge management and ICT alone cannot make organizations more knowledgeable.
Aim: Discern relationships between ICT tools and knowledge.
The relationship between ICT tools and knowledge management has proven to be problematic. The advocates of ICT-driven knowledge management suggest ICT alone enables knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer and distribution, and knowledge creation. In other words, alone, a pure engineering approach can make organisations more knowledgeable.
The advocates against a pure engineering approach acknowledge that ICT can act as a catalyst for knowledge management but they also argue that ICT tools primarily address data and information and not knowledge. In other words, a pure engineering approach ignores the management approach to knowledge.
Research conducted in the period 1993 – 1998 has shown that much of the knowledge management literature was biased towards a technological agenda. This research cites the engineering approach to knowledge was the dominant position in the knowledge management space. Moreover, the engineering approach to knowledge steered away from wider organisational issues and it ignored social and behavioral factors.
To address the ICT-knowledge management problem, one must make a clear distinction between the engineering approach and the management approach. Additionally, one needs to discern between the four classes to knowledge: the knowledge storage approach; the knowledge flow approach; the organizational learning approach; and the knowledge measurement approach. An understanding of these distinctions combined with a set of assessment criteria will provide rationale to establish a meaningful link from ICT to knowledge management.
Review
In conclusion, this article and title assumes the reader of the article has a clear understanding that there are many rivers to cross get knowledge and that we, in knowledge management, know where the rivers to be crossed are located.
A few questions to ponder for the reader of this summary:
1. What are the many rivers in your organisation?
2. Have the many rivers been defined?
3. Where are the crossings located for the many rivers?
4. What are the bridges that need to be constructed to reach the other side?
Red Auerbach, Communications Guru
19 years ago
