to remember

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

KM and LIS education/ Trish Milne

Knowledge Management and LIS Education
Associate Professor Trish Milne
Head, School Information Management and Tourism
This talk will reflect on …
Tertiary education and professional courses
Current professional environment
What we know about ourselves
What we need to change
LIS education
A bigger picture
Tertiary education & professional courses
As well as providing academic leadership (research) for the profession educators must
Keep in close touch with leading practitioners
Be aware of new directions
Develop curricula to reflect the changing needs of the profession
Understand and respond to the challenges in a dynamic environment when graduates are needed to ‘hit the ground running’
Factors impacting on curriculum development
Dynamic environment
Courses constantly updated - last 10 to 15 years
Advances in information and communications technology
Librarians were among first to see potential of WWW
Issues of access and equity to the fore
Employers emphasis on graduate attributes
Flexibility
Adaptability
Ability to be a team player
Ability to problem solve etc etc

In all of this …
Still feeling that librarians were doing what always done - only the tools had changed
Service
Remained core professional ethic
One of the first characteristics noted when discussing role of the librarian (Fleck and Bawden 1995)
New changes in the environment
Abell noted
IM key corporate resource
Its strategic management moving up corporate hierarchy
This is where information professional should be represented
It is where information professionals are able to increase their sphere of influence
Since mid-1990s
Organisational emphasis on KM rather than IM
KM has become part of a continuous process of organisational change (Abell 1999)
Do information professionals have a role? (Southern and Todd 1999)
If they do, what is it?
When we can say what it is, are they fulfilling it?
‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge managers’ but does this cloud some important issues about their role?
Research has shown that …
Although increasing numbers of information professionals are moving into KM-related positions, few have yet gained senior KM positions.
Abell once asked…
Why, if knowledge management has become an accepted core function in organisations, are there so few librarians at its leading edge? (Abell 1999)
Is the service ethic a handicap?
Many would say ‘Yes!’
‘Yes’: because of the perception it has created
In the minds of information professionals themselves
In the minds of their clients
‘Yes’: because it limits the role that information professionals can play in their organisation
Abell’s research sought to …
Understand why information professionals were not playing a more active role in what seemed to be an area core to its expertise
Map the skills required in KM
Recommend ways in which these skills could be developed
Research was
Largely qualitative
Based on wide consultation with experts
Based on a series of case studies
Survey of organisations implementing KM
Key question: Why were information professionals playing such a small role in developing KM strategies
Additional research outcome
Identification of the key elements of a KM program and
Identification of the essential skills that were required
Fundamental concept …
KM is about a creative mix of skills
Not the prerogative of any one department or function
Forming hybrid teams at planning stage is a key feature
KM environment distinguished by …
Emphasis on interaction between people
People working in multi-disciplinary teams - virtual or actual
Sharing of knowledge and experience
Continual process of learning
Communities
Skills for the K environment
Core competencies
Professional/technical gained through education, training and development
Business sector experience (whatever the sector) (Abell 1998)
Survival skills
Embedded in the ability to
Communicate
Work in a team
Negotiate
Persuade
Facilitate
Coach
Mentor
Understand business processes
KM enabling skills
Skills that will enable the
Identification & analysis of business processes
Understanding of K processes processes
Understanding of the value, context and dynamics of K and information
Identification, creation, maintenance of K assets
Mapping of K flows
Management of change
Leveraging of information & communication technologies to create KM enablers
Support & facilitation of communities & teams
Management of projects
Structuring & architecture of information
Management of document & information workflow
Understanding of information management principles
What was lacking?
Skills
Written communication
Presentation skills
Experience
General management
Strategic planning
Lacking …
Attributes
Business focus
Team approach
Value ethos
Leadership
Ability to innovate
Ability to recognise opportunity
Lacking …
Behaviour
Confidence
Ability to influence
Willingness to share
Ability to take risks
Willingness to identify with the business
Abell answers her question …
Probably many reasons
KM processes and practices are organisation specific & implementation reflects culture of the organisation
BUT fundamental criteria that make it difficult for information professionals to play a major role (Abell 2001)
Poor visibility and definition of
Information profession
Information professionals
Profession still associated with the management of libraries
Critical point being that even virtual libraries are still seen as support rather than a core function
Degree in LIS is not seen by management as developing ‘high-flyers’
Perception of information professionals as providers of effective support services not key business players
This is reflected in the positions held - however well regarded or even rewarded seldom among most senior managers
Research from early 1990s …
Focussed on value placed by management on the corporate library
Reported views of management to whom librarians reported
Online searches most valuable service
Most companies had no process to evaluate
libraries or the
effectiveness, efficiency or productivity of what librarians do
While everyone liked libraries and librarians few thought of them as mission critical (Prusak and Matarazzo)
Two other studies found librarians were …
Highly regarded
Fulfilled service oriented and reactive function
Perceived as
Efficient
Intelligent
Helpful
Having specialised knowledge
BUT
Were also
Unambitious
Gained satisfaction from helping others achieve their ends
Authors concluded that there are problems for professionals working in a service function setting
BUT librarians must develop ways of showing that they are central to the business of the parent organisation (Fleck and Bawden, 1995).
KM culture
Frequently KM initiatives are begun at this senior level & strategy and planning teams reflecting their peer group
How soon information professionals are included depends on how soon they can influence their peer group
Are seen as having valuable skills but that they need to be directed by people who are core to the business - not seen as business managers
Attitudes of information professionals
Because of attitudes of management - many information professionals just do not expect to be involved
Many see KM as a new term for what they have always done - now being used by others to capitalise on the corporate interest in information
What more does this tell us?
Peer groups
KM driven from senior management
Seldom are information professionals part of this core group
Focus of KM approaches
Approaches to KM that involve cultural change, organisational learning etc rely on effective information management - but it is often viewed as a support activity, not a primary concern

Senior Management perceptions of IM professionals
Fundamentally associated with management of libraries
Support rather than strategic role
IM perceptions & expectations
Feel that KM is a new term for what they already do
Or it is a term used by those wanting to capitalise on the importance of information
Associate role with external information
Box themselves in

Mindset
St Onge suggested that the most important task for organisations developing KM is to change the mindset of its employees
Therefore information professionals need to think of themselves as part of the core business and not in a support/service role
Balancing this …
Knowledge managers, information specialists, chief answerists, K navigators - they are more commonly known as librarians. As corporations rely on information to keep ahead of the competition, demand for these professionals is escalating (Francois 1999)
Career paths are changing and opening new opportunities
In US 13% librarians don’t work in traditional library setting but functioning throughout business and commanding much higher salaries (Francois 1999)
Whichever part of society is focus, information professional has unprecedented opportunities - it is information that is underpinning current organisational success (Abell 1998)
LIS education
Needs to make clear the shift from information management to K management
It isn’t what librarians have always done
But it is our traditional skills that have made us so valuable - shouldn’t be ignored
Graduate attributes or generic skills are now more important than ever

Hand-in-hand with appropriate content, learning experiences must include creative assessment items that reflect the real world of work and provide the opportunity for the development of the skills, experience, attributes and behaviour that Abell found lacking (Abell 1997, Hall 1996, Milne 1996, Milne & Alderman 1996)
Picture is more than the tertiary course
Where does it begin?
Getting the students we need
Perception of the profession
Higher Education Sector
Courses have been discontinued
Others currently under threat
Move to distance or online delivery

Posted by: mary / 12:10 AM 11 comments

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Ferguson, S 2004, The knowledge management myth: will the real knowledge managers please step forward?, viewed 10/02 2005,

PAPER PRESENTED AT
Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge
Management – problems that have provided no small amount of
material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge
Management has survived for over ten years and continues to
attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and
in the literature – not just the literature of library and information
management, but also the literature of business management.
Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also
attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as
evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous
calls in the literature of library and information management
for information professionals to stake their claim as their
organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally
placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we
have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler
2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s
otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as
the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library
sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked
by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and
expertise to manage published information, could we not extend
this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At
this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made
the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and
that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play
a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent
IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians
Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some
of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s
suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many
knowledge management systems to match up to companies’
expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and
training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins
the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one
of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to
refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our
domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge.
Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management
domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and
information professionals forging partnerships with others in the
‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging
paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina
questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge
managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for
many years is Information Management, which, contrary to
what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge
Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line.
The claim that library and information professionals are ideally
suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the
face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is
at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information
Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion
that Knowledge Management and Information Management
are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the
emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims
about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship
highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences
between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number
of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the
past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004).
My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds
of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such
as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge
manager might look like and then ask whether our profession
has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more
productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many
papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please
Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Abstract
The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable
of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering
of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information
management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the
tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the
professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2
Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of
the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw
at their long-suffering students.
Corporate knowledge
First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd
one out of the following terms:
• information management
• knowledge management
• library science
• military intelligence?
The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an
example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information
Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out
– librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed.
Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would
like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical
nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the
proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they
are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t
is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called
explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy
documents, the contents of databases or corporate records
(in other words, what we would call information), but also the
knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion
of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study,
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe
organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically
‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in
organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the
emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us,
by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information)
– that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information
Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked
whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management
problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to
mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of
‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation.
There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming
sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much
of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a
degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and
its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts
to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for
instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig
(2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of
organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi
(1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al,
identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management
(Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of
Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged
Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task
for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit
knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes
of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore
cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson
2002). One can always change the term, however, and some
writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has
the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In
fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno,
refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit
knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such
as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are
‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical,
on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal
skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and
is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit
knowledge or, what we call, information.
Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the
term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that
sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of
strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge
or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an
organisational culture and the development of a technological
infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and
foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently
claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information
Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in
Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been
one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management
in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997,
pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge
management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information
fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which
make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge
management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of
organisational knowledge through sound practices of information
management and organisational learning.’
Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management
is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s
intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image
of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head
and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are
assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing
the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and
transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course
it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm
and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No
management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We
can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if
you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’
The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant
to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to
Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often
cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector:
• Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or
in non-associative learning;
• Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind
(for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials
(for example, production knowledge)
• Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of
past decisions or in R&D reports
• Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance,
‘lessons-learned’ reports
• Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer
programs
• Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’
in someone’s mind; and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3
• Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded
in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in
technology.
One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the
notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind,
but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that
Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much
broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession,
which consists largely of published information.
David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge
Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on
the following seven ‘strategic levers’:
• Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most
organizations
• Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while
performing core tasks
• Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions,
customized to users’ needs
• Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower,
your most precious asset
• Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or
elsewhere in the organization
• Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that
underpins successful collaboration
• Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your
intellectual capital.
Tasks of the knowledge manager
Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a
knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer
(2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six
from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es
what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which
they categorised as follows:
• focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice
and Question and Answer forums
• focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping,
Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases
• focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information
Alerts and Organisational Learning
• focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration.
This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but,
again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management
domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge
Management and Information Management, and the distance
between the two in terms of focus.
Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information
manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the
British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications
Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago:
What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives?
What information is needed to support those aims?
What information is available in the organisation?
Are there differences between needs and provision?
What has to be done to match needs and provision?
Is further exploitation of information viable?
Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information
Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and
Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence
of match, between information and needs by conducting an
information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge
mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the
methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are
overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of
so-called tacit or implicit knowledge.
Position descriptions
The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes
the construction of a hypothetical position description for a
knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to
be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably
well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its
creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange
and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia
published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen
Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant,
these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the
‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive
Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’,
‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and
‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions
relate to what we do in the library and information profession.
The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these
knowledge managers include the following:
• knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge
processes that support organisational development and
performance;
• knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational
knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to
knowledge discovery/exchange/development;
• ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of
information and knowledge resources;
• facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching
programs for improved communication skills to help with
collaboration and innovation;
• designing systems and procedures to enable effective
creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and
• managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with
knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12).
In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to
recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly
have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside
the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that
we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones.
The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a
wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne
Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that
collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job
advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the
six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information
collected was used to categorise roles as follows:
• Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for
the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy,
leadership and coordination
• Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person,
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4
responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT
infrastructure, business processes, change management and
so on’
• Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for
‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the
development of processes, infrastructure and information
resources’
• Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal
and external information and knowledge sources’
• Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM
activities within a specifi c network and community’
• Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM
activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’
(2004, pp.118-9).
Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that
require considerable knowledge of the core business of the
organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect
changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational
culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based
in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’
– many of these will be people who have the required business
or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or
knowledge management background. Somewhere between the
two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and
skills that look rather like those of an information professional.
Discussion
Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated
with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I
have already alluded, is the sheer range.
This is hardly surprising, given the range of information
professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’
Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of
practice within the Information Management sector – represented
by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier
– there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’
document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and
records management (both quite separate professions with
their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’
information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those
senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s
primary business and those people who design and implement
the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are
important continuities of practice, such as information analysis,
but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems
people may both talk about information analysis, but the
processes and outcomes are quite distinct.
Position descriptions for the various information professions vary
enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area
of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than
Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in
the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous
paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth
repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed
cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different
provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words,
it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional
‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs.
The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in
terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians
are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge
leverage required if their organisations are to become learning
organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks
outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of
leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire
to it. Some include a strategic information management role that
includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and
we all know that in the Information Management domain –
notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education
sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues
tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order
than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational
development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in
parts of the organisation never reached by librarians.
It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling
tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in
an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary
developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion,
revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999)
said a few years ago. Knowledge Management:
is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society.
It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c
management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex,
self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve
minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is
about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to
systems that are optimal within a specifi c context.
This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in
establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to
play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger
position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth
noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which
described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination
of information management (IM) for managing the documentary
form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’
The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at
the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this:
Director, Knowledge Management
The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the
Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of
effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing
organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment
with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes
coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide
program for staff development, communities of practice and
provision of executive management development.
The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with
specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records
management, information systems and networks management,
team leadership, and staff development and training.
The Director, as part of the senior human resources management
team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of
organisational objectives through:
• contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by
promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy;
• linking knowledge and information management policies and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5
practices with organisational objectives, including provision of
information to support decision making;
• facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the
strategic direction of the organisation;
• creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by
promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management
among executives, managers, supervisors and staff;
• assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to
incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of
planning and performance management;
• coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional
development program in collaboration with other staff
development providers;
• identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of
knowledge and information management;
• developing and managing all Knowledge Management
projects, including planning, resourcing and communication
strategies
• assisting the human resources management team to review
and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures
and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue
to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and
• providing organisational development support for the
implementation of knowledge management initiatives.
There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager
to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read
references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or
even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge
Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the
periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind
of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment.
This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians
who have made some contribution to their organisations’
knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the
areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace
Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library
Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined
how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an
electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss
and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local
clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the
Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too
a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought
together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large
number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge
managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable
subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is
that the librarians bring their own information management
expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject
specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of
practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm.
9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject
knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information
professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who
have that knowledge.
Conclusions
Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain
and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood
statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or
could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging
success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what
is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves
as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution
and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential
collaborators, whether they be other Information Management
professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business
or human resource management. It is also important that there
is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable
literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going
back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s
paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes
of education, training and CPD, we need information on the
changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge
management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned
earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are
to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed
one.
Besides the issue of what library and information professionals
have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain,
however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the
subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management
in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive
colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their
organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the
course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management
turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often
constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the
cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should
be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that
some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in
our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to
contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that
library managers practice better Knowledge Management than
any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of
library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital
of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’.
Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic
Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just
to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an
understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create
Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider
HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much
success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge
Management domain by library and information professionals
and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of
‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore
when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge
Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in
the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Keywords
Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging
knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge;
Information management.
References
Bishop, K (2002) New roles, skills and capabilities for the
knowledge-focused organisation, Business Excellence Australia,
Sydney.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
6
Bouthillier, F & Shearer, K (2002) ‘Understanding knowledge
management and information management: The need for an
empirical perspective,’ Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct.
2004, .
Branin, JJ (2003) ‘Knowledge management in academic libraries:
Building the knowledge bank at the Ohio State University’,
viewed 26 Mar. 2004, Kmacadlib.pdf>.
Broadbent, M (1997) ‘The emerging phenomenon of knowledge
management’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 46, pp.6-24.
Butler, Y (2000) ‘Knowledge management: If only you knew what
you knew’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 49, pp.31-42.
Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (1990)
Managing information as a resource, HMSO, London.
Chaudhry, AS & Higgins, S (2004) ‘Education for knowledge
management: A spectrum approach’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.127-136.
Cheng, G (2000) ‘The shifting information landscape: Re-inventing
the wheel or a whole new frontier for librarians’, Australian Library
Journal, vol. 49, pp.17-26.
Corrall, S (1999) ‘Knowledge management: Are we in the
knowledge management business?’ Ariadne, 18, viewed 26 Mar.
2004, .
Davenport, E (2004) ‘Organizations, knowledge management
and libraries: Issues, opportunities and challenges’, in Knowledge
management: Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H
Hobohm (ed.), IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.81-
89.
Davenport, T & Prusak, L (2000) Working knowledge: How
organizations manage what they know, 2nd ed., Harvard
Business School Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hobohm H (ed) (2004) Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, IFLA publications, no. 108,
Saur, Munich.
Johnston, C (2000) ‘The business of knowledge management in
the knowledge-aware organisation’, Capitalising on knowledge:
The information profession in the 21st century: ALIA biennial
conference, 24-26 October, viewed 16 October 2003, //www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/proceedings/christine.joh
nston.html>.
Koenig, MED (2004) ‘Knowledge management, user education,
and librarianship’, in Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.), IFLA
publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.137-150.
Koina, C (2003) ‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge
managers?’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.269-272.
Mac Morrow, N (2001) ‘Knowledge management: An introduction’,
in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, ME
Williams (ed.), Information Today, Medford, NJ, pp.381-422.
Middleton, M (1999) ‘From information management to knowledge
management: Some perspectives on development’, English
language version (written prior to translation into Spanish) of
‘De la gestión de la información a la gestión del conocimiento’,
El Profesional de la Información, vol. 8, no. 5, pp.10-17, viewed
26 Mar. 2004, IM_KM_Eng.doc>.
Milne, P (2000) ‘Information professionals and the knowledgeaware,
intelligent organisation: Skills for the future’, Australian
Library Journal, 49, pp.139-150.
Morris, A (2004) ‘Knowledge management: Employment
opportunities for IS graduates’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.115-125.
Myburgh, S 2003, ‘Education directions for new information
professionals’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.213-227.
Nonaka, I & Konno, N (1998) ‘The concept of ‘Ba’: Building a
foundation for knowledge creation’, California Management
Review, 40, 3, pp.40-54.
Nonaka, I & Takeuchi, H (1995) The knowledge creating
company, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Skyrme, D (1999) KM basics, Knowledge Connections,
David Skyrme Associates, viewed 24 Mar. 2004 www.skyrme.com/resource/kmbasics.htm>.
Snowden, D (1999) Grappling with knowledge and realising
what you’ve got - ‘I only know what I know when I need to know
it ...’. In Knowledge management: The information management
event, Olympia Conference and Exhibition Centre, London,
UK 24-25 March 1999, p.5; cited in Milne, P (2000) Information
professionals and the knowledge-aware, intelligent organisation:
Skills for the future. Australian Library Journal, 49, p.141.
Townley, C (2001) ‘Knowledge management and academic
libraries’, College and Research Libraries, vol. 62, no. 1, pp.44-55.
Wiig, KM (1993) Knowledge management foundations, Schema
Press, Arlington, TX.
Wilson, TD (2002) ‘The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’’,
Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct. 2002, InformationR.net/ir/8-144.html>.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Posted by: mary / 10:56 PM 0 comments

Ferguson, S 2004, The knowledge management myth: will the real knowledge managers please step forward?, viewed 10/02 2005,

PAPER PRESENTED AT
Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge
Management – problems that have provided no small amount of
material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge
Management has survived for over ten years and continues to
attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and
in the literature – not just the literature of library and information
management, but also the literature of business management.
Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also
attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as
evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous
calls in the literature of library and information management
for information professionals to stake their claim as their
organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally
placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we
have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler
2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s
otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as
the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library
sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked
by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and
expertise to manage published information, could we not extend
this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At
this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made
the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and
that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play
a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent
IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians
Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some
of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s
suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many
knowledge management systems to match up to companies’
expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and
training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins
the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one
of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to
refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our
domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge.
Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management
domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and
information professionals forging partnerships with others in the
‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging
paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina
questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge
managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for
many years is Information Management, which, contrary to
what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge
Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line.
The claim that library and information professionals are ideally
suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the
face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is
at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information
Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion
that Knowledge Management and Information Management
are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the
emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims
about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship
highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences
between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number
of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the
past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004).
My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds
of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such
as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge
manager might look like and then ask whether our profession
has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more
productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many
papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please
Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
Abstract
The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable
of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering
of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information
management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the
tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the
professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2
Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of
the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw
at their long-suffering students.
Corporate knowledge
First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd
one out of the following terms:
• information management
• knowledge management
• library science
• military intelligence?
The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an
example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information
Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out
– librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed.
Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would
like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical
nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the
proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they
are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t
is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called
explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy
documents, the contents of databases or corporate records
(in other words, what we would call information), but also the
knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion
of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study,
Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe
organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically
‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in
organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the
emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us,
by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information)
– that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information
Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked
whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management
problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to
mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of
‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation.
There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming
sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much
of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a
degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and
its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts
to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for
instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig
(2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of
organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi
(1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al,
identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management
(Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of
Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged
Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task
for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit
knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes
of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore
cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson
2002). One can always change the term, however, and some
writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has
the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In
fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno,
refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit
knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such
as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are
‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical,
on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal
skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and
is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit
knowledge or, what we call, information.
Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the
term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that
sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of
strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge
or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an
organisational culture and the development of a technological
infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and
foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently
claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information
Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in
Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been
one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management
in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997,
pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge
management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information
fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which
make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge
management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of
organisational knowledge through sound practices of information
management and organisational learning.’
Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management
is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s
intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image
of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head
and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are
assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing
the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and
transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course
it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm
and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No
management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We
can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if
you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’
The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant
to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to
Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often
cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector:
• Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or
in non-associative learning;
• Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind
(for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials
(for example, production knowledge)
• Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of
past decisions or in R&D reports
• Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance,
‘lessons-learned’ reports
• Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer
programs
• Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’
in someone’s mind; and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3
• Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded
in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in
technology.
One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the
notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind,
but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that
Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much
broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession,
which consists largely of published information.
David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge
Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on
the following seven ‘strategic levers’:
• Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most
organizations
• Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while
performing core tasks
• Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions,
customized to users’ needs
• Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower,
your most precious asset
• Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or
elsewhere in the organization
• Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that
underpins successful collaboration
• Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your
intellectual capital.
Tasks of the knowledge manager
Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a
knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer
(2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six
from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es
what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which
they categorised as follows:
• focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice
and Question and Answer forums
• focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping,
Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases
• focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information
Alerts and Organisational Learning
• focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration.
This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but,
again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management
domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge
Management and Information Management, and the distance
between the two in terms of focus.
Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information
manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the
British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications
Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago:
What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives?
What information is needed to support those aims?
What information is available in the organisation?
Are there differences between needs and provision?
What has to be done to match needs and provision?
Is further exploitation of information viable?
Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information
Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and
Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence
of match, between information and needs by conducting an
information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge
mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the
methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are
overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of
so-called tacit or implicit knowledge.
Position descriptions
The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes
the construction of a hypothetical position description for a
knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to
be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably
well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its
creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange
and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia
published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen
Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant,
these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the
‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive
Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’,
‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and
‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions
relate to what we do in the library and information profession.
The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these
knowledge managers include the following:
• knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge
processes that support organisational development and
performance;
• knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational
knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to
knowledge discovery/exchange/development;
• ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of
information and knowledge resources;
• facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching
programs for improved communication skills to help with
collaboration and innovation;
• designing systems and procedures to enable effective
creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and
• managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with
knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12).
In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to
recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly
have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside
the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that
we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones.
The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a
wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne
Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that
collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job
advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the
six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information
collected was used to categorise roles as follows:
• Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for
the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy,
leadership and coordination
• Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person,
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4
responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT
infrastructure, business processes, change management and
so on’
• Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for
‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the
development of processes, infrastructure and information
resources’
• Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal
and external information and knowledge sources’
• Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM
activities within a specifi c network and community’
• Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for
‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM
activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’
(2004, pp.118-9).
Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that
require considerable knowledge of the core business of the
organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect
changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational
culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based
in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’
– many of these will be people who have the required business
or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or
knowledge management background. Somewhere between the
two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and
skills that look rather like those of an information professional.
Discussion
Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated
with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I
have already alluded, is the sheer range.
This is hardly surprising, given the range of information
professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’
Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of
practice within the Information Management sector – represented
by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier
– there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’
document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and
records management (both quite separate professions with
their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’
information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those
senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s
primary business and those people who design and implement
the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are
important continuities of practice, such as information analysis,
but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems
people may both talk about information analysis, but the
processes and outcomes are quite distinct.
Position descriptions for the various information professions vary
enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area
of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than
Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in
the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous
paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth
repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed
cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different
provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words,
it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional
‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs.
The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in
terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians
are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge
leverage required if their organisations are to become learning
organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks
outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of
leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire
to it. Some include a strategic information management role that
includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and
we all know that in the Information Management domain –
notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education
sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues
tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order
than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational
development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in
parts of the organisation never reached by librarians.
It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling
tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in
an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary
developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion,
revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999)
said a few years ago. Knowledge Management:
is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society.
It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c
management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex,
self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve
minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is
about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to
systems that are optimal within a specifi c context.
This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in
establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to
play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger
position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth
noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which
described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination
of information management (IM) for managing the documentary
form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’
The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at
the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this:
Director, Knowledge Management
The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the
Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of
effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing
organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment
with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes
coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide
program for staff development, communities of practice and
provision of executive management development.
The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with
specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records
management, information systems and networks management,
team leadership, and staff development and training.
The Director, as part of the senior human resources management
team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of
organisational objectives through:
• contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by
promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy;
• linking knowledge and information management policies and
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5
practices with organisational objectives, including provision of
information to support decision making;
• facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the
strategic direction of the organisation;
• creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by
promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management
among executives, managers, supervisors and staff;
• assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to
incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of
planning and performance management;
• coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional
development program in collaboration with other staff
development providers;
• identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of
knowledge and information management;
• developing and managing all Knowledge Management
projects, including planning, resourcing and communication
strategies
• assisting the human resources management team to review
and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures
and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue
to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and
• providing organisational development support for the
implementation of knowledge management initiatives.
There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager
to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read
references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or
even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge
Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the
periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind
of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment.
This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians
who have made some contribution to their organisations’
knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the
areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace
Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library
Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined
how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an
electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss
and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local
clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the
Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too
a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought
together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large
number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge
managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable
subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is
that the librarians bring their own information management
expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject
specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of
practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm.
9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject
knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information
professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who
have that knowledge.
Conclusions
Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain
and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood
statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or
could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging
success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what
is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves
as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution
and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential
collaborators, whether they be other Information Management
professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business
or human resource management. It is also important that there
is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable
literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going
back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s
paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes
of education, training and CPD, we need information on the
changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge
management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned
earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are
to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed
one.
Besides the issue of what library and information professionals
have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain,
however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the
subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management
in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive
colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their
organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the
course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management
turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often
constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the
cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should
be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that
some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in
our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to
contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that
library managers practice better Knowledge Management than
any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of
library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital
of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’.
Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic
Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just
to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an
understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create
Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider
HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much
success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge
Management domain by library and information professionals
and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of
‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore
when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge
Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in
the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong.
Keywords
Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging
knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge;
Information management.
References
Bishop, K (2002) New roles, skills and capabilities for the
knowledge-focused organisation, Business Excellence Australia,
Sydney.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
6
Bouthillier, F & Shearer, K (2002) ‘Understanding knowledge
management and information management: The need for an
empirical perspective,’ Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct.
2004, .
Branin, JJ (2003) ‘Knowledge management in academic libraries:
Building the knowledge bank at the Ohio State University’,
viewed 26 Mar. 2004, Kmacadlib.pdf>.
Broadbent, M (1997) ‘The emerging phenomenon of knowledge
management’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 46, pp.6-24.
Butler, Y (2000) ‘Knowledge management: If only you knew what
you knew’, Australian Library Journal, vol. 49, pp.31-42.
Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency (1990)
Managing information as a resource, HMSO, London.
Chaudhry, AS & Higgins, S (2004) ‘Education for knowledge
management: A spectrum approach’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.127-136.
Cheng, G (2000) ‘The shifting information landscape: Re-inventing
the wheel or a whole new frontier for librarians’, Australian Library
Journal, vol. 49, pp.17-26.
Corrall, S (1999) ‘Knowledge management: Are we in the
knowledge management business?’ Ariadne, 18, viewed 26 Mar.
2004, .
Davenport, E (2004) ‘Organizations, knowledge management
and libraries: Issues, opportunities and challenges’, in Knowledge
management: Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H
Hobohm (ed.), IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.81-
89.
Davenport, T & Prusak, L (2000) Working knowledge: How
organizations manage what they know, 2nd ed., Harvard
Business School Press, Cambridge, MA.
Hobohm H (ed) (2004) Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, IFLA publications, no. 108,
Saur, Munich.
Johnston, C (2000) ‘The business of knowledge management in
the knowledge-aware organisation’, Capitalising on knowledge:
The information profession in the 21st century: ALIA biennial
conference, 24-26 October, viewed 16 October 2003, //www.alia.org.au/conferences/alia2000/proceedings/christine.joh
nston.html>.
Koenig, MED (2004) ‘Knowledge management, user education,
and librarianship’, in Knowledge management: Libraries and
librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.), IFLA
publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.137-150.
Koina, C (2003) ‘Librarians are the ultimate knowledge
managers?’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.269-272.
Mac Morrow, N (2001) ‘Knowledge management: An introduction’,
in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, ME
Williams (ed.), Information Today, Medford, NJ, pp.381-422.
Middleton, M (1999) ‘From information management to knowledge
management: Some perspectives on development’, English
language version (written prior to translation into Spanish) of
‘De la gestión de la información a la gestión del conocimiento’,
El Profesional de la Información, vol. 8, no. 5, pp.10-17, viewed
26 Mar. 2004, IM_KM_Eng.doc>.
Milne, P (2000) ‘Information professionals and the knowledgeaware,
intelligent organisation: Skills for the future’, Australian
Library Journal, 49, pp.139-150.
Morris, A (2004) ‘Knowledge management: Employment
opportunities for IS graduates’, in Knowledge management:
Libraries and librarians taking up the challenge, H Hobohm (ed.),
IFLA publications, no. 108, Saur, Munich, pp.115-125.
Myburgh, S 2003, ‘Education directions for new information
professionals’, Australian Library Journal, 52, pp.213-227.
Nonaka, I & Konno, N (1998) ‘The concept of ‘Ba’: Building a
foundation for knowledge creation’, California Management
Review, 40, 3, pp.40-54.
Nonaka, I & Takeuchi, H (1995) The knowledge creating
company, Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Skyrme, D (1999) KM basics, Knowledge Connections,
David Skyrme Associates, viewed 24 Mar. 2004 www.skyrme.com/resource/kmbasics.htm>.
Snowden, D (1999) Grappling with knowledge and realising
what you’ve got - ‘I only know what I know when I need to know
it ...’. In Knowledge management: The information management
event, Olympia Conference and Exhibition Centre, London,
UK 24-25 March 1999, p.5; cited in Milne, P (2000) Information
professionals and the knowledge-aware, intelligent organisation:
Skills for the future. Australian Library Journal, 49, p.141.
Townley, C (2001) ‘Knowledge management and academic
libraries’, College and Research Libraries, vol. 62, no. 1, pp.44-55.
Wiig, KM (1993) Knowledge management foundations, Schema
Press, Arlington, TX.
Wilson, TD (2002) ‘The nonsense of ‘knowledge management’’,
Information Research, 8, 1, viewed 16 Oct. 2002, InformationR.net/ir/8-144.html>.
The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?
Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University

Posted by: mary / 10:56 PM 0 comments

Thursday, February 17, 2005

The knowledge management myth/stuart Ferguson

Introduction
Despite the theoretical problems associated with Knowledge Management – problems that have provided no small amount of material for conferences and the publishing industry – Knowledge Management has survived for over ten years and continues to attract considerable attention in conferences, on websites and in the literature – not just the literature of library and information management, but also the literature of business management. Knowledge Management workshops and consultancies also attract substantial fees, which might be regarded by some as evidence of its value. Moreover there continue to be numerous calls in the literature of library and information management for information professionals to stake their claim as their organisations’ best-qualifi ed knowledge managers. We are ideally placed to take on this role, the argument goes, because we have been managing knowledge from time immemorial (Butler 2000, p.40; Corrall 1999; Townley 2001, p.53). Patricia Milne’s otherwise excellent paper (2000, p.149;) refers to librarians as the ‘ultimate knowledge workers’, while, in the academic library sector, Joseph Branin (2003, p.11) claims to have been asked by senior university administrators: ‘If we had the experience and expertise to manage published information, could we not extend this expertise to all the intellectual assets of the University?’ At this conference four years ago, Christine Johnston (2000) made the bold claim that librarians were ‘in a position of strength’ and that our ‘traditional skills … place us in an ideal position to play a key role in an organisation’s knowledge initiatives’. The recent IFLA collection, Knowledge Management: Libraries and Librarians Taking up the Challenge, is littered with such comments, some of them verging on the fanciful: for instance, Michael Koenig’s suggestion that the ‘obvious’ solution to the failure of so many knowledge management systems to match up to companies’ expectations is to import librarians to provide user education and training (2004, 140). Hans-Christoph Hobohm (2004, p.7) begins the collection with the claim that knowledge management is one of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to refl ect ultimately ‘on why other communities try to colonise our domains’ – well, the title of the collection does refer to challenge. Not all writers, in fairness, claim the Knowledge Management domain as ours. Milne’s paper, for instance, refers to library and information professionals forging partnerships with others in the ‘domain’, as distinct from ‘colonisation’, while, in a challenging paper in last year’s Australian Library Journal, Cathie Koina questions whether librarians are really ‘the ultimate knowledge managers’ and points out that what librarians have done for many years is Information Management, which, contrary to what many librarians believe, is not the same as Knowledge Management (2003, p.270). In this paper I take a similar line. The claim that library and information professionals are ideally suited to stake their claim as knowledge managers fl ies in the face of much of the Knowledge Management literature, which is at pains to distinguish Knowledge Management from Information Management. While not necessarily agreeing with the notion that Knowledge Management and Information Management are completely distinct, I can see signifi cant differences in the emphasis of each – differences that make the hyperbolic claims about Knowledge Management being ‘souped-up’ Librarianship highly questionable. That there are signifi cant differences between the two is borne out, to a certain extent, by the number of Knowledge Management courses that have emerged in the past few years (Chaudhry & Higgins 2004). My strategy in this paper is to attempt to establish the kinds of tasks performed by a knowledge manager – if there is such as thing – infer what a position description for a knowledge manager might look like and then ask whether our profession has the necessary skills and attributes. This seems to me a more productive approach than becoming bogged down, as many papers do, in an attempt to defi ne Knowledge Management and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University Abstract The library literature of the past few years has periodically exhorted librarians to market themselves as knowledge workers capable of taking over the emerging ‘knowledge management’ function in their organisations. This paper challenges such a fanciful reengineering of the librarian’s role and suggests that it is based on the misguided confl ation of knowledge management and information management. It argues that the two are much more distinct than generally believed, and contrasts them by attempting to identify the tasks of a knowledge manager, outlining appropriate ‘position descriptions’ for the Knowledge Management fi eld and examining the professional background and organisational position required to fulfi ll these roles.
2 Information Management and then juxtaposing the two in one of the ‘compare and contrast’ exercises that educators love to throw at their long-suffering students. Corporate knowledge First, however, I would like to pose the question: which is the odd one out of the following terms: . information management . knowledge management . library science . military intelligence? The clue lies in the last term, because it is often used as an example of oxymoron. Only one of the terms, Information Management, is not an oxymoron and is therefore the odd one out – librarianship is not a science and knowledge cannot be managed. Having succeeded in antagonising everyone in the room, I would like to emphasise that, while for many of us it is a philosophical nonsense to suggest that knowledge can be managed, the proponents of Knowledge Management insist that what they are attempting to ‘manage’ for the sake of corporate benefi t is the complete knowledge resource – not just the so-called explicit knowledge used by an organisation, such as policy documents, the contents of databases or corporate records (in other words, what we would call information), but also the knowledge locked away in people’s heads, a signifi cant portion of which is what we call ‘know-how’. In a much quoted study, Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak (2000, p.5) describe organisational management as ‘a fl uid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight’ that is typically ‘embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organisational routines, processes, practices, and norms.’ It is the emphasis on this second type of knowledge – what the rest of us, by and large, understand as knowledge (rather than information) – that distinguishes Knowledge Management from Information Management. On a more pragmatic level, if someone is asked whether her organisation has any Knowledge Management problems, the chances are that the fi rst example that springs to mind is the issue of people leaving the organisation with heaps of ‘know-how’ that is thus lost to the organisation. There is little point, especially in a paper this length, of becoming sidetracked by the semantic debate that accompanies much of our discourse about Knowledge Management, although a degree of semantic argument is inevitable, given the subject and its defi nitional problems. There have been numerous attempts to provide a theoretical basis for Knowledge Management: for instance Davenport & Prusak (2000), Srikanntaiah & Koenig (2000) and Mac Morrow (2001), not to mention studies of organisational knowledge: most notably, Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995). It is worth noting that a 2002 review by Hlupik et al, identifi ed eighteen distinct defi nitions of Knowledge Management (Bouthillier & Shearer 2002). Tom Wilson, a vocal critic of Knowledge Management, which he sees as typically repackaged Information Management, takes Nonaka and Takeuchi to task for what he sees as their misuse of Michael Polanyi’s term, ‘tacit knowledge’. That term, he suggests, refers to hidden processes of comprehension that cannot be expressed and that therefore cannot be ‘managed’ by the zealous Knowledge Manager (Wilson 2002). One can always change the term, however, and some writers have done so, substituting ‘implicit knowledge’, which has the merit of sounding like the antonym of explicit knowledge. In fact, Ikujiro Nonaka, in a paper co-authored with Noburu Konno, refers to technical and cognitive dimensions to what he calls tacit knowledge. The cognitive dimension constitutes aspects such as ‘schemata and mental models’, which, the authors admit, are ‘deeply ingrained in us’ and ‘diffi cult to articulate’. The technical, on the other hand, ‘encompasses the kind of informal personal skills or crafts often referred to as ‘know-how’ (1998, p.42), and is much easier to articulate and therefore convert to explicit knowledge or, what we call, information. Many of the proponents of Knowledge Management use the term for want of a better one – and because it is still a term that sells consultancies – but actually talk about the development of strategies and processes to encourage the sharing of knowledge or, more typically, the leverage of knowledge – the creation of an organisational culture and the development of a technological infrastructure that encourage the sharing of knowledge and foster the development of a learning organisation. It is frequently claimed that Knowledge Management is wider than Information Management, and even subsumes it. In her well-known paper in Australian Library Journal, Marianne Broadbent, who has been one of the most infl uential proponents of Knowledge Management in the Australian library and information sector, suggests (1997, pp.8-9) that, integral to the implementation of knowledge management, ‘is understanding the organisation’s information fl ows and implementing organisational learning practices which make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base.’ Knowledge management, she insists, ‘is about enhancing the use of organisational knowledge through sound practices of information management and organisational learning.’ Part of the occasionally infl ated claim for Knowledge Management is that it is an integrated approach to leveraging an organisation’s intellectual capital. ‘Leveraging’ suggests to me the bizarre image of the Knowledge Manager sawing open the poor employee’s head and leveraging out bits of brain, all for the corporate good. We are assured, however, that ‘leveraging’ knowledge refers to establishing the value of knowledge at each stage of knowledge creation and transfer, and ensuring that the full value is realised. And of course it is an integrated approach. It is basically a management paradigm and as such can be expected to take an integrated approach. No management consultant worth his or her salt is going to say: ‘We can tell you how to leverage some of your intellectual capital – if you want the other stuff, fi nd another consultant.’ The corporate knowledge that knowledge managers are meant to be leveraging includes the following categories, according to Karl Wiig (1993, p.156), one of the most infl uential and most often cited writers on Knowledge Management in the business sector: . Tacit Knowledge, such as the kind found in skills and habits or in non-associative learning; . Explicit Knowledge, which might be held in a person’s mind (for instance, procedural knowledge) or in written materials (for example, production knowledge) . Implicit Knowledge, which might be held in historic records of past decisions or in R&D reports . Combined Explicit and Implicit Knowledge: for instance, ‘lessons-learned’ reports . Procedural Knowledge, typically present in computer programs . Anecdotal Knowledge, such as memory of a particular ‘case’ in someone’s mind; and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
3 . Embedded Knowledge, in other words, knowledge embedded in organisational structures, systems and procedures, and in technology. One might disagree with parts of Wiig’s taxonomy, such as the notion that explicit knowledge can be held in a person’s mind, but it demonstrates the scope of corporate knowledge that Knowledge Management is intended to address. It is much broader than the explicit knowledge handled by our profession, which consists largely of published information. David Skyrme, another much quoted commentator on Knowledge Management, suggests (1999) that most KM programs focus on the following seven ‘strategic levers’: . Customer Knowledge – the most vital knowledge in most organizations . Knowledge in Processes – applying the best know-how while performing core tasks . Knowledge in Products (and Services) – smarter solutions, customized to users’ needs . Knowledge in People – nurturing and harnessing brainpower, your most precious asset . Organizational Memory – drawing on lessons from the past or elsewhere in the organization . Knowledge in Relationships – deep personal knowledge that underpins successful collaboration . Knowledge Assets – measuring and managing your intellectual capital. Tasks of the knowledge manager Turning to the ‘tasks’ that might be the responsibility of a knowledge manager, France Bouthillier and Kathleen Shearer (2002) conducted an empirical study of twelve organisations – six from the private and six from the public sectors – which identifi es what they called Knowledge Management ‘methodologies’, which they categorised as follows: . focus on communication, namely, Communities of Practice and Question and Answer forums . focus on storage and retrieval, namely, Knowledge Mapping, Expert Databases and Knowledge Databases . focus on selected dissemination, namely, News Information Alerts and Organisational Learning . focus on action, namely, virtual collaboration. This is by no means a comprehensive or rigorous typology but, again, it demonstrates the range of the Knowledge Management domain. It also highlights both the overlap between Knowledge Management and Information Management, and the distance between the two in terms of focus. Compare these ‘methodologies’ with the tasks of an information manager, as outlined in a well-known book published by the British Government (Central Computer and Telecommunications Agency 1990, p.15) over a decade ago: What are the organisation’s business aims and objectives? What information is needed to support those aims? What information is available in the organisation? Are there differences between needs and provision? What has to be done to match needs and provision? Is further exploitation of information viable? Some of the methodologies employed to effect these Information Management tasks resemble those listed by Bouthillier and Shearer: for instance, one establishes the match, or absence of match, between information and needs by conducting an information audit, which in many essentials resembles ‘knowledge mapping’. Once again, however, it is worth noting that the methodologies listed in the Knowledge Management study are overwhelmingly designed to provide and facilitate the sharing of so-called tacit or implicit knowledge. Position descriptions The sheer range of the Knowledge Management domain makes the construction of a hypothetical position description for a knowledge manager diffi cult, if not impossible. There is likely to be a whole range of positions, each responsible for a reasonably well-defi ned area in the domain of corporate knowledge and its creation, codifi cation and storage (where feasible), exchange and exploitation. A couple of years ago, Standards Australia published some ‘sample job descriptions’, compiled by Karen Bishop. Based on her expertise as a recruitment consultant, these are constructed around more specifi c sets of tasks than the ‘methodologies’ just listed. Positions covered include: ‘Competitive Intelligence Leader’, ‘Knowledge and Information Manager’, ‘Information Literacy Manager’, ‘Intranet Content Manager’ and ‘Knowledge Coordinator’. Interestingly, two of these positions relate to what we do in the library and information profession. The specifi c ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks performed by these knowledge managers include the following: . knowledge strategies – to develop/improve the knowledge processes that support organisational development and performance; . knowledge auditing – to develop maps of organisational knowledge, identify gaps in knowledge and barriers to knowledge discovery/exchange/development; . ‘information literacy’ training programs for improved use of information and knowledge resources; . facilitation skills for improved group dynamics, and coaching programs for improved communication skills to help with collaboration and innovation; . designing systems and procedures to enable effective creation of, and access to, recorded knowledge; and . managing changes in organisational behaviour in line with knowledge-focused organisational strategy (2002, p.12). In areas such as information literacy and provision of access to recorded knowledge, library and information professionals clearly have some expertise, but the other tasks take them well outside the comfort zones populated by most of the profession – not that we shouldn’t consider venturing out of these zones. The IFLA collection, mentioned earlier, also demonstrates a wide range of Knowledge Management positions. In it, Anne Morris reports on another empirical study, this time in Britain, that collected, analysed and, where necessary, followed up on job advertisements in the Knowledge Management sector over the six-month period, October 2000 until March 2001. The information collected was used to categorise roles as follows: . Chief Knowledge Offi cer – a senior person, responsible for the initial development of Knowledge Management strategy, leadership and coordination . Chief Knowledge Team Manager – also a senior person, The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
4 responsible for ‘KM development and training, strategy, IT infrastructure, business processes, change management and so on’ . Implementation Manager – part of a team responsible for ‘KM implementation and monitoring and overseeing the development of processes, infrastructure and information resources’ . Knowledge Centre-Based Employee – with responsibility for ‘facilitating acquisition, dissemination and access to internal and external information and knowledge sources’ . Knowledge Networker – with responsibility for ‘facilitating KM activities within a specifi c network and community’ . Business Unit-Based Employee – with responsibility for ‘facilitating the development and implementation of KM activities with the help of the implementation team in their unit’ (2004, pp.118-9). Some of the positions categorised here are senior ones that require considerable knowledge of the core business of the organisation and the authority on a strategic level to effect changes in areas such as IT infrastructure and organisational culture. At the other end of the spectrum are employees based in specifi c units who work in teams as knowledge ‘facilitators’ – many of these will be people who have the required business or subject expertise, but some may have an information and/or knowledge management background. Somewhere between the two extremes is a Knowledge Centre that requires knowledge and skills that look rather like those of an information professional. Discussion Two main points strike me about the kinds of positions associated with the Knowledge Management domain. The fi rst, to which I have already alluded, is the sheer range. This is hardly surprising, given the range of information professionals working under the somewhat more ‘traditional’ Information Management umbrella. While there are continuities of practice within the Information Management sector – represented by works such as the British Government one mentioned earlier – there are also many applications, ranging from the ‘traditional’ document-orientated professions, such as librarianship and records management (both quite separate professions with their own, typically distinct, position descriptions), to the ‘hybrid’ information managers who form a ‘bridge’ between those senior managers responsible for conducting an organisation’s primary business and those people who design and implement the supporting systems and technologies. Of course there are important continuities of practice, such as information analysis, but there are also signifi cant differences. Librarians and systems people may both talk about information analysis, but the processes and outcomes are quite distinct. Position descriptions for the various information professions vary enormously, and it is not surprising that it is similar in the area of Knowledge Management, which is claimed to be wider than Information Management. In one of the more balanced papers in the IFLA collection, Liz Davenport (2004, p.82) quotes a previous paper she co-authored with Blaise Cronin in 2000, which is worth repeating here: ‘knowledge management is a form of distributed cognition, a multifaceted domain where professionals of different provenance must recognize each other’s roles.’ In other words, it is not a question of ‘them’ trying to muscle in on our traditional ‘territory’ or of our attempting to colonise theirs. The second point that I would like to highlight is the fact that in terms of information politics, it is unlikely that many librarians are in any position to bring about the level of knowledge leverage required if their organisations are to become learning organisations. The more senior ‘knowledge-enabling’ tasks outlined by writers such as Bishop and Morris require a level of leverage that very few librarians enjoy, although many may aspire to it. Some include a strategic information management role that includes development of an organisation’s IT infrastructure, and we all know that in the Information Management domain – notwithstanding some notable exceptions in the tertiary education sector – our Information Systems and Technology colleagues tend to occupy a higher position in the corporate pecking order than most librarians. More important, is the level of organisational development required. Knowledge leverage needs to take place in parts of the organisation never reached by librarians. It seems to me, therefore, that many of the knowledge-enabling tasks are best effected by the Human Resources division in an organisation. We are talking about signifi cant evolutionary developments in organisational culture – if not, on occasion, revolutionary developments. Here is what David Snowden (1999) said a few years ago. Knowledge Management: is a new way of thinking about the organisation and society. It challenges the dominant mechanical metaphor of scientifi c management, in thinking of the organisation as a complex, self-structuring ecology in which the secret is to achieve minimal intervention for maximum benefi cial effect. It is about creating adaptive systems that learn, in preference to systems that are optimal within a specifi c context. This, it seems to me, sums up the challenge involved in establishing learning organisations. While librarians have a role to play, Human Resources departments tend to be in a much stronger position to bring about the required cultural changes. It is worth noting here Michael Middleton’s paper a few years ago, which described Knowledge Management (1999, p.2) as ‘a combination of information management (IM) for managing the documentary form, and HRM for managing the expression of knowledge.’ The position description for the corporate Knowledge Manager, at the senior end of the spectrum, should look something like this: Director, Knowledge Management The Director, Knowledge Management, is accountable to the Executive Director, Human Resources, for promoting a culture of effective knowledge sharing and for planning and implementing organisational knowledge and information planning in alignment with the strategic plan of the organisation. This includes coordination of the delivery of an integrated organisation-wide program for staff development, communities of practice and provision of executive management development. The Director is supported by a team of professional staff with specialist managers in knowledge centre management, records management, information systems and networks management, team leadership, and staff development and training. The Director, as part of the senior human resources management team, will play an integral role in supporting the achievement of organisational objectives through: . contributing to the strategic directions of the organisation by promoting an integrated Knowledge Management philosophy; . linking knowledge and information management policies and The Knowledge Management Myth: Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward? Dr Stuart Ferguson, Senior Lecturer, Charles Sturt University
5 practices with organisational objectives, including provision of information to support decision making; . facilitating staff understanding of, and engagement with, the strategic direction of the organisation; . creating an innovative and adaptive culture for change by promoting an understanding of Knowledge Management among executives, managers, supervisors and staff; . assisting the organisation’s executives and managers to incorporate knowledge management strategies at all levels of planning and performance management; . coordinating the delivery of an integrated professional development program in collaboration with other staff development providers; . identifying appropriate best practice primarily in the areas of knowledge and information management; . developing and managing all Knowledge Management projects, including planning, resourcing and communication strategies . assisting the human resources management team to review and evaluate knowledge management policies, procedures and systems to ensure they refl ect best practice and continue to meet the organisation’s strategic objectives; and . providing organisational development support for the implementation of knowledge management initiatives. There may be much in this illustration of a Knowledge Manager to criticise, but it does suggest a plausible paradigm. When I read references in the literature to the need for librarians to stake, or even re-stake, their claim to be their organisation’s Knowledge Manager, it strikes me that most librarians are still too close to the periphery of their organisation’s core business to provide the kind of leadership required in the Knowledge Management environment. This is not to belittle the success of those innovative librarians who have made some contribution to their organisations’ knowledge leverage, especially, but not exclusively, in the areas of health and law. Some may recall, for instance, Grace Cheng’s paper in the February 2000 issue of Australian Library Journal on the Hong Kong Hospital Authority, which outlined how librarians (no longer termed that of course) developed an electronic forum on which clinicians and managers discuss and exchange opinions on the application of evidence in local clinical practice, and supported the electronic publication of the Newsletter of best evidence (2000, pp. 22-23). Consider too a law fi rm, such as Allen Arthur Robinson, which has brought together knowledge managers and librarians to handle the large number of precedents required in legal practice. The knowledge managers in this case have legal qualifi cations and considerable subject expertise in the area of precedents, but the point is that the librarians bring their own information management expertise to the collaboration and, by working with the subject specialists, fi nd themselves more closely aligned with areas of practice (C Thomas, C Machin & J Guerrato 2003, pers. comm. 9 Oct.). Information knowledge is not a substitute for subject knowledge or knowledge of business processes, but information professionals can on occasion work more closely with those who have that knowledge. Conclusions Librarians do belong in the Knowledge Management domain and have a contribution to make. Instead of making motherhood statements about what good knowledge managers we make, or could make if we just had the chance, we should be exchanging success stories – case studies that will assist others to see what is possible. It is important, nonetheless, that we see ourselves as merely part of the so-called Knowledge Management solution and familiarise ourselves with the other players, and potential collaborators, whether they be other Information Management professionals or come from other backgrounds such as business or human resource management. It is also important that there is informed debate within the profession. There is a considerable literature within ALIA on professional roles for librarians, going back to the 1980s and including, most recently Sue Myburgh’s paper in ALJ on educational directions (2003). For purposes of education, training and CPD, we need information on the changing job market at the interface of information and knowledge management; perhaps along the lines of the studies, mentioned earlier, by Bouthillier and Shearer and by Morris. If librarians are to make a grab for Knowledge Management, it needs to be a wellinformed one. Besides the issue of what library and information professionals have to contribute to the Knowledge Management domain, however, there is another reason for interesting ourselves in the subject. We are used to thinking of Knowledge Management in the special libraries sector, in which our more proactive colleagues have already repositioned themselves in their organisations as Information Managers – and may be in the course of staking their claims to the Knowledge Management turf – but it is worth remembering that other types of library often constitute substantial organisations in their own right: what the cataloguers in our midst call subordinate bodies. We should be asking whether the Knowledge Management principles that some see as integral to librarianship are actually practiced in our libraries. I would maintain – and I am very much open to contradiction – that there is no empirical evidence to suggest that library managers practice better Knowledge Management than any other type of manager. Indeed, I am sure we can all think of library managers whose ability to leverage the intellectual capital of their libraries leaves considerable ‘room for improvement’. Like many educators, I continue to attempt to impart some basic Knowledge Management principles to my students, not just to prepare them for the turf wars ahead, but also because an understanding of Knowledge Management and the need to create Learning Organisations should be an integral part of the wider HRM environment. However, I also continue to look, without much success, for evidence, fi rst, of real engagement in the Knowledge Management domain by library and information professionals and, second, of an ability to practice what we preach in terms of ‘leveraging’ knowledge in our own libraries. I am sceptical, therefore when I ask an ALIA conference audience ‘Will the Real Knowledge Managers Please Step Forward?’ I don’t expect to be fl attened in the stampede, but I would be happy to be proved wrong. Keywords Knowledge management; Knowledge managers; Leveraging knowledge; Learning organisations; Corporate knowledge; Information management.

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