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Introduction to Knowledge Management 15

The lack of agreement on one universal formulation of a defi nition for knowledge
management makes it essential to develop one for each organization (at a very
minimum). This working or operational defi nition, derived through the concept analysis
technique, will render explicit the various perceptions people in that company may
have of KM and bring them together into a coherent framework. It may seem strange
that KM is almost always defi ned at the beginning of any talk or presentation on the
topic (imagine if other professionals such as doctors, lawyers, or engineers began every
talk with “ here is a defi nition of what I do and why ” ) but this is the reality we must
deal with. Whether the lack of a defi nition is due to the interdisciplinary nature of
the fi eld and/or because it is still an emerging discipline, it certainly appears to be
highly contextual. The concept analysis technique allows us to continue in both
research and practice while armed with a common, validated, and clear description
of KM that is useful and adapted to a particular organizational context.

History of Knowledge Management

Although the term knowledge management formally entered popular usage in the late
1980s (e.g., conferences in KM began appearing, books on KM were published, and
the term began to be seen in business journals), philosophers, teachers, and writers
have been making use of many of the same techniques for decades. Denning (2002)
related how from “ time immemorial, the elder, the traditional healer, and the midwife
in the village have been the living repositories of distilled experience in the life of the
community ” (http://www.stevedenning.com/ knowledge_management.html).
Some form of narrative repository has been around for a long time, and people
have found a variety of ways to share knowledge in order to build on earlier experi-
ence, eliminate costly redundancies, and avoid making at least the same mistakes
again. For example, knowledge sharing often took the form of town meetings, work-
shops, seminars, and mentoring sessions. The primary vehicle for knowledge transfer
was people themselves — in fact, much of our cultural legacy stems from the migration
of different peoples across continents.
Wells (1938) , while never using the actual term knowledge management , described
his vision of the World Brain that would allow the intellectual organization of the sum
total of our collective knowledge. The World Brain would represent “ a universal orga-
nization and clarifi cation of knowledge and ideas ” (Wells 1938, xvi). Wells in fact
anticipated the World Wide Web, albeit in an idealized manner, when he spoke of
“ this wide gap between . . . at present unassembled and unexploited best thought and
knowledge in the world . . . we live in a world of unused and misapplied knowledge
and skill ” (p. 10). The World Brain encapsulates many of the desirable features of the