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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS 155

All these issues mean that what is actually available on the organizational KMS
may be trivial and unhelpful while the really important knowledge continues to
reside in everyday practices. Moreover, not only are there problems in actually
codifying some knowledge, but also it must be recognized that people may be
reluctant to even attempt to ‘brain dump’ what they ‘know’ onto a database
because knowledge, or knowing, is also a key source of personal power within
organizations. Ironically, in cases where knowledge really needs to be shared –
that is, where it is both in short supply and central to the organization – there
may be a particular reluctance amongst people to share it with others. This is
because knowledge, or knowing, confers personal advantages – it means that
some people can do things that others are not able to – and so is kept secret by
the ‘knower’.
More fundamentally, the practice view of knowledge suggests that KMS are
limited by the very possession view of knowledge that they assume. Thus, the
practice approach views knowledge (unlike data) as something that cannot sim-
ply be possessed and transferred; rather it is continuously recreated and reconsti-
tuted through dynamic, interactive, and social, action and interaction.

>> THE PRACTICE VIEW AND KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AS NETWORKING
As seen in Chapter 1, the epistemology of practice – that underpins both pro-
cess and practice-sensitive accounts of knowledge work – starts from the prem-
ise that, truth, and so knowledge, is contestable, which means that knowledge
cannot be transferred between people through ICTs in any straightforward
way. A particular version of ‘truth’ can be transferred but, were this to be
understood by the intended recipients (and this in itself is problematic), it
may not be accepted given alternative ‘justified true beliefs’. Knowledge, or
rather knowing, cannot, therefore, be disassociated from the beliefs and experi-
ences of those people that use it. ICTs marketed as ‘Knowledge Management
Systems’ obscure and/or deny this socially constructed nature of knowledge.
Instead, those promoting such systems imply that, by introducing standard
processes and ICT-supported communication channels which link people and
groups, ‘best practice’ knowledge can be shared throughout a global organi-
zation. However, unlike data, knowledge cannot be simply transferred from a
sender to a receiver. Data can be directly transferred but their interpretation,
which involves the process of ‘knowing’, may be highly variable (Galliers and
Newell, 2003).
The knowledge-as-practice view highlights the importance of relation-
ships, and shared understandings and attitudes to knowledge formation and
knowledge sharing (Kofman and Senge, 1993). It is important to acknowl-
edge these issues since they help to define the likely success or failure of
attempts to implement KMS. The knowledge-as-practice view suggests that it
is likely to be fairly easy to share knowledge between individuals who are rela-
tively homogeneous in terms of their practice, because they share a common

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