Knowledge Management - Time to Rethink the Discipline

Knowledge management (KM) is going through a challenging time. Interest in knowledge management in the corporate world is waning across the board. According to a major consulting firm, for the first time since its inception as an important management tool in early 1990s KM has fallen out of management's priority list this year. It is one more reason why a number of academics are questioning the viability of KM as a worthy concept and its right to be an academic discipline. There are multiple issues that have facilitated the growing ambiguity around the concept. First, ever since the concept emerged, some members of KM community have opposed the name knowledge management. According to this group, this moniker is a misnomer and an oxymoron. They consider that knowledge cannot be managed hence the name does not make any sense. Their rational is as, often, subject name embodies and exemplifies what the subject is about it creates considerable opacity in the understanding of the true nature of the notion. Second, the concept of knowledge management evolved from the idea of information technology management. Technology is a key enabler and a pillar of knowledge management. However, undue focus on technology in the early stage of knowledge management has, in many cases, brought dubious results putting a damper on the enthusiastic sprouting of knowledge management use. Third, lack of proper theoretical and philosophical foundation bifurcated the concept in two ideologies: subjectivist and objectivist. Each of these views propagates its strategy and focuses on different priorities. Recent studies show that the KM initiative based on just one of the two strategies does not always produce desired outcome. Fourth, in today's evolving market, management concerns and needs are changing rapidly. Because of the superficial constraint internally imposed by KM as a discipline, it is failing to engulf new adjacent concepts as they emerge. Big data, for example, is a case in point. Grounding on the ideas taken from previously emerged new disciplines the author argues that the concept of knowledge management should be augmented and renamed as "Knowledge Science." The domain of the new discipline, the paper suggests, should encompass all aspects of knowledge not just management of knowledge activities.