An Analysis of Knowledge Management Frameworks: Towards a new Framework

Knowledge management has gained popularity in recent times because knowledge is regarded as a vital resource in today's economy. While there are a number of knowledge management strategies, three strategies are widely cited in literature: the knowledge management schools of thought; the personalisation and codification strategy; and knowledge management lifecycle frameworks. The lifecycle frameworks are the most popular with researchers and practitioners. The problem with the frameworks is that there are too many frameworks with different processes for academics and practitioners to choose from. This paper analyses 15 widely cited frameworks and proposes a new unified framework. Content analysis was used to count and group similar, prominent processes into concepts. The unified framework has seven knowledge management processes: knowledge acquisition, creation, organisation, storage, transfer, application and learning. The principal aim of the unified framework is to eliminate the confusion created by many frameworks with many different processes.