Year: 2007
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The emerging knowledge economy and society bring new challenges to organizations, managers and workers: the accelerating pace of innovation in products, services and processes; the growing importance of work that requires extensive education, experience and judgment; and the escalating complexity of knowledge, which becomes increasingly distributed and changeable, among others.The field of knowledge management (KM), however young, has attracted contributions from a wide range of disciplines seeking to provide answers to those challenges, and may be a good source of instruction to managers and workers willing to get prepared for them.In this work, we propose a model of individual knowledge management competence to support the education of knowledge managers, understood as general managers capable of dealing with those challenges.A preliminary model was theoretically developed after an extensive review of literature in the KM field and on the concept of competence, and then validated and refined in two ways: first, a questionnaire survey of KM researchers and practitioners, and second, a content analysis of curricula from master's programs in KM.The model explains KM competence as specific combinations of presumed KM-related activities and the individual capabilities required to perform them.It also indicates that those activities and capabilities are strongly dependent on particular perspectives on knowledge and its management.We describe four basic perspectives -information, human, computing, and strategy -that lead to very distinct ways to understand and practice KM.From an information-oriented perspective, knowledge is mostly seen as codified/codifiable content and transferable expertise/experience, and KM usually means to facilitate Educating Knowledge Managers: A Competence-Based Approach access to information, expertise and so-called best practices.From a human-oriented perspective, knowledge is largely interpreted as social practice and collective sense making, and KM usually means to cultivate contexts and facilitate connections that improve practice and sense making.From a computing-oriented perspective, knowledge is typically regarded as objective and suited to computational approaches, and KM normally means to develop systems/methods that compute knowledge and to build computational models for decision making.Finally, from a strategy-oriented perspective: knowledge is interpreted at the organizational level as capability or asset, and KM typically means to prioritize knowledge valuable to the organization and to design and implement strategies and processes to acquire, create, use and protect it.Those perspectives can be combined in myriad ways, and the model proposed suggests not a single definition of KM competence, but multiple profiles based on distinct understandings of what comprises KM.The study describes four typical profiles being developed in current KM education: the information manager, the learning facilitator, the knowledge systems developer and the KM manager.Finally, we conclude this work by suggesting other profiles that better focus on the managerial challenges in the knowledge economy and society, and propose ways to develop them through improved graduate programs.iii To Mom and Dad, my endless sources of love and wisdom To Sandra, who makes me believe in humankind To Amanda and Leonardo, the guiding light of my life Chapter 1: Introduction The emerging knowledge economy and society brings new challenges to organizations, managers and workers: the accelerating pace of innovation in products, services and processes; the growing importance of work that requires extensive education, experience and judgment; and the escalating complexity of knowledge, which becomes increasingly distributed and mutable, among many others.The expanding knowledge management (KM) field has attracted contributions from a wide range of disciplines seeking to provide answers to those challenges, and may be a suitable source of instruction to managers and workers willing to get prepared for them.In this work, we propose a model of individual knowledge management competence to support the education of knowledge managers, or general managers capable of dealing with those challenges.We first explore the KM field itself, identifying fundamentally distinct ways to understand knowledge and its management and suggesting that diverse contributions can be understood as combinations of four basic epistemological perspectives: information-, human-, computing-, and strategy-oriented.We examine the concept of competence as well, describing its two complementary aspects that emphasize either individual capability or expected performance, and translate it into the context of KM, proposing a model with three interacting elements: capability set, activity set, and KM perspective.We also investigate graduate KM education, detailing the varied ways in which the idea of KM competence is implemented, most often implicitly, in programs' curricula, and discussing the extent to which the current provision addresses the needs of knowledge managers.Finally, we conclude this work by suggesting profiles of KM competence that better focus on managerial challenges in the knowledge economy and society, and proposing ways to develop them through improved graduate programs.
Author: André Saito
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W81802321