The Concept of Knowledge for a Knowledge-based Society

With the emergence of the so-called knowledge economy, knowledge has become one of the mostfashionable terms in the political and managerial sphere. The present paper presents different views onknowledge, focusing mainly on the literature derived from management studies. The main focus is onknowledge management approaches, since this field of study has been very much involved in relatingknowledge to managerial practices. Three main approaches to epistemology are proposed in a broad sense: innatist/introspection,empiricism/behaviourism and critical philosophy/constructivism. Special emphasis is placed onconstructivism since it is argued that it is the predominant view nowadays. Afterwards, knowledge isconceptualized from a managerial perspective. More specifically, the paper differentiates betweenseveral knowledge-related terms, such as data, information or expertise. The distinction between tacitand explicit knowledge is also addressed. The paper finalizes summarizing main characteristics ofknowledge and its relationship with learning.