Beyond Knowledge Management: An Extended Model of Knowledge Governance

The authors outline trends in managing knowledge, introduce the emerging framework of knowledge governance, and expand its scope. The major approaches of classical knowledge management, distilled to cook-book definitions and consultant practices, are increasingly viewed as inadequate in addressing the growing complexity of information and knowledge flows in modern organizations and societies dealing with rapidly changing environments. Reflecting a new normative push towards conceptual innovation, knowledge governance has emerged as a new paradigm to describe, understand, and analyze the expanding “knowledge domain” in a holistic and comprehensive way. Knowledge governance involves the design of structures and mechanisms to support the processes of sharing and creating knowledge. Knowledge governance has two main interpretation levels in the literature: the company(micro-) and the national (macro-) level. The authors propose a three-layer model adding a layer of “global” knowledge governance. Analyzing and separating the main issues in this way, we can reformulate the focus of knowledge governance research and practice in all layers.