Knowledge Management and the colonization of knowledge

Interest in Knowledge Management (herein ‘KM’) has soared in the last few years. Despite what might be said about the feasibility or robustness of the idea, undoubtedly one of its astounding ‘successes’ is its heated diffusion among both academic and practitioner communities. This diffusion, together with its popularity among major consultancies suggest that it has the hallmarks of a management fashion, and is likely to disappear as quickly as it arrived. Indeed, the data we present in this paper indicate that this is likely to be the case. As such KM could be dismissed as not worthy of any serious investigation because its effects (if indeed there are any) will be short-lived. However, management fashions are arguably worthy of investigation in their own right. Fashions have symbolic or sign value flagging up some organizational concerns as being more pressing or worthy of management attention at certain times than others. They also draw attention to, and legitimate the status and expertise of, those who are seen as being able to deal with those pressing problems. We argue therefore that the fashionization of ideas needs to be understood in relational terms. That is it comprises multiple professional networks (encompassing practitioners and suppliers) that seek to compete for and defend their claims to knowledge in relation to other professional groups in ways that relate to the activities and practices they are actually involved with in organizations. Ironically, a consequence of the colonization by professional groups is that ‘KM’, when applied in organizations, could become an example of the very problems that it seeks to address. Thus, adopting a broad perspective on knowledge as socially constructed ‘KM’ itself is found to be an interesting example of the social construction of knowledge with the result here being that knowledge relevant to ‘KM’ is both dispersed and disintegrated. Introduction Although knowledge per se has long been recognized as important within organizations, the focus on Knowledge Management (herein ‘KM’) is relatively recent. Interest in ‘KM’ has soared in the last few years with articles and references to the topic growing exponentially (Scarbrough et al, 1999). Despite what might be said about the feasibility or robustness of the idea, undoubtedly one of its astounding successes is its heated diffusion among both academic and practitioner communities. This heightened diffusion, together with its popularity among major consultancies in North America and Europe (e.g. IBM’s ‘Institute of Knowledge Management’), suggest that ‘KM’ has the hallmarks of a management fad or fashion, likely to disappear as quickly as it arrived. Indeed, the data we present in this paper indicate that this is likely to be the case. As such, ‘KM’ could be dismissed as not worthy of any serious investigation because its effects on practice (if indeed there are any) will be short-lived. However, management fashions are arguably worthy of investigation in their own right, for example, as powerful rhetorics that shape management understandings and practices (Abrahamson, 1996). Fashions have symbolic or sign value flagging up some organizational concerns as being more pressing or worthy of management attention at certain times than others. They also draw attention to, and legitimate the status and expertise of, those who are seen as being able to deal with these pressing problems. According to this logic, the ‘fashionization’ of ideas has