Content area
Full text
Vicky Dougherty: Vicky Dougherty is an Independent Consultant based in Sheffield, UK.
Why is the term "knowledge" so popular these days?
Discussing and debating knowledge per se is not new (it has been an issue in philosophy for centuries), but its prevalence in both the business environment and the world of academia and research has grown exponentially in the last few years. In particular, knowledge has become a substance to be "managed", to take the phrase "knowledge management" at its most literal sense. Knowledge managers or officers are being appointed in large organisations, academic journals have changed their titles to include the word knowledge (business change and re-engineering has become "knowledge and process management") and consultants have become specialists in the new corporate function of knowledge management.
Knowledge management as a subject in its own right has developed from ideas that suggest that we are living in an age in which "intellectual capital", the "knowledge, information, intellectual property, experience" (Stewart, 1998) or, to put it another way, what we have in our minds, is our primary commercial resource. Raw materials and the manufacture and transportation of goods are no longer considered the central drivers of competitive advantage. "Information and knowledge are the thermonuclear competitive weapons of our time" (Stewart, 1998, who was then considered by The Planning Forum to be "the leading proponent of knowledge management in the business press").
This view, that could theoretically force the significance of people and their minds to the top of the agenda in strategic dialogue and decision making, has been evident in descriptions of the changing nature of our economy for some time now. In schools and universities we were taught about the shift from being a manufacturing-based economy to being "service" based. But, by transferring the subject from school and university books to glossier, high profile management books, knowledge, intellectual capital, call it what you will, is now visible to the management world and is fast becoming the sexiest subject to be consulting in, to be introducing in your company, to be a specialist in ...
Portraits of the late twentieth century also regularly describe the rapid growth and development of digital technology. We are now considered to be living in the "information age".
This focus is...