Content area
Full Text
Jay Liebowitz (ed.) Knowledge Management Handbook CRC Press, 1999
Jay Liebowitz and LyIe C. Wilcox (eds.) Knowledge Management and Its Integrative Elements CRC Press, 1997
Uwe M. Borghoff and Remo Pareschi (eds.) Information Technology for Knowledge Management Springer-Verlag, 1998
This review explores three selected books related to the field of knowledge management published over the last two years.
The first book Knowledge Management Handbook is an interesting collection of papers contributed by a number of leading researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge management (KM). It claims to be the only handbook available on KM and aims to serve as an essential reference, integrating perspectives from researchers and practitioners in KM. Through their work, one of the main goals of this book is to establish a good foundation of the methodologies, techniques, and practices in the field. Discussions and references to advanced topics are made, in the context of KM, including knowledge discovery and data mining, data warehousing, web-based technology, and intelligent agents. The editor, Jay Liebowitz posits that KM is not really a new concept but rather an amalgamation of concepts borrowed from the artificial intelligence (AI)/knowledgebased systems, software engineering, business process reengineering (BPR), human resource management, and organizational behavior fields. KM is much more than implementing systems, as it deals with the conceptualization, review, consolidation, and action phases of creating, securing, combining, coordinating, and retrieving knowledge. The book attempts to address a number of critical factors which will influence the adoption and practice of KM in organizations. These include the need for the creation of a knowledge sharing environment, the development of metrics to value knowledge and show its tangible benefits; the need to gain support, involvement and commitment from CEOs and senior executives in order to integrate KM systems and infrastructure with the mainstream of the organization. It also warns of certain pitfalls including the mistaken belief that KM is the same as information management; and the increasing mislabeling of every tool as a KM tool where such hype will kill the 'good' from KM principles in the same way that the previous fad, BPR, died out.
The book is divided into five sections. Section I traces the background, scope and implementation strategies of KM. The papers contributed respectively by Beckman,...