Solving the context sharing dilemma in knowledge management

This paper engages with one of the central dilemmas of Knowledge Management: how do we share contextual knowledge? This approaches Knowledge Management differently from the traditional distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge, although it aims to take that discussion forward. It is based in unstructured data management applications and research, and the recent development of visualisation techniques and platforms for processing and presenting information and knowledge. Most practitioners and researchers agree that knowledge and context cannot be separated. That raises the question of how knowledge can be used across contexts, and shared among different people. In other words, if knowledge needs to be provided for particular users, and therefore for each of their particular contexts, how can we design formats that will achieve this, and provide more dynamic and intuitive knowledge management? The format would need to be flexible and dynamic at the level of content and meta-content, so that some of the content as well as the meta-content can be reordered and rearranged for use in other contexts. This has specific implications for management, as it requires a shift away from formal systems and the management of formal systems, into "ante-formal" or "para-formal" systems management, or what might be called "communities of practice relationship management" (CPRM).