Knowledge Management: From an IT Perspective?

The advent of the Learning Organisation (Argyris, 1982; Senge, 1990; De Geus, 1997) or the Learning Company (Pedler et al., 1990) appears more than merely another management theory fad that promises unattainable benefit. Organisations must continually learn if they are to survive (De Geus, 1997) and many strive to develop strategies in support of this objective. Within these strategies it is clear that Information Technology (IT) has a leading role (Miller and Dunn, 1998) for it pervades many areas of the organisation and beyond to other elements of the supply chain. In short, IT is increasingly expected to provide the knowledge dissemination infrastructure within, and between the organisation(s) in order to support learning activities. Any comprehensive survey of the learning organisation literature and practice quickly reveals the significance of Knowledge Management (KM) (IPD, 1999) for it is through the capturing of information and sharing of knowledge that organisations can be seen to learn. The inference is clear, that to be a successful learning organisation necessitates close attention to the issue of creating organisational knowledge and of its management. Knowledge management can be said to be the policies and processes through which organisations seek to create, store and disseminate organisational knowledge, and fundamental to this endeavour has become the role of IT.