Delineating knowledge management through lexical analysis – a retrospective

Аннотация

Purpose – Academic authors tend to define terms that meet their own needs. Knowledge Management (KM) is a term that comes to mind and is examined in this study. Lexicographical research identified KM terms used by authors from 1996 to 2006 in academic outlets to define KM. Data were collected based on strict criteria which included that definitions should be unique instances. From 2006 onwards, these authors could not identify new unique instances of definitions with repetitive usage of such definition instances. Analysis revealed that KM is directly defined by People (Person and Organisation), Processes (Codify, Share, Leverage, and Process) and Contextualised Content (Information). The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – The aim of this paper is to add to the body of knowledge in the KM discipline and supply KM practitioners and scholars with insight into what is commonly regarded to be KM so as to reignite the debate on what one could consider as KM. The lexicon used by KM scholars was evaluated though the application of lexicographical research methods as extended though Knowledge Discovery and Text Analysis methods. Findings – By simplifying term relationships through the application of lexicographical research methods, as extended though Knowledge Discovery and Text Analysis methods, it was found that KM is directly defined by People (Person and Organisation), Processes (Codify, Share, Leverage, Process) and Contextualised Content (Information). One would therefore be able to indicate that KM, from an academic point of view, refers to people processing contextualised content