2.2 Evolution of Knowledge Management
The emergence of the term explicit knowledge and
the introduction of KM in the 1980s were new. It was a
natural evolution brought about by the confluence of many
factors. The developments that have led to present
perspective on KM come from many areas. Some are
intellectually based, while others are pragmatic and
rooted in the need to innovate to secure real-life
performance. KM can be described as the most recent
phase of an evolution from a managerial focus on data
management than information management and finally
KM. The three practices that have brought the most
contents and energy to KM are information management,
the quality movement and the human factors/human
capital movement [4].
Information management developed during the
seventies and eighties and is usually understood as a
subset of the larger information technology and
information science world. IT is a body of thought and
cases that focus on how information itself is managed
independent of the technologies that house and
manipulate it. It deals with information issues in terms of
valuation, operational techniques, governance, and
incentive schemes. Information, in this context,
generally means documents, data, and structured
messages. In broad terms, KM shares information
managements user perspective, a focus on value as a
function of user satisfaction rather than the efficiency of
the technology that houses and delivers the information.