Rooney, D. and Schneider, U. “The material, mental, historical and social character of knowledge.” In ...

Type of paper: concept paper, chapter in book about knowledge economies

Audience: academics

Focus: Explanation of knowledge or knowing to provide scaffolding with which to plan.

Summary: Identifies social constructivist and subjective paradigm as promising, but not enough. Better explanation is from evolutionary theory (Gebser and Mithen): underlying prelinguistic consciousness / intelligence remain basis of evolutionary developments: magic → mythic → modern, which thus still rely on imagination, intuition, analogy and metaphor, ie tacit knowing.

Knowledge is context dependent communication; knowing identifies gap and bridge building; a social process.

Rooney sets out a model of knowledge (p26):

1. Social-relational context: the social architecture in which knowing occurs.

2. Interpretive-relational context: sense-making.

3. The knower.

4. The situation: not only the personal, cognitive, sociological and phenomenological locations and shapers of knowledge, but also the historical, spatial and physical elements of knowledge systems, and beliefs, moods and attitudes.

5. Enactment of knowledge: fallibly intentional and directed use of knowledge, ie, it is messy, ir/rational, un/intentional.

Individual snapshots may appear random, but patterns over time may emerge. Knowledge management should not focus on outcomes, but on kawanatanga of the process and context of knowing.

Critique: While I have difficulty with evolutionary theories this one is persuasive. Many of these concepts are similar to Brenda Dervin's work, and familiarity is indicated through use of Dervin's terminology: sense-making, gaps, bridges. Rooney follows evolutionary theory with quote from Vygotsky, a social constructivist. Critical and phenomenological theory also have small parts to play within the model. Bhaskar appears to be a major influence. Key problems with the model are that it so big and has so many parts that the system is the model; and there are no measurements. Otherwise it is very appealing.

Wiig, K.M. (2007). Effective societal knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 11(5), 141-156.

Type of paper: Conceptual paper.

Audience: Academics and practitioners.

Focus: Nations must create societal knowledge management to enable and benefit its citizens; author suggests principles and framework.

Summary: Strong societal IC → effective participation in global knowledge economy, which is what all nations want. Knowledge is considered part of broader concept of intellectual capital and the terms are used interchangeably (p154).

Critique: This article places SKM as a holy grail of public administration and the panacea to all our woes. For example, it appears from Figure 2 and Wiig's commentary that increased literacy causes increased annual personal income, although I would suggest that both are caused by political stability, and only achieve high numbers when combined with established, government funded infrastructure.

Another difficulty I have is with Wiig's initial statement of limited government (p142):

The article emphasizes building competent people, profitable enterprises, effective cities, and desirable societies. Such developments result less from central planning and design – they primarily result from actions of people and organizations with detailed localized knowledge of needs and opportunities. Instead of specific prescriptions for how to build capabilities, the emphasis is on a knowledge-focused framework to foster environments, culture, and infrastructure.

Yet further on the government is required to provide literacy, education, effective cities, and national plans, social incentives (ie, tax breaks), best practices, R&D for national intellectual capital.

Other stand out points are that Wiig's utopia requires urbanisation, individual-based, western culture.

In the end the principles and frameworks suggested are (p151):

Hence SKM uses approaches developed and perfected in the private sector. Most management, organizational, and operational principles are similar. KM-related technology is also the same.

This assumes the private sector has perfected knowledge management.

This was written after NZ's “Knowledge Wave” programme, which was the government's attempt to emulate Ireland, and which hasn't made much impact.