European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 5: KM Terminology
Best/Good Practices: KM practices that have produced outstanding results in other situations, inside or outside of a particular organization and which can be validated, codified and shared with others and recommended as models to follow.
Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO): The individual with overall leadership of KM in an organization. Typically, the CKO will articulate and champion the KM vision, provide leadership for implementing and sustaining KM initiatives, and has the ultimate responsibility for knowledge creation, sharing and application.
Community of Practice (CoP): Informal, self-organized, collaboration of people, within or between organizations, who share common practices, interests or aims. When the CoP proves useful to its members over time, they may formalize its status by adopting a group name and a regular system of interchange through enabling tools. (Other types of KM communities include Communities of Interest and Communities of Purpose).
Core Competences: The set of skills, experience and attributes recognized by an organization as critical to their success in KM. – for example: information literacy, a sharing culture etc.
Customer Capital: Refers to the value of an organization’s network of satisfied clients, and their loyalty to the organization.
Data: Discrete, objective facts (numbers, symbols, figures) without context and interpretation.
Explicit Knowledge: Individual and collective knowledge that has been codified, typically in objects, words, and numbers, in the form of graphics, drawings, specifications, manuals, procedures etc. and can therefore be easily shared and understood.
Human Capital: Describes the value of the know-how and competencies of an organization’s employees. An organization which systematically develops its Human Capital is more likely to become a successful learning organization (see definition 23).
nformation: Is based on data, and adds value to the understanding of a subject and in context, is the basis for knowledge.
Information Management: Covers the processes of selecting, capturing, categorizing, indexing and storing information. Typically this involves active and continuous review of content stored in, or distributed through a range of tools (databases, taxonomies (see definition 30), human networks etc).
Intangible Assets: Assets that can have a great value to an organization, but which typically have no physical presence and have traditionally not been recognized from a financial perspective, except when sometimes grouped together as “goodwill” on balance sheets. Comprises assets such as reputation, brand value, monopoly rights and other non-balance sheet items such as “potential” –i.e. the capacity to generate competitive advantage in the future.
Intellectual Capital: Intellectual Capital (IC), a subset of the intangible assets (see definition 11) is commonly accepted to include three sub-categories: Human Capital, Structural Capital, Customer Capital (see definitions [8, 28 and 5 respectively). IC can include the knowledge of employees, data and information about processes, experts, products, customers and competitors; and intellectual property such as patents or regulatory licenses.
Knowledge: A set of data and information (when seen from an Information Technology point of view), and a combination of, for example know-how, experience, emotion, believes, values, ideas, intuition, curiosity, motivation, learning styles, attitude, ability to trust, ability to deal with complexity, ability to synthesize, openness, networking skills, communication skills, attitude to risk and entrepreneurial spirit to result in a valuable asset which can be used to improve the capacity to act and support decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit (see definitions 7 and 29 respectively), individual and/or collective.
Knowledge Audit: A systematic review, typically based on questionnaires, interviews or narrative techniques, of the knowledge within an organization. Often also includes a mapping of knowledge interactions and flows within and between organizations, teams and individuals.
Knowledge-Based Economy: A recently coined term that refers to the stage of economic evolution in which knowledge is considered as the key factor of production and competitiveness. This major change has significant implications for the strategy, operations, and structure of all types of organization, large or small, public or private, commercial, not-for-profit or academic.
Knowledge Management (KM): Planned and ongoing management of activities and processes for leveraging knowledge to enhance competitiveness through better use and creation of individual and collective knowledge resources.
KM Framework: Describes the most essential factors (assets, people, processes, tools) influencing the success or failure of a KM initiative, and their interdependent relationships. Typically, a framework is built up into a pictorial representation which serves as an aide-memoire for implementing KM within an organization, helping users to position individual KM initiatives with within a wider context (see also booklet 1 of this CEN guide).
Knowledge Life Cycle: Describes the principle phases of managing knowledge, such as selecting, maintaining, measuring, sharing and applying knowledge in given contexts.
KM Measurement: One of the KM life cycle phases (see definition 18) Aims to help organizations measure the value created by their KM projects, programmes and strategies. For example, measuring return on investment in KM is often possible through a range of both quantitative and qualitative techniques (see also booklet 4 of this CEN guide).
KM Roles: To implement KM successfully sometimes requires specific and clearly- defined roles. These are not always formal, but can include such roles as CKO (see definition 2), content managers, change management experts, knowledge brokers and harvesters etc.
KM Strategy: A declaration of how the organization will use KM methods, tools, processes, and practices to achieve business objectives by leveraging its content, people and processes and how KM will support the organization’s overall strategy.
KM Tools: The generic sets of tools that enable implementation of KM processes. These can be either IT systems (e.g. databases, intranets, extranets, portals), or methodologies, or human networks (e.g. CoPs – see definition 3).
Learning Organization: An organization that views its future competitive advantage as based on continuous learning and use of knowledge and an ability to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances.
Narrative Techniques: Techniques employed in the context of KM to describe complicated issues, explain events, communicate lessons learned, or bring about cultural change (see also booklet 2 of this CEN guide). Such techniques include oral story-telling, drama and some styles of written knowledge capture., which can richness to communication and carry more complex messages and sub-text than non-narrative techniques.
Organizational Culture: The way of perceiving, thinking and feeling, shared and transmitted among organizational members. Often referred to as: “the way things are done around here” (see also booklet 2 of this CEN guide).
Organizational KM: Unlike personal KM (see definition 27), which centres on the individual, organizational KM depends upon an enterprise-wide strategic decision to actively manage knowledge through a range of processes, tools and people.
Personal KM: A set of concepts, disciplines and tools for organizing often previously unstructured knowledge, to help individuals take responsibility for what they know and who they know.
Structural Capital: Describes the knowledge that has been captured and institutionalised within the structure, processes and culture of an organization. SC is a subset of explicit knowledge (see definition 7). It could include patents, copyrights, proprietary software, trademarks, trade secrets etc. It can be stored in the form of documented procedures, databases, expert systems, decision-support software and KM systems. SC is everything left at the office when the employees go home, and can clearly be regarded as an organization’s property.
Tacit Knowledge: Tacit knowledge (sometimes also called implicit knowledge) consists of mental models, behaviours and perspectives, largely based on experience. This knowledge is difficult to codify, but KM techniques such as learning by doing or collaboration between communities (see definition 3) can help people to share this knowledge.
Taxonomy: An outcome from knowledge mapping and structuring processes. A taxonomy is a hierarchical classification which helps users understand how explicit knowledge can be grouped and categorized. A good taxonomy helps users of knowledge by improving their search and retrieval experiences.