Development of a Model For Managing Organizational Knowledge  

The proliferation of interest in “knowledge management” in the last few years is a reflection that information has finally gained visibility as a major corporate asset. Furthermore, sharing information across the organization to support greater learning and competitiveness has resulted in moving to the next level of information management (IM)—knowledge management. Those of us who have been in the information business for a while have to contain our amusement as we have seen a society preoccupied first with data (anything that is observed, measured, counted, or collected), then information (organized data), now knowledge (selected information), and, perhaps next, wisdom (integrated knowledge).y´ As Thomas Stewart defines it in Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations, “Intelligence becomes an asset when some useful order is created out of free-floating brainpower—that is, when it is given coherent form (a mailing list, a database, an agenda for a meeting, a description of a process); when it is captured in a way that allows it to be described, shared, and exploited; and when it can be deployed to do something that could not be done if it remained scattered around like so many coins in a gutter. Intellectual capital is packaged, useful knowledge.”

Ashdown, Barbara and Kathy Smith. OSTI (1999). Articles>Knowledge Management>Workflow