The Professionalization of Knowledge Management

The Information And Knowledge Domain

The importance of knowledge for the performance of professional work, decision making, and maintaining competitiveness has long been recognized and documented in the literature. This acknowledgement, however, has come well ahead of any recognition of formalized ground rules to establish how one can define, or become, a knowledge professional (Cortada, 1998). Despite the considerable academic and professional attention that has been given to knowledge, the term appears to be used differently across domains with each claiming that its partial understanding represents a definitive articulation of the concept. Baskerville and Dulipovici (2006b) provide an excellent overview of the wide variety of theories from different domains that are forming the theoretical foundations of knowledge management. This continues to be the case as we struggle to find consensus on how knowledge roles should be assigned and classified.