Sharing and Managing Knowledge through Portals

Abstract

Any attempt to develop IT applications to manage information processes in a knowledge work setting will inevitably encounter the work of Ikujiro Nonaka (1991) on the importance of knowledge management in organizations. Almost all work can nowadays be loosely defined as knowledge work, since even ditch digging, for example, may involve the use of a GPS positioning device. Unwittingly establishing a doctrine of knowledge management, Nonaka took Polanyi’s (1958, 1966) old definition of tacit knowledge as the starting point in his theory, and went on to describe the relationship between implicit and explicit (communicable) knowledge, and their importance within an organization.