The Quality of Evidence in Knowledge Management Research: Practitioner versus Scholarly Literature

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Date
2006-11
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Rob Kling Center for Social Informatics
Abstract
The fragmentation of knowledge management as a field and as an area of research poses serious theoretical challenges for researchers. The viability of KM rests on how the community responds to these challenges, but it also depends on how they garner empirical support for their purported theories. One aspect of this would involve the evaluation of the evidence provided in KM research. This paper presents a comparative study of the evidence that is presented in scholarly and professional literature on KM. For this purpose, the paper introduces a typology of evidence to analyze the data obtained from the survey of the literature. The classification based on this typology reveals no systematic difference between the types of evidence put forth in the scholarly and practitioner literature. However, closer examination reveals interesting differences in terms of the questions they ask, the perspective they adopt, and the methods they follow to convince others of the validity their claims. We explain these differences in terms of the notions of “blackboxing” and “performance” borrowed from actor-network theory. Drawing upon lessons from the philosophy of science and science studies, we explicate the different degrees of blackboxing by professionals and scholars in translating data of studied cases into “evidence” that is then handed down to others who take interest in it. The implications of these differences for scholarly research on KM will be discussed.
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Keywords
social informatics, knowledge management, evidence, actor-network theory
Citation
To be published in the Journal of Information Science
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Copyright license granted to the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP - the owners of the Journal of Information Science) to process and distribute the paper as required for review. Copyright of the contents belong to the authors to assign or license pending acceptance for publication in the Journal of Information Science.
Type
Working Paper