Information vs. knowledge: the role of intranets in knowledge management

Knowledge has widely been acknowledged as one of the most important factors for corporate competitiveness, and we have witnessed an explosion of IS/IT solutions claiming to provide support for knowledge management (KM). A relevant question to ask, though, is how systems and technology intended for information such as the intranet can be able to assist in the managing of knowledge. To understand this, we must examine the relationship between information and knowledge. Building on Polanyi’s theories, I argue that all knowledge is tacit, and what can be articulated and made tangible outside the human mind is merely information. However, information and knowledge affect one another. By adopting a multi-perspective of the intranet where information, awareness, and communication are all considered, this interaction can best be supported and the intranet can become a useful and people-inclusive KM environment. 1. From philosophy to IT Ever since the ancient Greek period, philosophers have discussed what knowledge is. Early thinkers such as Plato and Aristotle where followed by Hobbes and Locke, Kant and Hegel, and into the 20th century by the likes of Wittgenstein, Popper, and Kuhn, to name but a few of the more prominent western philosophers. In recent years, we have witnessed a booming interest in knowledge also from other disciplines; organisation theorists, information system developers, and economists have all been swept away by the knowledge management avalanche. It seems, though, that the interest is particularly strong within the IS/IT community, where new opportunities to develop computer systems are welcomed. A plausible question to ask then is how knowledge relates to information technology (IT). Can IT at all be used to handle 0-7695-1435-9/02 $ knowledge, and if so, what sort of knowledge? What sorts of knowledge are there? What is knowledge? It seems we have little choice but to return to these eternal questions, but belonging to the IS/IT community, we should not approach knowledge from a philosophical perspective. As observed by Alavi and Leidner, the knowledge-based theory of the firm was never built on a universal truth of what knowledge really is but on a pragmatic interest in being able to manage organisational knowledge . The discussion in this paper shall therefore be aimed at addressing knowledge from an IS/IT perspective, trying to answer two overarching questions: “What does the relationship between information and knowledge look like?” and “What role does an intranet have in this relationship?” The purpose is to critically review the contemporary KM literature in order to clarify the relationships between information and knowledge that commonly and implicitly are assumed within the IS/IT community. Epistemologically, this paper shall address the difference between tacit and explicit knowledge by accounting for some of the views more commonly found in the KM literature. Some of these views shall also be questioned, and the prevailing assump tion that tacit and explicit are two forms of knowledge shall be criticised by returning to Polanyi’s original work. My interest in the tacit side of knowledge, i.e. the aspects of knowledge that is omnipresent, taken for granted, and affecting our understanding without us being aware of it, has strongly influenced the content of this paper. Ontologywise, knowledge may be seen to exist on different levels, i.e. individual, group, organisation and inter-organisational [23]. Here, my primary interest is on the group and organisational levels. However, these two levels are obviously made up of individuals and we are thus bound to examine the personal aspects of knowledge as well, though be it from a macro perspective. 17.00 (c) 2002  Opposite traditions – and a middle way? When examining the knowledge literature, two separate tracks can be identified: the commodity view and the community view [35]. The commodity view of or the objective approach to knowledge as some absolute and universal truth has since long been the dominating view within science. Rooted in the positivism of the mid-19th century, the commodity view is still especially strong in the natural sciences. Disciples of this tradition understand knowledge as an artefact that can be handled in discrete units and that people may possess. Knowledge is a thing for which we can gain evidence, and knowledge as such is separated from the knower [33]. Metaphors such as drilling, mining, and harvesting are used to describe how knowledge is being managed. There is also another tradition that can be labelled the community view or the constructivist approach. This tradition can be traced back to Locke and Hume but is in its modern form rooted in the critique of the established quantitative approach to science that emerged primarily amongst social scientists during the 1960’s, and resulted in the publication of books by Garfinkel, Bourdieu, Habermas, Berger and Luckmann, and Glaser and Strauss. These authors argued that reality (and hence also knowledge) should be understood as socially constructed. According to this tradition, it is impossible to define knowledge universally; it can only be defined in practice, in the activities of and interactions between individuals. Thus, some understand knowledge to be universal and context-independent while others conceive it as situated and based on individual experiences. Maybe it is a little bit Author(s) Data Informa