Knowledge Management – Advancements and Future Research Needs – Results from the Global Knowledge Research Network study

Abstract

Over the last two decades the role of knowledge in organizations has attracted considerable attention from organizational practice and academia (Beamish & Armistead, 2001; Blackler, Reed, & Whitaker, 1993; Grant, 1996; Jasimuddin, 2006; Nonaka, 1994). A broad research community has emerged around with about 40 peer-reviewed journals (Serenko & Bontis, 2013a, 2013b; Serenko, Bontis, Booker, Sadeddin, & Hardie, 2010) which has attracted scholars from fields such as management, information management and library sciences, psychology and organizational studies, sociology and computer sciences as well as engineering and philosophy (Baskerville & Dulipovici, 2006; Gu, 2004; Lee & Chen, 2012; Martin, 2008; Venzin, Von Krogh, & Roos, 1998; Wallace, Van Fleet, & Downs, 2011). The assessment of the KM field ranges from suggestions that KM is in a state of \"pre-science\" with different paradigms and disagreement about fundamentals in the field (Hazlett, McAdam, & Gallagher, 2005) while others see a ‘healthy arena with a strong foundation in multiple theories and clear direction for future work (Baskerville & Dulipovici, 2006).