In brief, the hierarchy is as follows:

Math→Physics→Chemistry→Biology→Psychology→Sociology
According to this approach, Mathematics is the most basic and abstract
form of knowledge. Math cannot be broken down into lesser elements
or underlying factors or patterns. The application of math onto the
real world is Physics, which attempts to explain the happenings of the
universe through mathematics. Chemistry is the science of using
physics to understand the constituent particles that make up
all matter. Biology is the study of how chemistry manifests itself
as life. Psychology is the study of how biology manifests itself
as consciousness. Sociology is the study of human systems and social
interaction.
Each step cannot exist or be understood properly without a firm
understanding of the step that lies before it. One cannot understand
biology without first understanding molecular biology and
how DNA encodes theproteins that make life possible. One cannot
understand DNA unless he first understands how the chemistry
of atoms allow them to form covalent bonds and intermolecular
attractions. One cannot understand atoms unless he first understands
physics and the nature of particles. One cannot understand particles
without math. However, in going down the hierarchy, the necessary
degree of mastery of the primary level is less.
In some respects, each level in the hierarchy is simply another level
of complexity imposed on the prior. Looked at differently, each
successive step is a higher degree of generalization,dealing with
increasing levels of organization. As the hierarchy implies there is not
set division between levels and instead it forms a gradient as each
level blurs into its neighbours. A more fleshed out hierarchy may
appear as: Mathematics→Physics→Physical
Chemistry→Chemistry→Biochemistry→Biology→Neurobiology→Psychol
ogy→Sociology
Knowledge management
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and
practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute,
and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and
experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or
embedded in organizational processes or practice.
An established discipline since 1991 (see Nonaka 1991), KM includes
courses taught in the fields of business administration, information
systems, management, and library and information sciences (Alavi &
Leidner 1999). More recently, other fields have started contributing to KM
research; these include information and media, computer science, public
health, and public policy.
Many large companies and non-profit organizations have resources
dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their 'business strategy',
'information technology', or 'human resource management' departments
(Addicott, McGivern & Ferlie 2006). Several consulting companies also
exist that provide strategy and advice regarding KM to these organizations.
Knowledge Management efforts typically focus on
organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive
advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration
and continuous improvementof the organization. KM efforts overlap
with organizational learning, and may be distinguished from that by a
greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a
focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help
individuals and groups to share valuable organizational insights, to reduce
redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training
time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as
employees turnover in an organization, and to adapt to
changing environments and markets (McAdam & McCreedy 2000)
(Thompson & Walsham 2004).

History
KM efforts have a long history, to include on-the-job discussions,
formal apprenticeship, discussion forums, corporate libraries,
professional training and mentoring programs. More recently, with
increased use of computers in the second half of the 20th century,
specific adaptations of technologies such as knowledge bases, expert
systems, knowledge repositories, group decision support systems,
intranets, and computer supported cooperative work have been introduced
to further enhance such efforts.[1]
In 1999, the term personal knowledge management was introduced which
refers to the management of knowledge at the individual level (Wright
2005).
In terms of the enterprise, early collections of case studies recognized the
importance of knowledge management dimensions of strategy, process,
and measurement (Morey, Maybury & Thuraisingham 2002). Key lessons
learned included: people, and the cultures that influence their behaviors,
are the single most critical resource for successful knowledge creation,
dissemination, and application; cognitive, social, and organizational
learning processes are essential to the success of a knowledge
management strategy; and measurement, benchmarking, and incentives
are essential to accelerate the learning process and to drive cultural
change. In short, knowledge management programs can yield impressive
benefits to individuals and organizations if they are purposeful, concrete,
and action-oriented.
More recently with the advent of the Web 2.0, the concept of Knowledge
Management has evolved towards a vision more based on people
participation and emergence. This line of evolution is termed Enterprise
2.0(McAfee 2006). However, there is an ongoing debate and discussions
(Lakhani & McAfee 2007) as to whether Enterprise 2.0 is just a fad that
does not bring anything new or useful or whether it is, indeed, the future of
knowledge management (Davenport 2008).

[edit]Research

KM emerged as a scientific discipline in the earlier 1990s. It was initially

supported solely by practitioners, when Scandia hired Leif Edvinsson
of Sweden as the world’s first Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). Hubert
Saint-Onge (formerly of CIBC, Canada), started investigating various sides
of KM long before that. The objective of CKOs is to manage and maximize
the intangible assets of their organizations. Gradually, CKOs became
interested in not only practical but also theoretical aspects of KM, and the
new research field was formed. The KM ideas taken up by academics,
such as Ikujiro Nonaka (Hitotsubashi University), Hirotaka
Takeuchi (Hitotsubashi University), Thomas H. Davenport (Babson
College) and Baruch Lev (New York University). In 2001, Thomas A.
Stewart, former editor at FORTUNE Magazine and subsequently the editor
ofHarvard Business Review, published a cover story highlighting the
importance of intellectual capital of organizations. Since its establishment,
the KM discipline has been gradually moving towards academic maturity.
First, there is a trend towards higher cooperation among academics;
particularly, there has been a drop in single-authored publications. Second,
the role of practitioners has changed. Their contribution to academic
research has been dramatically declining from 30% of overall contributions
up to 2002, to only 10% by 2009 (Serenko et al. 2010).
A broad range of thoughts on the KM discipline exists with no unanimous
agreement; approaches vary by author and school. As the discipline
matures, academic debates have increased regarding both the theoryand
practice of KM, to include the following perspectives:

 Techno-centric with a focus on technology, ideally those that

enhance knowledge sharing and creation.
 Organizational with a focus on how an organization can
be designed to facilitate knowledge processes best.
 Ecological with a focus on the interaction of people, identity,
knowledge, and environmental factors as a complex adaptive
system akin to a natural ecosystem.

Regardless of the school of thought, core components of KM

include People, Processes, Technology (or) Culture, Structure,
Technology, depending on the specific perspective (Spender & Scherer
2007). Different KM schools of thought include various lenses through
which KM can be viewed and explained, to include:

 community of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Synder 2001)[2]

 social network analysis[3]
 intellectual capital (Bontis & Choo 2002)[4]
 information theory[5] (McInerney 2002)
  complexity science[6][7]
 constructivism[8] (Nanjappa & Grant 2003)

The practical relevance of academic research in KM has been questioned

(Ferguson 2005) with action research suggested as having more relevance
(Andriessen 2004) and the need to translate the findings presented in
academic journals to a practice (Booker, Bontis & Serenko 2008).
[edit]Dimensions
Different frameworks for distinguishing between knowledge exist. One
proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge
distinguishes between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit
knowledge represents internalized knowledge that an individual may not be
consciously aware of, such as how he or she accomplishes particular
tasks. At the opposite end of the spectrum, explicit knowledge represents
knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form
that can easily be communicated to others.[9] (Alavi & Leidner 2001).
Early research suggested that a successful KM effort needs to convert
internalized tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge in order to share it, but
the same effort must also permit individuals to internalize and make
personally meaningful any codified knowledge retrieved from the KM effort.
Subsequent research into KM suggested that a distinction between tacit
knowledge and explicit knowledge represented an oversimplification and
that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory. Specifically, for
knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated
into information (i.e., symbols outside of our heads) (Serenko & Bontis
2004). Later on, Ikujiro Nonaka proposed a model (SECI for Socialization,
Externalization, Combination, Internalization) which considers a spiraling
knowledge process interaction between explicit knowledgeand tacit
knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995). In this model, knowledge follows a
cycle in which implicit knowledge is 'extracted' to become explicit
knowledge, and explicit knowledge is 're-internalized' into implicit
knowledge. More recently, together with Georg von Krogh, Nonaka
returned to his earlier work in an attempt to move the debate about
knowledge conversion forwards (Nonaka & von Krogh 2009).
A second proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of
knowledge distinguishes between embedded knowledge of
a system outside of a human individual (e.g., an information system may
have knowledge embedded into its design) and embodied knowledge
representing a learned capability of a human body’s nervous and endocrine
systems (Sensky 2002).
A third proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge
distinguishes between the exploratory creation of "new knowledge" (i.e.,
innovation) vs. the transfer or exploitation of "established knowledge" within
a group, organization, or community. Collaborative environments such as
communities of practice or the use of social computing tools can be used
for both knowledge creation and transfer.[10]
[edit]Strategies
Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-
related activities. Different organizations have tried various knowledge
capture incentives, including making content submission mandatory and
incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. Considerable
controversy exists over whether incentives work or not in this field and no
consensus has emerged.
One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy).
In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge
into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database, as well as
retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the
repository.[11] This is also commonly known as the Codification approach to
KM.
Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests
of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull
strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide
theirinsights to the particular person or people needing this (Snowden
2002). This is also commonly known as the Personalization approach to
KM.
Other knowledge management strategies for companies include:

 rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)

 storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)
 cross-project learning
 after action reviews
 knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a
company accessible by all)
  communities of practice
 expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the
experts)
 best practice transfer
 competence management (systematic evaluation and planning of
competences of individual organization members)
 proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be
either conducive or obstructive to knowledge sharing)
 master-apprentice relationship
 collaborative technologies (groupware, etc.)
 knowledge repositories (databases, bookmarking engines, etc.)
 measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit
knowledge for companies)
 knowledge brokers (some organizational members take on
responsibility for a specific "field" and act as first reference on whom to
talk about a specific subject)
 social software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc.)

 Motivations
A number of claims exist as to the motivations leading organizations to
undertake a KM effort.[12] Typical considerations driving a KM effort include:

 Making available increased knowledge content in

the development and provision of products and services
 Achieving shorter new product development cycles
 Facilitating and managing innovation and organizational learning
 Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization
 Increasing network connectivity between internal and external
individuals
 Managing business environments and allowing employees to obtain
relevant insights and ideas appropriate to their work
 Solving intractable or wicked problems
 Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce
(such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals)

Debate exists whether KM is more than a passing fad, though increasing

amount of research in this field may hopefully help to answer this question,
as well as create consensus on what elements of KM help determine the
success or failure of such efforts (Wilson 2002).[13]
[edit]Technologies
Early KM technologies included online corporate yellow pages as expertise
locators and document management systems. Combined with the early
development of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM
technologies expanded in the mid-1990s. Subsequent KM efforts
leveraged semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the
development of e-learning tools for communities of practice[14] (Capozzi
2007).
More recently, development of social computing tools (such
as bookmarks, blogs, and wikis) have allowed more unstructured, self-
governing or ecosystem approaches to the transfer, capture and creation of
knowledge, including the development of new forms of
communities, networks, or matrixed organizations. However such tools for
the most part are still based on text and code, and thus represent explicit
knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-
usable knowledge and ensuring that their content is transmissible through
diverse channels[15](Andrus 2005).
Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies
and are not necessarily acquired as a single software solution.
Furthermore, these knowledge management software tools have the
advantage of using the organization existing information technology
infrastructure. Organizations and business decision makers spend a great
deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest
technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management.
It is imperative that these investments are validated properly, made wisely
and that the most appropriate technologies and software tools are selected
or combined to facilitate knowledge management.
Knowledge management has also become a cornerstone in
emerging business strategies such as Service Lifecycle
Management (SLM) with companies increasingly turning to software
vendors to enhance their efficiency in industries including, but not limited
to, the aviation industry.

Knowledge management and collaboration.

 What is a knowledge hierarchy?

Definition
According to Robert Gagné (1985), a knowledge hierarchy is a ranked list of all
knowledge, and, therefore, of all intellectual skills and all learning, which progresses
from the simplest to the most complex: associationsand chains, which are prerequisites
for discriminations, which are prerequisites for concepts, which are prerequisites
for rules and generalizations, which are prerequisites for higher-order rules.
Discussion
Gagné believed that
• it is important for anyone teaching people to present all the necessary lower-
level facts before proceeding to teach at higher levels of the knowledge
hierarchy, and

• people can reason with higher-level concepts if they have learned all the
prerequisite lower-level information.
Example: Here is an example of Gagné's theory that higher-level types of
information cannot be understood or learned until all the appropriate
lower-level knowledge has been mastered:

• To do a math problem in percent (a higher-order rule requiring a

series of processes), one must know the following:
o A rule: the formula for calculating percent
o A concept: the concept of percent
o Discriminations: the differences between addition,
subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and their
uses

o Associations: basic math facts, such as addition facts,

subtraction facts, multiplication and division tables, and
the basic numbering system
Conditions within the learner and conditions within the learning situation vary with
each of these categories and greatly affect results. As new material is processed by a
learner, new memory structures are acquired. These new structures are what enable
learners to retain and transfer information.
In later years, Gagné placed less importance on hierarchical ranking and more on the
importance of prior knowledge.
See: Schema theory of learning
However, he used the hierarchical model to point out the important fact that higher-
level types of information cannot be understood or learned until all the appropriate
lower-level knowledge has been mastered.

© 1999 SIL International