The Wiig Model for Building and Using Knowledge

Karl Wiig KM model (1993) highlights the following principle: in order for knowledge to be useful and valuable, it must be organized. Knowledge should be organized differently depending on what the knowledge will be used for.  Some useful dimensions in the Wiigs KM model are:

• completeness,
• connectedness,
• congruency, and
• perspective and purpose (Dalkir, 2011, pp.76-77).

Completeness refers to how much relevant knowledge is available from a given source. Sources can vary from human minds to knowledge bases (i.e, tactic or explicit knowledge).We first need to ascertain that the knowledge is out there, the knowledge may be complete if all the information available on the subject is there but if no one knows of its existence, yjey cannot make use of this knowledge (Dalkir, 2011, p.77).

Connectedness refers to the well-understood and well-defined relations between the different knowledge objects. Most knowledge objects are connected to each other, the more connected a knowledge base is then the more coherent the content and the greater its value (Dalkir, 2011, p.77).

A knowledge base is said to be congruent when all the facts, concepts, perspectives, values, judgments, and relational links between the objects are consistent. Most knowledge content will not meet such ideals (Dalkir, 2011, p.77).

Perspective and purpose is a phenomena through which we know something but from a particular point of view for a specific purpose. We organize much of our knowledge using the dual dimensions of perspective and purpose (Dalkir, 2011, p.77).