Knowledge management page 3

Knowledge management is largely the management and support of expertise, it is primarily the management of individuals with specific abilities.

Information management is more management of data and management of repositories of data and information. The organizational culture is an important factor influencing whether it encourages the sharing of knowledge between employees or not. Organizational theorists are pretty much in agreement that one of the hardest things to change about an organization is its culture (Trice & Beyer, 1993 as cited in Blair, 2002).

According to Wilson (2002), knowledge management (KM) is either used as a synonym for information management (IM) or for the 'management of work practices' which are to improve the sharing of knowledge in an organization. Some see information management as a subset of knowledge management or knowledge management is often positioned underneath information management.

The main problem is the lack of definition of the concept knowledge management and its relation to information management. It is obvious that these two fields have very much in common. However, questions remain: Can we identify two different areas called knowledge management and information management, and if so, what the similarities or differences between these fields are (Widén-Wulff et al, 2005).

Knowledge management is also closely related to concepts such as organisational learning, organisational memory, information sharing, and collaborative work (Schultze 1998).