Digital Pulse - Ch 2 - Sec 2 - Knowledge Facts, Knowledge Fiction: The Role of ICTs in Knowledge Management for Development

Summary

The author examines the differing approaches to knowledge management and issues surrounding how individuals and organizations generate, acquire, conserve and utilize knowledge. The consequences of the adoption of corporate Knowledge Management (KM) strategies in the development field are probed and alternative strategies are presented. ICTs are examined in the context of whether they are able to facilitate knowledge exchange in the same way they do for information. Velden is opposed to attempts to utilize ICTs to extract and codify knowledge in ways that are not context specific and that fail to recognize the all important identity of the knower – their gender, race, ethnicity and class.

Key Points

Central to this discussion is the division between information and knowledge. While information is independent, and can be easily transferred and detached from its source, knowledge requires a knower and is linked to the context in which it is both learned and utilized. Knowledge Management (KM) is an organizational tool that emerged in the mid-90s as a method for maximizing efficiency (via smaller personnel rosters) while maintaining innovation. It is about improving knowledge sharing within an organization in order to facilitate the organization's ability to learn and adapt.

There are two possible approaches to KM, the first is a knowledge-centred approach. This is the approach that attempts to treat knowledge as if it were information by attempting to collect and capture knowledge in formats that are readily stored and retrieved with ‘just-in-time' efficiency. These approaches are technology heavy and rely on solutions that include email, groupware applications, corporate portals and large codified databases. While the theory may emphasize individuals, the practice is heavily rooted in ICTs and fails to capture the intuitive know-how and tacit knowledge of the practitioners. The knowledge becomes separated from context and its value is reduced.

The second generation KM is knower-centred and understands knowledge as a human resource that can be only shared through practice and interaction. Studies have shown that much of this knowledge is exchanged through informal associations and requires relationships of trust in order to be shared. When levels of trust are high, supportive environments are created that manifest themselves as ‘communities of practice'. This type of KM focuses on situated knowledge and recognizes the identity of the knower, including their gender, race, or class (features which are typically not important in corporate practices).

The author then shifts to the application of these approaches to the development field. In recent years, many international organizations have grasped on to KM, and unfortunately, they have tended towards the first approach rather than the second. Then World Bank is criticized for its approach to KM, and initiatives such as the Global Knowledge Partnership and Global Development Gateway are held up as examples of hierarchically ordered corporate-type portals. Velden also questions the Bank's claims to act as a knowledge broker because it usually fails to find appropriate intermediaries who will make the knowledge accessible and useful for the people that the Bank is claiming to target. The Bank's system of best practices and other universal strategies are also seen as suppressants to a more pluralist approach.

The issue of ICTs in these applications is then raised, and the author first notes that they have primarily become a form of transportation for information rather than a component of the social and cultural practices usually associated with the acts of communication. The development sector was one of the first non-commercial fields to begin utilizing ICTs for networking and exchange, but after a decade the author finds that the utility of ICTs for real poverty reduction to be questionable. The adoption of corporate KM practices has only reinforced this. While many development practitioners have assumed that as long as corporate based approaches were recognised and compensated for, the negative consequences could be mitigated. Velden, however, argues that it is the underlying and inextricable assumptions about knowledge as commodity of these approaches that make them inappropriate for development.

She supports the creation of new knower-centred approaches for ICTs for development organisations that incorporate the social context in which the tools will be used, recognizes their inherent limits to prevent the narrowing of goals, and integrates the perceptions and priorities of the people who own and use the knowledge. These tools need to favour, “flexible networks over hierarchical portals; holistic knowledge systems over exclusive expert systems; and the diversity of knowledge over the monoculture of the best practice.”

Developmental KM must be qualitatively different from the corporate version if it is to serve the purposes of effective poverty reduction. Knowledge should be based on broad generative learning frameworks that recognize the importance of variables such as gender, race and class. Knowledge strategies have to be considered in their context of use, and should be guided by principles of knowledge integration that bring together indigenous and expert positions. While KM and their usage of ICTs may have applications and potential benefits for the development field they will require a considerable conceptual overhaul that at its very heart requires that knowledge and the knower can never be separated.

Source: Maja van der Velden, “Knowledge Facts, Knowledge Fiction: The Role of ICTs in Knowledge Management for Development” in the Journal of International Development, Issue 14 (2002) 25-37.