Situated Cognition and Knowledge: a Contribution Towards Conceptual Clarity for Knowledge Management

Knowledge management has emerged as a growing field of practice and research but the concept of knowledge itself remains vague. This is an unsatisfactory situation that may well hinder the development of knowledge management theory and practice. In this paper Alexander et. al.’s (1991) educational knowledge framework is combined with Clancey’s (1997a) work on situated cognition to provide a clear framework for knowledge management. This provides us with the critical distinction between knowledge as situationally dependent and enacted human capacity, and knowledge representations. ‘Knowledge’ can thus only be managed indirectly, through managing human talent, a process that should be integrated with the management of knowledge representations.