In Search of the Knowledge Management Practices in Organisations: A Review

There has been extensive research on knowledge and knowledge management (KM) in the past two decades. KM has progressed from an emergent concept to an increasingly common function in industrial enterprises. As evidence of its maturity as an area of academic study, an increasing number of journals devoted to KM have been created. This paper presents a review of the literature addressing the KM concepts, approaches and frameworks, and the factors affecting the KM practices in organisations. The review covers the publicly available KM literature through library catalogue and electronic search over a period from 1997 to 2010. The distribution of KM literature and articles in regard to the scope of the research is presented. It explores the multi-disciplinary nature of KM and discusses the components of the KM process in organisational settings. Several dominant KM approaches, and selected frameworks and models in industrial application domains are also discussed along with the need for future research on investigating the KM competence at both firm’s and industry’s levels.