Knowledge management process: A theoretical-conceptual research

Abstract

Knowledge Management (KM) is a subject that has aroused the interest of many researchers in the last decade, being great part of contributions driven by steps, named KM process. Because it is an embracing theme, publications about KM process have multidisciplinary contributions and, thus, this research aims to conceptualize this process, analyzing the main approach that guides the study of each stage, and also, to raise the main publications on the subject, classifying them as to their contribution area. To reach these goals, this article is oriented by a theoretical-conceptual research, in which 71 articles were studied. The results indicate that the KM process consists of four stages: acquisition, storage, distribution, and use of knowledge. In the acquisition phase, the studied themes are organizational learning, knowledge inception, creative process and knowledge transformation. In the storage phase, the contributions deal with a person, an organization and information technology, while in the distribution phase the studies concentrate in social contact themes, practice community and sharing via information technology. And, fnally, in the use phase, we address the form of use, dynamic capacity and retrieval and knowledge transformation.