Managing Knowledge about Knowledge Management: ‘Practising What We Teach’

Abstract

There is a view that knowledge management (KM) is primarily a business concept that can bring increased profitability for commercial organisations. However, the management of processes such as knowledge creation, capture, sharing and use are not exclusive to business; good KM practices can bring benefits to all organisations. Given higher education's (HE) priority of developing knowledge assets, a culture that prioritises KM can be used to underpin a university's organisational processes including, not least, its teaching activities. This paper illustrates how attention to a particular part of the KM cycle, the knowledge creation (KC) process, can inform the delivery of a KM module; in turn, it shows how the author attempts to practice what she teaches. Evaluation of the module from various perspectives has provided very positive feedback. Lessons for the design and delivery of other modules (KM-based or otherwise) can be drawn from this paper.