Theme

Integrating “doing” and “thinking”: knowledge management as reflective practice

Our post-industrial economy is based on the availability of information, and the means to exploit this information, to create wealth. The emphasis in post-industrial production is on the ability to use abstract knowledge in a creative and innovative way by being able to quickly and critically evaluate existing practices, to gain insight from those practices and to make new discoveries.

Knowledge management (KM) is a concept that articulates many aspects that characterise post-industrial production in its concern with an organisation’s ability to create and exploit knowledge. However, mainstream KM adopts a top-down approach to express organisational imperatives and assumes a process view of KM that emphasises knowledge acquisition, storage, dissemination and application.

The conference theme highlights an alternative, bottom up approach to KM based on understanding work practices that include both the productive; the “doing”; and the cognitive and conceptual; the “thinking”; aspects of work tasks. The integration of these aspects forms the basis of reflective practice that characterises knowledge work. The conference is seeking submissions that explore the role of knowledge management in reflective practice.

We invite papers that address the conference theme and focus on areas that include, but are not limited to:

• Learning Organisation
• Knowledge Work Support
• Social Network Analysis
• Communities of Practice
• Work Task Analysis
  
• Knowledge Transfer
• Organizational Design