Delphi Study on the Future of Knowledge Management — Overview of the Results

Abstract

Knowledge management has become an integral part of the agenda in business and research. The term knowledge management first appeared in American literature in the seventies (Rickson 1976). Finally, at the beginning of the nineties, knowledge management acquired more management attention because of the structural changes in the economy and society towards the information society and knowledge economy (Drucker 1993, OECD, 1996; Grant, 2000). Since the mid nineties knowledge management could be considered as a new business management approach. Contributions to this new approach are coming from very different disciplines, not only from business administration, computer sciences and engineering, but also from library science, psychology, sociology and social sciences and from ethnology and philosophy as well. This cross-disciplinary attention shows the importance, which has been attached to this emerging business and research field. This is also underlined by the still increasing budgets for knowledge management projects in industry and public as well as the set-up of knowledge management professorships and university courses (Erlach et al. 2000; Ruth et al. 2003). Despres and Chauvel (2000) state that “all parties agree that we are nonetheless witnessing an explosion of interest in the term ‘knowledge management’”, whereas Grant (2000) thinks that “among the innovations that have swept through the world of management during the past two decades — total quality management, shareholder value creation, business process reengineering, and competence-based strategy — knowledge management has probably aroused the greatest interest and made the biggest impact. (...) Unusual among major management innovations, knowledge management has captured the interest of both practicing managers and business school academics”.303