Knowledge management (KM) is a key concept in today’s business world. While there is an element of fashion in its appearance toward the end of the 1990s (Swan et al. 1999), many of the world’s most successful corporations, businesses, and organizations are investing considerable resources in this enterprise (Alvesson & Karreman 2001). These knowledge projects
Building upon early research from rural sociology, diffusion of innovations, public opinion poll data, and information campaigns, Tichenor et al. (1970, 159–160) posed the hypothesis: “As the infusion of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status (SES) tend to acquire this information at a faster rate
The obsolescence of knowledge and skills has long been recognized as a problem affecting individual careers and organizational effectiveness. While obsolescence has been discussed from a management as well as a psychological perspective at least as far back as 1930, concern over the problem became widespread following the rapid changes that began during the post-World
Knowledge structures are mental representations of regularities believed to exist in social situations and people’s dispositions and behaviors. Specifically, knowledge structures are generalized characterizations of some social entity or experience. Knowledge structures are also commonly referred to as schemas. Scripts, plans, prototypes, and memory organization packets (MOPS) are among the different types of knowledge structures
The term knowledge work refers to a profession that utilizes intellectual capital to create, teach, and problem solve. Knowledge work requires significant cognitive activity and dedication to continuous learning on behalf of the practitioner. Day-to-day knowledge work consists of non-routine and non-repetitive activities. Examples of knowledge workers include, but are not limited to, doctors, lawyers
Knowledge, skills, and abilities are often referred to as “KSAs.” They are part of many methods used to analyze jobs and work for purposes such as staffing and vocational counseling. All three terms concern human attributes needed to complete work tasks successfully. In other words, KSAs are cognitive and psychomotor informational digests and processes stored
The assertion about the unique “complexity” or the peculiarly intricate character of social phenomena has, at least within sociology, a long, venerable, and virtually uncontested tradition. The classical theorists make prominent and repeated reference to this attribute of the subject matter of sociology and the degree to which it complicates the development of socio logical
The sociology of knowledge as a subfield in sociology deals with the social and group origins of ideas. In its brief history as a field of study, it has included the entire ideational realm (knowledge, ideas, theories, and mentalities), in an attempt to comprehend how that realm is related to particular social and political forces and
Knowledge is relevant to sociology as the principle that social relations can be organized in terms of the differential access that members have to a common reality. Until the late eighteenth century, Plato’s Republic epitomized the role of knowledge as a static principle of social stratification. However, the Enlightenment introduced a more dynamic conception, whereby
Knowledge management seeks to increase organizational capability to use knowledge as a source of competitive advantage. The field has risen to prominence along with the ”knowledge worker,” who is someone who does work which involves knowledge which is socially complex, causally ambiguous, and tacit. Relevant theories include social capital theory and the resource based view