Knowledge management: a review of the field and of OR's contribution

Abstract

This paper examines the field of knowledge management (KM) and identifies the role of operational research (OR) in key milestones and in KM's future. With the presence of the OR Society journal Knowledge Management Research and Practice and with the INFORMS journal Organization Science, OR may be assumed to have an explicit and a leading role in KM. Unfortunately, the origins and the evidence of recent research efforts do not fully support this assumption. We argue that while OR has been inside many of the milestones there is no explicit recognition of its role and while OR research on KM has considerably increased in the last 5 years, it still forms a rather modest explicit contribution to KM research. Nevertheless, the depth of OR's experience in decision-making models and decision support systems, soft systems with hard systems and in risk management suggests that OR is uniquely placed to lead future KM developments. We suggest that a limiting aspect of whether OR will be seen to have a significant profile will be the extent to which developments are recognized as being informed by OR.