How to interpret a Knowledge Management project

Abstract

This paper wishes to provide a model to systematise knowledge management studies, trying to clarify the different approaches adopted within the literature in order to define a concept on which the scientific community has been debating for a long time. In this paper we propose a taxonomy departing from the hypothesis formulated by Scarbrough, Swan and Sørensen, which include in KM two separated and contrasting streams: cognitive network model and community networking model. Our choice is to integrate the model by introducing two more streams, social cognitivism and the best practice vision. In the last section of the paper, the KM taxonomy that has been put forward is used to interpret the KM application within ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and the Environment