Distributed Knowledge Management: a System Approach

In this paper, we argue that the EKP`s (Enterprise Knowldge Portal: large, homogeneous, knowledge repositories) approach reflects an objectivistic epistemology and acentralised paradigm of managerial control. Indeed, it presuppones that all contextual, subjective and social aspects of knowledge can be eliminated in favour of an objective and general codification and that general knowledge can be shared and refised indipendently from the individual and community in which it was created. We show that this approach is incompatible with the nature of knowledge and that this way of managing knowledge explains, at least partially, why most KM systems are deserted by users. We propose a system approach in which there is no attempt to reduce corporate knowledge to a single, objective representation. In the last part of paper, we also sketch a high level architecture which can support this distributed approach to KM from a technological point of view