& Editorial

On the Problems of ManagementKnowledge

In the last week I have been revising some earlierwritings on knowledge management and alsolooking at some new case studies that have beensubmitted to the Journal. I have been struck bytwo observations (to call them insights would be tograce them with more weight than they deserve).First, as we seem to continuously cycle from onemanagement fad to another there does not seem tobe very much accumulation of knowledge. Second,only a relatively small proportion of firms actuallyseem to be able to translate any of the fads intosignificant and lasting results. I think this sayssomething about management knowledge – Isuspect that much of what purports to be manage-ment knowledge is not knowledge and the knowl-edge that we have is hopelessly incomplete.

Let me take this a little further. In the sciencesthere is a relatively orderly progression from onetheory to another or from one knowledge set toanother. If we are to believe such luminaries asThomas Kuhn theories succeed other theories ifthey are able to explain a broader and richer rangeof phenomena. In addition, earlier theories can beexplained as special cases of later theories. Ofcourse this apparent linear progression of know-ledge is a simplification of the messily human waythat science actually progresses. It also does notadequately take into account the extent to whichscience is embedded in a socio-cultural environ-ment. None the less it would seem that what wesee in science is a very different process than weobserve in the ‘creation’ (or discovery) of manage-ment knowledge. We really don’t seem to becreating a body of knowledge but only a fewrelatively incomplete and very limited knowledgeitems. We have no well established theory to linktogether the items of knowledge that we have. Aswe ‘discover’ new items of ‘knowledge’ it isneither possible to test their veracity nor includethem in the existing body of knowledge. This is

not to deny that there are clearly well developedtheories and bodies of knowledge in the cognatedisciplines – just that we do not seem to have thewherewithal to integrate them into some coherentwhole.

It would seem to me that most of the fads thatwe have seen in the 1990s have genuine elementsof knowledge to them – they would seem to bepartial perspectives on what management is – butthe story of the blind men and the elephant seemsto be poignantly relevant here – there is no oneanswer – business process reengineering does notprovide all the answers, knowledge managementdoes not provide a Royal road to competitiveadvantage, the Internet and its associate toolswould no more be favored by Midas than thevarious ‘fake’ philosophers’ stones that were‘discovered’ in medieval times. Although I doubtthat we will see a Grand Unified Theory ofManagement being proposed in the next fewyears I would hope that there are some bravesouls out there who will help us see how some ofthe truths of the various fads that we have livedthrough can be integrated. I also hope that theJournal will provide some stimulus to this integra-tion as we have deliberately cast our net forquality contributions widely, to include areassuch as knowledge management, eBusiness, pro-cess management, business process reengineering(to name but a few).

In this issue I have been able to include a reviewof a new book on cross-cultural management. Theunique and fascinating perspective that ProfessorHolden adopts is that of knowledge management.I hope that I will be able to include book reviewson a more regular basis in future issues of theJournal.

Anthony Wensley

Knowledge and Process Management Volume 9 Number 2 p 55 (2002)DOI: 10.1002 /kpm.141

Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.