Even without doing my preliminary research, I could safely just say from experience that knowledge management is more and more of an emerging trend and one that I wholeheartedly welcome. While I do a lot of IT based work versus library work, knowledge management is still just as important and is something that I believe will continue to become more prevalent in the world around us. Throughout time, we have begun to notice more and more that people are much more eager and willing to share and divulge information, which in terms has enabled more information to the public eye. While I would’ve agreed more with Asrar-ul-Haq’s statement that a person’s “willingness to share knowledge depends on the emotions as well as the empathy of the sharer” (Asrar-ul-Haq, 2016) a year or two ago, I fully think that the world around us has driven us more into the knowledge management area and people are a lot more willing to share information. We are living in a very weird time, there is absolutely no doubt about it, and with these crazy times in front of us with no sign of stopping, I believe now more than ever that this is the time for knowledge management to shine.
One of the biggest things I think that knowledge management has going for it at this point in time can be related to a few certain items, one of the main ones being just the state of the world we are in, and also the amount of various ways that people can spread knowledge and information these days. A lot of articles within the past few years cite one of the main reasonings for getting people to share information is to make them feel comfortable and welcome to share the information that is desired (especially within the workforce). Martinez-Conesa describes some of this in detail, noting that “building a positive social climate may be crucial to motivate employees to work together and improve knowledge flow…” (Martinez-Conesa, 2017). This in a way bounces back up to what I had notioned above about the world around us. With the crazy world that we are living in, a lot of people are finding solace and comfort within the online world, and thus I feel has been able to produce more information than ever before.
However, with every advancement, it will of course have some obvious drawbacks. While there are quite a few that can come to mind, the biggest one that has come up more and more prevalent within the past few months is the fear of misinformation or mishandled knowledge that can lead to false info. With the entire world database known as the Internet sitting in our pockets, in our hands, etc. is astounding, with some discovering that sites “such as Wikipedia and YouTube have emerged as important information sources”, also maintaining to that at least 50% people rely on sites like these to get information (Kim et al., 2014). Having these sites readily available is amazing as it is, but can heavily lead to misinformation, including reading things on social media. This is something that knowledge management continues to have to overcome, as while we want to continue to have more information readily available, we must make sure it is the right information.
That being said, it is still without a doubt a move in the right direction and I hope to continue to see the trend for knowledge management go up and up. Roknuzzaman noted in his article that LIS has been actually a positive promoter for knowledge management; citing that KM has the ability to be “the role of the global knowledge economy, the evolving nature of the field of information…the survival of LIS schools…and so on…” (Roknuzzaman, 2017). I wholeheartedly agree with Roknuzzaman’s sentiments and cannot wait to see what else the field of knowledge management has for the library and information science world.
References
Asrar-ul-Haq, M., & Anwar, S. (2016). A systematic review of knowledge management and knowledge sharing: Trends, issues, and challenges. Cogent Business & Management, 3(1), 1127744.
Kim, K., Sin S. J., & Yoo-Lee, Y. (2014). Undergraduates’ use of social media as information sources. College & Research Libraries, 75(4), 442–457. doi:10.5860/crl.75.4.442
Martinez-Conesa, I., Soto-Acosta, P., & Carayannis, E. G. (2017). On the path towards open innovation: Assessing the role of knowledge management capability and environmental dynamism in SMEs. Journal of Knowledge Management,
Roknuzzaman, M., & Umemoto, K. (2017). An interdisciplinary encounter between two knowledge domains: Library and information science vs. knowledge management. Paper presented at the Information and Knowledge Management, , 7(20) 19–26.