Information management and knowledge management: are portuguese organizations feeling the difference?

Abstract

Although there are some works trying to clarify the difference between Information Management, IM, and Knowledge management, KM, the distinction between those concepts is far from being well understood in the business community. This lack of clarity increases with the fact that some KM literature authors use the two terms indiscriminately, others argue that KM includes IM, and still others define them independently, but relating them. For instance, some authors say that KM has two ages, the first corresponding to IM, aiming to store, explore and transfer explicit knowledge; the second aiming to explore, improve communication and innovation, focusing the need to manage tacit knowledge, moving from transmit to learn, becoming a social activity and not only a technological one. Nevertheless there is a growing interest in KM and organizations say they are doing it, and even in many large, and some small, organizations a new corporate executive is emerging – the chief knowledge officer, CKO. Are they different from the chief information officers, CIO? Are organizations really making KM? Is there, in practice, any difference between KM and IM? To provide some answers to these questions, this paper presents empirical evidence of how IM/KM is practiced in some Portuguese organizations. Based on an exploratory study conducted in four Portuguese organizations, the paper describes the practices that are being developed in those organizations, discussing them in order to answer the questions: How do organizations interpret the concepts of IM/KM, do they think they are different? Which IM/KM processes they develop? Which computer based systems are used to support those processes? Who leads IM/KM and which skills are necessary to those executives?