Abstract
Within the last few years, the topic of knowledge management has gathered a
lot of interest in the corporate sectors. Although there is no commonly agreed upon
definition of knowledge management, companies, governments, institutions and
organizations are demonstrating an increasing interest in the topic. The key argument
of this chapter is that most current interpretations of knowledge management
are relevant to the industrial world of business of the past era. Given their origin in
the ‘old world’ of business, many such interpretations of knowledge management
may have serious and adverse implications for information strategy of enterprises,
governments and institutions.
The discussion surfaces the key assumptions about information strategy and
how they need to be considered afresh given the changing assumptions about
business strategy and competitive business environment. Based on this discussion,
a new perspective of knowledge management is proposed followed by suggestions
for the managers to effectively deploy it in the ‘new world’ of e-business. For the
purpose of this article, the focus of discussion is on e-business enterprises as most
observations are already evident in such organizations. However, most of the
arguments, observations and conclusions are also relevant to executives interested
in information strategy and business transformation for other post-industrial organizations
in the twenty-first century.