Customer Reviews

Knowledge Management Foundations (KMCI Press)

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This is definitely a book for those who want to see through the charlatanry and the hype that passes for "KM" these days. What's surprising is that it's taken so long for a serious academic who doesn't work for a business school to produce a book like this. Fuller's goal here is basically to tell us how we got to a position where sticking "knowledge" in front of "management" has even gotten university presidents excited. It's a story that should be familiar to Marxists, since Fuller believes that knowledge is "capitalism's final frontier," but this no knee-jerk Marxist tract. Fuller is very open - perhaps too open - to alternative social and economic philosophies. His main point is that knowledge is a "positional good," which basically means that it's valuable only if it's scarce. And so, KM is really is in the business of manufacturing this new form of scarcity by things like computerized expert systems, intellectual property law, etc. This point cannot be repeated too many times, and Fuller does a great job exploring all its ramifications, especially for universities.

Despite its title, this is not a basic text introducing the key KM theories and concepts. Fuller attempts to place knowledge management on a 'secure intellectual footing' by tracing the historical, philosophical, and sociological underpinnings of KM. While it may offer an alternative view to the hype that abounds in the KM literature, it is a heavily theoretical text and there is very little in it for the practitioner.

This is definitely a book for those who want to see through the charlatanry and the hype that passes for "KM" these days. What's surprising is that it's taken so long for a serious academic who doesn't work for a business school to produce a book like this. Fuller's goal here is basically to tell us how we got to a position where sticking "knowledge" in front of "management" has even gotten university presidents excited. It's a story that should be familiar to Marxists, since Fuller believes that knowledge is "capitalism's final frontier," but this no knee-jerk Marxist tract. Fuller is very open - perhaps too open - to alternative social and economic philosophies. His main point is that knowledge is a "positional good," which basically means that it's valuable only if it's scarce. And so, KM is really is in the business of manufacturing this new form of scarcity by things like computerized expert systems, intellectual property law, etc. This point cannot be repeated too many times, and Fuller does a great job exploring all its ramifications, especially for universities.