Developing the core principles of responsible knowledge management (rKM): Section 2.2 – A field or fields? The ongoing struggle to define KM

This article is Section 2.2 of Chapter 2 of a series featuring my Master’s thesis The Emerging Concept of Responsible Knowledge Management (rKM): Identifying and Formulating the Core Principles of rKM.

Whether KM can be regarded as a unified field or an affiliated set of concerns remains a matter of debate. Scholars have long lamented the absence of a singular theory, for which there are many contributing factors. The absence of a singular theory has often been interpreted as conceptual immaturity, though it may equally reflect the inherently interdisciplinary and contextual nature of knowledge work. What persists despite the specific diagnosis is an ongoing identity struggle.

Through the 2000s, as Koenig and Neveroski observe¹, KM has not evolved toward disciplinary convergence but has instead deepened along multiple disciplinary trajectories. By not converging, KM remains true to its foundational cross-disciplinary origins (Wallace, 2007). So much so, that KM can reasonably be characterised² as “a science of complexity.” Consequently³, it “also has a reputation for incoherence and poor performance.”

Lambe argues⁴ that the “shallowness of knowledge management’s understandings of the traditions … it came from, and its lack of recognition of continuing near relatives” are factors that explain why it suffers from confusion and a persistent absence of common agenda. It is the reason why KM lacks a coherent theoretical foundation, making education, professional development, and evaluation difficult; resulting in naïve or improvised practices that fail to convince, despite persistent organisational interest.

Roberts offers a somewhat more generous interpretation⁵. She suggests that KM might serve a valuable role precisely “by unifying disparate activities” and offering “a lens through which to see the organisation as a whole.” This approach comes with the risk of ubiquitous KM being everywhere and everything, or nowhere and nothing. Only a clear and anchored sense of purpose and direction can prevent ubiquity from fading into obscurity.

The forgetting is not merely accidental. Lambe refers to what sociologist Robert Merton called the “palimpsestic syndrome”, a tendency to overwrite older ideas with newer ones, effectively obliterating their origins by incorporation. Lambe dubs this dynamic the “Veneering Effect,” borrowing from Charles Dickens’ satirical description of fashionable, rootless newness. KM’s apparent novelty in the 1990s was largely⁶ a⁷ product⁸ of commercial drivers and rebranding, rather than actual conceptual innovation.

To empirically demonstrate this forgetfulness, Lambe introduces the concept of a “citation memory”, the median number of years between when a KM journal article cites a source and when that source was published. Across major KM journals, the median citation memory is about five years, with most citations referring to works published only a few years earlier, indicating a very shallow temporal engagement with foundational literature.

Gu offers another compelling explanation⁹ for the apparent fragmentation of the KM field. According to Gu, much of its scholarly output is not published in explicitly KM-focused journals but rather dispersed across more established disciplinary outlets such as information systems, business, and computer science. This dispersion is partly strategic, reflecting the search for higher-impact venues, but it also highlights KM’s persistent marginality and multidisciplinary dependency.

As a result, KM appears fragmented and underdeveloped when much of its substantive work remains hidden across disciplinary silos. This structural condition exacerbates the difficulty of cumulative knowledge-building, as scholars work with different terminologies, assumptions, and audiences. It also reinforces KM’s identity as a boundary-crossing field that draws heavily from other established disciplines, borrowing theories, methods, and legitimacy from adjacent domains while struggling to consolidate a stable core of its own.

Argote, McEvily, and Reagans note¹⁰ the same difficulty of cumulating domain specific knowledge when “researchers fail to take advantage of ideas produced in other areas and simply ‘rediscover’ what is known already.” Edwards, Handzic, Carlsson, and Nissen concur¹¹ that “there are several knowledge management literatures”, and accordingly advice that KM “embrace difference” “in a spirit of integration, of debate, of complementarity, of building bridges.”

Jevnaker and Olaisen contend¹² that in the field of KM, according to their analysis of three consecutive years of conference papers, the lack of definitions causes researchers to “tell a story exemplified with statistics.” This carries the risk of allowing instruments to define inquiry, a concern originally articulated by Tornebohm in 1983¹³. If instruments are treated as ends in themselves, knowledge work may mistake the measure for the reality. This is particularly evident in KM’s historical embrace of quantifiable constructs such as intellectual capital or knowledge assets.

This tendency aligns with Kuhn’s 1962 notion of normal science¹⁴, where research becomes routine, paradigms calcify, and anomalies are sidelined. In such a climate, models like the SECI risk becoming ritualised instruments, applied out of habit. As a result, KM scholarship may reinforce what is measurable rather than what is meaningful.

Jevnaker and Olaisen found that “the dominating tendency among the papers [they compared] was to cater to the already known.” The authors suggest that much KM research functions as a confirmation of existing beliefs, rather than a site of theoretical or methodological experimentation. The field has embraced research that comes up with what Blumer in 1969 called definitive concepts¹⁵, “The definitive concept’s purpose is to Describe-Explain-Predict and Control and Rule.” Blumer also identified the existence of what he called sensitising concepts that are open-ended. Their purpose, on the other hand, is to “Describe-Explore-Reflect-Participate and Change”. This is the direction Jevnaker and Olaisen see as pivotal for future KM research.

The fragmentation and short memory of KM often end up reinforcing the frameworks that describe, explain, and predict in order to control. This orientation lends itself to measurement and replication, but risks narrowing the field’s imagination. The recognition that KM could also be guided by research that describes, explores, reflects, participates, and changes invites us to consider whether its diversity might be less a problem to be solved than an opportunity to think differently about knowledge.

In retrospect, the history of KM is not linear but layered, the fundamental assumptions largely established before the year 2000. Figure 2 below summarises the field’s most formative milestones according to Lambe and Koenig and Neveroski.

Next part: Section 2.3 – What has knowledge management given us so far?

Article source: Koskinen, H. M. (2025). The Emerging Concept of Responsible Knowledge Management (rKM): Identifying and Formulating the Core Principles of rKM. (Master’s Thesis, LUT University).

Header image source: Created by Hanna M. Koskinen using ChatGPT.

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