Developing the core principles of responsible knowledge management (rKM): Section 2.6 – The will to metrics: KM’s economic telos

This article is Section 2.6 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.

As Foucault noted¹, “[w]e live in a social universe in which the formation, circulation, and utilisation of knowledge present a fundamental problem.” He was pointing to the imbalance of power between those who possess knowledge and those who do not, and the possibilities or constraints this creates. In the business economics tradition, this imbalance has been reframed as a problem of valuation: the imperative to demonstrate the worth of knowledge. As Mouritsen, Larsen, and Bukh observe², KM activities “have to be crafted in such a way that they support the pursuit of financial value.”

From this follows what might be called the will to metrics – a deep-seated compulsion to translate knowledge into numbers, not only to understand it but to control it, rank it, and validate it. This impulse aligns with the megaparadigm of neoliberal economics, which extends economic rationality³ to “all rational conduct, or even simply all behaviour.” The will to metrics stems from a discomfort with the unmeasurable, answered by accounting abstractions that claim to capture the existence and performance of knowledge. The drive to compare, whether competitively or for monitoring, fuels this urge to quantify. Even when numbers are incommensurate, unstable, misleading, or symbolically overburdened, they provide a means of ranking and differentiation. They offer organisations a way of situating the present and projecting progress, however illusory.

The will to metrics is exemplified, for example, in the writings of both Harris and Tayler⁴ and Mouritsen and colleagues⁵ who elaborate the difficulties inherent in knowledge metrics without escaping the struggle. They admit that knowledge, as an intangible, socially embedded, and relational phenomenon, resists translation into fixed numerical terms. But paradoxically, both texts respond to this resistance not by questioning the logic of measurement itself, but by intensifying efforts to find better metrics.

Harris and Tayler mention the behavioural trap of “surrogation”, where metrics displace strategy and become mistaken for the objective itself. While their analysis of this phenomenon is compelling, nowhere do they entertain the possibility that the compulsion to measure might itself be the problem. Could the desire for auditable proxies for abstract organisational goals actually be incompatible with the nature of those goals? They describe how metrics distort meaning, or encourage undesirable behaviour, but offer no alternative way of engaging with abstract goals. Metrics, in their framing, are both dangerous and non-negotiable.

Mouritsen and colleagues, for their part, interpret intellectual capital statements as not measuring knowledge per se, but actively constructing managerial interpretations of it. Knowledge, they admit, has no stable “referent” and cannot be captured in traditional accounting terms⁶. Yet despite this insight, they remain wholly committed to the development of intellectual capital statements as management tools. Their solution is to blend numbers with narratives and visualisations, what they call “centres of translation”, in the hope that this multimodal representation will allow for more meaningful intervention. But what is being translated remains elusive. Their examples show clearly that the numbers do not depict knowledge; they depict managerial activities in the name of knowledge. Still, the conclusion is not to abandon numeric inscription but to improve it, structure it, and legitimise it through storytelling.

Thus, what both articles ultimately reveal, perhaps unintentionally, is the discursive trap of KM under managerialism: even when the object is demonstrably unmeasurable, the discourse insists it must be measured. This reliance on metrics may be misguided and, in some instances, risks becoming a concession to simplistic quantification. Knowledge may be fluid and socially enacted but must nevertheless be audited. The managerial numerologists do not escape what Fahey and Prusak⁷ called KM’s eleventh deadliest sin: failing to recognise⁸ that “the significance of knowledge is not what it is, [or how much there is] but what you do with it.”

Consequently, Mouritsen and colleagues seem to somehow assume that knowledge becomes actionable and by implication, real once it is “drawn away from the invisible inner space of individuals into [the] light” through the use of numbers. The authors present this transformation as if it were a managerial triumph: the taming of the unknowable through inscription. But sadly, the act of assigning knowledge a number, treating it as a transaction, a portfolio, or an effect, does not make it any more tangible. The number does not capture the knowledge itself, only the conditions under which certain activities are recognised as knowledge work. In presenting this process as a viable means of rendering intellectual capital governable, the authors seem to confuse the construction of organisational artefacts with the surfacing of knowledge matter.

There is something troublingly credulous in the suggestion that knowledge can be dislocated from individuals and redistributed simply by making it visible to management. The metaphor of lifting knowledge from the tacit darkness into the light of accounting is seductive, but it flattens the complexity of knowing. It implies that once individuals’ inner spaces have been mined for metrics (training hours, satisfaction scores, innovation counts) the knowledge they contain is no longer theirs, but a transferable organisational asset. Such a view treats knowledge as a disembodied resource to be counted and mobilised for productivity. In this sense, the intellectual capital statement becomes a ritual not of understanding but of appropriation. It is a tool to symbolically sever knowledge from persons and render it as organisational property.

Moreover, Mouritsen and colleagues are very candid in admitting that the interest in managing knowledge is entirely economic. This frankness reveals the fundamental limitations of the approach. The purpose of all activities done in the name of knowledge is to increase its worth, as manifested by a numerical label that can be compared internally and externally. The managerial gaze is totalising; what cannot be leveraged for organisational performance is of no concern.

If knowledge is numerically legitimised, its purpose and development lie in improving metrics. The field of KM is being primed to recognise only that which can be expressed through the language of economic utility. In such a paradigm, progress is a matter of performance against indicators.

It is important to realise that this instrumental orientation has consequences⁹. It “does not provide a comprehensive grasp of [the] non-linear, organic processes that shape the entire universe”; organisational goals should not be reduced to mere “adding and subtracting [of] financial quantities.” Johnson’s point¹⁰ being “that reality is organic” to which “the mechanistic view … does not apply.”

In their 2002 article, Mouritsen, Bukh, Larsen, and Johansen¹¹ highlight how intellectual capital statements are articulations of what an organisation understands KM to be. These statements give shape to a particular idea of knowledge: they specify what knowledge is for, what it relates to, and why it matters to a specific organisation. In this view, knowledge is always oriented toward a purpose. The firm becomes ‘knowledgeable’ or ‘intelligent’ only in relation to some intended outcome or telos. This insight is important, particularly if one asks: What exactly is that purpose? Is it just the upwards curve of the numbers? Exponential increase of profit?

In sum, the will to metrics emphasises that knowledge is primarily valued as a statistically verifiable stock and as a means of pursuing future value within the organisation – not for its potential beyond it. Metrics domesticate knowledge, turning it into a calibrated mechanism for driving shareholder returns. If KM continues to focus on how much knowledge an organisation can claim to have, does it risk neglecting the more important question of what can and should be done with that knowledge – beyond the pursuit of profit?

Next part: Section 2.7 – The vacuum of ethics in KM: A marginalised concept.

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.

References and notes: