Developing the core principles of responsible knowledge management (rKM): Section 4.4 – Distribution of the sample

This article is Section 4.4 of Chapter 4 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 mentioned earlier, the two searches produced a corpus of 33 results, or 41 texts when the 9 chapters of the one book are treated individually. Analysis eventually clustered these texts into three thematic dimensions – normative frameworks, inclusivity, and sustainable ecosystem – revealing the distribution of topics as unexpectedly balanced. Each dimension attracted roughly equal attention across the literature, even though the material was sourced from two different databases with distinct profiles. The Scopus sample tended to anchor discussions in more formalised and established KM debates around sustainability, phronesis, and ecosystemic responsibility, while the Google Scholar texts more often introduced normative, inclusive, and value-oriented perspectives that reimagine the future directions of KM. Despite these differences, the final corpus does not skew heavily toward one principle. Instead, the discourse on rKM appears to be emerging in equal measure along all three axes.

This balance was not the product of intentionally weighting the sample toward any of the three dimensions but arose from the systematic application of the inclusion/exclusion criteria. The search strategies for Scopus and Google Scholar were deliberately tailored as described earlier but no attempt was made to equalise the thematic distribution. For instance, the Scopus search did not return results focused on ethics in KM, which prompted the Google Scholar searches with the terms “ethical knowledge management” and “ethics in knowledge management” (also part of the Scopus query string). Similarly, while the notion of the common good was included in both searches, only the Google Scholar search produced relevant material on this theme. In this way, the two databases yielded samples that were partly overlapping but also distinctive in emphasis, reflecting both the strengths and limitations of each source. The results suggest that rKM is being simultaneously framed through normative, participatory, and systemic lenses. In other words, the literature does not privilege one path to responsibility but advances a plural and interdependent conception of what rKM entails.

The next section transitions from the basic description of the sample toward exploring the integrative literature review (ILR), unpacking these discovered thematic strands in greater detail.

Next part: Section 4.5 – Findings of the integrative literature review.

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.