Being and Knowing — Ontological Perspectives on Knowledge Management Systems

Authors

  • Deborah A. Blackman
  • Steven Henderson

Keywords:

Knowledge management systems, ontology, Popper, Heidegger

Abstract

This paper undertakes an ontological analysis of knowledge management systems from two perspectives: Popperian and Heideggerian. Earl's taxonomy of knowledge management schools is used as the proxy for the variety of systems that can be found in practice. The paper takes two contrasting ontological systems to identify generic strengths and weaknesses at the level of the School. The argument is made that many of the issues and difficulties frequently encountered in organisations are unlikely to have managerial or technological solutions as they are ontologically implied by the very systems themselves.

Downloads

Published

1 Jul 2007

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 3 (2007)

Section

Articles

License

Open Access Publishing

The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Maangement operates an Open Access Policy. This means that users can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, is that authors control  the integrity of their work, which should be properly acknowledged and cited.