The knowledge management tussle – speech communities and rhetorical strategies in the development of knowledge management

Abstract

Knowledge management has become a major trend since the mid-1990s. Different professional communities, among them information systems/information technology (IS/IT) and more business management-oriented actors, have created strong conceptual ties with the idea of managing knowledge. This paper studies the structure and development of the knowledge management discourse over an 18-year period with an emphasis on the role of the IS/IT community in shaping this discourse. In order to do so, a content analysis of 434 article abstracts from the ABI/Inform database referring to ‘knowledge management’ was performed. The argument here is based on a theoretical framework derived from recent theorizing about popular management knowledge as fashion and it is assumed that different professional or ‘speech communities’ gathering around a concept such as knowledge management enter into competition for limited organizational resources. The paper's findings show the co-existence of two distinct speech communities involved in the knowledge management debate, focusing on either IS/IT or general management issues and they support the idea that both communities engage in a joint effort at sustaining knowledge management as a fashion field.