Section Ten

10.3 McInerney, C. (2002). Knowledge Management and the Dynamic Nature of Knowledge. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 53(12), 1009-1018.

Something that I found to be interesting about this article is that it does not focus on information, but knowledge. Since knowledge is personal to the owner of said knowledge, it is impossible to transfer it without the aid of information. Within our studies in this class, we have placed a heavy emphasis on what people do to get information, but have not specifically looked at how they internalize it outside of Brenda Dervin's Sense-Making model. And while this article focuses on the business aspect of knowledge, it is certainly helpful in gaining a better understanding of the fluid and ever-changing life cycle of knowledge.

I found many of the concepts discussed in this article to be self-evident. Perhaps that is not necessarily so for all individuals, but then again, some people often seem to lack common sense. For example, on page 1014, McInerney describes in a lengthy fashion the need for trust in order for knowledge to be transferred. This is not ground breaking news. My five year old sister rarely believes a thing her best friend tells her because, as she puts it, "Rachel tells stories." My sister has long since discovered that Rachel's credibility is shot, and she did not have to read a lengthy article in order to reach that conclusion. That is just one of many points that McInerney makes that I felt were collective knowledge without any discussion.

And while that is so, her description of tacit and explicit knowledge was certainly clear and easily understood. On top of that, she included a very self-explanatory chart to further detail this process. As a visual learner, the chart was an ideal way for me to internalize the major concept of the article and transform it into knowledge. It will also be helpful to refresh my memory, as it is much easier to absorb a diagram than to pinpoint exactly where the key concepts are in a body of text. Plus, the chosen labels ease the comprehension of the chart. As far as journal articles are concerned, not much is worse than including a chart that is so incomprehensible that it makes the concept even more complicated instead of easier.