I believe you can look into intellectual capital development.

Hmmm... interesting puzzle.

My first thought is Organizational Learning...! That should tie information management, knowledge management, communication and library management to a big bundle. It would most likely be a theoretical research topic rather than empirical, I doubt there is any organization that has full comprehension on these topics let alone practise them.... The bright side is you get to be the pioneer in this field.

A head-up suggestion: if you pursue OL as the integrater: use information/knowledge stocks and flows in your analysis since they are the common grounds.

I hope this interest you, if so, have fun in your research

Communication is not Information: it implies a "mutual mutation", i.e. change (in mind) while exchange (with others), i.e. innovation. Knowledge is not any understanding: it implies sharing, i.e. commmunication. Knowledge management is not just information managemente, but organisation and innovation management.

Hi

I agree with Andrea. This is within the realm of the Learning Organization. However, more specifically

you may consider The role of Innovation in knowledge management within the context of the learning organization. That way you cover organizational structure (teams learning), Vision sharing (creating a culture of sharing), Mental models (Mind sets for knowledge management), and so on.

Best to you

Shannon (1949) starts the work in this area. He studied the impact of communication on information - Information theory- and then researchers follow this theory. Delone and Mclean built their model of information systems success on this theory. Generally speaking, knowledge management is an a field, this field still under construction.. but when talking about knowledge only, then I think you can do good work. Please, be careful because you are talking about areas of studies..and this need lots of researches not only PhD work....

Hope this note will help...

For any any conceptual matter to be understood, we need to know two fundamental things: 1) its characteristics and 2) its purpose.

What is the characteristics of information, knowledge, and communication?

What are their purposes? If we understand these two areas, we would understand their relationships...

Thanks alot for your responses. Iam still reading around and conceptualizing. one thing that is coming out clearly is the concept of sharing what people know within an organisation and recording the outcome for future reference.

May be communication aspect will help in tapping this knowledge, by persuading people to share and recording it in a comprehensible manner by applying the 7Cs of communication. I bet the information management skills may apply to the organisation and the retrieval of the stored knowledge.

by responding to Antony Liew , one characteristic of communication is that there is some common understanding of the message being exchanged between a sender and a receiver communication also focuses on maintaining good relationships between senedrs of messages and receivers of messages .

.information management deals mostly with the physical and mechanical aspects of organising by classifying the recorded messages and coming up with a efficient way of retrieving them. In my view knowledge management may be a hybrid of communication and information management.

@Esther

I agree with your view on 'communication'; transfer of information (message) and bulding of relationships.

However, your 'IM' sounds a lot like data management. My definitions for your reference...

Data management is the capture, storage, structure, compilation, retrieval, and analysis of records. It is the reconstruction of recent or historical events as inputs for decision-making and/or problem solving.

Information management includes reconstructing a picture of historical events, collecting current or recent market intelligence, as well as projecting possible future events (forecasting and scenario planning), and of course analysis for decision making and/or problem solving. Thereafter, action can be taken and then reviewed. (Therefore IM includes DM)

Knowledge management, on the other hand, is, in essence, the management of human capital (tacit knowledge that resides in the human mind) relationship capital such as customer, supplier, strategic alliance, social capital (tacit and explicit), and structural capital (explicit knowledge a.k.a. data and information), the source and stock of knowledge; and the flow of knowledge as in knowledge creation, sharing, and application to create and/or sustain organizational value and competitive advantage. (Thus, KM includes IM and DM)

This is becoming even more complex especially when you look at the definition of Data management given by Liew. I look at data as something that has no form or meaning- though if handled properly can make some sense( has that potential depending on who is using it ) .This leads to information management that involves making sense out of the data.

Take for instance the field of librarianship; it involves selection,organisation, storage,retrieval and dissemination systems of all forms of information resources. Can we then say that the field deals with data management? i beg to differ here.

Librarianship, as a classic example of an information management field together with other sister fields like archival science and records management fields deals with the management of recorded messages/information. This information is passed through an appraisal process to determine its value to the target users.

In my view what knowledge management has added to the information management field and communication is the tapping of what people have (intellectual capital),that may not be necessarily be recorded but has worked well in the past or, can potentially work well in the future(this brings in the aspects of innovation). Thus knowledge management borrows alot from information management -that incorporates management of raw data(DM).

It needs communication aspects like persuasion, motivation,good public relations etc and principles of communication too, to be able to extract what is in human brains. once information has been extracted and shared, it may not be 100% accurate and dialogue is needed to sieve the ideas. The ideas are then recorded and managed in an easily retrieval form just like any other ideas in books,journals or any other media.

This as others commented earlier will then involve creation(tapping), sharing (like we are doing in this forum),storage, and finally disseminating to all members of the organisation to improve productivity-organisational competence. This is a continuous process. In terms of ownership,this information belongs to the organisation that creates it.

Friends, these are my ideas and views deduced from others through reading and sharing. Iam still trying to get a clear path in a thick forest. Assist me get a highway where we can all pass through, academically. Any advise,comment or complaint welcome.

I also look at KM as the holy trinity with Intellectual Capital and Organizational Learning. IC is more of stock of knowledge and OL as flow of knowledge. There is also another element that can be included in KM eventually and that is Business/Market/Competitive Intelligence. But the ultimate goal of KM is Value Creation.

See Edwards Deming and the relationships between management and labor in quality control circles. How does this affect change in defining the roles of individual responsibility -- how are data and control communicated and managed in manufacturing processes in quality control in the dynamics of assembly lines? Each individual now assumes a more direct role in reaching the outcome of the process -- management no longer has complete control of the data.

The purpose of information (including processed data) is for decision-making (which is also part of problem-solving). Information has to go to the hands of the decision-maker or execution to be effective. In other words, armed with informed decision execution would be much more effective and efficient.

Do you know any studies for knowledge flows o models? thanks

Thanks a lot   for the insights