Publisher Description

A comprehensive theoretical and practical guide to the operating principles of knowledge auditing, illustrated with numerous case studies.A comprehensive theoretical and practical guide to the operating principles of knowledge auditing, illustrated with numerous case studies.A knowledge audit provides an "at a glance" view of an organization's needs and opportunities. Its purpose is to improve an organization's effectiveness through a better understanding of the dynamics and levers of knowledge production, access, and use. However, this developing field is hampered by the lack of a common language about the origins and nature of knowledge auditing. In Principles of Knowledge Auditing, Patrick Lambe integrates the theory and practices of the field, laying out principles and guidelines for a clearer and more pragmatic approach to knowledge auditing that makes it more accessible to practitioners and researchers.Lambe examines knowledge auditing in the context of the development of communications, information, and knowledge management in the twentieth century. He critiques and clarifies ambiguities in how knowledge audits are approached and described, as well as how the results are conveyed within organizations. He discusses the benefits and risks of knowledge management standards. Knowledge auditors, he says, need a common frame of reference more than they need standards. Standards have their uses, but they provide only markers and sign posts and are poor representations of the richness of the landscape. He concludes with a set of guiding principles for practitioners.

Author Biography

Patrick Lambe is Principal Consultant at Straits Knowledge. He is the author of Organising Knowledge- Taxonomies, Knowledge and Organisational Effectiveness and coauthor of the award-winning The Knowledge Manager's Handbook- A Step-by-Step Guide to Embedding Effective Knowledge Management in Your Organization.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1
I Recovering Our Past
1 Seeking to Understand Knowledge in Organizations 15
2 The History of Knowledge Audits 23
II Speaking Clearly about Audits
3 What is an Audit? A Definitional Approach 31
4 What Kind of Audit Is a Knowledge Audit? A Naturalistic Approach 43
5 What Are We Auditing? 63
III Drivers and Motivations
6 What Stimulated the Emergence of Knowledge-Related Audits? 77
7 Beginnings and Improvisations: Discovery Review, Inventory, and Participative Goal-Setting Audits 101
8 Authority Envy: Assessment Audits and Standards in Communication and Information Audits 127
9 The Battle for Standards in Knowledge Management 145
IV Speaking Clearly about Knowledge
10 Risky Metaphors 185
11 The Syllepsis Trap: When Choice of Language Becomes Problematic 191
12 The Language of Value: Assets and Capital 203
13 The Language of Value: Resources 227
14 Ascribing Value to Knowledge and the Implications for Influence and Control 245
15 The Inventory Audit: Auditing Knowledge Stocks 253
16 Unhelpful Dualisms: The Personal-Collective Dualism 261
17 Unhelpful Dualisms: The Tacit-Explicit Dualism 283
18 Typologies of Personal Knowledge 293
19 Typologies of Organizational Knowledge 301
20 Toward Integration: Typologies of Functional Knowledge 331
21 Conclusion: Possibilities 347
References 355
Index 393

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