Knowledge Management System Development Approaches: Evolution or Stagnation?

This paper investigates evolution of Knowledge Management (KM) systems development approaches. KM has been an important topic for over forty years. Period KM systems development has been based on definitions of knowledge that have evolved, with systems developed using tools and approaches characteristic of the time. The first KMS were gateways to static information supporting integrative business processes. As KM evolved, knowledge became seen as dynamic, moving within the enterprise due to organizational processes. Current thought focuses on tacit knowledge, which is hard to explicitly transfer, making KM a social process. Analytics will increasingly play a factor in new KM systems. The question is whether development approaches have kept up with evolving definitions of knowledge. This paper identifies approaches implementing new KM systems, draws on the literature to examine how they are used, and discusses whether they reflect knowledge’s changing nature. Themethodologies used to develop KM systems are examined with the goal of providing insight into approaches that work