Approaching the Complexity of Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is an intrinsic part of the managerial process and not a substitute for it. It is that part that is focused on managing intangible resources like knowledge, ideas, brands, and many other similar entities. Although this assertion is clear and looks like an extension of classical management, many knowledge management projects failed and generated a question mark about the future of knowledge management. Management developed based on the basic ideas coming from engineering and on the paradigm of measuring. The assertion “What gets measured gets managed” became almost a norm in management thinking. But knowledge is intangible and contextual. Measuring knowledge is almost impossible by using the measuring systems designed for tangible objects, and that is a huge barrier to understanding and practicing knowledge management. There is a need to change the management paradigm to accommodate intangible resources, and that means approaching the complexity of knowledge and knowledge management. The purpose of this chapter is to reveal some of the most important barriers between classical management and knowledge management and how we can find ways to overcome them, that is, to identify some new models for explaining the complexity of knowledge, knowledge dynamics, and knowledge management concepts. That means revealing new metaphors for understanding the multidimensional concept of knowledge and how to interpret its dynamics at the individual, team, and organizational levels. The chapter focuses on the theory of knowledge fields and knowledge dynamics from a thermodynamics perspective.