Activity Knowledge Management: Conceptual Foundation, Framework, and Knowledge Hierarchy
摘要
Knowledge is an essential asset produced and utilized within organizations to understand the business context, make informed decisions, and carry out activities. Its effective management contributes to organizations’ growth through adequate decision-making, enhancing individuals’ capabilities, and enabling the creation of innovative goods or services. To achieve these objectives, the organization knowledge management (OKM) specifies types of knowledge to focus on and methods for acquiring, storing, and applying this knowledge to create value within organizations. However, OKM studies primarily focus on explicit and tacit knowledge and their framework cycles, often neglecting the activity and encapsulated knowledge sealed in services or products. Moreover, they tend to elaborate on high-level knowledge hierarchies without considering specific types of knowledge needed across organizations’ layers like the operational and management levels. To address these limitations, this study contributes to the theoretical development of knowledge management by introducing the concept of activity knowledge management (AKM) framed under the prism of an extended activity theory and presents an activity knowledge management framework and cycle. It further elaborates on the activity knowledge hierarchy within the context of organization knowledge management and provides potential applications of activity knowledge. Finally, it identifies new directions and a research agenda for AKM.