Challenges in Knowledge Management Education

Suliman Hawamdeh
University of Oklahoma, College of Arts and Sciences, Schusterman Center, 4502 E 41" St. Tulsa, OK. 74135
Email: suliman@ou.edu 0

Thomas J. Froehlich
Kent State University, P.O. Box 5190 314 University Library, Kent, OH 44242-0001. Email: tfroehli@kent.edu

Taverekere (Kanti) Srikantaiah

Dominican University, Center for Knowledge Management, 7900 W. Division St., River Forest, IL 60303
Email: srikant@dorn.edu

Abdus Sattar Chaudhry

School of Communication & Information, 31 Nanyang Link, SCI Building, Singapore 637718
Email: aschaudhry@ntu.edu.sg

Yun-Ke Chang
University of Oklahoma, College of Arts and Sciences, Schusterman Center, 4502 E. 41st St., Tulsa, OK 74135
Email: yunke@ou.edu

Miguel A. Morales-Arroyo [Moderator]

University of Oklahoma, College of Arts and Sciences, Schusterrnan Center, 4502 E 41st St., Tulsa, OK. 74135
Email: rnarroyo@ou.edu

The members of panel will discuss the opportunities
and challenges facing knowledge management education.
The panel will share their experiences in the development
of four knowledge management programs at Kent State
University, Dominican University, University of
Oklahoma, and Nanyang Technological University in
Singapore.
Today's organizations are faced with many challenges,
such as producing the desired objectives (efficacy),
solving the right problems (effectiveness), and using the
minimal quantity of resources (efficiency) in a competitive
and complex environment. Among other necessities,
organizations have to identify knowledge sources and
assess their value when possible. They need to be
proactive and/or adapt to the rapid pace of change. They
should be able to recognize the needs of their costumers
or users and be able to develop or adapt mechanisms that
permit them to measure their intellectual capital and build
the technological infrastructure that would facilitate
knowledge sharing and utilization. Organizations also
need assess and create a culture that allows knowledge
sharing, socialization, collaboration, and the creation of
communities of practice.
Knowledge workers and knowledge professionals are an
important, if not vital, component of the knowledge
organization. Regardless of the industry, type of
organization (profit or nonprofit organization), or the
business sector, they all require a new breed of
information professionals who are able to work closely
with the knowledge workers, understand their needs and
communicate their concerns to the management of the
organization. Knowledge professionals will help
organizations identify opportunities, deal with
competition, generate synergy, and create a knowledge-
sharing environment.
Traditionally, information professionals' roles were
limited to the identification, acquisition and organization
of explicit knowledge or information. Today, that role is
being expanded to include other forms of knowledge
activities-- tacit and implicit knowledge in the form of
skills and competencies. Tacit knowledge is personal and
gets transferred through human interaction, training,
observation and replication in different environments. It
can only be shared by socialization, interaction and
training, and it requires interpersonal communication. As
knowledge professionals need to deal with human
resource issues as well as organizational issues, a new set
of skills and competencies are needed. Such skills and
competencies require a multidisciplinary program and
cannot be catered for by one single discipline. Disciplines
involve include information technology, information
science, communication and cognitive science, and
business and management.
At the moment, most knowledge management
practitioners and self -proclaimed experts come from
various backgrounds with different levels of skills and

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competencies. Clearly there is a need for a formal
qualification for knowledge management to the increased
demand for knowledge professionals. Given the fact that
knowledge management is an interdisciplinary area and
requires the participation of people from different
disciplines, designing a balanced and practical knowledge
management curriculum will always be a challenge. There
is very little agreement on what characteristics knowledge
management professionals should have, and the roles that
they should play. Many organizations are creating
knowledge management positions, which have a diversity
of names and descriptions. Some of these roles could be
associated with knowledge management practices, but
others may be more IT-related.
As knowledge management evolves, educational
institutions around the world are beginning to develop
programs in response to the market needs of knowledge
management professionals. These programs have taken
2004 Proceedings of the 67th ASIS&T Annual Meeting, vol. 41
different approaches: Library and Information Science,
Information Technology, Communication Studies, or
Management. An essential question for higher education
institutions in the Knowledge Management arena is - how
they can prepare and help students and organizations to
achieve their goals in a changing environment in which
the creation of knowledge and new skills is a constant
necessity, and at the same time there is the need to
integrate different conceptual approaches. The challenges
in knowledge management education are diverse: defining
the skills and competencies of knowledge management
professionals based on the market needs; educating
information professionals rigorously enough so that they
will be able to meet the demands of knowledge
management work; integrating and coordinating different
disciplines that are the foundations of knowledge
management.
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