Table of Contents

Introduction: The Rise of Knowledge Management
Chapter 1: Situating Knowledge Management
Chapter 2: Knowledge Management?
Chapter 3: Knowledge Acquisition, Retention and Transfer
Chapter 4: Knowledge, Creativity and Innovation
Chapter 5: Ignorance, Forgetting and Unlearning
Conclusion: Looking Forward

About the Author

Joanne Roberts is Professor in Arts and Cultural Management and director of the Winchester Luxury Research Group at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, UK. She has held posts in the business schools of Newcastle, Durham, and Northumbria Universities, UK. Her research interests include the internationalization of knowledge-intensive services, knowledge transfer, innovation and creativity, and critical perspectives on knowledge in organization and economy. She is currently investigating knowledge and ignorance in the field of luxury. Joanne is a member of several national and international scholarly networks, for instance the Academy of International Business, the Critical Management Studies network, the British Academy of Management (BAM), and the Dynamics of Institutions and Markets in Europe (the DIME network of excellence). From 2009 to 2011 she chaired BAM’s annual conference track on Knowledge and Learning.


Joanne has written extensively in the fields of business and management. She has published articles in a wide range of international journals, including the Journal of Knowledge Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, International Business Review, Management Learning, Research Policy, and The Service Industries Journal. In addition, Joanne is author of Multinational Business Services Firms (Ashgate, 1998) and co-editor of three books: Knowledge and Innovation in the New Service Economy, with A. Andersen, J. Howells, R. Hull and I. Miles (Edward Elgar, 2000); Living with Cyberspace, with J. Armitage (Berg, 2002); and Community, Economic Creativity and Organization, with A. Amin (Oxford University Press, 2008). Joanne is also the co-founder and co-editor of the award-winning journal Critical Perspectives on International Business; an editor of the journal Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation; and member of the editorial board of several journals, including Luxury: History, Culture and Consumption. She is currently co-editing Critical Luxury Studies: Art, Design, Media with John Armitage for Edinburgh University Press.

Reviews

A masterly short book that offers in-depth and critical explanations on the key principles of Knowledge Management, written by an author with deep knowledge of her subject. The chapter on ignorance is worth the price alone and should be read by all practicing decision makers. -- Ted Fuller A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Knowledge Management is a lucid, thoughtful and engaging book that competently covers a range of topical issues associated with knowledge management and its complexity. Joanne Roberts does an excellent job in offering an accessible must-read for university students who seek to develop their understanding of the field. The book is of real value also to academics who enjoy an original and truly interesting read. -- Snejina Michailova This short book is a real tour de force. In a few pages, Professor Roberts not only exposes and analyses the essential of knowledge management, but she invites us to discover the other side of knowledge, ignorance and the unknown, and their impact on management. The reader is being offered a unique and outstanding guidance through the different aspects of knowledge management. In particular, the book convincingly explains how knowledge management differs from, and is related to the concepts of information management, organizational learning, innovation management and creativity management. -- Patrick Cohendet I have recently read "A Very Short, Fairly Interesting Book About KM" and I greatly admired it. I have always believed that the vast multi-faceted KM domain needs efforts that provide a succinct overview of the field to guide practitioners and new researchers and [this] book does exactly that. -- Mohamed AF Ragab I really enjoyed reading this little book on knowledge management. I wish I had read it at the start on my PhD before diving into the 'deep end' of the knowledge literature. Having come from a clinical science background it was great to have it explained simply! I've already recommended it to a colleague. -- Amy Grove As a second year doctoral student in the KM field, I was blown away by the depth and resonance of your work, I really think the title is misplaced, as you have managed (somehow) to pack in all the relevance of the KM field into one volume. It should be titled "everything there is to know about KM!" -- Paul Mc Evoy Primarily written for college students, these works are not intended to be used as textbooks but rather as short, introductory monographs. Roberts (Univ. of Southampton, UK) has an extensive publication record in knowledge and learning in organizations. Her purpose in writing this book is "to take a critical view of knowledge management" and to challenge the standard perspectives on the nature and future of knowledge management. This approach provides an alternative to the ones used by typical management textbooks... [The book is] is recommended for its clarity and brevity in discussing a complex and contemporary area of study. -- L. Kong, California State University, San Bernardino While the book engages seriously with the intellectual ideas and concepts discussed, it is written in an accessible style, which I think students would find appealing, and which makes the book accessible to anyone not familiar with the topic of knowledge management. -- Donald Hislop Roberts does well throughout to present a thorough yet fast-paced account of the field of knowledge management and her book is one that is well-placed as a potential resource to scholars coming to knowledge management for the first time as much as it is to undergraduate and postgraduate students. -- Thomas Swann