Knowledge management and information technology: can they work in perfect harmony?

TLDR: The paper seeks to pin‐point the strengths and weaknesses of IT in the domain of knowledge management (KM) and to explain why the technology promise remains unfulfilled, as seen by many KM practitioners.

Abstract: Purpose – Aims to impart new insights into the role of information technology (IT) in knowledge extraction, capture, distribution and personalization. The paper seeks to pin‐point the strengths and weaknesses of IT in the domain of knowledge management (KM) and to explain why the technology promise remains unfulfilled, as seen by many KM practitioners.Design/methodology/approach – The discussion in this paper is fundamentally based on Stankosky's four KM pillars conceptual framework. Within this framework the authors attempted to shed some light on the IT role and the hidden reasons that make knowledge prominently unreachable via IT.Findings – IT assimilation and representation of knowledge intangibility, dynamism, experience and other humanistic cognitive dimensions remain debatable. The current technology is immature to resolve such problems. For IT to be effective for KM it must shred its bivalent logic and instead learn to operate within an authentic continuum.Originality/value – Knowledge managers ne...