Knowledge Identity (KI): A New Approach to Integrating Knowledge Management into Enterprise Systems

Despite the extensive studies about KM over the past four decades, the discipline still lacks a clear and practically comprehensive understanding of how KM can be integrated into enterprise systems. To a high degree, the issue is associated with the ambiguous assumptions taken by organizations about knowledge. Many of the assumptions of information systems theories about knowledge require revision, particularly how knowledge is managed. Conceptualizing knowledge as processed data and information has led contemporary design and implementation of enterprise systems to fail to capture the complexity of knowledge. In this article, we critically examine these views. We argue that the answer to the question as to how and to what extent enterprise systems can support KM, depends on the assumptions that organizations take towards the nature and sources of knowledge. To address this question, we introduce the concept of Knowledge Identity (KI) and a model of Enterprise Knowledge Integration.