The quality of evidence in knowledge management research: Practitioner versus scholarly literature

@article{citeulike:1959960, abstract = {The viability of KM partly rests on how researchers garner empirical support for their purported theories. One aspect of this would involve the evaluation of the evidence provided in KM research. This paper presents a comparative study of the evidence that is presented in scholarly and professional literature on KM. For this purpose, the paper introduces a typology of evidence to analyze the data obtained from the survey of the literature. The classification based on this typology reveals quantitative differences between the types of evidence put forth in the scholarly and practitioner literature. More interestingly, however, our analysis reveals differences in terms of the questions they ask, the perspective they adopt, and the methods they follow to convince others of the validity of their claims. We explain these differences in terms of the notions of blackboxing' and performance' borrowed from actor-network theory. 10.1177/0165551507080412}, author = {Ekbia, Hamid R. and Hara, Noriko }, citeulike-article-id = {1959960}, doi = {10.1177/0165551507080412}, journal = {Journal of Information Science}, keywords = {communities\_of\_practice, decision\_making, evidence-based\_practice, information\_behaviors, information\_theory}, month = {September}, pages = {0165551507080412+}, posted-at = {2008-02-29 17:05:03}, priority = {4}, title = {The quality of evidence in knowledge management research: Practitioner versus scholarly literature}, url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0165551507080412}, year = {2007} }

TY - JOUR ID - citeulike:1959960 L3 - citeulike-article-id:1959960 TI - The quality of evidence in knowledge management research: Practitioner versus scholarly literature JF - Journal of Information Science SP - 0165551507080412 N2 - The viability of KM partly rests on how researchers garner empirical support for their purported theories. One aspect of this would involve the evaluation of the evidence provided in KM research. This paper presents a comparative study of the evidence that is presented in scholarly and professional literature on KM. For this purpose, the paper introduces a typology of evidence to analyze the data obtained from the survey of the literature. The classification based on this typology reveals quantitative differences between the types of evidence put forth in the scholarly and practitioner literature. More interestingly, however, our analysis reveals differences in terms of the questions they ask, the perspective they adopt, and the methods they follow to convince others of the validity of their claims. We explain these differences in terms of the notions of blackboxing' and performance' borrowed from actor-network theory. 10.1177/0165551507080412 KW - communities_of_practice KW - decision_making KW - evidence-based_practice KW - information_behaviors KW - information_theory AU - Ekbia, Hamid AU - Hara, Noriko PY - 2007/09/26/ UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0165551507080412 ER -