“Ideas are everywhere, but knowledge is rare.

”
Thomas Sowell−Knowledge & Decisions (1980)

“It is a clich´e that we live today in a knowledge economy.”

John Kay−Culture and Prosperity (2005)

“Knowledge is our most powerful engine of production.”

Alfred Marshall−Principles of Economics (1890)

“ . . . the boundaries of the firm are likely to be knowledge boundaries.”

Kling−Unchecked and Unbalanced (2010)

“Information and knowledge are at the heart of organizational design . . . ”

Holmstr¨om and Roberts−The Boundaries of the Firm Revisited (1998)

Chapter 1

Introduction
1.1 Background

The growth and survival of mankind depends upon knowledge. From the Stone Age till date, man

has struggled to know the unknown. He explored land, water and space by virtue of his

knowledge. Man has made progress in all fields starting from science, technology to arts etc. The

successful discoveries and inventions encouraged man to contemplate on new ideas. His ability to

rationalize, analyze and store the events in his memory enabled him to achieve success.

Knowledge gave him the power, confidence and courage to make life worthy of living. He began

to use the forces of nature for his own benefits. Thus, life become comfortable. He utilized his

knowledge to improve his own life.

In 1597, Francis Bacon said Knowledge itself is power. Knowledge is the awareness of
a fact or a situation. It is a rich and a unique possession that cannot be stolen or
plundered. Knowledge doesn't decrease when it is given. In fact, knowledge is power.
Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of countless human beings.
Those who have wide-range of knowledge and experience can capture power and
influence. The possession of knowledge gives them a distinct advantage over the semi
educated people. Half knowledge is regarded as 'the curse of god' and also it is worse
than ignorance.

In the early part of the last century, the British economist Adam Smith
wrote that if all the machine and artifacts created by man are lost for some reason or
other but the sources of knowledge which helped in creating them are saved then those
artifacts can be recreated; but if the knowledge sources are lost then the loss is far
greater as it would be very difficult to recreate the lost item. The implication that
knowledge is the key to survival, development and progress of a nation applies equally
to an enterprise.

Marshall (1920b) quoted “Capital consists in a great part of knowledge and

organization: and of this some part is private property and other part is not. Knowledge
is our most powerful engine of production; it enables us to subdue Nature and force her
to satisfy our wants. Organization aids knowledge; it has many forms, e.g. that of a
single business, that of various businesses in the same trade, that of various trades
 relatively to one another, and that of the State providing security for all and help for
many. The distinction between public and private property in knowledge and
organization is of great and growing importance: in some respects of more importance
than that between public and private property in material things; and partly for that
reason it seems best sometimes to reckon Organization apart as a distinct agent of
production.”

As Francis Bacon, Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall makes clear, Knowledge plays an important

role in all spheres of human life and activity. Knowledge and organization are important,

interrelated, inputs to production. In fact, “knowledge is our most powerful engine of production”.

An engine which is aided by organization.

Business and economic theory is increasingly concerned with the role of organizational

knowledge. As a source of economic success, knowledge is increasingly seen as having displaced

traditional factors of production in the post-Fordist economy (Drucker,1995) . The ability to

manage knowledge is becoming increasingly more crucial in today’s knowledge economy.

Knowledge management (KM) is arguably the strategic concern for many firms (Nonaka &

Takeuchi 1995).

Now many organizations are becoming increasingly concerned with organizational

knowledge and their use of knowledge to create and make quality products, deliver quality

services, and maximize the efficiency of their internal operations. The fact that knowledge is a

company’s asset no longer lies in the ability to store and retrieve them, but in the management of

its usage in a dynamic knowledge era.

Managers all over the world are realising that knowledge in the form of expertise and

competence, is the organisation’s most important asset and that its quality and availability

affect all aspects of the organisation. More and more executives, managers and professionals
 realise that in modern organisations, all valuable work is centred on knowledge-intensive

activities and that the organisation’s success is directly related to the quality and relevance of

these activities, particularly through knowledge workers’ expertise and willingness to use that

expertise to the advantage of the organisation. There is thus little doubt that we have entered

the knowledge economy, where what organisations “know” is becoming more important than

the traditional sources of economic power - capital, land, plant and labour (Drucker, 1992a: 6).

Natural resources, once the most valuable asset of the organisation, have been replaced by the

knowledge, created by and embedded in the knowledge worker’s mind. Unlike industrial age

assets that were managed on the principle of scarcity, the knowledge asset, if managed and

exploited appropriately, increases through sharing.

The late twentieth century has been described as the Age of Information, where an

emphasis was placed on the transformation and re-engineering of organisations. It has

already been suggested by authors such as Davenport (1999); Drucker (1992a); Hamel

(1995); Nonaka (1998a); Prusak (1996); Skyrme (1998a); Sveiby (1995);

Wiig (1993, 1994, 1995b) and many others that the twenty-first century will be the Age of

the Mind. The focus on the externally observable features of information will have been

replaced by a completely different set of rules, customs and modes of delivery. People will use

knowledge according to judgements made on a different set of criteria - the criteria for the

management of knowledge.

Knowledge economy is resulting in competition which increases the demand for

innovation. The wave has urged libraries which faced no competition before to think of ways to

add and show more value to their users and donors. The coming of digital libraries and other

information providers challenges traditional libraries to improve their practices before doomed

obsolete. Managing knowledge is however, complex and multifaceted. In addition, a history of

treating different types of information as discrete entities means that no one profession or

function has taken responsibility for this process. The library and information science (LIS)

profession in particular, has not even formulated a clear role for itself in this process. Current

research in this area is serving to validate the current trends in interest in KM within library and

information science.

1.2 Statement of the problem:

According to Peter Drucker “The most valuable asset of a 20th century company was its

production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st century institution will be its

knowledge workers and their productivity” (Drucker, 1999). Libraries have been reluctant to

create new measures in replacement for old measures such as number of books on the shelves,

the number of loans and so on. Still there is a dilemma as to what will the future holds for

libraries especially when most things are available online. There is a need for libraries to create

and demonstrate more value to appeal to the stakeholders given the fact that more and more

information providers exists. One way to achieve this is through promoting a well prepared and

motivated task force through adequate training and development opportunities. Even with this

era of very sophisticated technology the discoveries of machines which can think much the same

way as a human being is still a dream. The human mind is the principal contraption that

organizations need to generate new knowledge and innovation.

Librarians are among the most overlooked of knowledge workers. Yet for centuries the

services they provide have been essential to storing, preserving and accessing

knowledge in various form. It is arguable that they are the oldest and most well

established form of knowledge worker, responsible for developing various

organizational tools upon which much of modern knowledge is founded. One example

of the example of this is the bibliography, a precursor to modern taxonomy methods.

The invention of this tool is credited in part to one of the earliest and most famous
 librarians of antiquity Callimachus of Cyrene. (Rebecca Lloyd, 2003)

One of the main forces of change is globalization and central to this trend, is innovation

and the search for productivity improvements and international competitiveness. The

marketplace has become virtual, global and paperless. This new era, which some call the

knowledge economy, depends more on the creation and manipulation of knowledge and less on

the production of material and goods. The rules of business are thus rewritten and it forces a

radical rethink of corporate value.

The major challenge is that the large amounts of information internal and external to the

organization may not be used effectively for research and development decision-making

purposes. The volume of information creates challenges for workers in the areas of data

acquisition, integration, and management, which has resulted in a loss of innovation and a

decrease in productivity. The library and information science (LIS) profession - skilled in

the acquisition and distribution of information - in particular, has not even formulated a clear

role for itself in this process. To gain an understanding of the roles, skills and competencies

needed for managing knowledge and wants to assess the implications for the LIS profession, if

its members want to play a significant part in this process.

Various LIS literature is characterized by speculation about the future of libraries and

librarianship. One prominent LIS figure observed:

Libraries are under threat. If the world is really being built on information and

knowledge, transmitted almost instantaneously from any place to anywhere,

what role is left for yesterdays fusty mausoleums of print? Perhaps they will

survive as museums … (Brophy 2001, p.xiii).

The sheer volume and scale of information availability has contributed to new demands for access

to knowledge. Brophy, in the earlier quotation, was not advocating a future for libraries as

museums. Rather he was pointing to a different future in a world where with information

overload threatening organizations of all kinds, LIS professionals would perform access and

intermediary roles which embraced not just information but also knowledge management.

Knowledge management, therefore, has emerged as a response to challenges the profession faces

in a discontinuously changing environment.

From the LIS perspective, KM has been recognized as a further significant influence on library

practice, as reflected in the creation of new products and services, and in new knowledge-

linked titles for those (hitherto known as librarians) involved in their delivery. This is reflected

in the following quotation:

As the companies become more explicitly reliant on effective management of

their knowledge and information, so the opportunities for information

professionals are opening up (Abell & Wingar 2005, p.7).

KM is a very broad field, and includes by necessity many people of diverse educational and

experiential backgrounds. KM is a process that has been heavily influenced by the growth and

application of computer technology to data and information management.

That may explain why traditionally, KM has been located in IT departments. As the focus of KM

has moved from IT towards human expertise, including recognition of the importance of tacit

knowledge, other disciplines and departments have become increasingly involved. Koenig notes

that attendance at KM conferences shifted from being almost entirely comprised of IT people to

including a significant contingent of human resources people in the late 1990s (Koenig &

Srikantaiah 2002). LIS professionals connect to KM through their traditional role of managing
and organizing information. They are expert in content management, something that is often

central to successful knowledge management. KM is linked to information management because

knowledge is communicated and managed through information infrastructures that are used to

locate, create, distribute, store and eventually discard information (Morris 2004). Koenig sees

librarianship as bringing to KM:

a set of tools … to facilitate the implementation of KM, the extension of

librarianship, thus avoiding unnecessary, wasteful, expensive, and, above all,

time-consuming reinventions of the skills and tools we already have (Koenig

1996, p.300).

Consequently, information management has been seen as the essential prerequisite to KM

(Davenport 2004). Although managing knowledge is different from managing information, there

are a lot of transferable skills involved in the management of both (Webster 2007, p.77). With

fundamental values encapsulated in knowledge sharing and customer service, the library and

information community clearly fits within the knowledge management environment, a fit which

is enhanced by their core skills in information acquisition, organization and use (Corrall 1998;

Schwarzwalder 1999).

In recent decades, a body of literature has emerged that explicitly addresses knowledge

management from the perspective of library and information professionals. There is little to be

said about LIS in mainstream KM literature, where it has been rarely mentioned and then

largely as a „supporting discipline (Davenport 2004). But what does an examination of the LIS

literature reveal on this topic? Reviewing recent LIS literature reveals that the LIS community

has welcomed the challenges and opportunities knowledge management presents; for more than

a decade many of the leading figures in LIS education have contributed to the debate on such

issues (Broadbent 1997; Corrall 1998; Abell & Oxbrow 2001; Koenig & Srikantaiah 2002)1.
There is a key assumption reflected within the literature that since the organization of knowledge

has always been the strong suite of librarians, they must not only engage in, but also actively

spearhead knowledge management initiatives (Gandhi 2004). KM has been recognized as an

opportunity for improving the status and image of the profession through creating new roles and

responsibilities for the LIS profession. Marianne Broadbent was among the early advocates of

potential LIS involvement in knowledge management. In fact Broadbents much cited paper in

1997, was the starting point for much of the professions enthusiasm for KM. Much of the overlap

between KM and librarianship, and the potential opportunities for librarians, has resulted in

repeated calls for the LIS profession to engage more with KM (Ferguson & Hider 2006). However,

not everyone within the LIS community approves of KM.

A minority of commentators consider knowledge management as simply another management

fad and in fact, nothing more than information management (Wilson 2002). There have also been

a range of motherhood statements of the librarians have always been engaged in knowledge

management type (Milne 2000).

Knowledge management is a wide, interdisciplinary field that embraces the many aspects of

management of a key resource. There is an acknowledgement within the literature that, although

LIS professionals with potential IM competencies are likely to be significant players in knowledge

management, they need to develop additional skills and overcome a number of obstacles if they

are to extend their roles into the KM domain. This suggests that rather more is needed than for

LIS professionals to promote their expertise more widely, if they to aspire to involvement at the

strategic and policy-making level. For many in the information professions this is likely to entail

learning different kinds of skills and opening up to new ways of thinking. Broadbent (1997)

perceived LIS involvement in KM as conditional upon the nature of the work performed by

individual LIS professionals, and the extent to which they were able to look beyond the confines of
professional values and perceptions. KM has also been seen as a threat. This is because if LIS

professionals refuse to gain new skills and involve effectively in knowledge management practice

they risk becoming irrelevant to their organizations, and could be the losers in competition with

people from other industries. There is a different point of view, however, and that is that LIS

professionals should stick to what they know and resist being drawn into futile attempts to serve

other professional masters (Martin et al. 2006). However, this is not a challenge faced by the LIS

profession alone, and several areas such as human resources management find themselves faced

with the same challenge.

Some would of course argue that LIS professionals are already making their mark in the

knowledge management space (Brogan et al. 2001). and particularly in specialist new roles such

as those of information architects, taxonomy development, or content management for

organizational intranets (Ajiferuke 2003). The number of positions being advertised for librarians

in a KM role, especially in the legal and health sectors, has increased (Webster 2007). In these

sectors, LIS professionals are prominent, often through their expertise in the management of new

technologies (Valera 2004). Other LIS professionals have demonstrated their management

potential by transferring to careers in consultancy and other forms of business. Nevertheless, the

evidence of a few heroic examples may not necessarily constitute a long-term trend. Often this

involvement appears to entail LIS professionals doing more of the same, and I standing still in

terms of career progression, with accession to more senior knowledge management roles being

more a matter of aspiration than of achievement (Ferguson 2004), and this despite notable

exceptions including librarians, such as Trish Foy, Laurence Prusak and Paul Vassallo (Townley

2001). On the whole, the LIS professions may still labour under a dual, self-imposed handicap in

seeking to exploit opportunities in knowledge management. The first is a traditional reluctance to

move beyond the information container towards analysis and interpretation of its contents, and

the second, is that information professionals continue to promote themselves as service-oriented,

rather than value-oriented (Corrall 1998). The perpetuation of such attitudes may well help to
explain the general absence of an LIS component within the mainstream knowledge management

literature. Should the LIS professions opt to buy into the knowledge management game in search

of new opportunities and improved status, they must, however, be prepared to take a holistic view

and focus on organizational rather than simply personal or professional objectives (DiMattia &

Oder 1997). They must also be prepared to take the risk of self-promotion in competitive markets

for higher-level jobs (Abell & Oxbrow 2001).

In order to prepare for such risk-taking activities, as well as to ready themselves for a range of

roles across the knowledge management spectrum, LIS professionals must also address any

existing and potential gaps between their current and future needs for education.

The research proposal seeks to address three important issues:

 To what extent does knowledge management help in improving the competitiveness?

 How can special libraries support and extend effective knowledge Management systems?

 What are the competencies and skill required for LIS professional in knowledge

management environment?

1.2.1 Research problem

The LIS profession does not play a significant role in the knowledge

management environment or Knowledge Management Systems.

This statement was formulated after research into the management of knowledge revealed that

this profession receives little mention in the debate.

1.2.2 Research question

Does the LIS profession have a role to play in managing knowledge for the

organization it serves?
 The following questions emerged whilst determining the scope of this project:

What is this “knowledge economy” that organizations operate in?

• Is this economy something new and what is driving it?

• What does it require from participants?

Is it necessary for organizations to understand the concept of knowledge and

is it necessary to be managed?

• Why is it important to manage knowledge?

• Is information different from knowledge?

• What are the key components necessary to ensure successful knowledge

management implementation?

• How does the management of information differ from managing knowledge?

How does the LIS profession fit into the knowledge management

environment?

• What role does an organizational library play in the traditional paradigm?

• Did this role change in the new economy?

• What skills and competencies are needed for participation?

• Is the LIS profession equipped for this new role?

What does the picture look like for LIS professionals in India specifically?

What recommendations can be made to the LIS profession to ensure professional

visibility and recognition for adding value in the knowledge management landscape?

1.2.2. Objectives of the Study:

The main objective of this research is to obtain empirical evidence of information professionals’

involvement in knowledge management activities. Specifically, the objectives are to determine the

following:

 What contribution can LIS professionals make to the practice of knowledge management?
 To assess the degree of involvement of library and information professionals in Knowledge

Management.

 Skills required by the information professionals to participate effectively in KM activities;

 Barriers and facilitation factors inhibiting the participation of information professionals in

KM activities;

 Are developments in knowledge management likely to prove of major significance to the LIS

professions?

 Research and development Institutions are my interest area where the knowledge base is

critical factor of organizational growth and Special Libraries on the role to fulfill their

organizational objectives.

Scope and limitation of the study

The margin of error or confidence level determined the extent to which the results confirm or

dispute the assertion that Special librarians can operate as KM practitioners. This revealed the

inherent imprecision of survey data. Another weakness was that, having been their librarian, a

respondent may have felt the need to please, and in the process, jeopardize the accuracy of

responses. This was to a large extent controlled by the use of multiple methods of data collection.

The study is also limited to one very specific case therefore results may not necessarily be

applicable to other institutions. As the topic retrieve the broader perspective, there are the many

issues involved in the relationship between KM and LIS, the following were selected for this study:

the perceptions of LIS professionals about KM, the role of libraries/LIS professionals in KM, the

educational needs of LIS professionals and the required competencies for KM practice.

Furthermore, the research is limited as regards the generalizability of the findings. Although

intended to gain an Indian perspective on LIS and knowledge management, the survey succeeded

mainly in obtaining responses from National Capital regions. Thus, the result of this study is not

representative of the LIS profession as a whole and, therefore, might not be the true picture of the
position of KM within LIS. This could be explained in terms of the relative levels of library

development, and of the extent to which the concept of knowledge management has travelled.

Obtaining questionnaire and interviews with LIS professionals who were leaders of KM in their

organizations were conducted to gain in-depth insights into how LIS professionals practice KM.

Again, the diverse contexts in which the interviewees were located (some in Institution, some in

corporate bodies and some in research organizations) limits the extent to which their experiences

might be generalized.