Knowledge Management (KM) is a discipline concerned with the analysis and technical support of practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable the adoption and leveraging of good practices embedded in collaborative settings and, in particular, in organizational processes. Effective knowledge management is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage, and a key to the success of contemporary organizations, bolstering the collective expertise of its employees and partners.
There are several perspectives on KM, but all share the same core components, namely: People, Processes and Technology. Some take a techno-centric focus, in order to enhance knowledge integration and creation; some take an organizational focus, in order to optimize organization design and workflows; some take an ecological focus, where the important aspects are related to people interaction, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system similar to a natural ecosystem.
Information Sharing (IS) is a term used for a long time in the information technology (IT) lexicon, related to data exchange, communication protocols and technological infrastructures. Although standardization is indeed an essential element for sharing information, IS effectiveness requires going beyond the syntactic nature of IT and delve into the human functions involved in the semantic, pragmatic and social levels of organizational semiotics.
The two areas are intertwined as information sharing is the foundation for knowledge management. KMIS aims at becoming a major meeting point for researchers and practitioners interested in the study and application of all perspectives of Knowledge Management and Information Sharing.