Business Information Review

The potential of knowledge management (KM) for library and information professionals was investigated by the UK Library and Information Commission (LIC) funded research project: ‘Underpinning Skills for Knowledge Management: training implications’. This aimed to: gain an understanding of KM and the roles, skills and competencies needed in these environments; assess the implications for the library and information profession; assess the routes available to people wishing to develop KM skills; and examine the need for information literacy throughout KM environments. KM practitioners, representatives from KM environments, and KM experts and groups were consulted using: interviews, a questionnaire survey, case studies, workshops and market testing. Organizations implementing KM initiatives in Europe and North America were identified along with the emerging KM related roles, and the skills and backgrounds of people recruited to undertake them. Concludes that knowledge management is becoming commonplace but seldom in the form of large KM programmes. A small number of identifiable and achievable KM activities are usually introduced, those offering the most business opportunities being selected. The cumulative effect contributes to changing behaviour and attitudes but the term ‘knowledge management’ is used with extreme caution and many activities are not labeled as such.

Recent years have seen a rapid growth in the literature of knowledge management (KM) with over 1800 different software products labelled as KM, even though companies interpret the definition in different ways. Notes that this lack of consensus has not prevented the considerable expenditure of money on courses, seminars and conferences on how to develop knowledge management programmes and even how to define it. The author records the ways in which KMhas changed her working life through the need to understand the concept as interpreted by the companies she has worked for. Concludes that the stages of the information profession have shifted from custodian, to reactive, to proactive and finally, to innovative. Ways of thinking need to be changed in order to further knowledge management programmes. Sometimes the simple recognition that there is a knowledge management programme in operation can be a big step forward.

Reports key findings of the AIM-UK (Aerospace Information Management-UK) study of the effectiveness of internal research and technology information management systems in theUKaerospace industry and the effectiveness of information seeking and utilization by scientists and engineers working in industry and academia. The main contextual issues included: the relationship between information management and knowledge management; the possible impact of the Freedom of Information Act; collaborative approaches to information resource sharing; the Technology Foresight Programme; the Civil Aircraft Research and Demonstration Programme; the SBAC Competitiveness Challenge; the Lean Aircraft Initiative; the Defence Diversification Agency; and the NASA/DoD Knowledge Diffusion Project. Directors or senior managers, in the 18 companies studied, were interviewed to evaluate how effective aerospace companies managed the information that they had generated and to examine how issues of defence and commercial sensitivities could be reconciled to the wider needs of the UK. Concludes that personal stores of information and discussion with colleagues are still the most frequently used information sources; electronic sources do not dominate either in academia or industry; use of intranets in both academia and industry are at a low level; and Internet use in industry and academia was far lower than expected. The results of the study have produced a strategy for enhancing information management in the UK aerospace sector.

Discusses the importance of digital communities (communities of interest) for the library and information science (LIS) profession, considers some of their evolutionary and ecological aspects and identifies ways of building and maintaining communities of interest. Identifies the rapid growth of the Internet and WWW, coupled with the globalization of business, as the key elements in the emergence of digital communities. Considers ways of identifying and establishing potential communities of interest and how they can be cultivated and maintained within a digital infrastructure. These include: understand the community’s needs, the way its members work and their underlying values; and establishing and sharing a common purpose. Content identification, capture and engineering and contextual design are key issues to be addressed. Communities of interest will only prosper if they share an economic model which makes sense. Sponsors and users have to perceive value that rewards their cost of involvement and it is often a major challenge to understand the economic impact of a networked community. Key skill-sets required for networking and digital communities include: market research and analysis; leadership, communication and persuasiveness; systems thinking in digital information product and service development; analytical and synthetic skills; networking technology skills; marketing skills; and customer management expertise.

Considers the development of competitive intelligence as a formal discipline, noting that the use of competitive intelligence in Europe has been stimulated by developments in the USA. Notes that the pressure on companies to move from being competitor aware to being competitor intelligent is driven by the need to have a competitive strategy, the ability to use the intelligence once it is gathered to contribute to the bottom line, the ability to study competitors. In most European countries the developments which have resulted in a major intensification of competition between companies include: privatization; deregulation; liberalization; global marketing; periods of economic recession and reduced product and service differentiation. Consultancies providing competitive intelligence consist of competitive intelligence specialists, corporate investigators, secondary data feeders, benchmarking companies and market research organizations. Factors inhibiting the growth of competitive intelligence in Europe include data protection legislation, fear that competitive intelligence is unethical, counter intelligence, failure of competitive strategies to yield the expected gains. Concludes by discussing the role of the information manager in competitive intelligence gathering.

Outlines the development of business and management education in the UK and the increasing trend toward distance education. Describes and discusses the move towards Web-based delivery of information products and how business school librarians, in particular, have developed services to encapsulate both these changes and the increasing demands of servicing remote students.

The Managing Director of The RM Group, the largest independent company providing online business information and other information services to the business community, offers his views on the employability of young people emerging from university and the quality of training provided to ensure that they can cope with the requirements of modern business information. Concludes that students graduate with a lack of understanding of the commercial world and the practical restraints that this imposes on online and other information gathering techniques. The vital importance of information to company decision-making means that freshly graduated information professionals require extensive monitoring with 12–18 months needed for a graduate to have a full grasp of the research job and perhaps three years to understand the information industry in any depth. Outlines the importance of the Internet and the Web to business information providers. Concludes that it is up to the information industry to take fresh graduates, shape them, make them interested and retain not just the brightest but also those that are hardworking and committed.