Denise A. D. Bedford
Goodyear Professor of Knowledge Management
Kent State University, Kent Ohio
Communication Culture and Technology,
Georgetown University

• We invest in research for many reasons, but among the most important is that ultimately research may inform and improve practice.
• Knowledge management is a profession of practice
• While there is a rich body of peer reviewed and practically tested research, there are challenges to uptake
• The purpose of this research is to understand what some of those factors are and how we might mitigate them

• We acknowledge certain basic challenges to uptake o This discipline rests on an extensive information topology including informal primary, formal primary, secondary and tertiary information - it represents many different stages and forms of completeness o It is also multidisciplinary – the research is scattered across many disciplines o Because we have more practitioners than researchers, access to peer reviewed research is often costly and challenging (e.g. lack of access to commercial sources)
This research looks beyond these challenges and goes directly to the research itself – to determine whether it is practical or theoretical in nature, for whom it is intended, whether it is aligned with practitioner needs, and whether it is interpretable by and understandable to researchers

• Research Question 1. Does knowledge management research address the practical and applied needs of knowledge management practitioners?
• Research Question 2. What type of practitioner does the knowledge management research target?
• Research Question 3. Does the focus of knowledge management research align with the expressed interests and needs of knowledge practitioners?
• Research Question 4. Is the language of knowledge management research suitable for uptake by practitioners or does it require extensive interpretation and translation?

Question 1
Question 4
Question 2
Question 3

• A test corpus was created that included 187 peer-reviewed research publications – covered all facets of the field – and were drawn from both core and non-core Knowledge
Management journals
Knowledge Management Facet Research
Publications
% Total
Intellectual Capital
Collaboration and Communities
Knowledge Strategy
Knowledge Architecture
Organizational Learning
Knowledge Operations
Innovation
Knowledge Technology
Organizational Culture
Knowledge Asset Management
Total Observations
50
34
27
26
15
7
5
5
5
3
187
28.25%
19.20%
15.25%
14.69%
8.47%
3.95%
2.82%
2.82%
2.82%
1.69%
100%

• Because the research is heavily focused on the language of the research itself we leveraged high-end semantic analysis methods and technologies
• Research Questions 1 and 2 in particular made extensive use of natural language processing and semantic rules
• Research Question 3 relied on the results of a survey of knowledge management professionals
• Research Question 4 leveraged four standard methods for assessing the readability of text, as well as a semantic analysis of the scatter of language used in research

• SAS Content Categorization Suite supported the semantic analyses designed for Questions 1, 2 and 4
• Technology has a deep Natural Language Processing foundation, and provides access to concept extraction, rule-based categorization, statistical categorization and also rule-based summarization engines
• We leveraged the rule-based categorization engine and the concept extraction engine (noun phrase extraction)
• We constructed seven high level individual profiles to address these three research questions

• We identified four factors that would help us to answer this question.
• Factor 1: Does the language of research tend toward theoretical or practical?
• Factor 2: Does the language of research reference expected outcomes and are they applied or theoretical?
• Factor 3: Does the research language take on an active
(e.g., practical) or a passive (e.g. theoretical) voice?
• Factor 4: Does the language used to describe the research tend to be concrete or abstract?

• Of the 238 semantic markers signifying “applied research” included in this profile, 179 (75.21%) were referenced in the research corpus.
• A high percentage of the semantic markers in the profile were found in the research corpus (5.21%).
• Suggests that knowledge management research tends toward practice and application rather than theory.
• What is particularly interesting is the higher incidence rate for non-core journals – at 231.87 markers per document.

• A high percentage of the semantic markers signifying “expected outcome” (67.94%) were referenced in the research corpus.
• This is further evidence that knowledge management research tends toward practice and application rather than theory.
• Again, for this factor we note a slightly higher rate of incidence in the papers that were published in noncore journals - 68.30 – though not significant.

• The semantic profile for active and passive voice was comprised of a total of 62 semantic markers.
• All 17(100%) of the semantic markers representing active voice were found in the research corpus and the incidence rate for active voice was high across the full corpus – 98.73 occurrences per document.
• The incidence for non-core journals was significantly higher than for core journals (Table 10).
• Only 46.66% of the semantic markers for passive voice were noted.
• This result is points to more applied rather than theoretical focus.

Intentional Language Indicator
Allness Language
Consciousness of Projection
Identification – Predication
Language
Superlative Language
Non-KM
Core Journals
(Average)
100.05
18.90
51.66s
81.10
KM Core
Journals
(Average)
64.68
14.64
36.12
60.26
All Source
Average
80.91
16.63
43.25
69.82
Extensional Language Indicator
Comparative Language
Conditional Language
Pseudo-Quantifying Language
Quantifying Language
Non-KM
Core Journals
(Average)
129.61
133.95
48.30
243.39
KM Core
Journals
(Average)
100.77
97.35
37.72
196.03
All Source
Average
114.00
114.14
42.57
217.76
Results suggest much higher rates of incidence for use of Concrete Language

• Does knowledge management research address the practical and applied needs of knowledge management practitioners?
• The semantic analysis of applied research markers and expected outcome markers showed a clear tendency toward practice.
• The research suggests that – assuming we can overcome the discovery, access and affordability issues for practitioners – consumption and uptake of peer-reviewed literature should be strong.

• Generally it is not the case that published research targets a particular audience or user - rather, published research is intended to communicate the interests and focus of the researcher or research team.
• Constructed a semantic profile that represented the interests of potential practitioners and users.
Professional Role Non-KM
Core Journals
KM Core
Journals
All Source
Average
Business Operations
Communication
Professionals
Management Professionals
Knowledge Professionals
Technologists
Learning-Education
Specialists
Human Resource Managers
21.36
44.48
16.11
30.01
23.42
8.64
1.29
18.35
22.18
22.82
70.19
14.99
5.97
1.31
19.73
32.41
19.74
51.74
18.85
7.19
1.30

• Another important consideration for research uptake is whether the focus of the research aligns well with the work and professional interest of knowledge practitioners.
• In 2013, a survey was conducted of knowledge practitioners general professional and their work-related interests (Bedford
2012). Survey results were compared to an analysis of the corpus.
Facet of Knowledge Management KM Professionals
Ranking
Collaboration and Communities
Knowledge Asset Management
Knowledge Operations
Intellectual Capital
Knowledge Strategy
Knowledge Architecture
Organizational Culture
Knowledge Technology
Innovation
Organizational Learning
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
Rank by Incidence of
Published Research
4
9
1
3
2
10
6
8
7
5

• Research Question 4 considers whether the language used to report research is interpretable and understandable by practitioners.
• For understandability/readability Gunning Fog Index, the Coleman Liau
Index, the Flesch Kincaide Grade Level, the Automated Readability Index, and the SMOG Index suggest that the knowledge science research is well aligned with the education levels of knowledge practitioners and is well within the education levels of knowledge practitioners.
Gunning Fog Index
Coleman Liau Index
Index
Flesch Kincaide Grade Level
Automated Readability Index
SMOG Index
Average Score
13.19
14.6
11.4
11
10.3

• A second part of this question asked whether research required additional interpretation and translation by practitioners
•
• When considered in the context of disciplinary vocabularies and scatter there is indeed a challenge. 748 distinct concepts/terms were found in the corpus. There were few core terms.

• Research Question 1. Does knowledge management research address the practical and applied needs of knowledge management practitioners? o Yes, the research indicates that the knowledge science research tends towards the practical and applied needs of practitioners.
• Research Question 2. What type of practitioner does the knowledge management research target? o The research suggests that there is a strong alignment of research reported in the knowledge science journals with the job profiles and responsibilities of knowledge practitioners. Knowledge sciences research reported in non-core knowledge science journals, though, was more broadly targeted to related professions.

• Research Question 3. Does the focus of knowledge management research align with the expressed interests and needs of knowledge practitioners? o No, the research suggests that there are some significant discrepancies between the aspects of knowledge management addressed by current research and the stated interests of knowledge science professionals.
• Research Question 4. Is the language of knowledge management research suitable for uptake by practitioners or does it require extensive interpretation and translation? o While knowledge sciences research scores at an acceptable readability level of grade level 13.2, scatter in the vocabulary presents interpretability challenges. There is a need to develop knowledge organization and indexing tools to compensate for cross-disciplinary perspectives.

dbedfor3@kent.edu
db233@georgetown.edu