Knowledge without Goals? Evaluation of Knowledge Management Programmes

In: Evaluation: the international journal of theory, research and practice, Volume 9, Issue 1, p. 55-72

Abstract

How to create and transfer knowledge in organizations is the subject of a rich and stimulating discourse among academics and practitioners. This article focuses on a still relatively unexplored aspect of this issue: the evaluation of the outcomes of programmes designed to stimulate the creation and transfer of knowledge in corporations (sometimes called Knowledge Management [KM] programmes). This is done by taking the concept of organizational goals for development of knowledge, and viewing their relation to evaluation against the backdrop of epistemological concerns. It is argued that the evaluation of programmes for the creation and transfer of knowledge is a complex task for a number of reasons, one of the most important of which is the constitutive character of knowledge itself. As a conclusion the article recommends a constructivist and goal-free framework for KM-programme evaluation, which has the capacity to sensitize the organization to the transformative nature of KM. The article concludes with a number of suggestions as to how such evaluations may be carried out.