Basic concepts of knowledge management. The concept of knowledge management in modern organizations. Knowledge within an organization

Basic concepts

Nowadays, the term "knowledge management" is increasingly used. However, this term is often used ambiguously and in different ways. Let's start with the definitions.

“Knowledge management is generally understood as a discipline that provides an integrated approach to the creation, collection, organization, access and use of an organization’s information resources. These resources include corporate databases, textual information such as documents describing policies and procedures, and, most importantly, the tacit knowledge and experience of people in the organization. ”

This is a fairly authoritative definition of the international company IBM. According to this definition, it can be seen that knowledge management is a rather complex and perfect information management system. This is also indicated by another definition below.

»Corporate knowledge refers to various business information that is necessary to maintain a high level of basic business processes of the enterprise, as well as to respond quickly to market dynamics. In a broader sense, knowledge is information materialized in the process of solving a specific problem in the form of some specific actions of people striving to achieve their specific goals. "

Let's consider other definitions.

“When implementing knowledge management technologies, we pay special attention to the strategy for creating and developing corporate data warehouses, which we link to the strategic aspects of the entire company and the needs of specific business processes.”

According to this definition, it turns out that knowledge management is a rather complex and perfect data management system.

In fact, there is no contradiction in these definitions. First, in many English-language publications, it is specifically noted that knowledge management is a single term that defines a certain level of complexity of a cybernetic software system. And this is not management of knowledge.

3 The concept of knowledge

Nevertheless, there are still ongoing attempts to figure out what is the difference between the three concepts - data, information and knowledge. And the question of this is conceptually very important. As noted by many authors, the problem lies in the fact that knowledge, like other basic philosophical categories, is rather difficult to describe and define in a direct way, in the image and likeness of the concept of "the limit of sequence". In this case, the category "knowledge" (like the set) can be considered basic and undefined.

For example, consider such definitions. Thus, Aristotle in his work "Metaphysics" says that the desire for knowledge is one of the basic properties of man. Or more modern ones:

Cognition is a prosess of active exploring the environment and creating various types of new knowledge by some entity in order to optimize its living processes and / or gain goals.

"Cognition is a process of active research of the environment and the creation of various types of knowledge in order to optimize life processes and achieve certain goals."

"Knowledge is a set of concepts and ideas about objective reality, their internally interrelated systems (judgments, positions, concepts, theories, etc.), developed by society in the process of cognition and transformation of the world. and subsequently produced in the specialized - scientific - activity of society, first of all for the achievement of practical goals, knowledge more and more embraces the object, penetrates ever deeper into its secrets, that is, it develops both in extensive and intensive terms ...

These are examples of a general philosophical definition that is quite correct, but also rather useless for practical applications.

As you can see from these definitions, they give a general idea of \u200b\u200bwhat knowledge or cognition is, as a cognitive process. But, in order to build a QS based on knowledge, this is not enough. You need to know at least:

How knowledge differs from similar concepts - data and information.
What are the ways of presenting or processing knowledge in the COP.
What are the sources of knowledge?

Therefore, in the tasks of computer science, it is possible and more convenient to define the category of knowledge in some sense indirectly - through its most diverse properties and processing methods (Kolesov). Apparently, in our case, we will also have to go this way.

4 Localization of knowledge.

It seems that the easiest way to start is with the question "where is knowledge?" That is, with the problem of its localization. This problem is not as trivial as it might seem. The best way to do this is to start with the classics. As mentioned above, Grigory Skovoroda for the first time in his essay "The Flood of Serpents" described the concept of three worlds. According to his description, the reality that surrounds us (in English Reality - R) enters the first world. The second world includes the inner world of a person (English term Mind or M). The third world, according to G. Skovoroda, is the world of signs (signs - or S). Indeed, this world does not intersect with either of the first two worlds. It is difficult to doubt the autonomy of the existence of the world of signs in the era of the Internet. Especially if it was predicted over two hundred years ago. And independently of Skovoroda, some Western philosophers of the 20th century came to the discovery of the third world - for example, Karl Popper. He even called this world "the third world".

As you know, philosophical systems, depending on the recognition of the primacy of the existence of one of the first two worlds, are divided into materialistic (the primacy of the material or real world R) or idealistic (the primacy of the spirit or inner world M). However, the concept of a word as a generalized image of the sign world is also found in texts, and even in very ancient ones. The question of its existence and primacy is also discussed. Thus, the Gnostic Gospel of John begins with the words "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God." It is clearly enough said about the Word as about the third world and about the problem of its primacy, origin, etc. - and a fairly authoritative author. If we suspend now the philosophical and theological reasoning, then we can move on to practical conclusions about the localization of knowledge in one of these three worlds.

That is, now we can continue the discussion about how this theoretical construction can serve information technology, in particular, a clearer understanding of what knowledge is. Here, as already mentioned, the problem of not primacy, but belonging is more urgent and fruitful. Indeed, data is a real-world phenomenon. These are magnetized areas of discs, grooves of records and CDs, modulated radio waves, etc. They can be measured and often seen or touched. However, this data carries encoded information that can be perceived only if it is converted into signs - for example, visual, sound. On the computer screen, we see their iconic content. Through the speaker, we hear encoded sounds from a gramophone record or transmitted over the radio. This is not a discovery, but a statement of fact. That is, information has a symbolic nature and belongs to the world of signs. A similar reasoning leads to the conclusion that knowledge belongs to the inner world of man. Complex and simple cognitive processes occur in full only in the human mind - from complex proofs of theorems to Aristotelian syllogisms. And now work is underway to model and transfer the most elementary of these processes into cybernetic systems.

To clarify (at least in a first approximation) this important fact, we can give a fairly trivial example from school practice. School teachers are engaged in managing the process of converting information found in school textbooks (which students often read "from now on") into knowledge. At the same time, when interviewing students, teachers professionally, using special questions, find out whether the memorized information from the textbook is in the student's head (that is, he memorized the lesson) or it has been transformed into knowledge. More precisely, one of the criteria for distinguishing information and knowledge will be described below.

So, data are objects of the material world. Information is signs obtained by converting data in the mind of a person or in a computer processor. Knowledge, however, is still only in humans or in its most elementary form in cybernetic systems (CS). But not yet in knowledge management systems, which are so often called for marketing reasons and are often very sophisticated information management systems (or data - since processing begins with reading data, converting it into information, etc.).

5Elementary act of knowledge processing. The criterion for the existence of knowledge.

It is now possible to illustrate and clarify the above reasoning. Indeed, if we introduce the following two facts into the COP:

1. Student Petrov studies in group 925.

2. Students Ivanov and Petrov study in one group.

If after that we make a request to the system:
- In which group is student Ivanov studying?
Any schoolchild will answer this question, but it seems interesting to know which knowledge management system will answer correctly to such a question.

This is where the difference lies between the most advanced knowledge management system (in the sense described above - like a perfect IS) and a system that is actually capable of processing knowledge. Such a system has an essential property that can be taken as a criterion for defining a real system that works with knowledge - namely, the ability to generate new or additional knowledge as a result of its own internal cognitive processes. You can return here to the example with schoolchildren. Of course, in this simplest case, any schoolchild will answer in which group Ivanov is studying. However, having read a text from a textbook given by a teacher, not every student is able to transform it into knowledge, that is, be able to generate new knowledge if necessary.

As already mentioned in the preface, one of the goals pursued in this course is the desire to be as clear as possible (in conditions where this clarity, for example, a sharp boundary between concepts), nevertheless describe the basic concepts, paradigms and technologies understood in informatics under the term "management knowledge "or its often used English equivalent" knowledge management ".

So, we know that knowledge is in the mind of a person or a rather complex QS. The criterion that there is knowledge in a problem area is the ability to generate (generation or auto-generation) new knowledge. We can say that this criterion for the generation of surplus knowledge is the ability of IS (CS) to process knowledge.

6Sources of knowledge

You should immediately pay attention to another important fact that requires some philosophical culture to understand. The source of knowledge is not yet knowledge itself. The text is a sign construction and often contains knowledge. But the text is not knowledge, but only its source. Knowledge from the text still needs to be extracted. Human or COP. The Bible contains a lot of knowledge, but everyone gets it in their own way and not everything that can be potentially extracted from there. Although you can often find the statement that a text (especially a highly formalized text - for example, a mathematical article) is knowledge. This is only true in the sense that it is easier to extract knowledge from there. This is also true for reality - the material world around us. It contains a huge amount of knowledge in latent form. And to identify and describe them is the task of various sciences. That is, the material world around us is also not knowledge, but only its source. As well as one of its implementations - data on any material medium.

Here one can only briefly touch upon the problem of knowledge extraction. The knowledge gained can be presented (that is, re-embodied) in a wide variety of forms - laws, universals, definitions, and even incompletely understandable texts.

7 Knowledge domain

Using the paradigm of the three worlds, it is now possible to quite clearly define the concept of a subject area (software) or knowledge domain or simply domain, often used in computer science and other cognitive sciences. Indeed, on the basis of belonging to one of the three worlds, human activity (often formally) can be divided into three types - objective activity, realized in the material world (R), mental activity and sign activity. In practice, it is often impossible to separate them. Even in order to build a barn, you need to have its idea in mind and sketch out the simplest plan on paper.

Therefore, the subject area related to a given task (theoretical or practical) means the set of material, mental, sign objects, their qualities and relationships involved in this type of activity.

So that the presentation is not too abstract, you can take for the exercise the definition of software for billiards, football, opera, housing, etc. Such a possibility will be realized during the laboratory work on ontology coding.

Dialectics of correlation - "knowledge-information-data"

As already stated, knowledge, -information and -data are not the same thing. But very often they are used one instead of the other, and there are reasons for this. Indeed, let us expand on the example of students described above and imagine that a huge amount of information (of course, in the form of data) about students is entered in the COP. Let's imagine that our COP is incapable of conclusions, i.e. to the generation of new knowledge. Nevertheless, it will be able to respond, that is, give back to the user, upon his request, all the information entered into it. Let us now imagine that the CS under consideration is already capable of drawing the simplest conclusions described above, at least within the framework of Aristotelian syllogisms. It is clear that from the user's point of view, there is not much difference here, although on the other hand, the difference is fundamental. Therefore, there is reason to consider some IS, which stores only a huge amount of facts, that is, information as a knowledge management system from the point of view of practice, even if it is not capable of making the simplest conclusions, that is, generating new facts.

Moreover, in practice it is often not discernible. The user does not know how information about students Ivanov or Petrov was entered into his IS. In order to find out in which group Ivanov, you just need to find the desired record. And in order to find out in which group of Petrov, it is necessary to generate new, hitherto unknown knowledge. But in both cases it is presented in the same way. Only in the latter case should new information be generated. There is a process described by the following diagram -
K _____\u003e I _____\u003e D
This process is called the process of reification or reification of knowledge.

It can be repeated once again that a certain philosophical culture is required to fully understand this process. For an adequate understanding of such processes, in fact, philosophy is studied in universities.

So, a typical system capable of processing, that is, extracting and generating new knowledge, will consist of two interconnected blocks - a knowledge base (KB - Knowledge Base) and a cognitive processor or knowledge processor (KP - Knowledge Processor), which, in fact, is implements the function of processing knowledge recorded in KB:
For the user, at his request, this knowledge must be generated and converted into the form of information (reified):
User<____> I<___>
Formats of knowledge representation in KV and methods of their processing in KR will be discussed below.

A new trivium.

As already mentioned here in the introduction, now, apparently, the fact of the rapid growth of various kinds of sign systems, the increase in their role in the life of society, their striking diversity, as well as many of their other functions and properties, does not require proof. Semiotics as a science about the general properties of signs and sign systems, from a peripheral, exotic or auxiliary science (something like numismatics) is turning into one of the leading scientific disciplines (at least in computer science).

Indeed, in the past, despite the existence of many sign systems (ES), the leading and basic ES was the natural language (NL). Therefore, the classical education of people was based on the trivium of sciences (where the expression "trivial" came from) - grammar, rhetoric and theology. If we recall the subject of these sciences, then, from the point of view of semiotics, grammar is the syntactics of NL, and rhetoric and theology allow us to correctly describe the semantics and implement the pragmatic function of speech, therefore, to build all our behavior. Taking into account the above, one should recognize the need for a new trivium, built on semiotics "in its pure form", which is the basis of teaching - that is, on the study of syntactics, semantics and pragmatics of sign systems.

The effectiveness of technologies based on the principles of a new trivium that takes into account the realities and universals of the three worlds (real, symbolic and consciousness) can be illustrated by the example of the technology of obtaining information by Americans from their prisoners in Iraq. Indeed, only a specialist could have noticed many of the essential features of this technology in the conflicting media reports. But there were features that were worth paying attention to. Indeed, practically without seriously exposing the bodies of Iraqi prisoners to serious physical impact, they were subjected to cruel (according to the norms of their Muslim culture) moral torture, forcing them to assume obscene postures. But the matter was not limited to this. Photos were taken with the threat of their publication in order to discredit these people in the eyes of their relatives and neighbors, which was tantamount to their civil death (). Apparently, these technologies, built taking into account the semiotic characteristics of the local civilization, turned out to be more effective than primitive knockout of readings.

Local knowledge processing systems

Syntactics, semantics and pragmatics of knowledge representation

Within the framework of this presentation, there is no need and no possibility to analyze all the variety of knowledge representation systems. However, it is enough to really describe the most common of them. These structures include predicates (or, more generally speaking, logical calculi), frames, and semantic networks. All three of these structures are described in sufficient detail in a variety of literature. Therefore, only the basic principles of their construction will be touched upon here.

So, logical predicates are expressed quite simply in the notation adopted in the prologue programming language specially created for their processing. So, to describe the fact that John is Mary's father, you need to write the following expression -
Father (John, Mary)
Such a record already allows you to answer questions such as "who is Mary's father", "whose father is John". It is possible to form much more complex logical structures expressing knowledge in any subject area. They are described in detail in numerous tutorials on applied logic and on the prologue programming language. Attention should be paid to the positive fact that there is a ready-made cognitive processor (CR) for processing knowledge bases (KB) built on predicates - the prologue language. Systems built on such structures are quite effective. So, the system, GEOBASE, which was the basis of one of the laboratory work (and freely available on the Internet), describes quite well such software as the geography of the United States, answering questions asked in limited English (natural language - NL). This system can be easily expanded and reconfigured for any other software.

In fairness, it should be said that the authorship of such a system of representing knowledge in the form of syllogisms goes back, apparently, to Aristotle.

Frame-based knowledge systems are frames or tables (which is in English frames), divided into slot cells. Elementary units of knowledge are recorded in them. So, the example reproduced above about John and Mary will be written in the form of a frame in the form of a table with the name Father from two cells (slots), in which the information is written respectively - the name of the father and the child. Only the CR program that processes frames needs to be written by yourself. One of the first knowledge in the form of frames was proposed to code by Marvin Minsky in the USA in the 60s. XX century It is easy to see that frames can be converted into predicates and processed by programs in the prologue language.

A very convenient and visual form of knowledge representation is the essence of semantic networks (SS). They are actively developed by a large number of scientists, as well as scientific laboratories and commercial enterprises around the world. Very detailed information about the SS is presented on the Internet and in the publications of John Sowa. In SS, software objects are represented by rectangles and they are connected by arcs that indicate their qualities or connections. For convenience of description, the arcs contain circles in which the values \u200b\u200bof these arcs are inscribed.

So, the English sentence - Cat is on the mat. - will be presented in the CC form in the form -
----- (on) -----
Very complex and varied information can be presented in the CC form. Separate fragments of the SS are easily connected to each other. But the programs for their processing must also be written by yourself. This can be clearly seen on the sites of John Owl. Separate semantic units can also be easily represented in the form of SS through a set of typical semantic connections (arcs):

The simplest cognitive processes.

Forms of presentation of cognitive processes

Knowledge processing processes (cognitive processes) are quite complex and not fully understood. At present, as already mentioned, attempts are being made to transfer, simulate some of them in the COP, thereby applying them for practical human activity. These cognitive models can be embodied in a wide variety of forms. It can often even be said that the same cognitive process can be described, modeled, or formalized in different ways, depending on the pragmatic needs of the application.

The process of understanding a sign

It is fair to start by considering the simplest cognitive process - the process of understanding a particular sign, partly analyzed in the above when defining the concept of "sign". Indeed, a person, or, which is now more important for us, the CS, having somehow perceived the sign object S, generates his image S1 in himself. A sign, by definition, is that which replaces another object in consciousness - denotatum D. This means that the image of denotatum D1 is activated in consciousness. In this case, the denotatum D itself may not even be available to direct observation. Then we can say that the act of the simplest understanding of a separate sign described by the diagram has taken place:

S _____\u003e (S1 ____\u003e D1)
The addressee of the sign understands that we are talking about a specific denotation, without even perceiving it. Indeed, if we see the word "table" (S), then we have a visual image of it, from which, as a result, we come to the image (concept) of the table, even if we do not directly observe it. The processes taking place in consciousness are enclosed in curly braces. It is clear that such a process of understanding a single sign is not difficult to simulate and implement in the CS, multiplying it on the understanding of whole sign syntagmas.

8 The process of generation (auto-generation) of an elementary unit of knowledge

This process, which underlies Aristotle's syllogisms, was described over two thousand years ago. Thus, the famous Barbara syllogism will be processed as follows. If Socrates is a man and All people are mortal, then Socrates is mortal. It is very important to note that this cognitive process contains, as an elementary sub-process, the process of sign understanding described above. The first two statements are perceived by a person or COP in the process of their sign processing, described above. Its result was the generation of new knowledge - "Socrates is mortal." As in the case of sign understanding, this process takes place internally, in the inner world (consciousness) of a person or using a cognitive processor in the COP. It is easy to see that such a processor can be easily implemented on the basis of the prologue language.

Brooks' formula

The next level of the cognitive generalizations described above is Brooks' formula. Indeed, if the QS (with amendments to the terminology will be true for a person, but further we will talk about the cybernetic aspects of these processes, meaning their implementation in software products) is already contained in knowledge as some structure (S), which can be processed by its cognitive processor K, then with a symbolic understanding of the next piece of information I, this structure must be perceived, understood and written into its knowledge base. In its most elementary form, this can be described by the following formula:

K (S) + I \u003d K (S + S1)
However, analyzing this formula, one can come to the conclusion that this is not always the case. First, not all information, generally speaking, can be perceived and processed. Then Brooks' formula will look like this:
K (S) + I1 + I2 \u003d K (S + S1)
Here I2 denotes information that, for one reason or another, is not understood and processed. However, this formula does not always accurately describe the cognitive processes occurring inside the COP. Indeed, the knowledge base S is not always additive. Therefore, it is more correct to speak about the transformation of S into S1. Then the formula is converted to the following form.
K (S) + I1 + I2 \u003d K (S1)
But here, too, a final clarification can be made. Generally speaking, after understanding the received and processed information, the cognitive processor itself can change, become different (in a sense, smarter). Then our formula is transformed again to the following form.
K (S) + I1 + I2 \u003d K1 (S1)
Bearing in mind that the new knowledge (S1) and the "wiser" cognitive processor (K1) have become so when understanding only part of the information (I1).

Knowledge management (KM) can be summarized as a process of integrated transformation by a corporation of its intellectual assets into profits and material values. This process affects the organizational, technical and cultural aspects of the corporation. Knowledge management (KM) provides a full cycle of operations with corporate knowledge (documents, databases and knowledge, electronic content and personnel experience): identification, extraction, storage, transformation, distribution and use. Knowledge management makes it possible to leverage collective experience and knowledge (social capital) and transform them into corporate capital.

KM includes completely different components: knowledge exchange, management of external information flows, training, structuring knowledge in a corporation, collaboration on social networks, customer relationship management, etc.

There are other definitions of KM.

Knowledge management is a discipline that provides an integrated approach to the creation, organization, access and use of an organization's information resources: structured databases, textual information, documents describing rules and procedures, as well as the most important implicit knowledge of employees, etc. (definition Gartner Group) .

Knowledge management is a formal process that evaluates organizational processes, people and technologies and creates a system that uses the relationships between these components in order to provide the right information to the right people at the right time, which leads to increased productivity (definition NUS) .

Knowledge management as a concept integrates systematic processes through which the knowledge necessary for the success of an organization is created, stored, distributed and applied.

The concept of "knowledge management" carries a double semantic load: it is both management technology and information technology (Fig. 3.1). However, in fact, we are talking about the synthesis of these technologies, united by the concept of "corporate knowledge management".

Figure:

The terms “knowledge management” and “knowledge management” are often identified, although there are significant differences between them. Knowledge management refers to a purely functional task - the management of systematized information. Knowledge management, or knowledge-based management - the purposeful organization of the entire corporation, where knowledge is considered as the main strategic factor of success. That is, knowledge management is only an integral part of this global task.

Knowledge management is one of the main concepts of business development, along with overall quality management, process approach and reengineering of business processes, e-business, balanced scorecard methodologies ( Bsc), the system of economic value added (EVA)and others. In the near future, UZ will become a key technology that defines the management paradigm.

The strategic objectives of UZ are:

audit and assessment of existing knowledge resources, their sources and information resources of the corporation;
identification of relevant and defining knowledge and information for a given type of business;
defining the type of corporate knowledge management scenario;
development of a classification of corporate knowledge;
determination of the technological component of the project and the selection of the necessary IT solutions.

The main role of knowledge management is not to reduce costs, but to significantly increase the competitive advantage for the corporations that have implemented it. Table 3.3 shows the evolution of the basic concepts of management, the change of which shows the search for the most effective technologies at various levels.

Table 3.3

Basic management concepts

Management paradigm	Comment
Financially oriented management	Became relevant for enterprises in the initial period of transition to a market economy, replacing purely production tasks
Marketing management	It replaced the previous paradigm in the transition from the manufacturer's market to the buyer's market. Management based on marketing as a defining ideology
Quality management (process-oriented management)	As a management concept, it is not reduced to the functional task of quality management (the task of the quality control department), but involves building a business based on the ideology of the organization's quality and improving the processes of activity focused on satisfying correctly identified customer requirements
Knowledge management (cognitive management)	Closely related to the concepts of the intangible economy, the knowledge economy that underlie the optimal organization of company processes

The initial basic concept can be considered financially oriented management. When moving to the buyer's market, he was replaced marketing management, in which marketing has become the defining ideology of management. Marketing management was replaced by quality management, which involves building a business based on the ideology of quality, including the quality of the organization and the improvement of business processes aimed at satisfying correctly identified customer requirements. Transition to knowledge management (cognitive management) happened when the search for a reliable basis began both for a more accurate and quick identification of customer needs, and for the optimal organization of business processes.

What we call knowledge management today was born fifteen years ago as a new direction in management. In the beginning, UZ had nothing to do with information technology. The original goal was to create guidelines and methodologies for the optimal use of the intellectual potential of company employees. Knowledge was recognized as an economic category, and after a short time, information technologies appeared to work with them. Why UZ is needed for an enterprise's activities, what advantages it gives, is very fully described in the report Knowledge Management Research Report 2000. It follows from this document that for most European and American enterprises, the introduction of UZ has become a reality.

Analysts IDC predict a significant growth in the market for consulting services and UZ technologies, as a result of which its volume will increase to $ 10 billion. Indirectly, the prospects of this market segment can be judged by the attention paid to it by large companies. For example, in IBM singled it out in a separate direction, and this, as you know, is a fairly accurate barometer: a corporation enters the market if only the bill goes to the billions.

The problem of introducing a unified terminology and standardization in the field of knowledge management is becoming an urgent task. Standardization is part of the process of converting technology into a commodity, into a commodity. The existence of standards helps to conquer markets, stimulates competition, increases the level of competence of manufacturers through the wider dissemination of best practices. There is another strong argument for standardizing knowledge management processes. In Western practice, banks and accounting firms seek to convince companies to keep account of their "invisible assets". In the future, any organization may be asked for a balance sheet with metrics that characterize the state of intellectual capital. Knowledge auditing is becoming the norm.

American (Proposed Draft American National Standard. Knowledge Management Vocabulary, 2003) and European ( European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management, 2004) Knowledge Management Standards. In 2005 Standorts Austra- lia published the second version of the Australian standard for KM “Interim Australian Standard. Knowledge Management ". Earlier, in 2001, the same organization issued a national document "Knowledge Management - A Framework for sicceeding in the knowledge era". This document was largely based on the principles of risk management and its role in the organization, showing practical steps for applying AF processes to specific business goals, allowing companies to harmonize activities on KM in relation to business risks.

In the West, public interest in AF is very noticeable. A large number of materials have been prepared: books, government memorandums (for example, the English national program for building a knowledge-driven economy), reports from major analytical companies, magazine articles, numerous proprietary materials. Every year several dozen major conferences and seminars are held, one way or another related to KM.Here are just some of the works of leading experts in the field of knowledge management, which deal with theoretical and practical aspects of knowledge management, as well as issues of development, implementation and maintenance of knowledge management systems in a business organization in order to increase its competitiveness and efficiency.

Alvin Toffler (1928 - 2016) - American philosopher, sociologist and futurologist, considering the global problems that humanity will face at the turn of the 21st century, proposed his concept of a post-industrial society. He believed that human capital is the most important resource of a post-industrial society, in whose economy the dominant role will belong to information technologies, and assumed the emergence of a completely different type of work in the industries of the Third Wave, where the participation of workers in decision-making is increasing, rigid work schedules are replaced by mobile ones, about an increase in production and beneficiation, instead of increasing fractionality; creativity is encouraged, the right to choose is given.
Daniel Bell (1919 - 2011), American sociologist and publicist, believed that the supremacy of knowledge, the presence of intelligent technologies characterizes a post-industrial society, where economic activity will require an increasing use of human capital, to which he attributed the acquired knowledge, skills, motivation and energy of workers ... The ideas of human capital were also developed in the works of Russian scientists, such as S.G. Strumilin (1877 - 1974), a Soviet economist and statistician, academician of the USSR Academy of Sciences, who studied the relationship between the degree of qualifications of workers and their education.
A.N.Dobrynin and S.A. Dyatlov consider human capital to be a form of manifestation of human productive forces, a leading, creative factor of reproduction. MM Kritsky in his writings argued that human capital, being a form of economic life, enriches the worker and is realized in the quality of his life. L.I. Abalkin, developing the foundations of the Russian school of socio-economic thought, considered human capital as a factor that generates income. R. I. Kapelyushnikov considers the issues of the evolution of human capital in Russia, its profitability, the influence of the ideas of human capital on the socio-economic policy of the state.
On the eve of the new century, a new round of interest arose in the issues of quality and productivity of labor, human resource management, human capital development, which were discussed by representatives of various sciences. For example, Herbert Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), a Canadian philosopher, philologist, literary critic, and communications ecologist, believed that an employee's human capital expands by replenishing the knowledge and experience of other employees through communications. Enedzi (Yoshita) Masuda (1905-1995) - Japanese sociologist and futurologist, in his concept of the information society, argued that the mass production of knowledge in the near future will make an information revolution and, thereby, strengthen human capital, which will provide an opportunity for problem solving and development cooperation, that is, intellectual production will become the leading sector of the economy.
Peter Drucker (1909-2005), who presented the scientific concept of management in an organization in the form of a systematized amount of knowledge, considering management issues in the 21st century, noted that each organization will have to independently develop the human capital of its employees, which included knowledge, skills and health, so how exactly on the basis of individual capital, the most valuable resource, the firm's advantages in the knowledge age are formed. Philosophers, mathematicians, sociologists and representatives of other sciences in different countries in the transition period to a post-industrial society are studying the changes in socio-economic relations that occur as a result of the impact of information technology on the employee, changes in working conditions, the growing role of an active employee who can make decisions based on knowledge.
At the same time, such a need was brewing within companies as well. Thus, a new area of \u200b\u200bmanagement was formed - knowledge management (KM), or knowledge management (Knowledge Management), and the concept itself was introduced by the American researcher Carl Wiig in 1986. He believed that knowledge in a specific situation interprets the information received, is the basis for making decisions on specific problems.
The tasks of effective use of human resources in an organization have led to a wide interest in this rather new type of management activity - “knowledge management”. T. Davenport, professor of information systems management at Boston University School of Management and director of the Institute for Strategic Change at Accenture, and L. Prusak, director of the Institute for Knowledge Management (IKM) at IBM, emphasized that knowledge is experience, values, intuition and other parts of human capital, and are developed in communication processes between employees. They defined indicators for measuring knowledge and showed their role in the management of a modern organization. Considering that knowledge becomes obsolete, updated and supplemented under the pressure of the latest achievements of science and there is a need to apply new knowledge to solve changed problems, in 1990 Peter Senge, an American scientist, develops principles for building such an organization in which mechanisms for the development of human resources are created based on knowledge and expanding opportunities to achieve the required results. The study of modern processes of human resource development, the intellectual capital of companies around the world led scientists Ikujiro Nonaka, professor at the School of International Corporate Strategy at Hitotsubashi University, and Hirotaka Takeuchi, professor at the Harvard University Business School, to create a model of interaction between explicit and implicit knowledge possessed by employees of organizations. They argue that the constant "spiral" activity of accumulating individual knowledge and its dissemination within the organization leads to the creation of new, organizational knowledge itself.
In the context of the transition to the information society in Russia, the corresponding changes in the nature of labor, the emergence of new economic incentives, new directions for the development of organizations, interest in knowledge management has increased. B.Z. Milner (1929 - 2013), professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, argued that improving the efficiency of an enterprise is based on the systematic formation, updating and application of new knowledge. A. L. Gaponenko, Professor of the Russian Academy of National Economy and public service under the President Russian Federation, the object of knowledge management defines precisely the people working in a particular organization - human resources, their relationships with each other. He emphasizes that such sciences as psychology, sociology, cultural studies provide a basis for developing modern methods on human resource management, allow you to switch from production processes to knowledge.
The issues of the development of economic science, strengthening the function of knowledge in the economy of the future, their microanalytical description, the role of knowledge management in the general structure of organization management, its interdisciplinary nature, the formation of "knowledge" as one of the main factors of production that connects human resources with all other resources of the organization, are raised Russian scientists in the first 10th anniversary of the 21st century.
The issues of human resource management, in general, and knowledge management - the isolation of certain types of activities at the junction of various knowledge, in particular, are actively moving into a practical plane. This is evidenced by the intensive emergence of new figures in business (Chief knowledge officer, CKO), new positions at the linear management level, in the names of which there are different contexts, designed to combine various disciplines into a single integral content of activity: Head of instrumentation department / ACS (Instrument & Controls Systems Manager); Research & Development Manager; Head of Strategy & Safety Manager; Head of Administration & Support manager, Head of Training & Development Manager. Many organizations are working to implement knowledge management technologies.

The main thesis of E. Toffler is that from the first wave, traditional (the main type of production is agriculture), through the second wave, industrial (the main type of production is the extraction and processing of natural resources, as well as industry) goes to the third wave, postindustrial (the leading role in society is assigned to knowledge, information, computers). Toffler Alvin. Third wave. M .: AST: Philosophy. 2010.784 p.

Throughout the development of mankind, great importance was attached to information, but until the 1980s. information management was not viewed as an independent activity requiring additional qualifications from employees. Previously, information management functions were performed by employees independently in the course of their professional activities.

In the early 1980s. the concept of "information resource management" appears (UIR - Information resources management). The terms "information resource management", "information management" and "information management" will be considered identical, since in fact they are different names for the same type of activity.

The beginning of the development of information management theory (information management) dates back to the 1970s. The importance of information resource management for society and the economy was first declared in 1977 in a report to Congress and the President of the United States, which stated that information cannot be considered a public good along with air and water. The government must reckon with the fact that information and its use have a certain value, thus information resources need to be managed professionally, as well as financial and human resources. Since then, the role of information resources has increased even more, and the current century is quite rightly called the century of the global information society, and the economy of this century - the knowledge economy.

For more than three decades in the world theory and practice, generally accepted terms have been developed, the most important functions in information management have been highlighted: the design of information systems and management of information resources.

The first piece of information management legislation in the United States was Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, adopted in the United States, subsequently continued in acts Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and E-Government Act of 2002

(US Electronic Government Act of 2002), which sets out the state policy in the field of information resource management, and also fixes some terms: "Information resource management is the process of managing information resources aimed at achieving the organization's mission, increasing the efficiency of the organization, including reducing the burden of collecting information ".

In the early 1990s. a new direction in the development of management theory was highlighted, in which information and knowledge occupy a central place, and people whose work consists in creating and using information become the main driving force and resource for the development of the company.

Table 1.1 reflects the main stages in the development of the theory of information resources and knowledge management.

Table 1.1.The emergence of the main stages of the formation and development of theories of information resource management in the company

Formation start	Stage name	Main tasks	Ways to achieve
	Information systems design management	Creation of automated information processing. Formation of internal information resources	Computer and information technology, software
	Information resource management (information management)	Effective management of information resources in the interests of fulfilling the company's mission	Technologies for the efficient use of information resources
Early 1990s	Knowledge management	Creation and use of new knowledge in the company	Providing conditions for the creation, exchange and sharing of knowledge, cooperation at the enterprise

Let's consider the highlighted stages in the formation of the theory and practice of information resources and knowledge management in more detail.

1. Information systems design management. The main tasks of the direction are to create an automated information processing technology in a specific subject area. Such tasks are solved based on the design of automated information systems, databases, and the development of telecommunications infrastructure. In Russian publications, this is often what is meant by the concept of "information management". However, this position is erroneous. This misconception is based on the fact that over the long period of existence of the command-administrative economy, enterprises and organizations received almost all the information necessary for their activities from higher structures, i.e. their information needs were met by policy information. As a result, information resource management consisted of the distribution of directives and the processing of internal information. Undoubtedly, achievements in the field of building information systems are the basis for the development of information resources and knowledge management.

Currently, the most important issue of information management is access to the necessary information from external sources, its effective use.

2. Content management (information management ). The main task of information resources management is to organize information support for the decision-making process in the company in such a way as to provide all the necessary information and ensure the efficient use of information resources.

Content management issues were discussed at seminars and conferences held in the early 1980s. At the same time, professional communities appeared in the United States, for example, the Information Management Association ( Association for Information Management - aslib. co.uk), Society for Information Systems Management ( Society for Management Information Systems - ugasmis. org), Association for the Management of Federal Information Resources ( Association for Federal information resources management), Information Resource Management Association ( Information resource management association), Data Management Association ( Data management association international), etc.

Thus, already in the 1980s. the concept of information resource management was formulated. The basic principles of this concept are as follows:

- information is an expensive resource that must be used in the most efficient way;
- information resources available to the company are an important asset of the company that needs to be managed professionally, as well as other company resources;
- information resource management should be based on modern computer and telecommunication technologies.

It should be noted that access to automated information systems at the initial stage was very expensive and the cost of using them directly depended on the level of qualifications of employees. Already in 1982, US universities offered training programs in information resource management.

In the 1970s. the concept of "information literacy" appeared, which means the ability to find information, manipulate it, critically evaluate it and use it to solve various problems. The purpose of information literacy training is to provide users with knowledge and skills that allow them to navigate the flow of information and modern computer and communication technologies, to effectively meet their information needs.

However, in the emerging information society, every citizen must have the appropriate qualifications for the implementation of their professional activities, lifelong learning and use civil rights in terms of access to information.

3. Knowledge management. The purpose of knowledge management is to provide conditions for the generation of knowledge, its accumulation, transfer and use. The definition of "knowledge" varies greatly depending on the subject area in which it is given. The lack of fundamental differences between the concepts of "information" and "knowledge" leads to the fact that many knowledge management projects are based on the information system.

1) the implementation of knowledge management projects implies the possession of metainformation about where this knowledge originates and in what sources it is reflected, i.e. knowledge of the information resources themselves;
2) knowledge management involves the translation of a person's personal knowledge into forms of information presentation available to other people (in the form of a document);
3) the task of disseminating knowledge is one of the most important in knowledge management. However, knowledge presented in the form of information (document) becomes part of an information resource and is distributed as an information resource.

Knowledge management also has specific functions, such as providing conditions and opportunities for creating new knowledge, presenting this knowledge in the form of information. But these functions are more related to the management of the company's human resources and their development.

In Russia, the understanding that it is necessary to professionally manage information resources at enterprises came much later, since within the framework of the planned economy, as already mentioned, there were two types of information: directive and internal, coming from various divisions of the enterprise and characterizing the state of the resources of the enterprise.

In the directive information coming from the planning authorities, the enterprise was established:

- what products and in what quantities to produce;
- what requirements the manufactured products must meet;
- who will supply raw materials and components;
- what wages should be paid to workers and employees, taking into account their qualifications and length of service;
- what energy resources will be allocated to ensure production;
- where the released products should be shipped;
- a number of other parameters.

Information about the latest achievements, about the products produced by the organization or the services provided was selected centrally and sent by the relevant structures of the state system of scientific and technical information to the organization.

With the transition to market relations in Russia, directive and scientific and technical information ceased to flow to commercial structures. As of January 1, 2009, there were 4,771.9 thousand state, municipal and private organizations in Russia, of which more than 83% of organizations were privately owned. All these organizations in the market conditions are forced to independently find the above information, as well as other information necessary for doing business. This information is usually referred to as information about the external environment. According to experts, information about the external environment makes up more than 85% of the general information that a company needs to carry out its activities.

Cm .: National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. Annual Report to the President and Congress, 1976-1977. URL: eric.ed.gov/
E-Government Act of 2002. Global Legal Information Network. URL: glin.gov/
See: Innovative development: economics, intellectual resources, knowledge management / ed. B. 3. Milner. M .: INFRA-M, 2009.S. 423.
Cm.: Davenport T . H ., Marchand D. Is KM Just Good Information Management? // Financial Times Limited. 2001. no. 04/25. P. 2.

Knowledge management is one of the main management concepts affecting modern business development trends, along with total quality management (TQM), business process improvement and reengineering, e-commerce, Balanced Scorecard, EVA, ABC methodologies. It is knowledge management, in the general opinion, that in the near future will become a pass to the leaders, a mainstream technology, i.e. a key technology that defines the management paradigm as a whole.

However, despite the fact that the topic of knowledge management is already actively exploited by the most advanced consulting companies, and some Russian enterprises are already claiming that they are using this approach, clarity in the answer to the questions "what is hidden under this concept, what is the benefit of its application and what steps need to be taken to implement knowledge management in the company is still missing. business engineering.

Question:The project manager for the implementation of knowledge management in our country, as a rule, is either the head of the IT department or the HR director of the companies. What explains such an ambiguous choice and, as a consequence, an ambiguous understanding of knowledge management tasks?

This selection of project managers and understanding of knowledge management objectives is based on two of the most common approaches to implementing knowledge management.

The first approach can be called personifying or intuitive. It is based on the fact that knowledge is contained in people and, most importantly, that bearers of knowledge (experts) keep it and share it. As a result, personnel motivation and the formation of the necessary company culture come to the fore. The main task of knowledge management with this approach is to identify, preserve and effectively use the knowledge of employees.

The second approach can be called informational or technological. He proceeds from the fact that modern enterprises, especially large ones, have accumulated huge amounts of data about customers, suppliers, operations and more, stored in dozens of operating and transaction systems in different functional divisions. Real treasures of wisdom are hidden in these databases. But this information is mostly raw data that is not suitable for analysis purposes. To search for knowledge in data arrays and process them, information technologies are needed that reveal hidden dependencies and rules in data. Knowledge is considered as accurate information on a given issue. A system that is able to provide an accurate answer to a request is a knowledge management system.

Question:What actions should be taken within a knowledge management project in accordance with one approach or another?

In the first approach, the project usually begins by identifying the key people interested in supporting the project and bringing them together into a community that will further promote knowledge management ideas in the company. After that, an assessment is made of the correspondence of knowledge resources to the real needs of employees. Based on this assessment, the company's knowledge management strategy and policy are developed. These documents define the further scenario of knowledge management and the main mechanisms of the program's action: what kind of knowledge is especially important for the company, what should be done with it, how the effectiveness of knowledge exchange is assessed, what are the new job responsibilities of employees in relation to knowledge management, etc. In conclusion, a knowledge management policy is put in place and actions are taken to implement the knowledge management strategy.

With a "technological" approach, the scenario of setting up a CM is reduced to the introduction of adequate technical means business intelligence and business communications. This approach, as it were, ignores the differences in CKO and CIO tasks. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) manages computers, databases and the network (technology), the Director of Knowledge Management (CIO) is responsible for the development of processes that contribute to the accumulation, generation and transfer of knowledge (informatics!), And their application by the company's employees.

Question: The scenario for implementing knowledge management with the "technological" approach seems somewhat one-sided, but the scenario of the "personifying" approach impresses with its logic. There is a desire to take it as a model in the implementation of knowledge management projects, but some managers are still holding back in this approach to knowledge management?

What is holding back, in my opinion, is the fact that this approach, as it were, moves away from the content side of knowledge, i.e. from the answer to the question "what kind of knowledge is especially important for the company?", and this is the cornerstone in the implementation of any scenario. We can say that the "importance" of knowledge is determined by its role in the implementation of key business processes, and the assessment of the effectiveness of knowledge management is based on the analysis of the relationship of these processes with the implementation of the overall business strategy. However, at present in Russia it is difficult to find such an enterprise where these initial conditions are fulfilled: i.e. and the processes are described, and are associated with the strategy, it remains only to come and implement knowledge management.

If these conditions are not met, then "knowledge management practitioners" advise "to start with the obvious and easily accessible", i.e. "important knowledge" is determined by an expert method and work with them begins according to the principle "there is no harm, but benefit is possible." Unfortunately, the results of knowledge management do not sound very convincing in this case. This is usually a marginal cost reduction based on more efficient use of time to find the information you need. An example is the decrease in Internet traffic due to the development of a directory of useful links, etc. Such improvements are reminiscent of the "theory of small deeds" prevalent among the Russian intelligentsia of the 19th century. And it is not entirely clear why there is so much noise around this concept.

Question:If cost reduction and resource saving are not, in your opinion, the main goal of knowledge management, what should be expected from this direction?

International studies (including the KPMG report) show that the main role of knowledge management is seen not in reducing costs, but in significantly increasing the competitive advantage for the companies that have implemented it. Only such an interpretation can explain the general opinion that knowledge management will soon become a key technology that defines the management paradigm as a whole. The true importance of knowledge management in modern business can be understood by examining the evolution of the basic concepts of management, the change of which is illustrated by the consistent search for the "roots of success" at ever greater depth. The initial basic concept can be considered financial-oriented management, which existed for a long time in the era of the "manufacturer's market". During the transition to the buyer's market, it was replaced by marketing management, in which marketing became the defining ideology of management. Marketing management was replaced by quality management, which absorbed it, which involves building a business based on the ideology of quality, incl. quality of the organization and improvement of business processes aimed at satisfying correctly identified customer needs. The transition to the knowledge economy took place when the search for a reliable basis began both for a more accurate and quick identification of customer needs, and for the optimal organization of business processes.

Question:In the change in management paradigms you described, you can see similarities with the methodology of a common strategic management tool - the Balanced Scorecard. What is the role of knowledge management in the context of the mentioned methodology?

Regarding financial indicators as the results of activities, the balanced scorecard orients the company towards more and more proactive control of the business: in addition to financial indicators, indicators are introduced that characterize marketing (market share, customer satisfaction), the level of organization and quality of processes, as well as indicators reflecting the potential for growth and development business - it is they that reflect the level of knowledge management in the company. In this case, the main direction of the causal relationship between the indicators - the main attribute of the balanced scorecard - corresponds to the sequence of changes in the basic management concepts discussed above. Financial indicators are a consequence of the company's successful activities in the market and the satisfaction of the company's customers, market success is a consequence of the quality of the organization of business processes, which in turn is a consequence of the development of corporate knowledge and staff motivation at all levels of the company. Thus, goals, indicators and knowledge objectives lie at the deepest level, creating the most solid foundation for the company's success. And the proactive control of the business, set by the balanced scorecard, prescribes to constantly plan and monitor the company's development trends: a lag in knowledge development in 2003 can lead to a deterioration in the quality of processes in 2004 and market positions in 2005, which, in turn, will lead to poor financial results in 2006!

Question:Are Russian enterprises ready to make long-term investments and plan for 2006 results?

Dag Engelbart, who was one of the first to develop systems of "knowledge management", proposed to classify the functions of an enterprise into 3 groups. Group A - primary activity: manufacturing of specific products (for example, cars) or providing services (for example, medical care); group B - secondary activities aimed at improving the basic functions of group A; group C - activities aimed at improving the functions of group B. In fact, for most Russian enterprises at their current stage of existence, only the activities of group A are most critical, hence the low interest in everything related to corporate knowledge. Genuine interest in knowledge management in our country will arise when the functions of groups B and C become critical.

Question:Why is there interest in discussing knowledge management methods now?

According to many analysts, the criticality of the functions of groups B and C will come very soon. Moreover, this process will be brought closer by two trends. On the one hand, this is the arrival of foreign manufacturers on our market, on the other, the heads of many "advanced" companies have come to understand the insufficiency and narrowness of the domestic market for successful development and maintaining the growth rates of their business. "What competitive advantages can Russian companies boast of? A high share of the domestic market, knowledge of the specifics of the market, cheap natural and human resources?" These are temporary factors. If they are not backed up by sustainable competitive advantages, the situation on the Russian market will change rapidly. As a result, many companies start looking for new competitive advantages and stop at knowledge.

Question:Thus, the application of knowledge management methods will be primarily in companies operating in saturated markets with a high level of competition and in companies seeking to compete in the international market?

Yes, the greatest competitive advantage knowledge management can provide to a company focused on constantly changing business processes to adapt to changing external needs, especially in industries where one of the key performance indicators is time-to-market. However, there is also another group of enterprises in Russia, which should be given close attention to knowledge management. These are enterprises with a rich history that invested a lot in the formation of intellectual potential in the Soviet years, which is still valuable. In such enterprises, knowledge, as a rule, lies in the heads of employees who are finishing their labor activity and the management faces an important task - preserving the intellectual capital of the enterprise. The solution to this problem also lies in the field of knowledge management tasks, or rather in its separate area - knowledge engineering.

Question:You mentioned the concept of intellectual capital, could you explain how it relates to knowledge management?

The concept of "intellectual capital" allows you to go to the economic assessment of the knowledge possessed by the company. In order to demonstrate what intellectual capital is, the following example is often given. Imagine, for example, that all major developers have left a software company. The loss in the value of its shares will be equal to the amount of its intellectual capital. The main models of intellectual capital divide it into three components: human capital, which includes personal non-objectified knowledge, organizational capital, which includes objectified knowledge, and capital of relations - a set of established connections with the entire environment of the company, primarily with customers. Thus, if knowledge can be interpreted as a kind of "intellectual capital", then this capital (as well as financial) can be "own" or "borrowed". That is, knowledge in itself is not an asset, since an asset implies the ownership of an organization, and implicit and uncontrolled knowledge, like employees, is not the property of an organization. "The components of corporate knowledge that are" in the minds of employees "should be approached as leased, leased, or borrowed assets. Or, more correctly, as assets leased by an organization just for the next working day" - says Gordon Boronau, president of the insurance company Scandia (Sweden). Therefore, an important task of knowledge management is to transform intellectual capital into intellectual assets, objectify knowledge, extract it from sources, which are individual employees of the company. Then the risks associated with dependence on specific personalities will become less, and knowledge can be freely transferred, disseminated and effectively applied where it is needed in the interests of the company.

Question: When we solve this problem, won't we come to the utopian idea of \u200b\u200bcreating a cybernetic organization based exclusively on objectified knowledge?

Of course, not all intellectual capital can and should be transformed into intellectual assets. After formulating and systematizing, a lot of knowledge is deprived of a significant part of the meaningful nuances based on individual interpretation and experience of use. Therefore, the second important task of knowledge management is a clear division of knowledge into formalized (objectified) and non-formalized, which will allow applying to each type of knowledge the most appropriate tools that ensure the maximum increase in the total intellectual capital of the company.

Question: You have quite convincingly criticized some existing approaches to knowledge management. Now I would like to know about your approach to solving these problems, including the formation of a competitive advantage based on knowledge?

The sequence of implementation of the concept of knowledge management is in line with the general concept of business engineering and involves the passage of a number of stages. First of all, it is necessary to identify the company's activities at the strategic and process level - to build a company's business model. The solution to this problem contributes to the identification and formalization of extremely important strategic and procedural knowledge - knowledge of "why", "why" and "how" the company's activities are implemented. This will identify the key business processes that drive value growth and the implementation of the organization's strategy, and formulate the company's knowledge requirements that are necessary to successfully complete these business processes - to identify the critical success factors in the field of knowledge management. Further, it is necessary to identify the sources of obtaining and carriers of key knowledge, as well as to identify the places of use and application of this knowledge at the stages of business processes. After that, an analysis of the gap between existing and required knowledge should be carried out, on the basis of which a knowledge management strategy is selected. Only after this are knowledge management processes developed, that is, regular activities in this area are established, a technological platform is created that supports knowledge management. In addition, throughout the entire project of setting up knowledge management, an internal culture of exchange, generation and application of knowledge is developing.

Question:Finally, I would like to know if the terms knowledge management and knowledge management are synonymous?

These concepts are often identified, although, in my opinion, it is necessary and useful to distinguish between them.

Knowledge management refers to a purely functional task - the management of systematized information, and knowledge management or knowledge-based management is the purposeful organization of the entire company, where "knowledge" is considered as the main strategic factor of success. Knowledge management, in the narrow sense of the term, is only a very important component of this global challenge. The same difference, for example, exists between the concepts of quality management and quality management - their confusion leads to failures in setting up a QMS in Russia. Therefore, it is advisable not to repeat this mistake while mastering this new management paradigm!