Bjoerg:
Good question. I'll give my two cents.
I believe that in a certain light these terms may be looked at as a
historical progression in this order: (1) Learning Org (or Organizational
Learning); (2) Knowledge Management; (3) Intellectual Capital.
As to their interrelation, both LO and KM are interested in developing
Intellectual Capital. LO, I believe, is one of several processes within
KM, so I would use KM as the umbrella term. I would also be wary of
calling IC a "measure;" it is, more properly, the "product." So, in line
with the terms you used, I would have said KM = process, LO is a result of
KM, and IC is a product of LO. Bear with me...I'll get clearer in a
moment, but I want to lay these foundations first.
I would agree that LO is a more familiar term to HR types, mostly because
it has been around longer. I would disagree, though, that KM is better
understood by IT people -- I think it is very MIS-understood by them and
this is perhaps worse than HR people being ignorant of it. IT people, and
IT media, very often relegate KM to a technology-centered discipline,
which it is not. I am guessing that is why you think of it as a "result".
KM is oft times thought to be Knowledge Base of Document Management OR
Workflow Processing software. Other times it is explained as if it is
focused on streamlining a company's technology for more effective
databasing.
Now, some functional definitions...my intent is to not give a
glossary-type definition, but descriptive ones.
Learning-Org:
Learning Org and Organizational Learning are disciplines that are
interested in making the company as intelligent as the individuals within
it. There are a lot of approaches toward accomplishing this. Peter Senge
considers 5 disciplines to be core to developing a learning org: personal
mastery, mental models, team learning, shared vision, and systems
thinking.
[Host's Note: Also, "learning-org" is my trademark for this ongoing
dialogue. ... Rick]
Knowledge Management:
KM is interested in the applied intelligence of the organization. That
is, it is not just interested in making the company more intelligent, it
is interested in using that intelligence to increase the bottom line
through marketable innovation (increased revenue) and process improvements
(reduced expenses). It is a discipline of managing organizational
intelligence to create financially profitable products and, hopefully, to
make the organization more instinctive as it encounters cultural and
market change. All of this involves the use of technology by necessity of
today's business focus on technology, but the technology is tangential to
the more human-centered principles that drive KM. Technology stores data
and even can do a good job of providing hints of how to convert that data
into useable knowledge by coupling it with context and classification
schemes. But the processes that create revenue still ultimately reply on
people, and KM addresses those issues aside from technology.
Intellectual Capital:
IC is just a way of describing the intelligence of the company that is or
potentially is revenue generating. The knowledge becomes a true asset of
the company and increases the net worth of the company. There are various
tools that enable companies to assign dollar values to knowledge. This is
then defined as capital, or "intellectual capital" in order to distinguish
soft assets from hard assets.
Organizational Development (OD) could be seen as the mother discipline of
all of these, but the term is not used as often as it used to be.
I do hope that these overly simplistic definitions help you to orient to
these disciplines. I add, though, that there is an awful lot of
subjectivity in any definition of these concepts you may encounter,
including mine. We all tend to define based upon the aspects of the
fields that we think are most important or that we are most familiar with.
J.B. Bryant
Knowledge Engineer
Chemical Abstracts Service
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com>
Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>