International Journal of Information Management 32 (2012) 365–371 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect International Journal of Information Management j our nal ho me p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijinfomgt Maturity model of Knowledge Management in the interpretativist perspective  Edgar Serna M. * CCIS Group, Intituto Antioque˜ no de Investigación IAI, Medellín, Colombia a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Available online 9 January 2012 Keywords: Knowledge Maturity model Knowledge Management Interpretativist perspective a b s t r a c t Many authors have proposed categorizations for approaches to Knowledge Management; outstanding prospects including functionalist and interpretativist. In the first approach, knowledge is considered as a “static object” that exists in a number of ways and locations; in the second one, knowledge does not exist independently of human experience, social practice, of knowledge itself and its use, where it is shared by the social practices of communities, because it is “dynamic and active”. These articles constitute an extensive review on the subject, focused in reviewing, analyzing and presenting a study of the interpretativist perspective, and describe a maturity model for KM operational from it. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Since the last years of the 20th century a strong social rev- olution has begun; it is a revolution based on information and knowledge, which is driven by the developments in informatics and communications technologies ICT. “We are entering – or we have already entered – in the knowledge society, in which the basic economic resource. . . is the knowledge itself. . . and where the worker of knowledge will perform a central role” (Drucker, 1993). Emerging global economy progressively becomes more distin- guished by intensive knowledge enterprises that need specialized workers, exhibiting knowledge that diversify and develop unique competences, and that get involved with the collaboration to create new knowledge for the improvement of the company performance. The ICT’s progresses perform an integrating role within these com- panies as a way for the achievement of the shared learning. These changes have resulted in the need for the improvement of Knowl- edge Management, which in turn leads to more changes in the same companies. Different authors (Brown & Duguid, 1998; Hedlund, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Schultze, 1998; Tenkasi & Boland, 1996) have proposed categorizations for the KM approaches, being the most outstanding the functionalist and interpretativist approaches. In the functionalist approach, the knowledge is con- sidered like an “static object” that exists in a number of ways and localizations; in the interpretativist approach, it is considered that knowledge does not exist being independent of human experience, social practice, the knowledge itself and its use, where it is shaped  This research was performed at the Faculty of Engineering, University Luis Amigó, Medellín, Colombia. * Tel.: +57 4 3127294593. E-mail address: eserna@eserna.com URL: http://www.eserna.com. by the social practices of the communities, because it is “active and dynamic”. 2. The knowledge In the context of Knowledge Management, the knowledge can be defined in different ways in such a way that it reflects the different research perspectives. Most of the definitions belong to one of the following categories: (1) it can be defined by means of comparison or relation with data and information (Marshall, 1997; Burton- Jones, 1999; Kanter, 1999); and (2) it can be defined as knowledge per se, that is, without any direct relation with data and informa- tion (Davenport & Prusak, 2000; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; OECD, 1996; Rennie, 1999). In the first category it is considered as an entity which is located in an authority level higher than data and information (Stewart, 1997). Data is a set of discrete facts about events (Davenport & Prusak, 2000), while information is “data provided of relevance and with a purpose” (Drucker, 1988) that can be created by adding value to data through contextualization, categorization, calculation, cor- rection and condensation (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). Therefore knowledge is described like “information suitable to be processed” (O’Dell, Essaides, Ostro, & Grayson, 1998; Tiwana, 2000), which provides “the power to act and to take decisions that produces value” (Kanter, 1999). On the one hand, however, in the real world, it is not always possible to distinguish among knowledge, information and data, because the differences between these terms are simply a matter of degree (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). On the other hand, in accordance with the importance of the knowledge and the knowl- edge base of individuals, that which is considered as information for some people is interpreted as knowledge by others and vice versa (Bhatt, 2001). 0268-4012/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2011.12.001