Chapter XXIII
Critical Analysis of International
Guidelines for the Management
of Knowledge Resources
Federica Ricceri
University of Padova, Italy
James Guthrie
The University of Sydney, Australia
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AbstRAct
The shift towards a knowledge based economy is at the core of the debate of contemporary management
and accounting literature and organisations are challenged by the need to manage their knowledge
resources. Several national and international institutions have produced authoritative “guidelines” to
facilitate the management and reporting of KR. Many of these guidelines are the result of co-operation
between researchers, companies, industry organisations and consultants and have, therefore, been in-
formed by practice. However, to date, there has been no serious critique of these guidelines. The main
objective of this chapter is to provide an in-depth analysis of six contemporary guidelines. By reviewing
these guidelines, this chapter explores how each of these addresses the MKR and therefore facilitates the
management and reporting of KR. Therefore, this chapter will establish some of the key issues involved
in understanding MKR. It will also provide an overview of how these issues are addressed or otherwise
in the six guidelines. Two key messages of this chapter are the followings: frst, MKR and its elements
are embedded in various ways into the international guidelines examined; second, that a key policy
issue is international harmonisation.