Much of my work with professionals and their organisations is implicitly about knowledge management, but the term knowledge management is not easily defined. Some further explanation of the term is due.

In the mid-late 1990s, the concept of knowledge management became popular in the western world, based on the belief that a company’s strategic advantages often hinged on the knowledge of staff. Database companies were quick to suggest that the key to managing the knowledge of staff was to somehow channel all corporate knowledge into databases.

However, definitions of knowledge such as the following by McDermott and Snyder (2002, pp.8-14) stress the different types of knowledge that might exist in an organisation and which cannot be captured solely in a database:

• Knowledge lives in the human act of knowing. The knowledge of experts such as surgeons is an accumulation of experience that remains dynamic: part of their ongoing experience. Communities of Practice make knowledge an integral part of their activities and interactions, and they serve as a living repository for that knowledge.
• Knowledge is tacit as well as explicit. Not everything we know can be codified as documents or tools. In business, tacit knowledge, such as a deep understanding of the complex systems in an industry or in VET, is sometimes more valuable than explicit knowledge. Sharing tacit knowledge involves interaction and informal learning processes such as storytelling and coaching of the kind that Communities of Practice provide.
• Knowledge is social as well as individual. A body of knowledge, say about the NTF, is developed through communal involvement, not just from reading documents. 
• Knowledge is dynamic. What makes knowledge management a challenge is that knowledge is not static: it is not an object that can be stored, owned and moved around like a document. Knowledge resides in the skills, understanding and relationships of its members as well as in tools, documents and processes.

If one accepts such a multi-layered definition of knowledge, ‘managing’ such different types of knowledge requires a new response by managers. Both individuals and organisations within VET will benefit if managers encourage staff to collaborate and share their knowledge with their peers and across the organisation.

From my own research, I have found that the structure of a community of practice provides an ideal platform for such sharing of knowledge. On the other hand, communities of practice are complex, subtle and challenging undertakings, which require managers to use skills and knowledge not previously part of their conventional duties.

I discuss these concepts further in my report The Potential for Communities of Practice to Underpin the National Training Framework, available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 4’).