Some Provocations Concerning the Foundations of IC and KM Research
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The overall objective of this paper is to propose and discuss some provocative questions about the foundations of IC and KM research. These provocations primarily, but not exclusively, address issues with respect to the ontologies and epistemologies that underlie these areas of research. The nature of knowledge and its articulation lies at the heart of concerns with the current theories underpinning IC and KM and, indeed IC and KM research generally. Such concerns also raise interesting issues about many existing research studies in IC and KM. Of particular concern are the ways in which the terms ‘knowledge’ and ‘intellectual capital’ are defined (or not defined) and explored. It is critical that generally agreed on definitions of key concepts are identified so that firm foundations exist as a basis for empirical investigations. However, it is argued that these definitions are likely to be open-ended and need to recognize that, at least with respect to value, the definition of relevant concepts is radically dependent on context at many different levels. From a definitional perspective IC and KM are intertwined and overlapping. Furthermore, to the extent that one of the dominate objectives of the management of IC and KM is the creation of value the contribution of the components of IC and KM is intimately related to the individual, group, organization and social context within which such management takes place. Although this paper offers provocations with respect to the current state of IC and KM research, it also provides some suggestions as to potentially fruitful extensions of existing research. One stems from a nuanced consideration of knowledge and the interaction of knowledge and IC in generating value. It is suggested that much insight can be gained through a renewed consideration of such disciplines as Economics and Organizational Studies. The paper concludes by proposing that IC and KM researchers refocus both on the intersection between the two research areas and the nature and value of knowledge.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.052 | 0.092 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.007 | 0.090 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.018 | 0.042 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.014 |
| Research integrity | 0.014 | 0.019 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.011 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".