The Pervasive Identity of Knowledge Management: Consolidation or Dilution?

It is a widespread opinion that knowledge management (KM) is a strongly interdisciplinary field of study. Over the years, this characteristic has become more marked, and it is now possible to identify more than one hundred different definitions of the term coming from distinct subject areas, e.g., business management, accounting, education, human resources, information, computer science, healthcare, and library science. The number of papers related to KM has grown notably, and they now amount to tens of thousands. Looking at the literature, KM appears to be a pervasive concept that can be applied to any human activity, and conversely, any dimension related to human activity affects the adoption of KM. Although multidiscipinarity is not necessrily a negative characteristic, there is a risk that the concept itself of KM becomes misunderstood or used in a generic way and may lose its original significance. In other words, the proliferation of works that refer to KM is a positive signal but also raises the question of whether the discipline is consolidating or diluting its identity. The paper stimulates a discussion on this by going a little deeper into the abovementioned pervasiveness. An analysis of various reviews of the literature on KM is done to verify if KM is conceptualized and applied in a common way or if it is splitting into different but increasingly inconsistent streams.