‘Information is not knowledge.’ – Albert Einstein
In the last decade, Europe has demonstrated a desire to take advantage of the powerful engine that is the knowledge produced in its societies and to entrust the future of its prosperity to that knowledge. There is a widespread consensus that ensuring easy access to good quality information and to learning is central to constructing a competitive, knowledge-based economy.
However, knowledge production in itself offers a perspective that is too narrow. The challenge is defined by the entire field of knowledge management, comprising at the same time the production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge. The emergence of two elements – the diffusion and appropriation of digital media and the economic crisis – has further complicated the situation. In addition to a challenge, these elements also represent an opportunity. Rationalising the main funding agencies and strategic means of dealing with constrained public budgets are at the core of the European political agenda. Regarding the scientific debate, there is a pressing need to better understand the trends in the field of knowledge management. This huge area, comprising the production, dissemination and consumption of knowledge, ranging from preschool to the population at large, is an important site for theories, perspectives, approaches, methodological tools and research outcomes. To begin mapping the new processes introduced by digital media is an important step for enabling the required transition to a knowledge-based economy and society.
The current thematic focus on ‘Knowledge Management in Contemporary Europe’ derives from a workshop organised by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology, www.cost.eu), the longest-established and widest European intergovernmental network for cooperation in research. The workshop was held in spring 2010 and gathered experts from Europe and beyond to discuss and set up an agenda of inspiring new ideas and proposals in the field of knowledge management. It aimed at advancing our understanding of how our societies can manage knowledge in the best possible fashion. It did so by reviewing concepts, ideas, frameworks, problems and proposals regarding the field of knowledge management, both from academic and practical approaches. Four working groups focused on dimensions of knowledge management: (1) the role of knowledge creation in a networked society; (2) knowledge infrastructures; (3) knowledge dissemination and transfer; (4) the future of higher education institutions.
The workshop adopted an interactive format. Plenary and working sessions were combined to allow general discussion as well as focused exchange. The group that came together in Brussels was an impressive mix of researchers in the early stages of their career and senior, well-established scientists. Philosophers, sociologists, and media specialists met with consultants and librarians, Europeans exchanged experiences and approaches with scholars from America and Asia.
At the end of the two-day workshop, each working group presented a set of well-defined problems, recommendations and strategies to be put forward to stakeholders and policy makers, to be applied for use in the field of educational decision-making.
Some of the recommendations are outlined here.
(1) The role of knowledge creation in a networked society
• Use of universities, research institutions and professional bodies to promote greater diversity in knowledge creation and diffusion (such as open access and open source), in order to counter brand domination as a problem.
• Explore strategies for using new media in collaborative knowledge creation (such as peer-reviewed blogs).
• Develop and promote experimentation with new genres of visuality and textuality; foster their recognition as legitimate modes of publishing and diffusing important research and scholarship (i.e. recognised as equivalent to articles in peer-reviewed journals).
• Foster research, dialogue, and policy recommendations in respect to how new media, in changing senses of self, fosters and challenges foundational assumptions of liberal societies.
(2) Knowledge infrastructures
• Enhanced and more holistic understanding of the motivations of stakeholders (researchers, institutions, funders, and policy-makers) and their implications.
• Understand conflicts among funding sources (European, national, regional) and implications for coherence in research.
• Understand implications of inequities in funding opportunities for different research areas.
• Establish the value of interdisciplinary research.
(3) Knowledge dissemination and transfer
• Accommodate mobility schemes between the different sectors (research, business, civil society) and foster a triangle of workplace experience, teaching and research, supported through new technologies.
• Engage in partnership with business and civil society.
• Introduce new modalities of evaluation in higher education.
• Develop new models of academic careers (such as recognition of innovative teaching) and respect diversity in university models.
(4) The future of higher education
• Use increased networking to facilitate new types of students.
• Encourage interuniversity cooperation for teaching and research both at European and international levels.
• Provide increased IT, where appropriate for the teaching, and gear it to the production of tools for democratic participation.
• Involve museums and libraries (both outside and within the universities) with research interests in the wider university teaching programme.
• Bring curriculum and assessment into line with new developments.
As can be deduced from the above, key concepts for improved and sustainable knowledge, as identified in the workshop, address the educational system and educational policy, and target universities, their curricula and the interaction between research, business and the civil society. In terms of education, the conditions for optimal learning and teaching in educational environments need to be examined. Helle Mathiasen's paper considers these issues and discusses the link between knowledge transfer and knowledge dissemination in educational contexts. Giuseppina Pellegrino's paper offers a critical review of knowledge management initiatives in managerial contexts, proposing an alternative approach to knowledge management as intertwined socio-technical circulation. In his contribution, Sakari Taipale deals with the challenges resulting from the EU's enlargement and suggests that knowledge management in Europe today is not only a technological or organisational issue but also a cultural concern. Oscar Westlund approaches the topic of knowledge management from a more theoretical perspective and deals with science as involving systematic efforts to increase human knowledge, a phenomenon usually described as cumulativity. In his paper, Westlund argues that perception of science and knowledge could benefit from a broader and more nuanced approach to cumulativity. Finally, John Brennan's contribution reflects upon the growing diversity of higher education systems and institutions by exploring three main trends of expansion, differentiation and globalisation.
To conclude, this focus contributes to the current debate on knowledge management in various ways. It places under scrutiny the very common concept of knowledge transfer, advocating that it be replaced by the concept of knowledge sharing. It warns against the backward conception of an IT-driven knowledge management and proposes a new approach. But most importantly, it shifts attention towards a very urgent political problem: the necessity of managing the new cultural diversity in Europe – by introducing a new conceptualisation to strengthen knowledge cumulativity in the scientific process and finally re-examining the concept of higher education.
Leopoldina Fortunati is the Italian Representative in the COST Domain Committee for Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (DC-ISCH). She works at the University of Udine, where she teaches sociology of communication and culture and directs the PhD programme in Multimedia Communication.
Svend Erik Larsen was the Danish delegate in DC-ISCH from 2008–2010. He holds the Chair for Comparative Literature at Aarhus University, is Vice-President of the Danish Research Council and Chair of the Academia Europaea's section for Literature and Theatre Studies.
Julia Stamm, since 2006, has worked at the COST Office in Brussels, where she manages the COST Domain of Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (ISCH), gathering over 33 pan-European research networks in the social sciences and humanities. Her research interests and teaching obligations focus on political sociology, elite and career research as well as European integration processes.
COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology) is one of the longest-running European instruments supporting cooperation among scientists and researchers across Europe. COST is an intergovernmental framework composed of 35 countries, allowing the coordination of research that is funded on a European level, through the provision of platforms for European scientists to cooperate on a particular project and exchange expertise.
As a precursor of advanced multidisciplinary research, COST contributes to reducing the fragmentation in European research investments and to opening the European Research Area to cooperation worldwide. It anticipates and complements the activities of the EU Framework Programmes, constituting a ‘bridge’ towards the scientific communities of emerging countries. It also increases the mobility of researchers across Europe, fostering the establishment of scientific excellence (see www.cost.eu).
