What is knowledge management? Definition, models and the knowledge manager's role
What knowledge management is, how knowledge moves, where the pillars and five Cs come from, what ISO 30401 and ISO 9001 ask, and what a knowledge manager does.
Knowledge management is how an organisation makes sure that what its people know can be found, shared, kept current and used when someone has to act or decide. It covers knowledge written in documents, knowledge built into processes and tools, and knowledge that lives in people's heads. It relies on people, processes and technology.
There is no single agreed definition. A 2016 review of knowledge management across the United Nations (UN) system found that definitions "vary from simple to sophisticated", and that some UN organisations had effective knowledge management policies without a common definition. This guide explains what is being managed, how knowledge moves, the models people quote (the pillars and the "five Cs"), what the standards ask for, and what a knowledge manager does.
What is being managed: data, information and knowledge
Knowledge is not the same as information. In a 1998 study of 31 knowledge management projects, Thomas Davenport, David De Long and Michael Beers described knowledge as "information combined with experience, context, interpretation, and reflection". A price list is information. Knowing which customers get an exception, and why, is knowledge.
The European Commission makes the same distinction in its 2016 strategy on data, information and knowledge. It notes that there are no universally agreed definitions of the three, and describes knowledge as what comes from analysing data and information, supported by expert opinion and skills.
Knowledge is usually split into two kinds. Explicit knowledge is written down or recorded, so it can be stored and shared: a procedure, a design rule, a lessons-learned note. Tacit knowledge is what a person knows from experience and finds hard to put into words: how a technician hears that a machine is about to fail, or how a manager reads a tense negotiation. The US Army's knowledge management manual (2024) uses the same two terms. Our guide on tacit and implicit knowledge explains how the two differ.
There is a third place where knowledge sits. Guidance written in 2016 for ISO 9001 auditors, by the ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group, notes that knowledge can be embedded in an organisation's processes, products and services. The draft second edition of ISO 30401, the knowledge management standard, names the same three forms: in people, codified (written down) and embedded. The table gives an example of each, and what managing it involves:
| Where knowledge sits | Example | What managing it involves |
|---|---|---|
| In people | why a supplier was dropped two years ago; how to calm an angry major customer | conversations, mentoring, communities of practice, handovers |
| Written down | a procedure, a design standard, a lessons-learned report | owners, review dates, a structure people can search |
| Embedded | a checklist inside a ticketing tool, a template, a tested process | process design and control of changes |
How public bodies define it
Several public bodies that run knowledge management programmes publish a definition. Here are four of them, in plain words:
| Source | Year | What knowledge management is |
|---|---|---|
| International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) | 2006 | a systematic approach to identifying, acquiring, developing, sharing, using and preserving knowledge, to reach set objectives |
| World Health Organization (WHO) | 2005 | managing information and processes, and managing people and their environment, so that knowledge is created, shared and applied more systematically |
| United Nations Joint Inspection Unit | 2007 | the processes and practices an organisation uses to identify, capture, store, create, update and distribute knowledge, for use and learning across the organisation |
| US Army | 2026 | a process that improves the flow of knowledge, for shared understanding, decision making, performance and learning |
The wording differs, but the same ideas keep appearing. Knowledge is managed for a purpose: an objective, a decision, better performance. It moves through a cycle, from creation or capture to sharing and use. The US Army names four tasks: creating, organising, applying and transferring knowledge. Two of them also put people ahead of tools. The IAEA calls people "the most important component", and the US Army notes that technology helps but is not required for knowledge to move from one person to another.
How knowledge moves through an organisation
Two models from research describe how this happens. In 2001, Maryam Alavi and Dorothy Leidner reviewed the research on knowledge management for the journal MIS Quarterly. They describe four processes: creating knowledge, storing and retrieving it, transferring it, and applying it. Each depends on the others: knowledge that is stored but never found or applied changes nothing.
Ikujiro Nonaka's model explains how new knowledge is created. In a 1994 article, he describes a continuous dialogue between tacit and explicit knowledge, through four conversions. The model is often called SECI, from the first letters of the four conversions:
| Conversion | From and to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Socialisation | tacit to tacit | a new engineer works next to an expert for a week |
| Externalisation | tacit to explicit | the expert writes down how they diagnose a fault |
| Combination | explicit to explicit | a team merges three site procedures into one |
| Internalisation | explicit to tacit | a technician follows the procedure until it becomes routine |
Written knowledge covers only part of this cycle. Socialisation and internalisation happen through people, by watching and by doing. This is why a knowledge management programme needs ways for people to meet, not only documents to read. Our guide on knowledge sharing and knowledge management explains how the two work together.
The pillars of knowledge management
Readers often ask for the "five pillars" of knowledge management. We found no research and no public body that defines five. The models that exist have three or four parts:
| Model | Origin | Parts |
|---|---|---|
| People, process, technology | traced back to Harold Leavitt's 1964 model of organisations | people, processes, technology |
| Four pillars | Michael Stankosky and colleagues, George Washington University | leadership and management, organisation, technology, learning |
| IAEA components | International Atomic Energy Agency, 2006 | people, processes, technology |
| US Army components | knowledge management manual, 2024 | people, processes, tools, organisation |
| APQC components | APQC, a US benchmarking non-profit, 2010 | people, process, content and IT, strategy |
John Edwards traces the first model to Leavitt in a 2011 article in the Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management. He also warns that a knowledge management initiative is risky if it ignores process, that is, how people and tools actually do the work. Stankosky's four pillars have been tested. A 2011 doctoral study at George Washington University supported the leadership, learning and technology pillars, but found that the organisation pillar, as defined at the time, might not fully meet the needs of practitioners. In every model in the table, technology is one part out of three or four, never the whole.
The only "five pillars" model we could trace comes from a 2007 conference paper, in which two authors describe how Infosys made knowledge management part of its project work.
The "five Cs" of knowledge management
There is no official list of five Cs either. Several lists of five words starting with C are in use, each from a different author and for a different purpose:
- Capture, creation, codification, communication, capitalisation. A model of the knowledge lifecycle, first proposed in a 2005 working paper from Jordan and published in a peer-reviewed journal in 2008.
- Capture, curate, connect, collaborate, create. A list from Stan Garfield, a knowledge management practitioner, who presented it in 2021 at the annual conference of the Special Libraries Association.
- The 5-C approach of Infosys, from the 2007 paper above. It names five conditions for making knowledge management part of daily project work: a compulsory shift in mindset, the creation of repositories for reuse, a clear organisation, consistent communication and career-driven incentives.
Garfield himself notes that "creating themed lists of words starting with the letter C has been very popular". So treat any list of five Cs as a memory aid, not as a standard. The useful question is whether your organisation covers what most of the lists include: capturing knowledge, creating new knowledge and communicating it.
Is there a standard for knowledge management?
Yes. ISO 30401, published in November 2018, is the international standard for knowledge management systems. It sets requirements and gives guidelines for an organisation that wants to establish, run, review and improve a management system for its knowledge, whatever its type or size. ISO sells the full text.
The standard is being revised. A second edition went to a vote as a draft international standard in 2026, and the vote closed on 18 September 2026. ISO's page for the 2018 edition says it is expected to be replaced within the coming months. The draft can still change, but ISO's public preview of the draft lists:
- a new section on fundamental concepts, and clearer guiding principles;
- requirements organised around knowledge management processes, the working environment and culture;
- a new clause on technology;
- the three forms of knowledge described above: in people, written down and embedded.
The draft also states that a knowledge management system is part of an organisation's overall management system, not a separate one.
Knowledge management in ISO 9001
Quality teams already manage knowledge under another name. Since its 2015 edition, ISO 9001, the quality management standard, has had a clause on organisational knowledge (clause 7.1.6). ISO 9001:2026, published in September 2026, keeps it, and ISO lists organisational knowledge among the smaller refinements of the new edition. The vocabulary standard that goes with it, ISO 9000:2026 (May 2026), adds knowledge management as a concept. The draft of ISO 30401 gives ISO 9001 as an example of a standard that uses the term organisational knowledge.
Guidance on organisational knowledge, written in 2016 for ISO 9001 auditors, shows what the clause means in practice. An organisation determines the knowledge it needs, makes it available, preserves and protects it, and acquires new knowledge when its needs change. The guidance warns that document control alone does not make tacit or experience-based knowledge available, and that having documents does not prove the right knowledge was identified.
A survey published in 2019, launched in Portugal, Romania, Switzerland and Turkey, covered 222 organisations certified to ISO 9001. Of these, 39.8% named organisational knowledge among the most beneficial new approaches of the 2015 edition. Only risk-based thinking scored higher (75.7%).
What research says about results
Four reviews of the research, published from 2023 to 2026:
- A 2025 meta-analysis in the Journal of Knowledge Management combined 53 studies. It found a positive link between knowledge management processes and organisational performance, and that organisational culture makes the link stronger.
- A meta-analysis of 40 studies, published in 2023, found that knowledge management technologies are linked to better overall, financial and non-financial performance.
- A 2024 review of the research on putting knowledge management in place notes that many organisations find it a challenge. It proposes five stages: diagnosis, design, implementation, improving the implementation, and evaluation.
- A 2026 review of 32 studies on artificial intelligence (AI) and knowledge sharing, presented at the InSITE conference, found that trust, leadership support, employee engagement and role clarity are the conditions most often reported.
The two meta-analyses report that a link exists, but not how strong it will be in a given organisation. Two of the reviews name culture or leadership as conditions, which matches the pillars above.
What a knowledge manager does
Public role descriptions are similar. The UK government's skills framework for its knowledge and information management profession says that knowledge managers promote collective learning and help people share tacit knowledge. It lists their tasks:
- setting knowledge sharing and learning strategies;
- advising teams on sharing activities and putting them in place;
- training staff in sharing techniques, such as communities of practice and skills directories;
- capturing knowledge where practical, through exit interviews, job handovers and after-action reviews;
- building a culture that supports sharing;
- measuring the impact of knowledge sharing on the organisation.
In the UK civil service, knowledge management is one of the six job families of that profession, alongside information management, records management, information rights, information architecture and library management. NHS England's role description adds a concrete habit: a before-action review when a project starts and an after-action review when it ends. At NASA, a Chief Knowledge Officer sets the standards for knowledge sharing across the agency, and its knowledge policy asks for measurement data to monitor whether the practice works.
No official statistic gives the pay of a knowledge manager. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not list it as an occupation, and O*NET, the US occupational database, has no occupation of that name: it lists "knowledge manager" as an alternate title of training and development managers. The UK Office for National Statistics classifies "knowledge management officer" in a broad group of business associate professionals, so its pay data describe that group, not the role.
What knowledge managers do at our customers
Public role descriptions list strategies and practices. They say less about two practical questions: when to create the role, and who looks after the content once the role exists. Here is how three of our customers answered them.
SPIE ICS, an IT services company that runs service desks for other companies, hired a dedicated knowledge manager before it chose a tool. At Savencia, a food group with 28,000 employees, the role did not exist before. Anne Thermolle and Vincent Kippelen run the group's new knowledge management function. They work with each business function to identify knowledge, structure it and make it findable, and they question what teams submit. They do not administer the tool: about 200 space administrators run the spaces, and a steering committee governs the 160 spaces.
At Partoo, the knowledge manager treated the choice of a new platform as a project, and then led the rollout: a pilot group first, then four teams with trained administrators, then the whole company. Every article has a validity date, and its owner gets an automatic reminder. Four articles in five are checked regularly.
This is what we build with Elium: one platform where every space has owners and every article has a review date, and where your AI agents answer from the same verified content.
Common questions
It is how an organisation makes sure that what its people know can be found, shared, kept current and used. It covers documents, knowledge built into processes and tools, and the experience people carry in their heads. There is no single agreed definition, but public bodies such as the IAEA and the WHO describe a similar cycle: create or acquire knowledge, share it and apply it.
There is no official list. The best-documented versions are capture, creation, codification, communication and capitalisation (a lifecycle model published in 2008), and capture, curate, connect, collaborate and create (from the practitioner Stan Garfield, 2021). Use them as memory aids, not as a standard.
There is no single list. A model from George Washington University (Michael Stankosky) has four pillars: leadership and management, organisation, technology and learning. An older model, used by the IAEA, has three parts: people, processes and technology. We found no research or public body that defines five pillars.
Yes: ISO 30401, published in 2018, sets the requirements for a knowledge management system. The draft of a second edition went to a vote in 2026. ISO 9001, the quality standard, also has a clause on organisational knowledge, and its 2026 edition keeps it.
A knowledge manager sets the strategy for sharing knowledge and learning, runs practices such as communities of practice, handovers and after-action reviews, trains staff, and measures the results. In the UK civil service, knowledge management is one of the six job families of the knowledge and information management profession.
No official statistic gives one. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics does not list the role as an occupation, and O*NET files the title under training and development managers. The UK Office for National Statistics classifies knowledge job titles in broad groups, so its pay data describe those groups, not knowledge managers.
Where to start
NASA builds its knowledge management on critical knowledge: knowledge that is essential to its mission and its decisions, usually gained through experience, and hard to replace. Start there. List the five tasks or decisions your team could not handle if one person left tomorrow. For each, write down who knows how, where that knowledge is written, and when it was last checked. The gaps show you where to act first. To see how Elium gives every space an owner and every article a review date, book a demo.
Sources
- United Nations Joint Inspection Unit, Knowledge management in the United Nations system, JIU/REP/2016/10, 2016, quoting its 2007 report JIU/REP/2007/6.
- International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA-TECDOC-1510, 2006, and IAEA-TECDOC-1586, 2008.
- World Health Organization, Knowledge management strategy, 2005.
- US Army, ADP 6-0, Command and control, July 2026, and ATP 6-01.1, Knowledge management, March 2024.
- European Commission, Data, information and knowledge management at the European Commission, C(2016) 6626, 2016.
- Davenport, De Long and Beers, Successful knowledge management projects, MIT Sloan Management Review, 1998.
- Alavi and Leidner, Knowledge management and knowledge management systems, MIS Quarterly, 2001.
- Nonaka, A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation, Organization Science, 1994.
- Edwards, A process view of knowledge management, Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 2011.
- Stankosky, Knowledge management: creating new wealth in the knowledge economy, George Washington University, and Ternes, Confirming the Stankosky knowledge management framework, 2011.
- APQC, How mature is your KM program?, 2011, and What are the best four components of knowledge management?, 2019.
- Gupta and Rao, 5-C approach to making knowledge management a way of life in projects, PMI Global Congress, 2007.
- Alawneh, Hattab and Al-Ahmad, An extended knowledge management framework during the software development life cycle, International Technology Management Review, 2008.
- Garfield, Gartner comparison, part 1: KM in the key of C, 2022.
- ISO, ISO 30401:2018, ISO/DIS 30401, ISO 9001:2026 and ISO 9000:2026.
- ISO 9001 Auditing Practices Group (ISO/TC 176 and IAF), Guidance on organizational knowledge, 2016.
- Fonseca, Domingues, Machado and Harder, ISO 9001:2015 adoption: a multi-country empirical research, Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management, 2019.
- Chong and Duan, meta-analytic review of knowledge management processes and performance, Journal of Knowledge Management, 2025.
- Liu, Kianto and Tsui, Knowledge management technologies and organizational performance, Industrial Management & Data Systems, 2023.
- Henz and Oliveira, Knowledge management implementation: a systematic literature review, Knowledge and Process Management, 2024.
- Djangone, systematic literature review on AI, knowledge sharing and performance, InSITE conference proceedings, 2026.
- UK Government Knowledge and Information Management profession, About us and GKIM skills framework.
- NHS England, Knowledge manager role.
- NASA, Knowledge management and NPD 7120.6A, Knowledge policy for programs and projects.
- O*NET OnLine, search for "knowledge manager", and Office for National Statistics, SOC 2020 coding index.