Thinking about terminology for my PhD again. I wonder if I should introduce knowledge networker as a term. I like it because it stresses social side of knowledge work, being a node in a knowledge network, which is often missing in a “mainstream” knowledge worker literature. From another side, it may be perceived as a narrow one, focusing only on the networking side of the knowledge work. May be it should be something like knowledge net worker :)
There is another problem with knowledge networker. Knowledge worker is the one who does knowledge work. Following this logic knowledge networker does knowledge network :) It could be netWORK as used by Nardi, Whittaker & Schwarz, but their meaning is not mainstream too and means “networking part of work”.
Next to the associations that people may have with new term, my problem comes to a usual dilemma about introducing new terminology. For example, many people do not like knowledge management or weblogs for several reasons and introduce new terms to stress specific aspects of the phenomena behind these terms. I understand them and in many cases admire their persistence in introducing terminology that captures their views better than existing one, but I belong to another, more pragmatic, camp. For the sake of common language and being understood I use “mainstream” terminology. For example, I do not believe that knowledge can be managed, but I use knowledge management because it establishes a common ground to start. If we go in depth I would introduce my assumptions about KM stressing that “of course, we can’t manage knowledge”… Sometimes it feels as a bad compromise, but I choose it instead of starting with trying to address the same thing with different terms.
So, may be I should just stick to knowledge worker and explain what I mean with it :)
Tags: definitions, knowledge networker, PhDArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/01/05.html#a891; comments are here.
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