benchmark 3

Abstract The viability of KM partly rests on how researchers garner empirical support for their purported

theories. One aspect of this would involve the evaluation of the evidence provided in KM research.

This paper presents a comparative study of the evidence that is presented in scholarly and

professional literature on KM. For this purpose, the paper introduces a typology of evidence to

analyze the data obtained from the survey of the literature. The classi!cation based on this typology

reveals quantitative di"erences between the types of evidence put forth in the scholarly and

practitioner literature. More interestingly, however, our analysis reveals di"erences in terms of the

questions they ask, the perspective they adopt, and the methods they follow to convince others of

the validity of their claims. We explain these di"erences in terms of the notions of `blackboxing' and

`performance' borrowed from actor-network theory.

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The quality of evidence in knowledge management research: practitioner versus scholarly literature

Hamid R. Ekbia and Noriko Hara View all authors and a"liations

󩈳󩈴󩈵 Restricted access Research article First published May 31, 2007 Request permissions󩘳

Volume 34, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551507080412

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