Codification — Knowledge Maps

Knowledge codification takes place when knowledge is written down in books and manuals, stored on films (e.g., instructional videos) or embedded in everyday work procedures or software (e.g., diagnosis software, expert systems). These media are widely used and serve the purpose of articulating, transferring and storing explicit human knowledge. Knowledge maps, in contrast, do not attempt to codify the knowledge itself, but rather to codify “knowledge about the knowledge”. Like geographical maps, they guide the way and help to find knowledge, either in the form of knowledgeable people and experts or in the form of knowledge media. Furthermore, knowledge maps are used to structure a knowledge domain in order to provide a shared understanding and common vocabulary and to preserve metaknowledge about a topic. The following chapter will briefly discuss means and objectives of knowledge codification in general and then focus on knowledge maps in particular. Knowledge maps can be differentiated according to their purpose: while some maps codify knowledge to provide means for knowledge detection, others are used to support knowledge assessment. These aspects will be discussed in Sect. 6.2. Knowledge maps, furthermore, differ in the knowledge contents they codify (e.g., causal knowledge, knowledge about knowledge sources), which will be explained in Sect. 6.3. Sect. 6.4 introduces the case of a high-tech SME that has successfully used a newly developed knowledge mapping approach to analyse its knowledge flows in new product development and has subsequently used an intranet knowledge application map to codify its processes for easy navigation. The chapter closes with a discussion of the results in Sect. 6.5.