People-focused knowledge management

Topic Domain Knowledge
In order to handle situations competently, people need good topic
domain knowledge — knowledge about job-related tasks — to deal
effectively and competently with work. When a person has extensive
knowledge, he is able to routinely perform many tasks. However, as
we have repeatedly emphasized, work is not always simple, routine,
and repetitive. Most workers need to deal with tasks that range in
complexity from logical extensions and less common variations of
routine situations, all the way to unusual challenges outside the scope
of their normal jobs.
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With the increasing job complexity created by
globalization and general progress and sophistication, it is inappro-
priate, and even impossible, to provide people with advance topic
domain knowledge covering every possible situation. Instead, to help
people become effective in personal complex Decision-Making and
novel Problem-Solving, they need to build — through acquisition or
creation — more abstract topic knowledge consisting of scripts,
schemata, metaknowledge, and other mental constructs. In addition,
for team or conscious situation-handling, people can also be given
opportunities to acquire just-in-time knowledge when available 
(Davenport & Glaser 2002).
Letting people build abstract scripts, schemata, and metaknowl-
edge relevant to the topic domain prepares them to tackle more
complex work with deeper understanding in areas relevant to their
work. Broad knowledge supports the human ability to engage in the
conceptual blending and integration of pertinent concepts, mental
models, and perspectives needed to address new challenges. Such
knowledge becomes more general as the abstraction level increases
from routines to operational mental models, scripts, schemata, and
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People-Focused Knowledge Management
general principles. A further step is to engage people in situations
that let them build metaknowledge, especially procedural meta-
knowledge and declarative metaknowledge which allow them to
tackle very general situations and problems.