The growing importance of knowledge assets has lately caused organizations of all kinds to concern themselves with knowledge management. However, a very different approach is taken by every school in the classical disciplines that has anything to do with the question, at both methodological and epistemological levels. Working from the distinction Hollis makes between the different approaches to social sciences, a classification of the various currently coexisting paradigms is made and the need to progress towards an interdisciplinary, more integrated view of knowledge management is called for. Finally, the adoption of a paradigm based on complexity theory is proposed.

knowledge management, information management, knowledge assets, Social Sciences philosophy, epistemology, organization theory, business management, complexity