Knowledge management as an ephemeral management fashion?

This paper aims to understand how interest in the topic of knowledge management has evolved in the decade between 1998 and 2008 and to evaluate the claim that knowledge management is a management fashion.

The paper uses the academic publications database to investigate academic interest in the topic of knowledge management between 2000 and 2008, and company web sites to evaluate level of contemporary interest among global consultants and professional service firms in knowledge management.

The data presented challenge the idea that knowledge management can be regarded as a transient fashion, showing that academic interest in the topic has been sustained throughout the first decade of the twenty‐first century. However, in contrast to this, there has been a significant decline of interest in knowledge management among global consultancies and professional service firms.

The data on levels of academic interest in knowledge management were taken from only one source (ABI Proquest) and data on the level of interest among consultants and professional service firms were based on an analysis of their web sites.

The paper provides the first systematic evaluation of the level of interest in the topic of knowledge management in almost a decade.