Big data analytics: a threat or an opportunity for Knowledge Management?

Big Data Analytics is a rapidly developing field which already shows early promising successes. There are considerable synergies between this and Knowledge Management: both have the goal of improving decision-making, fostering innovation, fuelling competitive edge and economic success through the acquisition and application of knowledge. Both operate in a world of increasing deluges of information, with no end in sight. Big Data Analytics can be seen as a threat to the practice of knowledge management: it could relegate the latter to the mists of organizational history in the rush to adopt the latest techniques and technologies. Alternatively, it can be approached as an opportunity for knowledge management in that it wrestles with many of the same issues and dilemmas as knowledge management, The key, it is argued, lies in the application of the latter’s more social and discursive construction of knowledge, a growing trend in knowledge management. This conceptual paper explores the synergies, opportunities and contingencies available to both fields. It identifies challenges and opportunities for future research into the application of Big Data to Knowledge Management.