Knowledge Management and Politics at the Highest Level: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

This paper analyses Knowledge Management (KM) as a political activity, made by the great political leaders of the world. We try to examine if at the macro political level KM is made, and how. The research is interesting because given that we live in a Knowledge Society, in the Information Era, it is more or less obvious that the political leaders should also do KM. However we don’t know of any previous study on KM and world leaders and this paper wants to be a first step to fill that gap. As a methodology we use literature review: given this one is a first preliminary study we use data we found online and in databases like EBSCO. We divide the analysis in two main parts: theoretical ideas, and application. In the theoretical part we aim at distinguishing KM as made by managers from KM made by politicians. The second part is itself divided in two segments: the past and the present times; in the second segment we illustrate our ideas with the example of President Barack Obama. We observe, rather surprisingly, how much it has been over-looked by scholars; KM always was and nowadays is pervasive in the activity of the world political leaders. Furthermore, the importance of KM made by world political leaders is so great that it should prompt the making of detailed studies in order to improve the world governance. The study has the limitation of relying on documents, insights and texts, and not on interviews. It should be followed by studies of a more qualitative and participative nature. We believe it would be very interesting to make such studies and that they would help improving the democracies in the 21st century and beyond.