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Making memories available: a framework for preserving rural heritage through community knowledge management (cKM)

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Knowledge Management Research & Practice

Abstract

While most of the research in Knowledge Management (KM) has focused on business communities, there is a breadth of potential applications of KM theory and practice to wider society. This paper explores the potential of KM for rural communities, specifically for those that want to preserve their social history and collective memories (what we call heritage) to enrich the lives of others. In KM terms, this is a task of accumulating and recording knowledge (using KM techniques such as story-telling and communities of practice) to enable its retention for future use (by interested people perhaps through KM systems). We report a case study of Cardrona, a valley of approximately 120 people in New Zealand's South Island. Realising that time would erode knowledge of their community a small, motivated group of residents initiated a KM programme to create a legacy for a wider community including younger generations, tourists and scholars. This paper applies KM principles to rural communities that want to harness their collective knowledge for wider societal gain, and develops a community-based framework to inform such initiatives. As a result, we call for a wider conceptualisation of KM to include motives for managing knowledge beyond business performance to accommodate community (cKM).

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Acknowledgements

We dedicate the title to George Scurr, an 81-year old former rabbiter who, ‘for the sake of his four grandchildren and those of other Cardrona residents, was delighted to take part in university's Cardrona Repository project … [because it would allow] (the memories) to be made available for them’ (quoted in M. Cook (2006) Broken bones and other Cardrona tales. Otago Daily Times, p. 11).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Operations and Information Management Group, Aston Business School, Aston University, Birmingham, U.K.

    Duncan Shaw

  2. School of Business, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand

    Graham McGregor

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  1. Duncan Shaw
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  2. Graham McGregor
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Correspondence to Duncan Shaw.

Appendix A

Appendix A

See Table A1.

Table A1 A framework for cKM involving people, process, technology and strategy
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Shaw, D., McGregor, G. Making memories available: a framework for preserving rural heritage through community knowledge management (cKM). Knowl Manage Res Pract 8, 121–134 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/kmrp.2010.7

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