ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the evolving nature of knowledge work and the rapidly changing organizational and social environment that it explains necessitates an individual approach to Knowledge Management (KM). It also raises the issue of potential conflict between Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) and Organizational Knowledge Management (OKM) and how organizations might support PKM to bring greater effectiveness to OKM programmes. The chapter highlights two aspects or problems of the evolving nature of knowledge work as it relates to environmental change; both aspects, information overload and the changing nature of work support the need for PKM. It seeks to resolve this issue, but we believe that the success of organizational KM strategies ultimately rests on how well organizations value and can strengthen the individual employee's quest for personal knowledge, self-esteem and even self-realization. The difficulty is how to convince a traditional company that developing an individual employee's quest for knowledge necessarily leads to better OKM.
