Knowledge management for effective and ethical management of public schools

Abstract

In this article, we consider the instituting of effective and ethical knowledge management in the arena of public schooling, with reference to a multiple case study involving three schools in Emalahleni Circuit 1,2 and 3 in South Africa. Teachers, HoDs, administrative clerks, and principals (20 participants altogether) were interviewed in depth concerning their understandings of knowledge management. We explicate Nonaka and colleagues’ model of knowledge management, which they developed to apply to business and public organizations and which is considered seminal in the literature on knowledge management. It is tied to (Japanese) principles of ba – where people recognize their occupation of a shared space with others. We relate this model to a discussion on the applicability of the African concept of Ubuntu to the knowledge management practices in the selected public schools. We use these cases to consider Ubuntu-directed knowledge management as a process of developing sharedness of purpose among the stakeholders within the schools (internal stakeholders) and outside thereof (in the wider community and society). We indicate to what extent and in what ways the participants experienced knowledge management in this way