**1. Introduction**

286 New Research on Knowledge Management Models and Methods

Yin, RK. (2003). *Case Study Research: Design and Methods*, Sage, ISBN 978-076-1925-52-1,

Zyngier, S.; Burstein, FV. & McKay, J. (2004). Knowledge Management Governance: A

Multifaceted Approach to Organizational Decision and Innovation Support, *Proceedings of the 2004 IFIP International Conference on Decision Support Systems* 

California

*(DSS2004)*, Prato, Italy, July 2004,.

Since the last years of the 20th century a strong social revolution has begun; it is a revolution based on information and knowledge, which is driven by the developments in informatics and communications technologies ICT. "*We are entering* ‒*or we have already entered– in the knowledge society, in which the basic economic resource … is the knowledge itself... and where the worker of knowledge will perform a central role*" (Drucker, 1993).

Emerging global economy progressively becomes more distinguished by intensive knowledge enterprises that need specialized workers, exhibiting knowledge that diversify and develop unique competences, and that get involved with the collaboration to create new knowledge for the improvement of the company performance. The ICT´s progresses perform an integrating role within these companies as a way for the achievement of the shared learning. These changes have resulted in the need for the improvement of knowledge management, which in turn leads to more changes in the same companies. Different authors (Hedlund, 1994; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995; Tenkasi & Boland, 1996; Schultze, 1998; Brown & Duguid, 1998) have proposed categorizations for the knowledge management ‒KM‒ approaches, being the most outstanding the *functionalist* and *interpretativist* approaches. In the functionalist approach, the knowledge is considered like an "*static object*" that exists in a number of ways and localizations; in the interpretativist approach, it is considered that knowledge does not exist being independent of human experience, social practice, the knowledge itself and its use, where it is shaped by the social practices of the communities, because it is "*active and dynamic*".

This work focuses in reviewing, analyzing and presenting a study about the interpretativist perspective, and describing a maturity model to turn operative the knowledge management based on it. The work begins with a discussion of the concept of knowledge management. Later, the current knowledge management perspectives are described; the functionalist and interpretativist. Finally we propose a maturity model to turn operative the knowledge management in the interpretativist perspective.
