The field of knowledge management has developed quickly over the last decade and the literature on the topic has demonstrated increasing diversity and specialization (Easterby-Smith and Lyles, 2003). In this development, some scholars have raised their concerns about the concept knowledge management, pointing out its ambiguity (Scarbrough and Swan, 2001), the controversies around it (Swan and Scarbrough, 2001a), and its contradictory nature (Alvesson and Karreman, 2001). This paper presents one more critical view of the knowledge management concept by relying on the practice perspective. From the practice perspective, it is argued that knowledge is defined as embedded in situated practices of individual; it is self-managed by situated practices of knowledge production and reproduction (Gherardi, 2000), and learning is conceived as a way of becoming part of a social world, which is a system of situated practices (Gherardi, Nicolini, and Odella, 1998). It is impossible to manage knowledge by non-practitioner managers, who does not participate in the situated knowledge creation and sharing. In this paper, we define management as composed of two modes of intervention: coordination and control (Alvesson and Karreman, 2001). Our argument is supported by an empirical case study. Our methodology is practice-based (Nicollini, 2009). We investigate the management activities of five knowledge managers in a multinational. The investigation had two steps. The first step involved three years of participant-observation in different knowledge management projects of the multinational. In the second step, five knowledge managers were interviewed during two sessions of two hours. Our findings show that the knowledge managers are unable to manage knowledge of the company’s practitioner community and they are marginalized from the community’s work life. The knowledge managers end up managing the relationship with various organizational actors involved in knowledge management.
