The authors promote a dialogue about information quality and knowledge management. This is a timely and useful undertaking. The book contains an original synthesis of excellent ideas on information, quality, and knowledge. In a way, it is an argument by analogy. The language of total quality management of physical products is applied in detail to information and information products (knowledge). This can be seen in the way information is described as being “fit for use” (p. 43), using the language of the uniform commercial code.

Chapter 1 proposes that bootstrapping quality information leads to the creation of knowledge. The implication is that knowledge is information that satisfies the quality attributes so that it is fit for use. Knowledge is explained as--reduced to--quality information. Chapter 2 makes the case for managing information as a product. Chapter 3 goes into the 16 quality attributes of information; for example, it should be complete, unambiguous, meaningful, and correct. This builds on earlier work by one of the authors [1]. A framework is provided for formalizing how computer systems succeed (or fail) in representing the world. This perspective on information quality changed my way of viewing information. The authors claim that the framework is ontological (p. 35)--related to the order and structure of reality in the broadest sense. This framework is productive and engaging. Chapter 4 looks at the survey method used to gather intelligence on how an organization is performing in terms of quality information.

Chapters 5 through 9 turn to the explicit dimension of knowledge management. Examples are drawn from experience with intranets by knowledge workers at IBM. Here we get a new definition of knowledge as a capacity to perform--a “core competency,” a concept that is explicitly invoked. The authors specify ten strategies for knowledge management, which include establishing methods, managerial visibility, collaboration, and sharing best practices. Stewart’s refinements of intellectual capital as human, structural, and customer capital [2] add value to the discussion on page 134. The text is peppered with many useful references, and it is a minor oversight that Stewart is not included in them. The layout is nicely prepared for the most part, but every fifth page or so, the spacing between paragraphs is reduced from the usual one line to a half line. The text is still readable, but this flaw is a point of concern in a book on quality.

The authors’ work has enough integrity and coherence to withstand criticisms. The way they write about “hardening” knowledge is misleading. It is true that we speak of “hard data,” but “hardening” knowledge is easily confused with organizational Alzheimer’s disease, mentioned on page 92. The “hardening” of data, however, is a positive feature. It refers to indexing data, formalizing it, preparing it for reuse, and storing it as an accessible asset in a library or database. This would ordinarily be described as the systemization of the knowledge.

Nowhere do the authors give their definition of knowledge. Instead, several useful working definitions are provided: knowledge as quality information; knowledge as competency; and knowledge as a “hardened,” systematic product. The authors distinguish between “know-how,”“know-what,” and “know-why” knowledge (p. 62). This is a useful distinction between factual, instrumental, and explanatory kinds of knowledge, but each presumes an implicit definition of knowledge. In the final analysis, the most original definition of knowledge provided is that, when information has a suitable number of quality features, that information becomes knowledge in the full sense. Knowledge is made relative to information, but gains in engagement with real-world contexts. It acquires the dignity and respect we accord something when we say we know, rather than we hope or believe. While the theoretically inclined may find many problems with this approach, the result is a practical success. Knowledge is put into practice in pragmatic and instrumental terms, and that is indeed a valuable result.