Historical Root of Knowledge Management: A Bibliographic Review

The aim of this chapter is to analyse the historical root of knowledge management from 1930 to 2020 through a systematic review of the international academic literature. The research work consisted of a systematic review that involved the analysis of articles that presented both theoretical and empirical research results. The research was performed from 1930 to 2020 on the Web of Science databases. We conclude that despite the environmental awareness and knowledge that exists about this concept, it has not yet reached a sufficiently comprehensive level to apply it. Therefore, it is necessary to introduce certain variables such as the generation and use of information as well as the formation of human capital in this regard. A compilation of recent works was made to identify how knowledge management affects the enterprises that currently face serious problems in this domain, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and to generate a contribution to the state of the art and the subject knowledge gaps in the subject. The major limitation of this paper is the lack of access to the content of articles located in databases such as Web of Science.