Knowledge Management in Society 5.0: A Sustainability Perspective

Abstract

Organizations require the means to navigate Society 5.0. This is a knowledge-intensive society where a sustainable balance must be created for social good through a system that integrates cyberspace and physical space. With significant data, information and insight exchange based on knowledge in people and machines, organizations need to make sense of the notion that knowledge assets are the central structuring elements for sustainable development. By considering the key aspects of knowledge management (KM) in Society 5.0 as they relate to sustainable development, organizations may leverage their KM capability and learning agility to successfully address the unique requirements of the new society, environment and goals for sustainable development. In this research, automated content analysis was applied to identify key KM aspects using the Leximancer software. A total of 252 academic papers were analyzed, identifying 10 themes related to key KM concepts in Society 5.0 as they pertain to sustainability. The KM concepts identified were described and mapped to the sustainability triple bottom line. They comprised three primary and three intersecting dimensions, i.e., the environment (planet), society (people) and economic performance (profit) in the socio-economic, eco-efficiency and socio-environmental domains. The most significant themes included “knowledge”, “human”, “companies”, “information” and “system”. Secondary themes included “innovation”, “development”, “resources”, “social” and “change”.