Knowledge Mapping: The Consolidation of the Technology Management Discipline.

The paper presents a method of conceptual mapping of knowledge during the consolidation process of an interdisciplinary domain into an emerging discipline. This approach allows tracking the evolution of an emerging discipline of technology management. Knowledge consolidation is the result of colliding source disciplines and the simultaneous influence of changing paradigms. Three paradigms have played major role in recent development of the emerging discipline: (1) engineering management paradigm, (2) management of technology paradigm, and (3) technological entrepreneurship paradigm. The changing needs of practice drive the process. Knowledge mapping approach identifies elements of that process. Those elements (concepts) are identified and used for building a map of knowledge. The impact of different source disciplines (such as economics, management science, psychology, engineering sciences, systems science, and sociology) is characterized by affinities they have with concepts developed and applied in the emerging discipline. Linkages among those concepts are graphically interpreted in the map of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]