The one sure certainty about knowledge management is that it's anything but one thing. Searched your favourite search engine and the findings will tell you that knowledge management continues to mean many things to different people. Indeed this was the case at the four European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM) which was held at Oriel College, Oxford. The presentation of 96 papers clearly showed that ECKM and the area of knowledge management is growing from strength to strength. Knowledge management remains a great challenge for researchers and management alike. This issue of the Journal brings together executives and researchers to present their perspective on knowledge management. This issue has resulted from a call on selected participants from the conference to submit their papers for review. This selection of papers for this issue was no simple task as there was a eclectic range of topics covered and the quality of the content was extremely high. The papers identified have been reviewed and sub sequentially modified by the individual authors for suitability to this issue of the Journal. I hope you find the selection interesting and challenging.

Moving on we asked for recommendations for the next issue of E.J.K.M in July 2004. I would like to thank all those that responded with suggestions, most of the recommendations will be included in future issues of the journal. It would appear that Knowledge management has clustering around five main themes, strategic issues of competitive advantage, creativity and innovation, operational management of knowledge issues such as identification, capture and motivating towards the sharing of the knowledge resource, technology and its role in knowledge management including systems design for knowledge and an appropriate methodologies and finally costs and benefits and the risks associated with knowledge initiatives.

Having considered all the submissions and the current state of knowledge management research the theme for the July issue will be “How has knowledge management initiatives affected work practices”. After a decade of interesting research and work on knowledge management I believe it is time to consider how work practices have been changed or modified as a result of our efforts. We look forward to your submissions.