Knowledge management is an important area targeting improvements in organisational functionality and performance. Technological tools of ever increasing sophistication are available for use in achieving the dissemination and sharing of data, information and knowledge across the organisation. However, despite the existence and capability of these tools, knowledge management in many organisations all too often does not deliver the benefits sought from it. Other important issues that arguably play a pivotal role in the success of knowledge management initiatives are organisational and human-related. Holistic knowledge management practice should take such matters more into account than is typically the case. The panel will present two main perspectives on knowledge management efforts, a ‘constructivist’ one and a ‘theoretical’ one, with a particular focus on the human and organisational issues involved. Constructive approaches are aimed at enabling purposeful intervention in the organisational world through the creation of environments, techniques, frameworks, and tools that can be applied in practice. Theoretical approaches focus on understanding and explaining the experience of knowledge management as it is encountered in such practice. The two approaches are complementary, in that constructive approaches need to be based on sound theory if they are to be successful and theory deals with the phenomena that arise from the application of constructive approaches in practice. Theory and construction are thus mutually dependent; better understanding of one leads to improvements in the other and the focus of the panel discussion reflects this and it aims to further the linkage and complementary relationship between these two approaches to knowledge management.