Adult learning is a multidimensional process in which a considerable number of simple and complex mechanisms, of a wide variety, play a part. The topic of knowledge management is of particular significance in deliberations on adult learning. It is a field which sprung from business studies and encompasses various issues relating to intellectual capital, without which the more profound meaning underlying an evaluation of the adult learning process is lost.

Adult learning is a multidimensional process in which a considerable number of simple and complex mechanisms, with a wide variety, play a part. The topic of knowledge management is of particular significance in deliberations on adult learning. It is a field which sprung from business studies and encompasses various issues relating to intellectual capital, without which the more profound meaning underlying an evaluation of the adult learning process is lost.

It is the widespread, society-oriented understanding of issues pertaining to knowledge management and intellectual capital which motivated the initiators and founders of the Institute of Knowledge Management in Krakow in 2002. The initiatory group consisted of Mariusz Strojny, an expert of many years’ standing with the KPMG consulting arm, Amir Fazlagic, of the Poznań University of Economics, Zenon Wiertelorz, from Kędzierzyn Koźle, and, from Krakow, Janusz Krysztofik. The team took a dynamic approach within academic circles, spurring young scholars and students on to participate in a series of meetings and any number of discussions on topics connected with the theoretical and practical aspects of knowledge management in both the social and the managerial dimensions. Among the issues to which the first such aspect refers are the problems relating to building an information society and the issues surrounding the creation of a Knowledge-Based Economy. In both 2002 and 2003, the Institute of Knowledge Management won the Ministry of the Economy’s award for the documentation of expertise in areas related to building a knowledge-based economy in Poland and on the topic of the chances and prospects of developing knowledge management in the Polish economy.

Two years after the inception of the Institute of Knowledge Management, the establishment of technological facilities and chairs engaging in this field at higher education institutions began. Knowledge management and intellectual capital became an indicator of a new perception of the development of society, the economy and enterprise. Peter F. Drucker denied the tenets of Marxism by replacing the proletariat with the knowledge worker. A subject and, at one and the same time, an object of interest in contemporary andragogy, an adult person, is the not-infrequently eminent specialist whose primary assets are knowledge and intellect. The nature of complex technological processes or services means that the expert becomes a key figure in a business enterprise, one upon whom the company owner’s success or failure hinges. Fulfilling the function of experts or managerial functions is the province of adults, since it is only adults who possess the competence to combine theoretical knowledge with experience and both hard and soft skills, namely pragmatics and responsibility, economy and morality.

Time and again, the representatives of the Institute of Knowledge Management in Krakow have addressed the issue, calling attention to the state’s obligations as regards the need for institutional, legal and fiscal transformation and for changes to, among others, the media, all of which would genuinely open society up to knowledge and to lifelong learning. In order for these actions to attain the desired effect, namely, the shaping of a knowledge society, they cannot be limited to bottom-up initiatives, since this is a plane where social policy and education meet. This means that only a mature and common understanding of these processes is capable of benefiting from the possibilities that the concept of lifelong learning can bring to the shaping of a knowledge society.