Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody -- either by becoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action." -- Peter F. Drucker in The New RealitiesAchterbergh & Vriens (2002) further write that the function has two main parts. First, it serves as a background for the assessment of signals, which in turn, allows the performance of actions. As to the first part, they write, "To determine whether a signal is informative, an observer has to "attach meaning to it," e.g., to perceive and interpret it. Once perceived and interpreted the observer may evaluate whether the signal is informative and whether action is required."
And secondly, "The role of knowledge in generating appropriate actions is that it serves as a background for articulating possible courses of action (articulation), for judging whether courses of action will yield the intended result and for using this judgement in selecting among them (selection), for deciding how actions should be implemented and for actually implementing actions (implementation)."
