Tuesday 5 May 2009

Knowledge Management (KM)

There is no clear definition for knowledge management because the knowledge itself is very hard to define. But many scholars tried to give a near appropriate definition.
According to Online YourDictionary it can be defined as “The process of creating, institutionalizing, and distributing knowledge among people for the purpose of improving and organizing business processes and practices”.
According to NASA” Knowledge management is getting the right information to the right people at the right time, and helping people create knowledge and share and act upon information”(Nasa, 2005).
Further the CIO.com “KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets”, the generating value is achieved through codifying the all the stakeholders knowledge and share it with others to establish best practices.
But knowledge management as a business activity can be defined in two aspects. They are “Treating the knowledge component of business activities as an explicit concern of business reflected in strategy, policy, and practice at all levels of the organization” and “Making a direct connection between an organization’s intellectual assets”.( Barclay and Murray, 1997)
In my point of view knowledge management is not a single process, but it is a set of processes which creates, distribute and utilizing the knowledge available for the benefit of an organization. Analysing the meaning of knowledge management in a vacuum has no meaning, therefore it should be analysed in a context. I would like to base by argument in an organizational context.
In Robert Kaplan’s view ‘‘managing knowledge capital will be critical for organizations to create a sustainable, competitive advantage”. In this competitive business environment the success can be achieved through the knowledge based assets such as skills, abilities and motivation of people and the databases and information it posses. (Switzer, 2008).
Further, for many organizations knowledge management is used to share information about customers, products and services which can help to improve competiveness of the business (Ashdown and Smith). There is always a question whether the organizational knowledge is manageable or not. The answer would be yes, for that primarily the individual’s knowledge about the specific field should be identified as a tacit knowledge which can be converted in to explicit knowledge through performing job in their own way. Through identifying the best practices with in the organization will help the organization to create database called “knowledge repositories” (Rowley, 2002)
Unlike the traditional organizations which give priority to the physical assets, modern “knowledge companies” give preference to the knowledge asset. The biggest obstacle to be overcome to attain this transition is to encourage the “knowledge manager” to share their knowledge. By providing greater pay for what they are producing, by offering them more learning opportunities, allowing them to make independent decisions and by give them place in corporate decision making and so on will encourage them to share tacit knowledge explicitly. (Switzer, 2008).
This is very much true in many traditional organizations. When I was first joined the company as a graduate where there is no graduates in that department. As a fresher I was assigned to a senior person to be trained. But, he was very reluctant to share the knowledge because he had the fear that he will lose his position in the department where he learnt the job with nearly six year of experience for me just joined to his equal position with no experience. I had a very hard time because I had to learn everything by myself.
Organizational culture plays a key role in knowledge management. The organizational culture is shaped by many factors such as structure, system and technology. The relevant choice will shape the organizational culture that ultimately decides the success or failure of the Knowledge management projects. (Balthazard and Cooke, 2004)
Through this analysis of this subject I realized that Knowledge management is not just a technology it is a collection of methodologies that is driven by practice that involve people, process and technology. The productivity and efficiency of an organization can be improved immensely by implementing correctly with the consideration of organizational culture and clearly defined goals.
References.
CIO.com, "Knowledge Management Definition and Solutions". Available at http://www.cio.com/article/40343/Knowledge_Management_Definition_and_Solutions, Accessed on 2nd may 2009.
Barclay.R.O and Murray.P.C (1997), “Knowledge praxis”. Available: http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html. Accessed on 2nd may 2009.
Ashdown.B and Smith.K, “Development of a model for managing organizational knowledge” Available at: http://www.osti.gov/inforum99/papers/orgknowl.pdf. Accessed on 2nd may 2009.
Switzer, C. (2008), Time for change: empowering organizations
to succeed in the knowledge economy, Journal of knowledge management, 12(2): 18-25
Rowely, J., (2002), “Eight questions for customers knowledge management in e- business”, journal of knowledge management, 6(5), 500-511. Available at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/ViewContentServlet;jsessionid=1E22F4DF40739563AA658F8F232AF65F?contentType=Article&Filename=Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Articles/2300060508.html, Accessed on 3rd may 2009.
Nasa. (2005). What Is Knowledge Management? [Online]. Available: http://km.nasa.gov./whatis/index.html Accessed on 3rd may 2009.
Balthazard, P. A. and Cooke, R. A., (2004), “Organisational Cultural and Knowledge Management Success: Assessing The Behaviour – Performance Continuum”, 37th Hawaii International Conference on system science – 2004. Available at http://www.thestep.gr/trainmor/dat/%7B8a7c6309-2338-4a07-b413-8854a235f4f8%7D/article.pdf [Accessed on 3rd may 2009.

1 comment:

  1. Good and detailed article Caroline. But I got a little bit confused when at one point you say KM is a set of processes, while on the other hand you say that it is a collection of methodologies. Which is which?
    A few citations are missing from the body of your article, even though you have referenced them. Please look at some parts of your references as they are not upto Harvard style.

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