Knowledge Management: Embedding knowledge sharing culture
1. What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management (KM) has made its name since early 1990’s and until today KM still turn out to be one of the burning topic in management world as it have the potential to influence many spheres of an organisation. Lots of organisations acknowledge that knowledge is a crucial asset for them in order to success and subsist in an increasingly competitive market (Benjamin et al., 1998). Therefore it has become one of the main reason for the exponential growth of KM in the past decade.
If we ask what is KM, one would simply explain KM is about how the organisation manage their organisation’s knowledge. This is the most simple and straight forward answer. Actually it is fair enough because we can simply describe the answer from the word “knowledge” and “management” itself. Even though the answer is acceptable but it is not describing the whole picture of KM. KM does not have a specific definition because the definition can be varies in different perspectives (i.e. business, process and technology). Following is one of the widely accepted KM definition for its simplicity and broad context:
“Knowledge Management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers” (Duhon, 1998).
In this definition, Duhon manage to succinctly capture the broad scope of KM. Obviously having all the knowledge assets neatly organised would provide a great value to an organisation.
2. What is knowledge?
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... As a result, it can lead the team members to produce new ideas and make a better decision making. Knowledge Café is an easy and low cost programme and it can encourage knowledge sharing and the creation of a knowledge sharing culture
Works Cited
1. Arun Hariharan (2002), “Knowledge Management: A Strategic Tool”, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Vol. 3 No.3, pp.50-59.
2. Duhon, B. (1998). “It's all in our heads”, Inform 12(8), pp. 8-13.
3. Davenport, T.H. (1994), “Saving IT’s soul: human-centered information management”, Harvard Business Review, Vol. 72 No. 2, pp. 119-131.
4. Davenport, T.H. and Prusak, L. (1998), Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.
5. Benjamins, R., Fensel, D., & Gómez-Pérez, A. (1998), “Knowledge management through ontologies”, CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS. org).
T.D. Wilson (2002) makes a point of identifying several sources of articles, references and course syllabi with varying takes on knowledge management within organizations. Wilson is convinced that organizations misuse the terminology “knowledge management” and that their activities are more concerned with managing information than with the management of knowledge (Wilson, 2002). Wilson defines knowledge as involving “the mental processes of comprehension” or, as “what we know” and information as the expression of what we know and can convey through messages (Wilson, 2002). By researching the use of the “knowledge management” Wilson conveys that the terms knowledge and information are used interchangeably, which results in an inaccurate application
Tomeski, Edward, Lazarus, Harold, People-Oriented Computer Systems: The Computer in Crisis, New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Co, 1975
(106) 'Knowledge management means using the ideas and experience of employees, customers and suppliers to improve the organisation’s performance. ' (5) Knowledge management (KM) is best when 'it is in alignment with organizational culture, structure and strategy ' (5). For this reason, the aim of this briefing document is to advise Santander on solutions to potential KM barriers employees may face by discussing three key barriers- culture, technology and leadership.
The influential paper, “Managing Codified Knowledge” by Zack (1999) is reviewed here. The definition of knowledge and knowledge management, the benefits of knowledge management, the author’s rhetoric on the architecture of knowledge management and its importance in modern business organizations are discussed here. This paper also attempts to analyze two case studies presented by the author, and a brief summarization of the author’s key findings is also intended.
...bjectives and realize growth. Knowledge Management Knowledge management plays a key role in ensuring that the different functions and activities of a company are synchronized. In Google’s case, the purchase of Motorola (which has turned out not to have been the best business decision) probably could have been avoided if the knowledge within the company was managed and used better. Knowledge enables a company to create, recognize and distribute opportunities. When every employee of a company contributes his or her part of knowledge into the knowledge pool, it is very beneficial as it contributes to the overall success of the company. Proper application of the available knowledge in a company can offer several competitive benefits to both the company and the employees. Application of accurate knowledge at the correct situation helps a company to make good decisions.
Management theories help managers succeed in advancing the company goals. Knowledge management is one of the theories. Knowledge management is the management of corporate knowledge and intellectual assets; furthermore, knowledge management adds value to an organization by enabling an enterprise to act more intelligently (Gupta et al., 2002). Koenig, (2012), defines knowledge management theory as a “discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets”. He goes on to say, “these assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers" (Koenig, 2012, para 4).
Pasher, E., & Ronen, T. (2011). The complete guide to knowledge management: A strategic plan to leverage your company 's intellectual capital. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons.
"All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical. The wheel is an extension of the foot; the book is an extension of the eye; clothing, an extension of the skin; electric circuitry, an extension of the central nervous system. Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perceptions. The extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act -- the way we perceive the world."
Hansen M., Nohria N., and Tierney T. (1999), “What’s your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?,” Harvard Business Review (March 1999), 106–16.
In most organizations, effective utilization of knowledge increases productivity, creates competitive advantage and, ultimately, improves profits.
Many companies management’s often confuse business intelligence (BI) and knowledge management (KM) as the same thing, but Hansen indicates that there is a difference between the two. BI is a set of technologies that gather and analyze data to improve decision making, the data can be from the past, present and future that is analyzed and focused data. In addition, Business intelligence (BI) is a technology-driven procedure for investigating information and presenting actionable data to benefit company administrators, business administrators and other end users make more knowledgeable business decisions, While KM is a process of finding, selecting, organizing and presenting information in a way that improves comprehension in a specific area of
Nonaka, I. & Konno, N. (1998). The concept of "Ba": building a foundation for knowledge creation. California Management Review, 40(3): 40-50.
Knowledge management and innovation are interconnected. Good knowledge must be codified, combined and shared in order to achieve innovation. “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower”, a quote made by Steve Job. Indeed, successful and unique innovation allows organization to stay ahead of competition, and allow them to be the market leader to shape the future of the industry. However, organization that fail to innovate will lose ground to competitors and can only be a follower in the industry trend. Innovation allows organization to discover existing and future opportunities that meet current customer’s need and future demand rapidly and effectively as technologies, markets or trends shift. Innovation focus on
From my point of view, Knowledge Management is defined as a learning process of human through collecting information and data from various resources such as experience and books. That information will effect on people’s thinking, attitude, action, and behavior toward something. This field also examined about how people utilize their intangible asset like knowledge and cognitive ability in order to achieve their own goal.
According to article of Tengku Adil, Mohd Shamsul, Mohammad Fazli, Ahmad Nadzri, & Ahmad Azman, (2017) importance of data literacy is to improve knowledge management practices is the organizations refers to technologies to create, stores, retrieves and distributes knowledge for order to support their decision making and the technologies such as knowledge management systems (KMS) is to allow organizations to get many benefit vast amounts of business intelligence. The technologies allow people to support report, store current and historical data and consolidate data for management analysis and decision makings.