Introduction
Knowledge management is the process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using organisational knowledge. It refers to a multi-disciplined approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge (Introduction to Knowledge Management. (2007, March 19).
This is achieved through the promotion of creating, sharing, and applying knowledge as well as through the feeding of valuable lessons learned and best practices into corporate memory in order to foster continued organizational learning.
Knowledge Management has been a core requirement of many organizational practices and mostly in gaining competitive advantage over other firms. Knowledge itself is precious but if not used properly, then
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,1999).
The above methodology saves time and is cheaper compared to hiring someone to do a field research. For instance, Cisco introduced a social networking video sharing website. It also showed that employees have considerable amounts of knowledge that could be shared by using a social technology. Within six months this website attracted over 10,000 contributions and 8,000 of those contributions were work-related (Kettles,D, 2011) . The idea was that employees had the knowledge which is tacit and that needs to convert into explicit knowledge. There are several advantages such as trust within employers by sharing valuable information. This will aid in doing their task more efficiently. These sites not only allow general communication related to socializing, but also enable the management of knowledge through features like document sharing, wikis, and forums. The fact that these sites are used with such enthusiasm and that they support knowledge management suggests that they could solve the long standing challenge organizations have had with the use of knowledge management systems (Kettles,D,2011).
Another good example is Lotus Notes by IBM. Lotus notes was an information bank to share knowledge among employees. A network approach refers to connecting people using tools such as online directories. The philosophy behind this approach is that once people find each other they can exchange knowledge through whatever medium (online or offline) is most effective. Both
This chapter describes what is knowledge management in details as well as what is the factors of implementing knowledge management which are implementing best practices, network expansion, systematic information system infrastructure, good organizational culture, senior management leadership and commitment and trustworthiness of teamwork.
The superior capabilities of knowledge management systems provide an opportunity for the business to engage the most effective components and recognize the importance of communication to make informed, accurate decisions (McGrath, 2001). This system can organize the company’s knowledge resources, knowledge obtaining, organizing, and applying to make a sound routine the will enforce effectiveness (Niu, 2008). The dynamic function of knowledge management to create, capture, and apply knowledge to achieve an organization’s objective will allow them to be more profitable and successful (Zucker, 1986). In addition to increasing profits, the system can be also used to reduce costs and enhance research and development (DeTienne & Jackson, 2001). With all of these advantages, it would be wasteful for a company to not employ knowledge management. As seen in the Discovery Communications, Inc. example, the company can attribute their new productivity levels and increase in ease of securing documents to the knowledge management system that put into place by Carefree Technology. Like Discovery Communications, Inc., knowledge management is so popular today because companies can collect, process and share knowledge to ignite employees ' creativity which in turn will make the business grow. Wenhong and Jianhua (2009) explained the core of knowledge management is to convert company’s knowledge resources into an increased company
While Knowledge Management (KM) is important in any business however, there is no real agreed upon definition. KM is a concept that includes the
"Knowledge management is the set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization 's intellectual resources. It 's about finding, unlocking, sharing, and altogether capitalizing on the most precious resources of an organization: people 's expertise, skills, wisdom, and relationships. Knowledge managers find these human assets, help people collaborate and learn, help people generate new ideas, and harness those ideas into successful innovations" (Bateman, 2004, p.8-9). One of the most important factors of change in management is the growing need for good, new ideas. Knowledge management is an approach that allows people to produce change. It 's bringing people together and collecting ideas from
Knowledge management is not only highlighted on the particular area of subject but rather addresses all conditions of life involving business, information management, economic and psychology. Becerra-Fernandez et al. (2004) represent knowledge management as accomplishing what is needed to maximise out of knowledgeable resources. Based on Awad and Ghaziri (2001) as taken from Malhotra (1999) declared that knowledge management contributes to the serious concerns of organizational adaption, survival and competence in the form of discontinuous environment. Essentially, it represents organizational measures that pursue collegial combination of input, information conversion movement of information technology, the creative and innovative capacity of human
Many companies are beginning to feel that the knowledge of their employees is their most valuable asset. They may be right, but few firms have actually begun to actively manage their knowledge assets on a broad scale. Knowledge management has thus far been addressed at either a philosophical or a technological level, with little pragmatic discussion on how knowledge can be managed and used more effectively on a daily basis. At this early stage of knowledge management in business, the most appropriate form of dialogue is not detailed tactics, but rather high-level principles. When an organization decides what principles it agrees upon with respect to knowledge management, it can then create detailed approaches and plans
To define what is Knowledge Management(KM), one should know what is knowledge first. Knowledge is different data and information. A data gives a specific fact; information is a collection of data that has been organized. Knowledge connects the information that has been given and create the context. For instance, “the third day of a week called Tuesday”, this is a data; “Tuesday is one of the weekdays” and “most people work on weekdays” are the information; Knowledge based on the the information, would suggests that “most people work on Tuesday.”
This report looks at the use of Knowledge Management (KM) and Innovation as a strategy in an organisation and how organisations have adopted the concept and principles behind the Knowledge Management theory and implementing them into the organisation to measure the successful delivery of the strategy.
Knowledge management is a term and a concept which began in the early 1990s. Despite the popular notion that knowledge management only began as a practice with the rise of technology, it has been around as a concept for around 15,000 years. At that time in history, merchants, artisans, doctors, and others first began writing down their knowledge for future generations. In Mesopotamia, roughly 5,000 years ago, people began to have difficulty keeping track of all the clay tablets on which information was written and created the first organized knowledge management solutions, the library (Bergeron 2003). Over the years, even as human advanced technologically, the idea of knowledge management remained. Since the idea of knowledge management arose as a management idea in the 1990s, it has undergone several changes in definition as ideas have changed. First, in 1994, it was defined as “the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge.” While this was a very straight forward definition, it had the disadvantage of not including any mention of the human element. Thus, in 1998, the definition was changed to be “a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets, which may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers.” Finally, as technology has created more of an element of
Knowledge management has gained substantial importance in the past few years due to the realisation of numerous advantages associated with efficient knowledge management. An improved decision-making process, considerable increased in productivity and quality, sharing of best practices, less circumstance for reinvention process, and increased development of the skills and talent of the workforce are some of the benefits associated with the knowledge management within the organisations. (Jennex, 2008, p.275). Efficient combination of previously unrelated elements and exchange of tacit knowledge helps in the creation of knowledge that correspondingly leads to appropriate transfer of the gained knowledge transfer (Nahapiet & Ghoshal, 1998). The implementation of knowledge management strategies depends a great deal
Knowledge is something that comes from information processed by using data. It includes experience, values, insights, and contextual information and helps in evaluation and incorporation of new experiences and creation of new knowledge. People use their knowledge in making decisions as well as many other actions. In the last few years, many organizations realize they own a vast amount of knowledge and that this knowledge needs to be managed in order to be useful. “Knowledge management (KM) system” is a phrase that is used to describe the
Knowledge Management is defined as the process of capturing, distributing and effectively using knowledge (Davenport, 1994) 1. It can also be refer as a multi-disciplined method in order to accomplish organizational objectives by fully utilized and generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets 6. Knowledge Management focuses on the gaining, creating, and sharing knowledge and technical foundations that support them 2. According to Grey, knowledge management is an audit of “intellectual assets” that highlights unique resources, critical functions and potential deadlocks which prevent knowledge flows to the point of use. It protects intellectual assets from decaying, seeks opportunities to improve decisions, services and products through adding intelligence, increasing value and providing flexibility (Grey , n.d) 5. On top of that, knowledge management includes a range of planning and practices used in an organization to classify, create, distribute and enable adoption of intuitions and experiences.
Knowledge management is set of practices aimed at discovering and harnessing an organization 's intellectual resources-fully use the intellects of the organization 's people. Knowledge management is about finding, unlocking, sharing, and altogether capitalizing on the most precious resources of an organization: people 's expertise, skills, wisdom, and relationships (Bateman, 2009). Knowledge management allows more employees to be involved in the decision making process of the company. In the roofing and sheet metal industry knowledge management is very important in the success of the organization.
Knowledge Management (KM) can be defined as a deliberate, systematic business optimization strategy that selects, distills stores, organizes, packages, and communicates information essential to the business of a company in a manner that improves employee performance and corporate competitiveness.
The research has shown that use of knowledge management can help in understanding the performance in the organizations and (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Other more recent studies like done by Fugate et al. (2008) and Huang and Chen (2009) also have talked on the importance of knowledge management systems and their positive effect on organizational performance.