INTRODUCTION:
Growing competition in a globalising environment marked by cut throat competition has challenged organizations to find an efficient method to allow shared access to the key resources: knowledge, experience and ideas.
The combination of knowledge management and electronic learning is a response to this challenge. The use of information and communication technologies as teaching and learning tools is now rapidly expanding into education and e-learning is one of the most popular learning environments in the information age.
Also with multiple generations in workplace today, organisations must deliberately put in place different processes, motivators and tools to stimulate collaboration and create a knowledge sharing culture
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Loss of expertise due to employee attrition or retiring baby boomers greatly impacts institutional knowledge. Tomorrow’s leaders, the knowledge professionals who will drive business growth through the 21st century, are in ever increasing demand and ever decreasing supply. The young workforce is more nomadic in its relationship with organisations; they tend to change jobs more frequently and do not see their career as a destination, but instead a journey. The recent economy may have slowed attrition rates, but many expect that as soon as the economy starts to improve. Companies will suffer a mass flight by employees who have become unmotivated, unattached and disengaged during the recession. As those employees leave, so does years of your valuable corporate knowledge and expertise. The same goes for the baby boomers. Their impending retirement and mass exodus from the workforce will create void of institutional knowledge, insights and experiences as so many of the baby boomers make up a large portion of senior management. If organisations do not have a plan in place to capture, transfer and grow that expertise, it will not only be lost, but may cost companies more in the future as they repeat costly mistakes.
BOTTOM LINE BENEFITS:
Knowledge management helps to solve some of the most common business problems and at the same time delivers
These differences in work values and skills among generational groups have prompted the desire and need for organizations to examine the dynamics of managing a multigenerational workforce. For most organizations, gaining a better understanding of each generation regarding attitudes, behaviors, and work expectations is imperative to attract and retain qualified professional people, while maintaining a certain level of intellectual capacity within the organization. The overall intent is knowledge sustainability. In other words, gaining a competitive advantage by storing knowledge assets within the organization to help drive success. It is my firm belief that informal intergenerational learning influences knowledge transfer. However, there is limited empirical research available on the study of the relationship between informal intergenerational learning and knowledge
E-learning has contributed into a technology-driven paradigm that has transformed the educational processes by providing creativity, innovation and diverse styles in teaching and learning. In nutshell, it is transferring of knowledge and information to learners using Information and Communication Technologies. E-learning is delivery of contents using extensive technological tools and computers with an intention to provide autonomy and flexibility to learners as well as teachers. The term E-learning is interchangeably used with related terms like virtual learning, online learning, web-based learning, internet learning, distributed learning, networked learning, tele-learning, computer-assisted learning, web-based learning and the likes. However, broadly e-learning refers to delivery of learning objects using electronic technologies.
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
Knowledge retention has been a top priority for the Aerospace Corporation since its founding in 1960. Most of the programs in which Aerospace is involved go on for decades, making knowledge retention critical in the face of rapid staff turnover at customer organizations. The types of knowledge that are critical to retain within the technical and programmatic areas of the organization are also the
Effective knowledge management, using more collective and systematic processes, will also reduce our tendency to ‘repeat the same mistakes’. This is, again, extremely costly and inefficient. Effective knowledge management, therefore, can dramatically improve quality of products and/or services.
Knowledge management refers to organising and sharing the various forms of business information created within an organisation (Marakas and O’Brien 2013). Knowledge management is important as it increases the capability of a firm to learn from its environment and to incorporate knowledge into its business processes (Laudon & Laudon 2014).
Learning organization represents a shift to organizational development, collective learning and growth (Garavan, 1997) and is an advanced state of organizational development. (Johnson, 2002) This concept embraces many of the vital qualities for today 's organisations, i.e. teamwork, empowerment, participation, flexibility
Today establishments that learn are continuously refining their methods and services by accumulation and mixing of new ideas and knowledge (Silberman, 2013). In recent years’ changes in education, know-how, and guideline, along with growing technology development makes it harder for establishments for organizational learning (Silberman, 2013). Each level activities offer different duties in an institution and the supervisors evaluate reevaluate how best to improve productivity (Silberman, 2013).
The article addresses the need to adopt knowledge retention initiatives and continuous learning commitments amidst the challenges in today’s business environment. This begins with the topic of individual learning and further details the operational and procedural levels of learning, as well as how learning is applied in the organizational context. The authors focus on how to effectively apply the
In order to survive and prosper, organizations in the private and public sectors will need to respond in a timely and flexible way to social, technological, economic and political change. This means that an organization’s survival and growth will depend on its ability to cope with the external and internal requirements that these changes will demand. This implies that existing and new staff will need to acquire new knowledge, skills, attitudes and perspectives on a continual basis.
Some employees possess rare or difficult-to-imitate knowledge which makes them important to the organization’s success. Determining what happens when these valuable employees leave may help leaders to better understand the impact of knowledge loss and cause them to create the right knowledge management system (Massingham,2008). The following paper highlights the how organizations lose knowledge and method to retain their knowledge by understanding the barriers to a knowledge management system.
Fortune 500 companies lose roughly “$31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge” (Babcock, 2004, p. 46), a very scary figure in this global economy filled with turbulence and change. Social issues in knowledge capture and its reuse will result in decreasing chances of success. Those issues could increase costly mistakes and failure in services to clients. Some of the consequences of the social issues in knowledge management can be described as follows:
Knowledge management is described as the capability of a company to research and develop new technology, disseminate it with purpose and under control, apply it on the products, services and systems. [1]
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.
E-Learning is the imparting of knowledge via electronic means. Transfer of skills and expertise has been enabled by computers and networks.