Study Of Knowledge Management Within The Context Of The Hospitality Industry Essay

Knowledge is considered as one of the most important and competitive resource for sustenance of the organisation (Zack, 1999). It can be compared to the strategic resource that can be used and applied in various frames of the organisation. Experienced managers in the organisations believe that company can receive strategic advantage through knowledge and not the strategies or actions implemented by competitors. Knowledge can be regarded as a strong approach that opens numerous ways of success. It is that weapon that help organisation to evaluate solutions in financial and other professional difficulties.

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.

Knowledge management was defined as the turning of information into actionable knowledge which can be accessed by people who can apply it. Robbins (2003) gives a time perspective in his definition of knowledge management. He mentions as part of knowledge management the distribution of the right information to the right people at the right time. Lytras et al (2002) gives a definition of knowledge management which emphasises the purpose of knowledge management. In the definition creation of new capabilities, enablement for superior performance, encouraging innovation and enhancement of customer value were mentioned. For the purpose of this study the researcher summarised knowledge management as the intentional process of coordinating people, technology and systems to optimise creation and sharing of intellectual

(1) KM strategy, the objective is to manage, share, and create relevant knowledge assets that will help meet tactical and strategic requirements (2) Organizational culture, influences the way people interact, the context within which knowledge is created, the resistance they will have towards certain changes, and ultimately the way they share knowledge (3) Organizational processes, the right processes, environment, & systems that enable KM to be implemented in the organization (4) Management & Leadership, the roles and dynamics of needs/ solutions required at various levels (5) Technology, the systems, tools, and technologies that fit the organization requirements- properly designed & implemented (6) Politics- the long term support to implement and sustain initiatives that involve virtually all organization functions (Frost,

While Knowledge Management (KM) is important in any business however, there is no real agreed upon definition. KM is a concept that includes the

KM Strategy – the strategy of knowledge management must be associated with vision and values

Since the mid-1990s, knowledge management has become increasingly significant for business managers and companies. ‘It is broadly accepted that systematic knowledge management is tightly linked with gaining and sustaining competitive advantage.’ (Bogner & Bansal, 2007, p658-6 as cited in Hislop, 2009, p1) The definition of knowledge management is various because of the wide range of this concept and its complexity (Al-Hawamdeh, 2003). For example, the broad definition provided by McAdam and McCreedy (2000, p155 as cited in Hislop 2009, p53) note that: ‘KM relates to the management of anything classified as knowledge’ Furthermore, Hislop (2009, p59)

Knowledge Management can make a significant difference between ongoing or successful ventures of any organization in a world of accelerating change. Knowledge Management provides the ability to connect and cooperate complex ideas efficiently and can be beneficial even to expand when using strategic alliances. To make Knowledge Management work in an

Each person brings particular expertise and experience – which although subjective, is the part why KM is so important and why reliance on people are needed. According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), knowledge embodies experience, values, and expert insights that provide a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information (Davenport, 1998)

Knowledge management often involves isolating and planning intellectual assets within an organization, producing new knowledge for competitive advantages within the organization, making vast amounts of corporate information accessible. Knowledge management can be hard to interpret or explain. How would a nurse or doctor define “health care” succinctly? How would a CEO explain “management”? Each of these areas is very complex, with many sub-areas of specialization. This in turn leads to the question “What is Knowledge Management Strategy & Metrics”?

A technologic approach to Knowledge Management has a much higher initial cost, is inherently more scalable, and can handle a much greater transaction volume than an unassisted knowledge worker. Technology in support of Knowledge Management isn’t necessary or even optimal in every instance. Technologies supportive of Knowledge Management can be applied successfully to organizations of any size; extensive investments in technology are generally practical only in medium-size to large companies. Perhaps the most significant way technology enables the KM process is that it can provide virtual meeting space for communities of practice.

Possibility of managing the knowledge in proper framework is becoming more or more important in modern economy. Knowledge creation and exploration in modern organizations become a key source in accomplishing and sustaining competitive significance. In fact, the level of organizational knowledge how effectively impact on firm uses. This means with the help of this how fast firm gain the knowledge, and create sustainable competitive advantage. In this era knowledge of modern organization is the one, which learns and memorizes the skills that acts on the basis of the available information in the best possible way. Knowledge management represents adoption of core of knowledge in order to achieve organization’s business goals. We can say, knowledge management is a systematic effort to enable information and knowledge to grow, flow in proper way and create and has a responsibility to ensure that person have correct knowledge at the correct place at the correct

Organisational learning can be seen as the goal of knowledge management and may be obtained by good knowledge management strategies and processes. By motivating the creation, dissemination and application of knowledge, KM initiatives pay off by helping the organization embed knowledge into organisational processes so that it can continuously improve its practices and behaviours and pursue the achievement of its goals.

It has become explicit that knowledge management is not just another fad which has been hyped up by the management consultants and technology vendors. (Remenyi, 2004).It is not facile to implement knowledge management successfully; in as much as it offers. Knowledge management panaceas depending on technology have not produced convincing results considering that more money has been spent. Remenyi went on to say that knowledge management is far more than a technological issue and thus, what is really entailed is a rethink with a prominence on the people side of knowledge management and such approach is the use of a knowledge café.

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