Knowledge management
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Knowledge Management (KM) involves identifying, creating, distributing, and enabling the adoption of insights and experiences within an organization. KM strategies typically focus on improving performance, competitive advantage, innovation, and continuous organizational improvement. Knowledge can be tacit, embodied in individuals, or explicit, easily communicated. Key KM strategies include codifying knowledge into shared repositories, and connecting knowledge seekers with subject experts on an ad hoc basis. A Knowledge Management System provides a means to create, store, and disseminate organizational knowledge to support effective decision making and reduce redundant work.
Knowledge management
- 2. Knowledge Management ( KM ) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences . Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge , either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice.
- 3. Focus on: Knowledge Management efforts typically focus on organizational objectives such as improved performance , competitive advantage , innovation , the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization .
- 4. Dimensions Tacit knowledge Tacit knowledge represents internalized knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of, such as how he or she accomplishes particular tasks. Explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge represents knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form that can easily be communicated to others
- 5. Strategies Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities. One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database , as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the repository. This is also commonly known as the Codification approach to KM.
- 6. Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide their insights to the particular person or people needing this ( Snowden 2002 ). This is also commonly known as the Personalization approach to KM. Strategies
- 7. Other knowledge management strategies and instruments for companies include: Rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing) Storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge) Cross-project learning Expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the experts) Best practice transfer Knowledge Fairs Social Software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc.)
- 8. Knowledge Management System Knowledge Management System (KM System) refers to a system for managing knowledge in organizations for supporting creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information. It can comprise a part (neither necessary nor sufficient) of a Knowledge Management initiative.
- 9. The idea of a KM system is to enable employees to have ready access to the organization's documented base of facts, sources of information, and solutions. For example a typical claim justifying the creation of a KM system might run something like this: an engineer could know the metallurgical composition of an alloy that reduces sound in gear systems. Sharing this information organization wide can lead to more effective engine design and it could also lead to ideas for new or improved equipment.
- 10. A KM system could be any of the following: Document based i.e. any technology that permits creation/management/sharing of formatted documents such as Lotus Notes , SharePoint , web, distributed databases etc. Ontology/Taxonomy based: these are similar to document technologies in the sense that a system of terminologies (i.e. ontology) are used to summarize the document e.g. Author, Subj, Organization etc. as in DAML & other XML based ontologies Based on AI technologies which use a customized representation scheme to represent the problem domain.
- 11. Provide network maps of the organization showing the flow of communication between entities and individuals Increasingly social computing tools are being deployed to provide a more organic approach to creation of a KM system.
- 12. Benefits of KM Systems Some of the advantages claimed for KM systems are: Sharing of valuable organizational information throughout organizational hierarchy. Can avoid re-inventing the wheel, reducing redundant work. May reduce training time for new employees Retention of Intellectual Property after the employee leaves if such knowledge can be codified.