Knowledge Management is the process of gathering, managing and sharing employees’ knowledge capital. It is a discipline that promotes collaborative and integrated approach to creation, capture and use of enterprise’s knowledge assets (Bhojaraju, 2005). It is the set of strategies and practices used by an organization for systematic management of intellectual capital that helps to gain insight and understanding from its own experience (Wallace, 2015).
The knowledge management program is as systematic approach consisting of following steps:
1. Identify the Goal: The first step in knowledge management program is to identify the goal/objective of the system to be implemented. It is very important to identify clear goal as all the actions will be based on this initially set goal. The goal of the organization can be gathering the knowledge of employees, develop a new product, documenting the process, structuring task execution methods or centralizing organizational policies. The goal is identified by accessing and understanding the specific needs of the organization through research.
2. Locate the Sources: After identification of goal, we need to locate the sources of knowledge that could be internal (within the organization) or external (outside the organization). The explicit knowledge can be easily located as they are available in scattered form over company database, websites, social media or other tools. However locating tacit knowledge is difficult as the employees themselves may be unaware about the knowledge they possess. For this, the company may use expert location systems and social network analysis.
3. Capture the Knowledge: Once the sources of knowledge are identified, it must be acquired to take benefit from the intellectual capital. Electronic database and collaborative technologies can be used to gather the knowledge, store them systematically and make them productive for the organization.
4. Organize, Share and Value Knowledge: If the captured knowledge is not properly organized, it will not benefit the organization. All the knowledge captured may not be equally important so it should be organized based on its value for the organization and shared to concerned people. Sharing the knowledge will help the employees in accessing right information conveniently and use it for the organizational benefit that will make it valuable.
For example: The goal of a company is to develop new product. After the identification of goal, it will look for the sources of knowledge. The competitors, target market segments, products with similar benefits can help the company to get knowledge about the cost, demand and profitability of the product to be produced. From this, the company will have idea about what the target segment, potential market, production cost, estimated demand and profit associated with the proposed product. The company them organizes the captured knowledge in database to collect objective data that will help the company in deciding what are the essential attributes the product must to position itself in the market. The knowledge is then communicated to all the staffs who will be involved in the production process so that the product will come out as expected and add value to the firm.
References
Bhojaraju, G. (2005). Knowledge Management: Why do we Need for Corporate? Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 10 (2), 37-50.
Wallace, P. (2015). Introduction to Information Systems (Second ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.
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Knowledge Management is the process of gathering, managing and sharing employees’ knowledge capital. It is a discipline that promotes collaborative and integrated approach to creation, capture and use of enterprise’s knowledge assets (Bhojaraju, 2005). It is the set of strategies and practices used by an organization for systematic management of intellectual capital that helps to gain insight and understanding from its own experience (Wallace, 2015).
The knowledge management program is as systematic approach consisting of following steps:
1. Identify the Goal: The first step in knowledge management program is to identify the goal/objective of the system to be implemented. It is very important to identify clear goal as all the actions will be based on this initially set goal. The goal of the organization can be gathering the knowledge of employees, develop a new product, documenting the process, structuring task execution methods or centralizing organizational policies. The goal is identified by accessing and understanding the specific needs of the organization through research.
2. Locate the Sources: After identification of goal, we need to locate the sources of knowledge that could be internal (within the organization) or external (outside the organization). The explicit knowledge can be easily located as they are available in scattered form over company database, websites, social media or other tools. However locating tacit knowledge is difficult as the employees themselves may be unaware about the knowledge they possess. For this, the company may use expert location systems and social network analysis.
3. Capture the Knowledge: Once the sources of knowledge are identified, it must be acquired to take benefit from the intellectual capital. Electronic database and collaborative technologies can be used to gather the knowledge, store them systematically and make them productive for the organization.
4. Organize, Share and Value Knowledge: If the captured knowledge is not properly organized, it will not benefit the organization. All the knowledge captured may not be equally important so it should be organized based on its value for the organization and shared to concerned people. Sharing the knowledge will help the employees in accessing right information conveniently and use it for the organizational benefit that will make it valuable.
For example: The goal of a company is to develop new product. After the identification of goal, it will look for the sources of knowledge. The competitors, target market segments, products with similar benefits can help the company to get knowledge about the cost, demand and profitability of the product to be produced. From this, the company will have idea about what the target segment, potential market, production cost, estimated demand and profit associated with the proposed product. The company them organizes the captured knowledge in database to collect objective data that will help the company in deciding what are the essential attributes the product must to position itself in the market. The knowledge is then communicated to all the staffs who will be involved in the production process so that the product will come out as expected and add value to the firm.
References
Bhojaraju, G. (2005). Knowledge Management: Why do we Need for Corporate? Malaysian Journal of Library & Information Science, 10 (2), 37-50.
Wallace, P. (2015). Introduction to Information Systems (Second ed.). New Jersey: Pearson Education Inc.