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Different Views Of The Term Knowledge Management

Satisfactory Essays

1.1. Outline different views of the term knowledge management
Knowledge Management (KM) is a concept and a term that arose in the early 90 's. In addition, early on in the KM movement, Davenport (1994) defined knowledge management as ' 'the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge." This definition has the virtue of being simple, stark, and to the point. A few years later, the Gartner Group defined KM to be a ‘ 'a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise 's information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual workers." Both definitions share a very organizational and corporate orientation. KM is primarily about managing the knowledge of and in organizations. Additionally, there are several different perspectives on what Knowledge Management is. For instance, KM can be about systems and technologies or a holistic initiative across the entire organisation etc.

Knowledge management involves a strategic commitment to improving the organization’s effectiveness, as well as to improving its opportunity enhancement. The goal of knowledge management as a process is to improve the organization’s ability to execute its core processes more efficiently. Davenport et al. (1998) describes four broad objectives of knowledge management systems in practice: create knowledge

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