Potential Contributions of Information Aggregation and Knowledge Brokering to Improve Business Process Performance

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.

According to Davenport et al (1998), Knowledge Management is concerned with exploitation and development of knowledge asset of the organization with a view of the objective of the organization. Knowledge can be managed by explicit, documented knowledge, tacit and subjective knowledge. It also associated with knowledge creation as well as knowledge sharing. Thus, requires systems for creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories to cultivate and to aid knowledge sharing. Organizations that succeed in knowledge management are likely to view knowledge as an asset and to develop organization culture which support knowledge creation and knowledge sharing. Jennifer Rowley (1999) describes the implementation of knowledge management has the importance consequences for structure and culture of the organization, and the roles of managers as well as workers. We can say that knowledge management implementation is crucial as it will lead an organization to be at competitive advantages. There are two types of knowledge mainly explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge. Different people convey their knowledge differently. The philosopher Polanyi (1967) described tacit knowledge as knowing more than we can tell, or knowing how to do something without thinking about it, like ride a bicycle. Tacit knowledge is automatic, requires little or no time or thought and helps to determine how organizations make decision and influence the behavior of their member (Liebowitz and Beckman, 1998). Sternberg (1997) states that tacit knowledge is technical or cognitive as it made up of mental models, values, beliefs, perceptions, insights and assumptions. Technical tacit knowledge demonstrated when people master particular knowledge or skills whereas cognitive tacit knowledge include implicit mental models and perceptions that are ingrained they are taken for granted. Tacit knowledge basically is the “know-how” based on practice, experience and seldom expressed

Tacit knowledge – know the definition and know what facilitates the exchange of this kind of knowledge (refer to discussion in Rutland and O’Hagan article).

Innovation is a cornerstone for any organization aspiring to set their visions high. The accentuation of an enterprise that needs to develop technology expeditiously would be: advertisement insights, analysing major trends and the need of a flair for professionalism which often brings us to crowdsourcing alternatives. "Innovation is: production or adoption, assimilation, and exploitation of a value-added novelty in economic and social spheres; renewal and enlargement of products, services, and markets; development of new methods of production; and establishment of new management systems. It is both a process and an outcome." (Edison & Torkar, 2013)

What exactly is knowledge management? “Knowledge management is defined as developing a system to improve the creation and sharing of knowledge critical for decision making” (Kreitner, 217). Tacit knowledge involves the creative minds of the production because “it is personal, intuitive, and undocumented

Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

This chapter reviews the related literature on knowledge management. It is divided into five main sections. The first section presents conceptual framework for the study elucidating key concepts of the study. The second section discusses the theoretical framework where key theories informing the study are discussed. In this section knowledge management theories and models are discussed and linked to the study. Section three reviews a critical review of the existing literature on the subject of knowledge management. In this section empirical studies are interrogated and critiqued to identify important variables which are relevant in this study. The current international knowledge coordination systems and knowledge management best practices will be evaluated. The literature review ends with a discussion of knowledge management critical success factors (knowledge enablers) related to the objectives of this study. The need for top management commitment in knowledge management processes is examined. The effect of organizational

In the recent past information and knowledge revolution have been witnessed in all sectors of production and have had the magnitude of the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries (Ondari-Okemwa & Smith, 2009). “Knowledge has been increasingly recognised as the most important economic resource surpassing the traditional resources of capital, labour and land” (Drucker, 1993). Tacit Knowledge creation and sharing has been attracting increasing interest, since the process of creating and managing it is relatively complex as compared to explicit knowledge. It is almost impossible to characterize tacit Knowledge without describing Knowledge and Knowledge Management (Mungai,

The last few years have witnessed big changes in the business climate, and business process improvement and continuous improvement (CI) efforts have certainly seen their share of change. I talk with companies every day and, without a doubt, there has been a fundamental shift in thought on how to best make meaningful process improvement happen.

Wasko and Faraj (2000) describe three kinds of knowledge: "knowledge as object", "knowledge embedded within individuals", and "knowledge embedded in a community". Communities of Practice have become associated with finding, sharing, transferring, and archiving knowledge, as well as making explicit "expertise", or tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is considered to be those valuable context-based experiences that cannot easily be captured, codified and stored (Davenport & Prusak

Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be tacit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject); it can be more or less formal or systematic. Botha et al (2008) pointed out that tacit and explicit knowledge should be seen as a spectrum rather than as definitive points. Therefore, in practice, all knowledge is a mixture of tacit and explicit elements rather than being one or the other. The most important distinction within KM is between explicit and tacit knowledge. The overload of data is making knowledge management increasingly more important as it facilitates decision-making capabilities; builds learning organizations by making learning routine, and stimulates cultural change and innovation.

Some authors have also identified that knowledge can be a measure of organisational success, for example, quoting McQuade et al (2007), “The hallmark of a successful enterprise is the degree to which it generates, develops, maintains, grows, exploits and protects its knowledge base and develops its core skill and competencies.” and also Rampersad H (2007) , “An organisation is more successful if its employees learn quicker, implement and commercialise knowledge faster than the competition 's workers”

In a book entitled “The Necessary Nature of Future Firms,” George P. Huber provides a blue print detailing how businesses can be relevant and competitive in the future. On the topic of organization learning and knowledge acquisition, Huber (2004) list three dependencies that are crucial to an organization survival. Those dependencies are listed as 1) An organization has to be innovative by 2) acquiring new knowledge or combining current knowledge, 3) or learning new knowledge or a new way of combining current and knowledge (Huber, 2004). Schultz and Kitchen (2000) writes literature to confirm the notion that the knowledge, experience and wisdom an organization possess is directly correlated to its success in the market place.

Business must endlessly update their systems to keep up with the changes that occurs with their business process. Business processes are continually trying to find many ways to accomplish new and shifting goals for the business. New or shifting goals, such as changing the responsible for a current business process, or combining more than one responsible into one can be difficult and needs a clear understanding of multi-tiered systems and the business processes itself. The absence of connection among requirement and employment can lead to problems in recognizing the suitable program which must be changed to further increase the worthiness of a system in response to the new goals. Unfortunately, these changes can lead to errors and can make take longer than expected.

The 21st century marks the beginning of the information age, where knowledge is the source of competitive advantage in organizations. Properly managed knowledge can foster new innovation, competitive forecasting and employee problem solving. (Fey, C., & Furu, 2008, p.1302). In the past, organizations used their production capacity to achieve economies of scale and cost reduction. Today, it is more important for organizations to leverage their intellectual capital and knowledge sharing to achieve sustained competitive advantage. Knowledge firms are no longer evaluated based on their tangible assets, but rather on their capacity to produce shared knowledge (Fey, C., & Furu, 2008, p.1302). Studies have shown managing and