What Is Knowledge Management Essay

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

and leadership. creation and unlearning, motivations, communications, and boundaries, politics, the use of information communication technologies, and strategies for knowledge management practices.

Knowledge is much more than the transmitted or acquired information.  It is the awareness and understanding of facts, truths or beliefs resulting from perception, learning and reasoning.

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

The superior capabilities of knowledge management systems provide an opportunity for the business to engage the most effective components and recognize the importance of communication to make informed, accurate decisions (McGrath, 2001). This system can organize the company’s knowledge resources, knowledge obtaining, organizing, and applying to make a sound routine the will enforce effectiveness (Niu, 2008). The dynamic function of knowledge management to create, capture, and apply knowledge to achieve an organization’s objective will allow them to be more profitable and successful (Zucker, 1986). In addition to increasing profits, the system can be also used to reduce costs and enhance research and development (DeTienne & Jackson, 2001). With all of these advantages, it would be wasteful for a company to not employ knowledge management. As seen in the Discovery Communications, Inc. example, the company can attribute their new productivity levels and increase in ease of securing documents to the knowledge management system that put into place by Carefree Technology. Like Discovery Communications, Inc., knowledge management is so popular today because companies can collect, process and share knowledge to ignite employees ' creativity which in turn will make the business grow. Wenhong and Jianhua (2009) explained the core of knowledge management is to convert company’s knowledge resources into an increased company

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

Since past years, a thorough study of Knowledge management systems is being done. Different Tactics have been projected for categorization of tools like methods, practices and technologies that typically comprise knowledge management systems. Over the time new practices are proposed resulting in better understanding of knowledge management. It is natural to any paradigm which is As with any discipline that lacks an acknowledged amalgamate paradigm, various views will emerge on the

Knowledge management as theoretical and practical concept appeared in the second half of 20th century. With the rapid development of ICT so called ‘knowledge bases’, intranets and computer-supported cooperative work have been actively used in knowledge management process.

It has been argued that within the short space of time between defining knowledge management and it becoming a common phrase, many organisations stated one of their main aims as ‘leveraging organisational knowledge’ (Ruggles, 1998). It is with this in mind that organisations must be aware of their knowledge workers, the information they hold and any potential knowledge based changes that may need to be implemented to help their success, or even, survival.

Knowledge management is critical to organizations. According to Gregory R. Wenig, knowledge management is consists of activities from its own experience and from the experience of others, and on the judicious application of that knowledge to fulfill the mission of the organization. In my point of view, I think that knowledge management is performed by organization to appropriately handle, distribute, and transfer assets of knowledge, experience, and ideas from individual

One of the primary reasons for the heightened interest in knowledge management is owing to the advances in information and communication technologies. But why have these technologies created such interest in how people can manage knowledge? Grover and Davenport (2001) highlight that the computing technology evolves in business to the point where it generates interest in managing knowledge. It starts by enabling processes at the level of transactions at the point of work. These systems were collecting amount of data which need to be processed to make sense out of it, and hence, the advent of data processing systems. Such a vast amount of information needs to be interpreted and applied by the management for effective action and even

Knowledge can be gained and interpreted in many different ways. It all depends on how people prioritize different ways of knowing and how they perceive what knowledge is. This has led to the question, Does knowledge consist solely of proven facts and information that can be organized in a coherent manner, or is knowledge deeper, depending not only on facts, but also on interpretation stemming from individual experiences? The question is, are facts alone enough to constitute knowledge or do those facts need to be interpreted under guidance of personal experiences in order to gain knowledge. In two areas of knowledge that have a large role in my life, natural science and religion, I can see both sides to the argument.

The concept of knowledge could be divided into three categories as well -- Knowing what, knowing how, and knowing why. Knowing what means that once the knowledge is obtained, a person could act by the instruction of knowledge. For example, a newly hired waiter in a restaurant needs to learn things like how to set up a table, how to take orders from customers. Knowing how indicates that with the knowledge in mind, a person could react to the environment with proper knowing what knowledge. An example would be two customers sit at the different tables in a restaurant and ask for the check at the same time, a waiter who knows how to react, would take their request right after one another, and then give their check at relatively same time. While a waiter without knowledge of knowing how, could have only taken one request at a time, while letting the the other customer waiting, in which is clearly not a good tactic to make the customer

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.

Generally, knowledge is interpreted, subjective information within a context, which involves understanding and is mostly tacit, not explicit. Knowledge can take many forms. It can be in the form of thoughts, insights, ideas, lore, lessons learnt, practices, and experiences undergone to name just a few.