Knowledge Management in Business Programs

9/10/2012

Faiza Javaid

With the advent of new technologies, such as datamining, intranets, videoconferencing, and webcasting, several technologists are offering such solutions as a panacea for meeting the business challenges of the knowledge era. Recent business survey has shown that increasing investments in new information technologies should somehow result in improved business performance. Interestingly, some technology experts and academic scholars have observed that there is no direct correlation between IT investments and business performance or knowledge management. Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaption, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings. Knowledge Management:Knowledge Management (KM) involves blending a companys internal and external information and turning it into actionable knowledge via a technology platform. Set of business processes developed in an organization to create, store, transfer, and apply knowledge.In simple language, KM is an effort to capture not only explicit factual information but also the tacit information and knowledge that exists in an organization, usually based on the experience and learning of individual employees, in order to advance the organization's mission. The eventual goal is to share knowledge among members of the organization. Knowledge Management Value Chain: Each stage adds value to raw data and information as they are transformed into usable knowledge Knowledge Acquisition Knowledge Storage Knowledge Dissemination Knowledge Application

Types of Knowledge Management Systems: Enterprise-wide Knowledge Management systems

General-purpose firm-wide efforts to collect, store, distribute, and apply digital content and knowledge

Knowledge work systems (KWS)

 Specialized systems built for engineers, scientists, other knowledge workers charged with discovering and creating new knowledge

Intelligent techniques
Diverse group of techniques such as data mining used for various goals: discovering knowledge, distilling knowledge, discovering optimal solutions

Knowledge Management in Business Programs:Knowledge is the most strategically significant resource of a firm. Knowledge-based resources are usually difficult to imitate and socially complex, therefore usage of effective knowledge management in business is the major determinant of sustained competitive advantage and superior corporate performance. Knowledge Management helps you make good use of your companys most important intellectual capital the information possessed by employees.Number of specific factors determines how vitalrole knowledge management in business has: Marketplaces are increasingly competitive and the rate of innovation is rising Reductions in staffing create a need to replace informal knowledge with formal methods Competitive pressures reduce the size of the work force that holds valuable business knowledge The amount of time available to experience and acquire knowledge has diminished Early retirements and increasing mobility of the work force lead to loss of knowledge Changes in strategic direction may result in the loss of knowledge in a specific area

These factors show how integration of knowledge management and business is becoming essential for successful company. And its not a problem just for large corporations. Small business knowledge management needs formal approaches even more, because small companies doesnt have the market leverage, inertia, and resources that big companies do. They have to be much more flexible, more responsive, and make more effective decisions because even small mistakes in small business knowledge management can be fatal to them. American companies will spend 73 billion dollarson knowledge management this year and spending on content, search, portal, and collaboration technologies is expected to increase 16% in 2008, according to a recent survey. Knowledge management systems, which facilitate the aggregation and dissemination of a company's collective intelligence, provide numerous benefits, including enabling innovation and improving process efficiency. But successfully implementing these systems can be a challenge.

Implementation Measures for Facilitating Knowledge Management Instead of the traditional emphasis on controlling the people and their behaviors by setting up pre-defined goals and procedures, they would need to view the organization as a human community capable of providing diverse meanings to information outputs generated by the technological systems. De-emphasize the adherence to the company view of 'how things are done here' and 'best practices' so that such ways and practices are continuously assessed from multiple perspectives for their alignment with the dynamically changing external environment. Invest in multiple and diverse interpretations to enable constructive conflict mode of inquiry and, thus, lessen oversimplification of issues or premature decision closure. Encourage greater proactive involvement of human imagination and creativity to facilitate greater internal diversity to match the variety and complexity of the wicked environment. Give more explicit recognition to tacit knowledge and related human aspects, such as ideals, values, or emotions, for developing a richer conceptualization of knowledge management Implement new, flexible technologies and systems that support and enable communities of practice, informal and semi-informal networks of internal employees and external individuals based on shared concerns and interests. Make the organizational information base accessible to organization members who are closer to the action while simultaneously ensuring that they have the skills and authority to execute decisive responses to changing conditions.

Conclusion:The new business environment is characterized by radical and discontinuous change which overwhelms the traditional organizational response of predicting and reacting based on preprogrammed heuristics. Instead, it demands anticipatory response from organization members who need to carry out the mandate of a faster cycle of knowledge-creation and action based on the new knowledge. In the final analysis, managers need to develop a greater appreciation for their intangible human assets captive in the minds and experiences of their knowledge workers, because without these assets, the companies are simply not equipped with a vision to foresee or to imagine the future while being faced with a fog of unknowingness. Elevating computerization to the level of a magic bullet may lead to the diminishing of what matters the most in any enterprise: educated, committed, and imaginative individuals working for organizations that place greater emphasis on people than on technologies.