Knowledge is a philosophical concept defined by Plato as a belief supported by an account or an explanation (Blair, 2002). Under the context of knowledge-view of an organization, the definition suggests that knowledge comes from firm’s increased ability to make use and sense of available information to create value for the shareholders (Leiponen, 2006). There has been a significant growth in the knowledge-based school of thought, which suggests that generating and retention of knowledge can have positive effects on the firm’s performance (Di Mattia & Scott, 1999). To manage this intangible asset to leverage firms for benefits is considered to be its core capability. Knowledge management (KM) has been aimed at capturing, integrating and using existing organizational knowledge and consequently creating a knowledge asset that can be a source of sustained competitive advantage in the long run (Brooking, 1999; Havens & Knapp, 1999). The revolution in the KM came with the rise of technology and there has been a misconception of linking IT with KM although it just facilitates the process (Papers4you.com, 2006).

The literature has divided knowledge into two major categories depending upon its nature to be codified for the use in a KM system. The structured and systematic knowledge that can be described in formal language and easily communicated and shared through formal means qualify for the explicit knowledge type (Elizabeth, 2001). It has been established that such knowledge is easy to codify in the form of databases and is seen as a base resource because of its inherent nature of easy imitation by other organizations. The other form of knowledge which has gained tremendous importance is the automatic collective behavior and is called tacit knowledge (Richard et al, 2001). Tacit knowledge, according to Sajjad et al (2005), comprises of mental models, values, beliefs, assumptions and perceptions which are deeply entranced into the intellectual capital of an organization. It has been suggested that tacit knowledge is faced with an apparent dichotomy i.e. the feature of inimitability that make it a source of sustained competitive advantage also makes it hard to capture and share within the organization to gain the potential benefits.

Therefore it can be concluded that the elusive asset of knowledge, where provides an organization with capability to undermine competition also proves to be a challenge to leverage itself (Papers4you.com, 2006). Any organization should not only look at the ‘best practices’ in the field but should customize each approach to its own unique culture and requirements to be able to successfully use KM.

References:

Blair, D.C. (2002), “Knowledge management: hype, hope, or help?”, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 53(12), 1019-1028

BROOKING, Annie (1999), “Corporate Memory: Strategies for Knowledge Management”, Intellectual Capital Series London: International Thomson Business

Di Mattia, S. & Scott, I. A. (1999), “KM: hope, hype or harbinger?”, Library Journal, 15 September, 122(15), p. 33

Elizabeth A. Smith, (2001), “The role of tacit and explicit knowledge in the workplace”, Journal of Knowledge Management; Volume: 5 Issue: 4; 2001 Research Paper

Havens, C. & Knapp, E. (1999), “Easing into Knowledge Management, Strategy and Leadership”, 27(2), p. 4

Leiponen, Aija (2006), “Managing Knowledge for Innovation: The Case of Business-to-Business Services”, Journal of Product Innovation Management, May2006, Vol. 23 Issue 3, p238-258

Papers For You (2006) “P/M/440. Tools of knowledge management”, Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmgt8.htm [22/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) “P/M/325. Knowledge management: definition of the concept”, Available from Papers4you.com [21/06/2006]

Richard T. Herschel, Hamid Nemati, David Steiger (2001), “Tacit to explicit knowledge conversion: knowledge exchange protocols”, Journal of Knowledge Management; Volume: 5 Issue: 1; 2001 Research paper

Sajjad M. Jasimuddin, Jonathan H. Klein, Con Connell (2005), “The paradox of using tacit and explicit knowledge: Strategies to face dilemmas”, Management Decision; Volume: 43 Issue: 1; 2005 Conceptual paper

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Help answer the question about Knowledge Management

What is the difference between knowledge management and knowledge based management.?
Knowledge Management, then, is the process of transforming INFORMATION and INTELLECTUAL ASSETS into enduring VALUE.Knowledge Management involves connecting people with people and people with information. Unlike Information, Knowledge is not just a “thing” to be “managed”. It is a Capacity – of people and communities – to continuously generate and renew themselves to meet new challenges and opportunities; it is the collective knowledge of the organization.
Ok this was all about knowledge management now can u please distinguish it from knowledge based management.

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Copyright © 2006 Verena Veneeva. Professional Writer working for http://www.coursework4you.co.uk

Knowledge is also available to a company in the form of news articles, journals, relevant publications, and documentation. Many times this knowledge is crucial in the successful running of the company. Without many types of knowledge such as statistics, reports, white papers, and specific industry information many companies would lose out on a serious advantage that can push them over the top when it comes to their competition. Knowledge management is a great tool that any company can implement and that will increase their success and profit potential.

There are many knowledge management tools that are available for companies to use. Knowledge management software will help a company to organize and collate the information that is relevant to the interests of the company. Once all this information is stored in one database it becomes a great tool for all employees to use.

Same about project management. Combining processes, people and technologies is an art, not a craft. But there’s another phase of the subject. Those management possibilities that failed once due to lack of communication, now are open. This is no more a problem but a difficulty.

Lets take a look at what’s called business of the future. What are its features. How to succeed in the world of constant speed-up. In the world where market transparency and complexity are constantly growing.

The members of «Enterprise 2.0 2008» conference say this way about Business 2.0 features:

1. Flat organization: there’re minimum layers between the top-management and common workers
2. Ease of organization flow
3. Agility: minimum bureaucracy
4. Flexibility: how quickly your company adapts to external changes
5. User-driven technology
6. Bottom up: control and information flows often originate from any layer
7. Distributed: team is distributed both geographically and in time. Teams are global.
8. Fuzzy boundaries, open borders: there’re no definite departments inside a company
9. Transparency: your company state is always visible from outside

10. Information systems are emergent, and not forced from top-management
11. Folksonomies replace taxonomies. It’s no use making people think the same you do.
12. Simple. Nothing to add here.
13. Open: the best description is given by Jonathan Nolen, hope it helps
14. Works on demand: for each new request, company invents new solutions. I recommend checking an intersting article about business-on-demand.
15. Short time-to-market cycle

Seeming simplicity of new organization is actually based on complexity of people and technologies. When saying ‘people’ I mean, new business is possible only when people characteristics are very high. Responsibility, creativity, communication skills, inner mobility. People become more demanding to themselves and business creates new people. The technology aspect of new business is: all those innovations become possible with new communication and knowledge management techniques.

But this is still not a difficulty. Difficulty lies in combining people and technology growth. It comes out that ideally technology should be one step ahead of people. Technology as a way to transmit achievements from more advanced participants to other. It’s like two endpoints of same spring. In such a way business system evolves.

OK, what do we have on the intellectual systems market that
1. Solve project management automation tasks
2. Empower managers’ flexibility in building teams and processes
3. Create an environment for knowledge sharing in a team
Let me note that these three things are connected with one another and support each other. There are systems that solve each of the problems perfectly. But only one.
Corporate Wikis for knowledge storing and sharing; ERP and «professional» project management tools like Microsoft Project; standard development and management methodologies. GTD programs are good for short-term teams that gather for one project (some communication management systems look like it’s GTD for teams, yes).
The balance between complexity of all those three tasks and usability is a challenge for many software companies: SalesForce, BaseCamp, Zoho.
You may review a comparison of well-known systems, I don’t want to stop on this issue right now.
Balanced solution that includes all needs of ‘business 2.0′ still does not exist. So many companies are now trying to build their own technical basis for growth.
We at NewtonIdeas were dissatisfied with those possibilities current systems provide. Thus we are constantly looking at top-edge developments in this field, and consider our 8 years experience in IT and business. And built our own, where we put principles of Enterprise 2.0 in the way we understand it.
So, that’s what drives us at developing Comindwork – a system for project management, team communication and knowledge sharing. Three-in-one and a bit more.

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Actually, there is powerful yet easy to use event software that enables all business owners to manage their marketing campaigns easily and conveniently. This marketing software is introduced by Aprimo.com, a company that has helped many business owners boosting their company sales and profit. The marketing software offered by this company is not just ordinary marketing software because the software can be used for various purposes such as event planner software. We will only need one piece of software to manage our email or phone marketing campaigns so we do not need to buy other software. This simply means that we can reduce our marketing expenses.

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Knowledge codification tools support the representation of knowledge so that it can be accessed and transferred. The capabilities of these tools vary depending on the targeted knowledge – i.e., process knowledge, factual knowledge, catalog knowledge, and cultural knowledge – and on whether that knowledge is explicit or tacit. Types of codification tools include knowledge bases, knowledge maps, organizational thesaurus/dictionaries, and simulators. Knowledge transfer tools alleviate the temporal, physical, and social distances in knowledge sharing. An alternative framework for classifying KM tools and technologies consists of five categories: business intelligence, collaboration, transfer, expertise, and discovery / mapping. Such frameworks can help organizations to select the appropriate technology for a given KM task.

Mere adoption of information technologies, however, does not necessarily achieve its intended purposes. According to the theory of technology assimilation (Cooper and Zmud, 1990; Fichman and Kemerer, 1997), technologies must be infused and diffused into business processes to enhance organizational performance. Assimilation is defined as “the extent to which the use of a technology diffuses across organizational work processes and becomes routinized in activates associated with those processes” (Tornatzky and Klein, 1982; Chatterjee et al., 2002). It is a key factor that explains the influence of IT adoption on organizational performance (Jarvenpaa and lves, 1991; Armstrong and Sambamurthy, 1999; Chatterjee et al., 2002). In the initial adoption stage, it is challenging yet users need to reconceptualize business process activities in order to use the technology effectively (Saga and Zmud, 1994; Fichman and Kemerer, 1997; Purvis et al., 2001). These challenges constitute ‘assimilation gaps’, i.e. the lag of rates of adoption between the organization and individuals (Chatterjee et al., 2002). Successful utilization hence requires, among other things (e.g. ease of use and reduced complexity etc.), mutual adaptation of the technology and the organizational context (Leonard-Barton, 1988; Purvis et al., 2001). In other words, IT must be adapted to the organizational and industrial arrangements (Van de Ven, 1986), while structures and norms may also need to be reformed to facilitate the use of the technologies (Kwon and Zmud, 1987). In the enablers or KM, IT should therefore become the enablers of KM processes to exhibit its effect on KM success. Without such assimilation within the KM processes, IT alone is not sufficient to improve firm performance. We hence hypothesize that IT does not affect KM success directly. Instead, its effect is fully mediated through KM process capabilities.

To succeed with knowledge management, organizations should focus on getting better at reinventing the wheel instead of avoiding it.

The rant that provoked this column was in response to the frequent justification of knowledge management efforts on the grounds that “we don’t want to reinvent the wheel,” which I finally got tired of hearing. It’s one of those phrases that sounds like it means something useful until you actually take a look at it.

First, equating “knowledge” with “wheels” gets you on the wrong track by confusing knowledge with something vaguely product-like. I can’t think of many knowledge work processes where you could simply take a piece of finished work from elsewhere in the organization and drop it in place. At the very least, you need to understand the current situation and the available knowledge work “thing” well enough to come up with a way to adapt or apply the old thing in a new situation. Any attempt to sidestep that process is guaranteed to lead to trouble. Don’t encourage it by laziness in comparing knowledge work deliverables to wheels.

Second, if you are really doing knowledge work, then your customer, be it someone above you in the organizational food chain or a paying customer, is not interested in and will not pay for yesterday’s answer. You need to divine their unique perspective and explicitly connect your knowledge work deliverable to that unique situation. The value of having organized access to prior knowledge work deliverables lies in improving the quality and the speed of applying that knowledge as an input to the process at hand, not as a deliverable.

by Jim McGee

1. Start with Strategy
Be clear what the objectives of a knowledge management strategy are, in order to ensure that knowledge management does not come to be seen as an end in itself. Document these carefully, so that they can be used to assess every aspect of the design of evolving systems and tools. In an educational context, it seems reasonable to expect that these objectives must, in broad terms, be to advance and improve student learning. IF knowledge management investments cannot be linked to this overall objective, it would seem to be difficult to justify them in an educational organization.

2. Involve users in the design of the knowledge management strategy and systems
This paper has stressed throughout the centrality of people to knowledge management. The most successful strategies and systems will harness the people who are expected to drive the system from the outset, building from an existing organizational context and from an understanding of patterns of use of information already present within an institution.

3. Clearly distinguish knowledge management strategies from technology implementation and information systems management
It is critical to keep remembering that technology is not the driver of knowledge management. Technology should be an enabler, facilitating the establishment of solutions to real problems. Once technology becomes a problem that needs its own solutions, it stops being useful to its users.

4. Ensure that the broader organizational environment supports and rewards creation and sharing of knowledge
There is little point in attempting to layer a knowledge management strategy on top of an organization that is structurally unsupportive of knowledge creation and sharing. Thus, establishing an effective knowledge management strategy will require thorough review of all organizational polices and practices in an effort to ensure that people are encouraged to become true knowledge workers. These policies and practice should encourage a spirit of enquiry and curiosity, while rewarding information-sharing and collaboration. They should also work actively to break down internal boundaries within an organization, in order to make it easier for people to work in teams, so that they are able to develop their own knowledge further through innovation and interaction with others. This process of organizational change will require strong institutional leadership if it is to work successfully.

5. Approach knowledge management as an iterative process
Knowledge management is not a once-off investment, in which a system is created and then left to run by itself. It will thus be critical to ensure that support for knowledge management strategies is long-term, and that it assumes an ongoing need for iterative improvements. Again, this will require strong institutional leadership if the strategies and systems of knowledge management are to become truly embedded into the operations of the organization.

6. Measure the impact of knowledge management
As noted in point one above, managing knowledge is not an end in itself, but rather should be informed by clear objectives. To close the loop, it is critical to integrate into knowledge management strategies and system some processes of measuring the impact these investments. This may be difficult to do, as it may be difficult to quantify the benefits that knowledge management brings, but reflective review of the effect that knowledge management is having remains an important element of ensuring that its evolving design and implementation has the greatest impact possible.

A study performed on 41 public/private organisations in Egypt using Hofstede’s (1980) cultural dimensions highlights the need for a change in network relationships and efforts to build the relational dimension of social capital. While the structural and cognitive dimensions are already in place, the insubstantiality of the relational dimension and the focus on individual achievement are curtailing members from sharing their expertise. It is apparent that the lack of trust in getting credit for the information they share makes it hard for them to volunteer their expertise unless instructed to do so and unless they feel the risk of not obeying commands.

It was concluded that the initiative has to start at the top in order for knowledge workers to have confidence in the system and to be able to cross the cultural gap between a knowledge-hoarding and a knowledge-sharing environment. The initiative must define several processes in order to enable the cultural transition. The study showed that the development of social capital as an infrastructure for knowledge transfer is a critical facilitator of knowledge transfer within organisations. Combining members’ knowledge resources can lead to collaborative knowledge creation that has the potential to limit the economic and knowledge gaps that exist within Egyptian organsations.