KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management



Knowledge management

Introduction

Knowledge management (KM) is a hot topic in many business communities. Although knowledge management title might suggest a rather simple definition, there are plenty of opinions as to what is and how to use, if used at all. However, due to the increasing pace of business development, the task of efficient and competitive management of organizations is essential and KM, if properly understood and properly applied, can be a useful tool for business transformation and the key competitive advantage.

This chapter presents an overview of QA including knowledge, knowledge management systems (KMS), communities of practice, transfer of knowledge and technologies for KM and how KM is used in the initiatives of the organization (Argote 2003). Knowledge management (KM) denotes explicit strategies, tools and practices that seek to make knowledge a resource for the organization. The field of KM is about developing the concepts that illuminate or improve the application of these practices (Blackler 2005). General Concepts

As indicated by this definition, theory and practice of KM involves multiple levels of analysis, ranging from overall organizational strategies by developing various tools and ways of representation of knowledge, practices micro management. Similarly, knowledge can become a resource on a variety of ways, including a legally defined form of intellectual property, an intangible asset value-based accounting and lessons for practice. As such, KM is actually a general term for a number of different aspects of business looking to improve the exploitation of knowledge enterprises (Brown 2001).

These include strategies for managing knowledge-based organizations, for the representation of knowledge assets or intellectual capital "in accounting, and to capture and distribute organizational learning (Contu 2003). Although some authors claim that KM is an uptime that organizations have always done, it is clear that self-conscious attempt to use the knowledge in this way is a relatively recent phenomenon. Many of the conceptual foundations were laid by a small group of writers in early 1990 (Nonaka 2005).

This group included Ikujiro Nonaka, whose work has been particularly influential as a way to explain the conversion of tacit knowledge of members of the organization explicitly, which can be widely applied by the organization. The notion of tacit knowledge was originally developed by the philosopher Michael Polanyi to highlight the importance of knowledge that cannot easily be verbalized, like Polanyi, since "we know more than I can say." The distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge is often equated to the difference between "know how" and "know-what." Thus, the classic example of tacit knowledge, as described by Polanyi, knows how to ride a bike (Orr 2000).

From this account, Nonaka describes four stages of knowledge creation terms internalization (explicit to tacit), socialization (tacit to tacit), externalization (tacit to explicit), and combination (explicit explicit) (Miller 2006). Nonaka argued that this cycle is critical to the innovation process in business and applied it to analyze the development of a new bread maker. The (re) discovery of tacit knowledge and practical application of innovation in large measure to raise the initial ...