KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ESSAY

Knowledge Management Essay



Knowledge Management

Introduction

Knowledge is the lifeblood of an organization and knowledge and information managers have a key role to play in keeping knowledge flowing, used and retained in their organizations. This role is particularly important during difficult economic times. The impact of budget cuts, office closures, voluntary and compulsory redundancies, falling demand and reductions in bank lending can each have unintended consequences, including acting as barriers - the restrictions or blockages - to the flow of knowledge.

Managing information can be frustrating to managers. Of particular concern is how imbedded information can be transmitted among members who may not realize how much information in fact exists. Knowledge Management comprises a range of strategies and practices that deal with how knowledge is acquired, transferred, and shared with all the members of the organization. Such strategies and practices seek to achieve the organization's objectives. Knowledge Management System refers to a comprehensive information and communication technology platform used for managing knowledge in organizations for supporting creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information.

How does knowledge application relate to the internalization phase of the Nonaka and Takeuchi knowledge spiral model that was presented in Chapter 3?

Knowledge acquisition is the process of developing new content and replacing existing content within the organization's tacit and explicit knowledge base. Nonaka and Tackeuch's (1995) SECI model postulated that knowledge is created using four processes to convert tacit and explicit knowledge. The processes were Socialization, Externalization, Combination, and Internalization (SECI). The authors proposed a cyclical translation process that encapsulated the four knowledge conversion processes as follows:

(a) Tacit knowledge transfer through socialization;

(b) Tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge conversion through externalization;

(c) Generation of new explicit knowledge through the combination of existing explicit knowledge; and

(d) The acquisition by individuals of tacit knowledge through the internalization of explicit knowledge.

Knowledge acquisition can be either internal or external in orientation. We consider both Internal Knowledge Acquisition and External Knowledge Acquisition in our analysis.

What are the key components that should be addressed by an organizational KM architecture? Why are these components critical for organizational knowledge application?

Knowledge is the lifeblood of an organization and knowledge and information managers have a key role to play in keeping knowledge flowing, used and retained in their organizations. This role is particularly important during difficult economic times. The impact of budget cuts, office closures, voluntary and compulsory redundancies, falling demand and reductions in bank lending can each have unintended consequences, including acting as barriers - the restrictions or blockages - to the flow of knowledge.

The architecture of company's knowledge management would consist of at least 3 levels: the process layer, which mentions the logic that links the data with its use and its users (other systems or other people who use that data); the data layer, which is the combined abstraction across irregular types of data, with potentially diverse storage mechanisms (e.g., text documents, database, audio, video); and the user interface, which supplies access to the information assets of the business through the logic ...