Wednesday 11 February 2009

(Article 2) Existence of knowledge in knowledge management

..............................In the management field, there is high probability of emerging fields. The brand new term evolved as a subsection is "knowledge management”. In taxonomic approach it is new in nature, but every successful organization is using this unknowingly. After emerging as a new field, there is a lot of controversy in the existence of knowledge management in an organization.

..............................At present within the boundaries of definition given by the scholars, Knowledge management is wobbling in between Information Management and Human Resource (Joe gollner, 2006).Some scholars are saying that its a completely different section in the organization, while some others like T.D.Wilson claims that its a "Non-sense”. Research carried out by T.D.Wilson includes reports on journals, corporate view of knowledge and also the studies carried out in different business schools. And he claims that the corporate in the studies are usually deals with information itself.

............................As T.D Wilson said Accenture is a software firm and it depends on IT enables Lotus ware software. Using the Lotus ware, the employees are sharing their information; it obviously becomes the sharing of knowledge itself. Cap Gemini Ernst and Young is another corporate organization in which they are using formal ,informal discussions, newsgroups , yellow pages and intranet within the organization(T.D Wilson, 2002).TD Wilson says It demonstrate that Its different from Information management.

............................The corporate company Deloitte and Touche defines knowledge as an asset(T.D Wilson, 2002) .The assets may be of different type documentation ,database, organizational policies etc .For the company Ernst and Young information sharing is done through networks which is part of the knowledge sharing, utilization and it becomes knowledge management itself. KPMG consulting company also uses some kind articulated knowledge which consists of policies and business process (T.D Wilson, 2002).

..............................For McKinsey and Company T.D.Wilson shows the example of the jobs one for "research analyst" job and the other for "Knowledge specialist" .Even though the job specification of "knowledge specialist" in the company is same as "information officer”. It doesn’t mean that knowledge is synonym to Information.

.............................There are a lot of examples of successful projects in Knowledge management; it’s because of the exact differentiation between knowledge and information. Every project has got their own objectives. The journal published in 1998 by , De long, Beers shows the successful projects in Knowledge management. The objectives of projects are classified as four; creating knowledge repositories, improving knowledge access, enhancing knowledge environment, managing knowledge as an asset (Davenport, De long,Beers,1998).

............................Creating knowledge repositories is important in Knowledge management. Goal is to collect the knowledge in any form- report, document, memos, presentation, articles etc (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).The second objectives concentrates on accessibility of the repositories. Yellow pages are a good example of the knowledge accessibility. Cap Gemini Ernst and Young used the yellow pages in their organization to gather the information. And its part of the Knowledge management itself. By creating effective knowledge creation, transfer and use the organization is enhancing the knowledge environment (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).Its creating an environment which suits for the fellow workers to understand the process in the organization. The last objective of the successful projects was to consider knowledge as a asset (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).The objectives may be of multiple characters. At the same time an organization can work on the knowledge repositories and improve the knowledge management environment to motivate people to contribute and access the repository (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).

................................The success factor of the organization mainly deals with the economic performance. The easiest and most impressive benefits from knowledge management projects involves money saved or earned (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).As per (Davenport, De long,Beers,1998),its difficult to get the best group for the project., for this purpose facilitators are used.The knowledge structure must be in balance, because the same knowledge differs for different persons. It’s not easy to create and modify the entire structure. Knowledge friendly culture is very difficult to cultivate in an organization, if it’s not present (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).People in the organization must have a "positive orientation"-they must be willing to accept the knowledge, at the same time they must be eager to the knowledge (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998)."Purpose" is a very important factor in effectiveness of projects. The example of Chrysler shows that more than fact based normal business languages knowledge manager deals with complexity and uncertainty which further debates itself (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).

............................Successful knowledge managers know that, knowledge is transferred through different paths and that reinforce them (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998)."Having knowledge oriented, retain g an organizational structure, finding motivation tools and developing senior management support" appear to be the most important key factors in success (Davenport, De long, Beers, 1998).

..........................Knowledge always plays a role in the new age successful projects. Failure also are there in knowledge management projects, But it’s not a complete disaster, the problem with them is to they cannot state their success. I think knowledge is not easy to manage directly; we can manage the way of processing the knowledge.



Reference:


  • Joe Gollner (2006),The Anatomy of Knowledge, www.gollner.ca

  • Thomas H.Davenport, David W. De Long, Micheal C. Beers (1998),Successful knowledge management projects, Sloan Management Review.

  • T.D. Wilson (2002),The nonsense of 'knowledge management', vol 8,no 1.

4 comments:

  1. what do you think about knowledge management, what does it mean to you?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Knowledge management ,for me is exploring,experiencing and distributing the business process to achieve more and move towards the success.

    still....i'm confused......

    ReplyDelete
  3. The place knowledge occupies in knowledge managemnet cannot be overemphasized. Knowledge is the reason for knowledge management. For example the knowledge of the current market when properly managed not only improves the organisation internally but also helps management develop strategies to overcome market forces and gain comeptitive advantage.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I support the importance of knowledge in KM.Even though the term 'knowledge management' is new to the corporate world, all of them are dealing with the 'knowledge' from the start itself. Knowledge is used in the organizations to sustain an improvement within them. In the past itself they know how to maneuver knowledge to get the profit, its same as the knowledge management .....

    ReplyDelete