Knowledge management: organization’s perspective

With globalization at its peak and competition being the driving factor organizations have realized the value of knowledge and are engaged in implementing it in their organizations. It has become a necessity for the organizations to exploit the knowledge they posses and also create new knowledge. Many researchers like Wiig (1997), Davenport and Volpol(2001)and Bhatt(2001) explicitly mentioned that to have a successful business the organization will have to acquire knowledge quickly. The organizations need to know where to get this knowledge, how to gain it, what to do with it. However like some literature points out the organizations started implementing “Knowledge Management Practices” without knowing its purpose or context to their organization. This has resulted in failures of many knowledge management projects.

There are many reasons for these failures as pointed out by Malhotra(2004) and Akhavan(2005). One of the major reasons they feel is that KM in organizations fail due to interpreting KM systems in terms of data, information and technology. This is a very common mistake made by the organizations where they assume that KM and IT are interchangeable and thus do not know themselves it they have sufficient resources for efficient business operations. Another reason cited by them is the lack of adaption and innovations capabilities in the KMS to meet the challenges of ever changing environment.

While Ambrosio(2000) is of the view that these failures are due to lack of coordination between KM and IT. The relationship of these 2 is not understood. This is touched upon by Malhotra(2004) as well. However the researches do agree on one point and that is of organizational culture playing its role. It is very true because knowledge management is not about knowledge databases being created or which technologies are used, it is about people. There is a need to connect this process to the people who are sharing their knowledge which leads to innovation. Researchers say that organizational culture plays a vital role but not many have shown how this can be eradicated or how it be really applied in organizations.

Bhatt (2002) suggests that management strategies for individual and organizational knowledge and then argues that both when used to gather organization will benefit from it. Yes there is a need to manage both these types of knowledge in an organization but before that it is necessary to understand KM’s elements and purposes in an organization. For each organization there is a different need and a different context, therefore it is essential not to adapt any existing KMS. If adapted there is a need to change it to behave to merge with that organization’s culture and ever changing environment.

It is evident form the literature that the correct role of technology and humans in KMS needs to be decided. Reflecting back on what we have learnt so far, it is seen that technology should be used by the organizations to determine data and information potential of that organizations. Programming is needed to reduce the manual tasks, how ever the humans must concentrate on innovation and creation. We can’t have technology to think and observe on our behalf. So the employees of the organizations should be engaged in synchronizing the programs with the environment and observe the business needs and act accordingly.

To sum up it is evident that knowledge management adds value to the information possessed by the organizations. It is necessary to relate to KM from 3 areas basically; technology, human and culture factors. Each one has its own implications in which differ in each organization. For example in a university the technology is just a base where data is stored, humans may or may not be interacting with the environment, and culture is that professors may pass on their knowledge to students or to assistant lecturers. It is quite ironic to see that in the end its all on the employee’s motivation to indulge in this process of sharing.


References

Akhavan, P., Jafari, M., Fathian, M. (2005), “Exploring Failure-Factors Of Implementing Knowledge Management Systems In Organizations”, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, May 2005 Available at: http://www.tlainc.com/articl85.htm, Retrieved on: [21/03/2009]

Ambrosio, J. (2000), “Knowledge Management Mistakes”, Available at:http://www.computerworld.com/industrytopics/energy/story/0,10801,46693,00.html, Retrieved on [26/02/2009]

Bhatt, G. D. (2001), “Knowledge management in organisations: examining the interaction between technologies, techniques, and people”, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 5, no. 1, p. 68-75.

Bhatt, G. (2002),”management strategies for individual knowledge and organizational knowledge”, Journal of Knowledge Management , Vol. 6, No. 1, 2002, pp. 31-39

Davenport, T. and Volpel, S. (2001), “The rise of knowledge towards attention management”, Journal of Knowledge Management , Vol. 5, No. 3, 2001, pp. 212-221

Malhotra, Y. (2004), “Why Knowledge Management System Fail? Enablers And Constraints Of Knowledge In Human Enterprise”, Available at: http://www.brint.org/WhyKMSFail.pdf, Retrieved on [24/02/2009]

Wiig.K.M. (1999), “Knowledge Management:
An Emerging Discipline Rooted in a Long History”, Source: http://www.krii.com/downloads/km_emerg_discipl.pdf [11/02/2009]