Knowledge management By Dhanalakshmi

Contents  Knowledge & knowledge management  Knowledge creation process  Knowledge management system  Knowledge management tools and techniques

Knowledge is an “understanding gained through experience or study”. It is “ know – how or a awareness of how to do something, that enables a person to perform a specialized task”. It may also be an “gathering of facts, procedural rules, or heuristics”. Knowledge management is the “act of making tacit knowledge explicit. Tacit knowledge is the knowledge we each carry in our heads about how to do things, who to call and the lessons learned through experience. Making it explicit is recording in some media that allows another person to use it”.

Organization knowledge creation process Initial knowledge A job is performed by a team Outcome is realized Outcome is compared to action New experience/ Knowledge is obtained Knowledge captured & coded usable by others New knowledge to be reused by the team for next job

Nonaka’s model of knowledge creation

SECI model Socialization : Sharing tacit knowledge through face-to- face communication or shared experience. Externalization : In this phase tacit knowledge is converted to understandable and interpretable form, so it can be also used by others. Combination : In this phase knowledge is also analyzed and organized. Internalization : It occurs through diffusing and embedding newly acquired and consolidated knowledge. Once internalized, new knowledge is then used by employees who broaden it, extend it, and reframe it within their own existing tacit knowledge.

Knowledge management system “It is a system for managing knowledge in organizations for supporting creation, capture, storage and dissemination of information”. A KM system could be any of the following: Document based Ontology/Taxonomy based Based on AI technologies Provide network maps of the organization Social computing tools are being deployed

Advantages of KMS 1.Sharing of valuable organizational information throughout organizational hierarchy. 2.Can avoid re-inventing the wheel, reducing redundant work. 3.May reduce training time for new employees 4.Retention of Intellectual Property after the employee leaves if such knowledge can be codified.

Tools and techniques of knowledge management Early KM techniques included online corporate yellow pages as expertise locators and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologies expanded in the mid-1990s. Subsequently KM efforts leveraged semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of e-learning tools for communities of practice. More recently, development of social computing tools (such as bookmarks, blogs, and wikis) have allowed more unstructured, self- governing or ecosystem approaches to the transfer, capture and creation of knowledge, including the development of new forms of communities, networks, or matrixed organizations.

Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies and are not necessarily acquired as a single software solution. Organizations and business decision makers spend a great deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management. It is imperative that these investments are validated properly, made wisely and that the most appropriate technologies and software tools are selected or combined to facilitate knowledge management. paper.pdf