Knowledge Management: Why do we need it for Corporates

African Journal of Business Management, 2021

The quest for a better way of enhancing firm performance has led to the discovery of knowledge as a unique and firm-specific resource for achieving competitive advantage. Knowledge management has gained the attention of practitioners and scholars in recent times. Knowledge management involves obtaining the right set of information and making them available to the right people, at the right time. When an adequate knowledge management system is in place, employees can create, share and re-use knowledge. Existing literature shows that knowledge management is still evolving and factors like intellectual capital, innovation and knowledge application play a significant mediating role in its effect on firm performance. Also, knowledge management processes ought to be followed by effective knowledge management implementation strategies to avoid knowledge proliferation and structuration. Modern businesses are gradually evolving from document-based knowledge management systems towards people-based knowledge management systems as a result of higher capacity for improvement and alignment of knowledge management strategies. Modern businesses also try to foster the effectiveness of their knowledge management process through gamification. Several challenges and limitations to knowledge management like organizational culture, lack of knowledge sharing incentive, cultural differences, lack of proper information structures and change management issues were also identified.

Paradigms in Social Science Research – A New Horizon. ISBN 978-81-7273-581-4, Authors Press, Publishers of Scholarly Books, New Delhi. (2011).

Knowledge Management has been recognized as a crucial component of a proactively managed organization. It creates competitive advantage in today’s competitive business markets. Implementing knowledge management, its sustainability, process and initiatives are quite new to Indian IT firms and is not widely considered and accepted as in theory. The purpose of this study was to investigate and study how IT firms provide importance to Knowledge Management.

Knowledge management is a process that transforms individual knowledge into organisational knowledge. The aim of this paper is to show that through creating, accumulating, organizing and utilizing knowledge, organizations can enhance organizational performance. The impact of knowledge management practices on performance was empirically tested through structural equation modelling. The sample included couple of the companies with more than 50 employees. The results show that knowledge management practices measured through information technology, organization and knowledge management positively affect organizational performance. Introduction It is obvious that knowledge is slowly becoming the most important factor of production, next to labour, land and capital. Even though some forms of intellectual capital are transferable, internal knowledge is not easily copied. This means that the knowledge anchored in employees' minds can get lost if they decide to leave the organisation. Therefore, the key objective of management is to improve the processes of acquisition, integration and usage of knowledge, which is exactly what knowledge management (KM) is all about KM is a process that through creating, accumulating, organizing and utilizing knowledge helps achieve objectives and enhance organizational performance. KM also consists of strategy, cultural values and workflow. In order to maximize its value a change in strategies, processes, organisational structures and technologies needs to be made According to Fugate et al. results collected in a logistics operations context prove the existence of a strong positive relationship between a KM process and operational and organisational performance. Still, it is not well understood how different KM strategies affect organisational performance. Choi et al. show that combining the tacit-internal-oriented and explicit-external-oriented KM strategies indicates a complementary relationship, which implies synergistic effects of KM strategies on performance. The results of the study conducted by Zheng et al. suggest that KM fully mediates the impact of organizational culture on organizational effectiveness, and partially mediates the impact of organizational structure and strategy on organizational effectiveness Researchers imply positive effect on knowledge management and organizational performance. The aim of this paper is to present a different knowledge management maturity model and to explain and test the hypothesis about impact of knowledge management practices on organizational performance. The paper is divided into two main parts. First, the theoretical background on components and elements of KM and organizational performance is presented. Second, the hypotheses and the conceptual model are shown.

Current Issues in Knowledge Management

This short chapter explores other motivations for organizations to implement KM. These motivations include obsolescence/innovation (these two go together as innovation leads to obsolescence), work process evolution, and persistence of knowledge. The goal of this discussion is to provide a basis for all organizations to justify KM initiatives that are not just event-based.

Long Range Planning, 1997

Knowledge can be seen as a key source of advantage. Its importance has been recognized for a long time. Some scholars have realized that information can create wealth. What is happening today is that there has been a qualitative change in the way in which vast amounts of data can be collected and communicated. The risk is of information overload. To help avoid this, a discipline is needed which can distinguish between data and knowledge, can find ways to reduce the overload and can organize itself.

International Journal of Current Research, 2017

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Knowledge Management is considered to be the most important aspect for a company to gain a competitive advantage in today's global scenario. Most IT companies in India provide solutions to companies all over the w knowledge management has become an apparent factor in companies, implementing knowledge management, its sustainability, process and initiatives are yet to be critically analyzed within context of the Indian IT firms. practices in one of the Top IT Organizations of Tamil Nadu, India. employees as Team Leads across various departments applied and all the 102 respondents were selected for the study. The researcher adopted the descriptive design to describe the degree of importance given by the organization towards the practice of Knowledge Manag Recourses towards Knowledge Management. Standardized tools were adopted and the reliability was reestablished to fit the organization. The results of the study demonstrate that Kn depicted at only a moderate level is still that it is t resources.

2006

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues on knowledge management that effect organizations embarking on a Knowledge Management journey (KM). KM is defined as the "conceptualization of an organization as an integrated knowledge system and the management of the organization for effective use of that "knowledge". "Knowledge" here refers to the "human cognitive and innovative processes and artifacts that support them. In an information society today, daily additional information and raw data are made available for employees. Organization converts knowledge and other resources into goods and services. The human mind stores data, generates information and forms fantastic ideas. Information once translated and transformed can mean revenue. Knowledge sharing can bring synergistic effect on organizations. Managers today realize that their own organization possess untapped resources-the human capital. A business entity has a tremendous capacity to create the right environment including cultural and structural inputs. The know-how and sharing of best practices can. determine organization survival. The right infrastructure and required support, the reward system to remove knowledge barriers, the tracking down of knowledge contributors and effective teams plus the recognizing of intellectual assets would determine the success of the KM journey.

Knowledge management (KM) is one of the newest topics in the present day, and many parts of the business sector have a growing interest in adopting this concept. There are great debates about the concept of KM and its frameworks in organizations. This paper presents a literature review of the notion of knowledge management in the institutional environment. First, it discusses the various definitions of knowledge management. Then, it follows with an overview of knowledge management background. Finally, it highlights the great debates of knowledge management in some conceptual foundations and authors evaluations, including tacit and explicit knowledge.

2009

Evidently, there is a strong competition among organizations and rapid changes in business surroundings. Therefore, the organizations start thinking of developing their performance and processes. In this regard, Knowledge Management (KM) processes have turned out nowadays to become an organization strategic resource to the extent in which KM is viewed as a base of success or failure. The aim of this paper is presenting a conceptual KM process framework. It mainly emphasizes on developing phases such as knowledge infrastructure, knowledge combination, knowledge filtering, knowledge repository, knowledge sharing, knowledge application, and finally, knowledge performance across the KM process. The paper describes a more valid process to Improving Knowledge Performance.

International Journal of Manpower, 2011

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set focus on, and discuss the concept of knowledge, and show how the interrelations between knowledge and other concepts, such as learning, have become a decisive element in managing human resources and firm performance. Design/methodology/approach – The dimensions of knowledge management are identified and related to learning, organizational configurations, human resources management and institutional environments in order to identify and percent the most important approaches to knowledge management and the development over time. Findings – Creating, transforming and utilizing various kinds of knowledge as a firm-specific asset is a very important element of firm competitiveness and innovative performance. In managing knowledge learning and innovation learning approaches are central. The paper identifies various approaches to learning and strategies to innovation and illustrates how combinations of these might benefit firm performance. It also stresses the preconditions of employee involvement and participation to knowledge management and not least the importance of interaction with environmental resources. To improve performance firms should be aware of the importance of deliberately combining various approaches to innovation and learning in order to include a maximum of actors as sources in building knowledge assets and strategies. Research limitations/implications – Most of the empirical examples are from private sector enterprises, even though the theoretical arguments should also be valid for the public sector. Originality/value – The paper relates knowledge management to theoretical approaches on learning, organization and innovation and shows the growing importance of these constructs in firm performance.