Information mangment - Essay Example

According to Nonaka, Krogh and Voelpel (2006), “organizational knowledge creation is the process of making available and amplifying knowledge created by individuals as well as crystallizing and connecting it with an organization’s knowledge system.” Studies have shown that creation of knowledge, retention as well as managing it is very important for the survival of the organization during the contemporary period as we move towards a digital economy (Alavi & Leidner, 2001). One way of generating knowledge in an organization is achieved through the use of learning.

Learning in an organisation is particularly concerned with creating, acquiring and transforming knowledge and transforming this knowledge to improve the overall performance of the employees and the organization as a whole (Andriopoulos & Dawson 2009). Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit, individual and/or collective. Basically, explicit knowledge refers to details of processes that have been codified and it often acts as a manual to deal with certain queries or problems in the organization while tacit knowledge is knowledge of experience (Polanyi, 1983).

In as far as tacit knowledge is concerned so the person concerned uses his or her experience to deal with a certain problem. As noted above, knowledge is a business asset given that much of organizations’ value mainly depends on their capacity to create and generate knowledge which can be used to transform the operations of the organization during changing period. It is important for an organization to create knowledge and transfer it to other employees since this can help the whole organization.

As illustrated in the model of knowledge creation and diffusion illustrated above, it can be seen that there are various techniques that can be used to transfer knowledge from one person to the other in the organization. According to Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995), knowledge can be transferred through the following strategies in the company: tacit to tacit through socialization, tacit to explicit through a process of externalization, explicit to tacit through a process of internalization as well as explicit to explicit through a process of combination.

Tacit knowledge can be transferred to tacit knowledge through the process of socialization. Basically, socialization is a process that loosely describes the way people in an organization are socialised or interact. Through interaction among employees in an organization, knowledge can be transferred from one person to the other. In this case, it is individual to individual where an experienced employee can impart his or her ideas and experience to the other employee who also can capitalise on this wealth of knowledge in his or her operations.

Explicit to tacit knowledge can also be transferred through a process of internalization in the organization. Internal structures in the organization are created and these are meant to transform knowledge that is codified into actual experience that can help the employees to deal with different situations they may encounter in their operations. This process involves transfer of knowledge from the individual, group as well as organization. This helps to improve the overall performance of the employees as well as the organization a whole.

The other strategy is tacit to explicit