Knowledge Management - Essay Example

? …………………. College/ ………….. …………. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Introduction Knowledge Management is relatively a new a academic discipline that has emerged to be one of the top priority of business managers as that they find it extremely important for organizational success. The business-experts and management people will be able to enhance high performance working and outstanding business results when they understand the various perspectives and theoretical concepts of knowledge management and its applicability to the business. This piece of research paper examines the roles that documents and technologies played in the development of the science of knowledge management and explain the three knowledge conversion platforms, namely internalization, externalization and socialization. Knowledge Management Knowledge Management has been defined as a management process that encompasses creating, sharing and using of the knowledge through effective ways and strategies of designing, implementing and aligning various tools, processes, systems and structures (Noe, p. 168). To be more succinct, it is concerned with creating, sharing and using the knowledge, that is either documented, or stored in data base or processed with help of technology, for the overall benefits of the organization. Roles of Technology and Documents in Knowledge Management Knowledge Management has been developed as a tool as well as an effective strategy that focuses on using of data, information and knowledge among the people in an organization (Awad and Ghaziri, p. 26, Boxall and Macky, 2009). It therefore concentrates on creating, sharing and utilizing the data or information that are either stored in database or documented in scripts or papers, and converting them to useful forms of knowledge for the benefits of the organization. Data is un-processed information, and when these are gathered, analyzed, interpreted and recorded in documents or database, it becomes information. Knowledge occurs when people gain information and are processed for the use of them in the organization. For several years, organizations have been solely depending on documents for recording and analyzing the data as well as information, but in recent years, technologies have got major significance and roles in the knowledge management landscape due to the advances in information technology. Tacit and Explicit knowledge are common terms in knowledge management literature. Knowledge can be classified as either explicit or tacit. This classification is based on where the data, information and knowledge are stored. According to this classification, knowledge management is a process of storing and making them used for the business throughout the papers, documents, data base as commonly referred as explicit knowledge. Information and knowledge that exists in people’s mind are known to be part of tacit knowledge (Noe, p. 170). Knowledge that are stored in computers assisted by certain specially built software are very similar to that of tacit knowledge, despite the fact that they are commonly referred as explicit, because they can easily be processed than that of papers or documents. Though both papers and technology data base together are known as explicit forms, technology has made tremendous changes and brought greater conveniences in the field of knowledge management, because technology made knowledge management an easy process. Tacit knowledge is more valuable and possesses greater significance in terms of its effectiveness to business, because knowledge that exist in people’s mind can easily be processed, transferred, shared and converted to more useful forms. People may need more efforts in identifying suitable information from the documents or computers, analyzing them, summarizing and interpreting and finally using them for the business purposes. In short, knowledge management comprises of creation, sharing and using of information and knowledge, that are stored either in papers, documents, database or throughout people’s mind. In recent years, technology, mainly computers have widely been used in collecting, storing, summarizing and interpreting information. Technology has thus has changed the way KM has been practiced. Impacts of internalization, externalization and socialization on knowledge conversion Once knowledge is created, either in documents or in people’s mind, it should effectively be transferred or converted to more useful forms. Many literatures have detailed that a better KM will work out effectively only if there is strategic conversion of knowledge between tacit and explicit forms. Knowledge, that is once created and stored, needs to be transferred either from documents or technology or people’s mind to any of them. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1997 and 2007) have detailed the concept of knowledge conversion as internalization, externalization and socialization and argued that most Japan companies have been able to achieve better success by implementing the strategy. According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (2007), an organization can achieve its goals such as high performance working, sustainable competitive advantage, long term profitability etc thorough better knowledge management process. A strategic thinking about knowledge conversion is therefore highly critical to successful KM process. Simply storing knowledge in documents or people’s mind may not be the effective way to managing the it, there must be free flow of information and knowledge between documents, papers, computers, software and people. In more simple words, knowledge management may work well when various elements like people, process, technology and resources are integrated and aligned together. As depicted in the figure above, knowledge can be transferred from tacit (people’s mind) to other people’s mind (tacit), as known as socialization. This is perhaps highly effective way of knowledge transfers, because people do learn more effectively from others through their teaching, experiences or training and development processes etc. The second form of knowledge transfer is externalization in which knowledge is transferred from tacit (people’s mind) to explicit (documents or computers). This helps people keep records of notes, important issues to be solved and either documents or computer can work as alerts to remind them about the matters to be handles. The third one is internalization in which knowledge is transferred from explicit (documents or computers) to tacit (people’s mind). This also plays significant role in the KM process because it is concerned with how people effectively understand, learn and grasp knowledge from either documents or computers. Conclusion This piece of research paper explained how tacit and explicit knowledge differ in terms of knowledge storing and sharing. This paper has highlighted the significant roles that both documents and technology play in the knowledge management process and compared and contrasted the three models of knowledge conversion, they are internalization, externalization and socialization. References Awad E.M and Ghaziri H.M, Knowledge Management, Pearson Education India, 2007 Boxall P and Macky K, Research and theory on high-performance work systems: progressing the high-involvement stream, Human Resource Management Journal, Vol 19, no 1,, retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com, 2009 Noe R.A, Employee training and Development, McGraw Hill Irwin, 2002 Nonaka I and Takeuchi H, knowledge Creating Company, Business Library, Management Library, Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost, 2007 Nonaka I and Takeuchi H, The knowledge-creating company: how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation, illustrated Edition, Oxford University Press US, 1995. Read More