Practical Use of Knowledge Management - Coursework Example

IBM and Lotus define knowledge management as a ‘discipline that systematically leverages content and expertise to provide innovation, responsiveness, competency and efficiency (Pohs, 2001 cited by Call, 2005) while Peter Drucker concise it says it is the coordination and exploitation of the organizations knowledge resources, in order to create benefit and competitive advantage. Call contends that no definition of knowledge management can be definite as it keeps changing from company to company and also from initiative to initiative.

At the same time, the failure rate of KM is high which makes it essential to understand the concept and theory of KM. This paper will discuss the anomalies found at the Post Office Consulting Group and how KM could be effectively applied in this organization. KM is also known by other terms like organizational learning, organizational memory and expertise management. Thomas, Kellogg, and Erickson (2001) fear that the codification of knowledge management is proceeding too rapidly and is too simple.

This may make survival in the competitive workplace difficult. Knowledge is primarily a problem of capturing, organizing and retrieving information. Knowledge is passive, analytic and atomistic. Knowledge management is nothing more than getting the right information to the right people at the right time. Codification of knowledge into information implies making knowledge portable, re-usable and transferable within the organization (Hall, 2006). While many have attempted to define KM, according to Gartner Group, Knowledge management promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, retrieving, sharing, and evaluating an enterprise’s information assets.

These information assets may include databases, documents, policies, and procedures, as well as the un-captured tacit expertise and experience stored in individual workers’ heads (Hicks, Dattero & Galup, 2006). Data is combined to create information and information is combined to create knowledge.