Knowledge Management paper - Essay Example

Knowledge is, to an enterprise or an individual, the possession of information or the ability to quickly locate it. This is essentially what Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first comprehensive English dictionary, said when he wrote that: "Knowledge is of two kinds: we know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information upon it." (Source website http://searchcio.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,sid19_gci212448, 00.html) This knowledge is spread over the length and breadth of the company and may be part of a network, a database, in manually documented files or simply as intellectual capital.

When knowledge actually present in the organisation is not structured, it is not leveraged upon and therefore causes redundancies, because of the repetitiveness of the tasks performed to acquire the same knowledge. This creates inefficiencies. Within the evolving dynamic environment in which current businesses operate, the ability to create, acquire, retain and organize knowledge assets and put it to recurring use is highly beneficial. Knowledge does not occur instantly. It takes time, effort and resources to be gained and is therefore valuable.

There are numerous ways in which knowledge management has been defined. . Shared knowledge is vital component of the knowledge management systems. This is not solely the responsibility of the infrastructure alone that serves to transfer explicit knowledge; nor is it a good substitute for transferring tacit knowledge that people are capable of.Why do we need knowledge managementPossession of the right knowledge is indispensable in the competitive market place. Companies long neglected the value of knowledge but have now understood the significance of it.

The environment is constantly evolving and therefore knowledge must keep pace and be updated. For example when companies lay off workforce, the workers leave with their valuable knowledge. If this knowledge is stored then it is available for the future. Similarly, growth forecasts are predicted by knowledge of customer preferences and changing trends and sufficient knowledge resources will ease the process. Globalisation has done away with geographic boundaries and therefore when similar projects are undertaken across the globe, knowledge sharing allows them to be executed with lesser risks due to practical knowledgeable experiences being available.

(Source from website http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html#why)Communities of practice A Community of Practice is a group of individuals who regularly engage in sharing and learning based on their common interests or methods of working. Members of a Cop interact closely leading to better knowledge sharing (Wenger, 1998). CoP's often bridge the gap between documented processes and actual practical feasibilities. There is often a dilemma as to whether existing CoP should be geared to wards the task or whether creation of