Knowledge Management - Essay Example

This has led to the focus on informal social processes that make tacit knowledge explicit. The corporate environment emphasizes the need to leverage their knowledge base to gain competitive advantage (Carter & Scarbrough, 2001). This has led to the packaging and commoditization of knowledge management programmes. Knowledge cannot be the exclusive property of the individuals or the groups. The concept of KM is a response to the needs of the organizations to intensify the creation and exploitation of knowledge.

Tacit knowledge is embedded in narratives and is articulated in the stories that circulate in organizations. Through story telling the tacit dimension of knowledge becomes easily visible. This paper will describe the process of story telling and narratives through examples. Story has been defined as ‘ante’ to narrative; it is ‘ante-narrative’. A narrative is something that is narrated or a story (Bhardwaj & Monin, 2006). While story is an account of incidents or events, narrative comes after and makes the story coherent.

Since story comes before the narrative it is known as ante-narrative and narrative is post-story. In the organizational context, story has been defined as the written and spoken experiences of the employees in the social, psychological and cultural context in which the organization operates. Narrative and story telling are human endeavors to make sense of a complicated reality. Stories are a means of connecting events and deciding what is important. Several people may observe the same public event and come away with different perceptions as human beings have the capacity to alter and direct their perceptions (Sax, 2006a).

Stories were developed as a means to deal with “information overload”. It is sued by human beings to organize and process their experiences. Storytelling has a sensuality that places it close to experience. Stories evoke sights, smells and sound which philosophies and precepts do not. The term