What is knowledge management? Explain its importance.
1 Answer
Knowledge management is emerging concept of management. It is the systematic management of an organization's knowledge assets for the purpose of creating value. It involves meeting tactical & strategic requirements. It consists of the initiatives, processes, strategies, and systems that sustain and enhance the storage, assessment, sharing and creation of knowledge. knowledge management system of an organization is the collection of information and technologies used to facilitate the organization, and distribution of knowledge of employees. Three levels are used to describe knowledge, they are explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge, and potential knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be thought of as book knowledge. Tacit knowledge remains within the people of the organization and isn’t formalized into written or documented form. Potential knowledge describes that knowledge hidden in the data that are upon collected but not yet used.
According to Clemmons Rumizen, "Knowledge management is the systematic process by which knowledge needed for an organization to succeed is created, captured, shared and leveraged.
In conclusion, knowledge management is the process of enabling the resources of knowledge. Knowledge management , therefore, implies a strong tie to organizational goals and strategy, It also involves the management of knowledge that is useful for some purpose and which creates value for the organization. Knowledge management is the process of enabling the resource of knowledge. It's practical expression is the combination of information management and organizational learning.
The importance of knowledge management are as follows:
a) Employee awareness
Knowledge management facilitates the employees to save their time and efforts because everyone knows where to go to find the destination of the organization. It helps the employees to be aware of their tasks and responsibilities.
b) Availability
Knowledge can be used wherever it is needed whether from the office or on the road or at the customer's site. It enables increased responsiveness to customers, partners, and co-workers.
c) Timeliness
Knowledge is available whenever it is needed when people are interested. It helps to eliminate the wastage of time for the distribution of information.
d) Adapt organizational change
Knowledge management helps to develop, acquire, process and retain old knowledge. Thus, such knowledge helps to adapt the organizational change.
e) Helps to decision-making
Knowledge management shows the trend of the past which helps to take the right decision at present and future. The manager can collect essential information from knowledge store and analyze the situation in a systematic way. Knowledge is gained from experience which gives ideas about the future.
f) Transfer Knowledge
Knowledge management helps to share information among all employees in the organization. This information helps to transfer knowledge from the employees to other employees which help to develop employees.
g) Reduces risk
Knowledge management accumulates the knowledge or information from internal and external sources which can be used in decision making and its implementation. The manager can take the right decision using such knowledge. Thus, it reduces risk.
h) Goal achievement
Effective Knowledge management facilitates to reduce costs. It should also increase the speed of the responses of employees as a direct result of better knowledge. People are developing their competence and confidence faster in an organization that practice effective knowledge management.
i) Availability of information
All the information either tacit or explicit is stored in the knowledge store. Such information helps to transfer knowledge from one employee to other employees which help to develop employees.