Concept and importance of Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management

Before studying about knowledge management, it is necessary to know about Management. Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals. The concept of management is universal and dynamic. Management can also be defined as a human action that includes design to facilitate the production of useful outcomes from a system.

Management is the act of planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization. It is the effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. ( Boundless.com)

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Knowledge Management is emerging concept of management. It involves a range of strategies and practices used in an enterprise to create and represent the implementation of insights and experiences. 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.

In another word, 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.

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. (KMT Knowledge management tools)

Importance of Knowledge management

Today, knowledge management is applied across the world, in all industry, sectors, public and private organizations. Knowledge management involves a strategic commitment to improving the organization's effectiveness as well as improving its opportunity enhancement. The goal of knowledge management process is to improve the organization's ability to execute its core processes more efficiently. It provides the following benefit to achieve the organizational goals:

a) Employee awareness

Knowledge management helps the employees to be aware of their tasks and responsibilities. It facilitates the employees to save their time and efforts because everyone knows where to go to find the destination of the organization.

b) Availability

Knowledge can be used wherever it is needed whether from the office or on the road or at the customer's site. Knowledge management enables increased responsiveness to customers, partners, and co-workers.

c) Timeliness

Knowledge is available whenever it is needed. It helps to eliminate the wastage of time for the distribution of information. But it is achieved just in case when people are interested.

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 in decision-making

Knowledge gained from experience gives the idea about the future. It 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.

f) Transfer Knowledge

Knowledge management ensures the sharing of information among all employees in the organization. Such sharing of information helps to transfer knowledge from the employees to other employees which help to develop employees.

g) Reduces risk

It accumulates the knowledge or information from internal and external sources. Such information 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 response 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 knowledge store or in the form of information. Such sharing of information helps to transfer knowledge from one employee to other employees and also provides sufficient information for conducting various activities.

(Business Studies, Book 12, page no-250)

Bibliography

Boundless.com. n.d. Electronic. 18 06 2016. https://www.boundless.com/business/textbooks/boundless-business-textbook/management-8/an-introduction-to-management-59/definition-of-management-283-7212/

KMT Knowledge management tools. 09 02 2015. Electronic. 18 06 2016. http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/knowledge-management-definition.html

Chalise, Dr Mahananda and Pandey, Dhruba Lal. Sunrise Publications Pvt. Ltd, Business Studies. 250. 18 06 2016.