KM Definition Article [1]

Knowledge management is a very broad topic and has many views.However statistics shows that 80 percent of KM projects are a failure.This is a interesting pdf about KM Glossary: Click to view

Knowledge is a very important part of every business organization.

To get a good basic understanding about knowledge and managing the knowledge one must read views expressed by Penrose (1959) and Drucker (1993). Penrose considered acquiring knowledge is a "Social Learning Process". Drucker coined the term "Knowledge worker" (Drucker 1959) Knowledge workers are generally people who are involved in planning, acquiring searching, analyizing, organinzing information in an organization.
In an IT field programmers, system analysts, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers are considered as knowledge workers.
Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive(1966) describes each "knowledge worker" as an executive of the organization either by his position or knowledge and that his contribution affects the capacity of the organization to perform and obtain results

The Most commonly accepted view of knowledge Management is the collection of simple facts which is "data" which when processed and structured forms "Information" and this when interpreted in a proper manner becomes "Knowledge", but now KM is also viewed in another dimension i.e reverse knowledge hierarchy (TUOMI, 1999) here the author says information cannot be interpreted without any prior knowledge and data cannot be collected without the knowledge of what information to be collected.

According to Karl Wiig of Knowledge Research Institute says that knowledge management[KM] is a very vast topic of discussion. KM is ability of an organization to make effective use of its human resources, "human capital" or "brainware" (LIEBOWITZ, 1999)

Where as Wilma Abney and Daimler Chrysler of corporate university think KM as "Know what is Known, who knows it, How it has been applied and how it can be further leveraged and shared " and these ideas are reflected in book Sharing Expertise(Ackerman., et al 2003) and I agree with the authors that most organizations never realize the knowledge they have in their organizations so the management should use some technique to tap the potential knowledge and how that knowledge will be benefit to the organization.

"If only HP knew what it knows it would make three times more profit tomorrow" - By Lew Platt, ex CEO Hewlett Packard (Young 2006)

The above is one of the definitions of knowledge management but has made huge impact around the world. In simple words it describes the importance of knowledge sharing and knowledge management, if they had a proper way to handle and manage the knowledge acquired by the employees and the organization, then the knowledge would remain inside the organization.

As mentioned earlier that 80 percent of the KM projects are failure, the possible reason for this may be that the organizations fail in one of the stages of KM i.e either in knowledge conversion or knowledge dissemination or may their may not have a proper method to discard the obsolete knowledge or which would become a mere data..

But Wilson (2002) has different views about Knowledge Management, understanding learning and gaining knowledge is the process that goes on in the mind. And there is no way to store knowledge but it can be expressed in the form of symbols, figures, articles or 'body language’. And that each mind processes information in its own fashion and gains knowledge.

And to me KM is process of learning new things and have the ability to know when, where and in what situation it can/has to be applied, and finally discarding the old knowledge and make room for new knowledge. Managing the knowledge is some things everyone does right from the young age as mentioned by my friend salis in his blog (Read More..) and nobody teaches us how to manage the knowledge acquired. I will try to explain Knowledge management in our organization VOSAPA Inc which is a mobile phone retailer and with a goal to be the top mobile phone retailer in UK. In order to achieve our goal we have to be up to date to gain the competitive advantage so we make market survey every quarter to know what the current trend in the market is, which mobile is preferred the most or which one would they like to have and which GSM connection they prefer the most. We hire people to do this survey and for them it is just data, and this survey will be processed by our staff and forwarded to the management who will decide which handsets to continue and which one to discontinue and if our staffs get a hint that the person who has done the survey has a good technical knowledge then we would hire him and make benefit out of that knowledge.

References:

1. Penrose, E.(1959), The Theory of The Growth of The Firm, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, .

2. Drucker, P.(1959), Landmarks of Tomorrow

3. Drucker, P.(1993), Managing for Results,London.

4. Jay Liebowitz :knowledge Management Handbook, CRC Press, 1999 Website:Book Preview 22-01-2009

5. Ron Young Knowledge Management Online Website: http://www.knowledge-management-online.com/Definition-of-Knowledge-Management.html

6. Iikka Tuomi : Data is more than knowledge, ISBN: 0-7695-0001-3,Website: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=772795 , 22-01-2009

The above paper also appears in : System Sciences, 1999. HICSS-32. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference