Nature of Knowledge Management

Knowledge is created through practice, collaboration, interaction, and education, as the different knowledge types are shared and converted. Beyond this, knowledge creation is also supported by relevant information and data which can improve decisions and serve as building blocks in the creation of new knowledge. While, Knowledge Management is about making the right knowledge available to the right people. It is about making sure that an organization can learn, and that it will be able to retrieve and use its knowledge assets in current applications as they are needed. In the words of Peter Drucker it is “the coordination and exploitation of organizational knowledge resources, in order to create benefit and competitive advantage”.

The use of IT is very much the same as it is for knowledge sharing, allowing for some degree of support in the transfer of all knowledge types. One important aspect is that it must support, and not interfere with, informal collaboration. For example, groupware systems can be used to enhance communication between communities or teams, particularly if they support varied informal communication. Apart from this, IT also has an important role through information management, by providing access to data and information, and allowing the manager to perform in-depth analyses. More than that, IT systems can also be programmed to spot trends in data and information and present that to the manager. This essentially enables the manager to make better decisions and aids knowledge creation by providing some of the building blocks for new knowledge. IT tools can also be used in the innovation process, but these are outside the scope of knowledge management.

With Knowledge Management, companies can improve very well. It helps companies to manage their assets within the company safe from their other competitor, and make them keep stronger than their rivals. Knowledge Management helps companies to learn from their past mistakes, also their successes. By learning from past mistakes and successes, they can improve their work’s efficiency and their quality also. Not only learning things from past, It also can help companies to improve a department from one to another. With the use of Knowledge Management, when doing an improvement within a department, the way the company use for improvement can be applied to another department. Means that they don’t have to spend  more time or cost for improving another department if the previous method can be applied.

In conclusion, Knowledge Management helping companies to share, create, improve, identify and improve the knowledge within company. Knowledge Management brings benefits that can help company to growth and survive in the competition. It also help companies to realize which department or assets that can be the crucial part of the company success.(Adrian)