Knowledge Management Part-1 (M2)

What is Knowledge Management?

  “Knowledge Management is the systematic management of vital knowledge and its associated processes of creation, organization, diffusion, use and exploitation.”

- David Skyrme

Actually we should take the word ‘exploitation’ as positive sense, that is “the fact of using a situation in order to get an advantage for yourself” not “a situation in which somebody treats somebody else in an unfair way, especially in order to make money from their work”

Most of the management people use their knowledge to exploit that is ‘to treat their subordinate unfairly by making them work and not giving them much in return’ instead of ‘to treat them as an opportunity to gain an advantage for both subordinate as well as the organization.

Generally the Knowledge management is called ‘KM’.

Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice.

KM includes management and operational practices and philosophies, technologies, strategies, and human behavioral traits just to name some the areas that are involved. Hence, both complexity and the many reasons for working with KM result in different ways in which to view the field.

Why Knowledge Management?

n Not to reinvent  the wheel : solution exists/ known somewhere in the organization

n Learn from past mistakes – ours or others

n Knowledge resource depletion, Reduction, migration & brain-drain

n Innovate & lead change in the business

“Wise men learn from their own mistakes;

   The wiser learn from other mistakes’ too”

Types of Knowledge

Tacit Knowledge

          What a person knows, but has not been documented or formally captured. Tacit knowledge is a type of knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it. With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust. Another example of tacit knowledge is the ability to ride a bicycle.

Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. Tacit knowledge consists often of habits and culture that we do not recognize in us. In the field of knowledge, the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known by an individual and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization

The tacit aspects of knowledge are those that cannot be codified, but can only be transmitted via training or gained through personal experience. Tacit knowledge has been described as “know-how” -- as opposed to “know-what” (facts), “know-why” (science), or “know-who” (networking). It involves learning and skill but not in a way that can be written down

Explicit Knowledge

          Written, codified, or imbedded knowledge that has been transferred to workgroups or to the organization. The most common forms of explicit knowledge are manuals, documents and procedures. Knowledge also can be audio-visual. Works of art and product can be seen as other forms of explicit knowledge where human skills, motives and knowledge are externalized. This website also best example for Explicit knowledge as it document of lot knowledge in it.

-to be continued…