Week 2 - Knowledge Management

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT THEORY AND CONCEPTS

After referring many books I came to know that it is very difficult to give a specific definition to knowledge. I didn’t get any information about the evolution of knowledge. Many writer's have their own definitions on knowledge management . I to gave my own definition by having a look at different definitions. To get into the concept of knowledge management we need to know about the basics like data, information, knowledge.

DATA: It is a collection of raw facts and figures which are useful to provide information.
Ex:dates , numbers etc..,

INFORMATION: Data which is expressed or arranged in a meaningful pattern
Ex: progress reports, patients report etc..,

KNOWLEDGE:

Here I am giving some definitions offered by writers and researchers in knowledge management.

Knowledge is:

‘’justified true belief’’: This is the venerable definition of many philosophers, especially of empiricists who believe knowledge claims can be justified by facts (Goldman 1991)

‘’Knowledge is understanding based on experience’’ .(James 1907)

‘’Knowledge is experience or information that can be communicated or shared’’ (Allee 1997)

‘’Knowledge is the capacity for effective action’’. (Argyris 1993)

MY COMMENTS:

I strongly agree with the definition of Knowledge given by Argyris because if any threat comes from an external or internal source to an organization ,any individual in the organization who reacts to it in an efficient manner to solve it is the person who possess knowledge. Knowledge is obviously gained by experience its not just believing in justified facts because judgement changes from person to person. I don’t agree with Goldman’s view. Gained information with out experience do not give a meaningful sense to knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

DEFINITIONS:

According to Davenport (1994) knowledge management is the Processes of capturing, distributing and effectively using knowledge. capturing in the sense , collecting the information from every individual and using it in a fruitful manner to get higher benefits to the organisation.

Ellen knapp (1998) said that the art of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value for an organization’s clients and its people is knowledge management. I think

Ellen Knapp is considering only the intellectuals knowledge in the organisation but not giving priority to the lower level people. He is just transforming the intellectual assets but he is not distributing the knowledge to others in the organization. I don’t support his definition.

For KTI(knowledge tranfer international), knowledge management is a strategy that turns an organisation’s intellectual assets –both recorded information and the talents of its members- into greater productivity, new value , and competitiveness. Yes, I do agree with this because here KM is totally considered as a strategy instead of looking it as a process as Dave port (1994). I think the word strategy suits best rather than using process but here also only intellectual assets came into consideration but there is no discussion about distributing knowledge .At this point I don’t agree with this.

MY DEFINITION:

‘’Knowledge management is a strategy in which the process of capturing ,distributing knowledge (from and) to each and every individual in the organization and effectively using it to get more profits to the organization’’. This is what my definition on knowledge management.

SUPPORTING MY VIEWS:

Let me support the above topics with an example. When we came to do my masters in BISM , we people of six formed into a group with a strategy to get distinction in our respective module. At that time of formation we just have a raw data on the module and its references. Then each and every individual in our group gathered information from the references. After that we shared that information to one another we gained knowledge from that. When ever we met the other groups in the class we came to know about our mistakes and corrected it through experience. Here we acquired knowledge by communicating with other teams. Here we captured and distributed the knowledge among ourselves and effectively used it for doing our group and individual course work to get distinction in the module. That is how knowledge management helped our team to reach our goal. I also think that ‘’we can store information but, not knowledge’’

REFERENCES:

1) James, S (1907), pragmatism, New York, NY: Longmans.

2) Goldman, A. (1991), Empirical Knowledge, Berkely, CA: University of California, 1991.

3) Argyris, C. (1993), Knowledge for action, San Fransisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

4) Oxford Dictionary.

5) Joseph M. (2002),’’Information Management and Knowledge Management’’, key issues in the new knowledge management