Knowledge Management Summary

Knowledge Management – from Pearlson & Saunders

Definition: The processes necessary to generate, capture, codify and transfer knowledge across the organisation to achieve competitive advantage.

An organisation's only sustainable competitive advantage lies in what its employees know and how they apply that knowledge to business problems.

Knowledge is often more about values and beliefs than about information and logic.

Person to person transfer is the best source of knowledge, but is impractical in a large organisation.

Two-thirds of the project time and budget must be spent on non-ICT resources, else it will turn into a technology project and not a Knowledge Management project

People are the basis of Knowledge Management – it is a combination of technology and socialisation

How Knowledge Management relates to Information Systems:

• ICT makes up the infrastructure for a Knowledge Management system.

• Knowledge Management systems make up the infrastructure for many IS systems.

• Knowledge Management is often referred to as an application of IS, like email or spreadsheets.

Intellectual Capital – knowledge that has been identified, captured and leveraged to produce a competitive advantage

Intellectual Property – allows owners of knowledge to be rewarded for their knowledge, and have a say how it is used; ie, patent/copyright issues.

Data – raw facts without any context, eg dates or figures
Information – data organised into some order or meaning , often for decision making
Knowledge – skills, experience and expertise that can be applied in many situations

Explicit – knowledge that can be captured and codified, such as in financial statements, company procedures.

Tacit – experience and expertise that must be passed on person to person, such as riding a bike, knowing how to identify the key issues of a problem, how to interpret the causes of a political event. Recording tacit knowledge is often done in the form of a narrative... [continues]

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