Moving From Confusion to Knowledge Management

Executives today are more focused on strategic management decision making due to the hypercompetitive global environment and the public and private sector evaluation and opinion. Executes still wonder where is knowledge and how can it be captured, utilized, and enhanced when it comes to decision-making. Executives found that within organizations, knowledge resides in various areas such as management, employees, culture, structure, systems, processes and relationships, and its role is to enhance organizational functions.

Executives across the globe have found that knowledge is critical to business success. Knowledge, in of itself, is not enough to satisfy the vast array of changes in today's organization. Therefore, knowledge management is only a necessary precursor to effectively managing knowledge within the organization. First executives must have an understanding of the concept of organizational knowledge itself. Organizational knowledge cannot merely be described as the sum of individual knowledge, but as a systematic combination of knowledge based on social interactions shared among organizational members. Executives can categorize followers based on their human knowledge which focuses on individual knowledge and manifests itself in individual's competencies and skills.

Organizational knowledge is part of the executive's protocol and comes fairly natural at the higher echelons of the organization. Most importantly, organizational knowledge is owned and disseminated by the organization. The key take-away for executives is that knowledge is a resource that enables organizations to solve problems and create value through improved performance and it is this point that will narrow the gaps of success and failure leading to more successful decision-making.

The key is for executives to convert individual knowledge into valuable resources to ensure that the knowledge is actually helping the organization grow both professionally for individuals and profitably for all stakeholders. The next section will focus on the taxonomy of knowledge that needs to be discussed.

Scientific and Philosophical Knowledge Vs. Organizational Knowledge

There is a scientific, philosophical, and organizational side to knowledge that executives should at least be aware of in today's hypercompetitive business environment. Scientific knowledge is objective and manifests itself as provable and verifiable knowledge or truth, while philosophical knowledge clarifies that truth exists in the minds of people, and is difficult to access. The key for executives is that organizational knowledge, unlike scientific and philosophical knowledge, focuses on enhancing “effective performance.” Answering the questions executives often ask: “What works?” Based on this view, this kind of knowledge empowers the capabilities of an organization, and actively improves its competitive advantage in the marketplace. Executives are already aware that organizational knowledge takes an objective approach and can positively contribute to a firm's performance. The key is how to use this knowledge, enhance it, distribute it, and capture it. The next section will focus on these processes of knowledge management which are the focal point of managerial implication.

Important Things Every Executive Needs To Know About Managing Knowledge

Companies are increasingly investing in knowledge management projects. But knowledge management in companies is still quite limited. Knowledge management can help companies identify their inefficiencies in organizational processes, and subsequently recover them on an instantaneous basis which enables executives to prevent further operational risk. The question remains. How can executives manage knowledge in organizations? By adopting the model proposed in this article, executives are able to answer the questions necessary to apply knowledge management without having to delve through all the models and theories to find what works well for them and what does not.

Knowledge is firstly accumulated by creating new knowledge from organizational intellectual capital and acquiring knowledge from external environments. The process of knowledge acquisition from external sources enhances the capabilities of executives to play the role of inspirational motivation, and enables executives to directly set highly desired expectations to recognize possible opportunities in the business environment. This process also helps executives develop a more effective vision, including a more comprehensive array of information and insights about external environments.

Executives can inspire people to create new ideas and develop effective mechanisms to acquire knowledge from various sources such as suppliers, customers, business partners, and competitors. This is similar to a value-chain approach. Executives need to first support this approach for the model to work because they play a strategic role in expanding the knowledge accumulation through applying incentives as mechanisms to develop a more innovative climate and managing effective tools to acquire knowledge from external sources.

Executives then integrate knowledge internally to enhance the effectiveness and efficiencies in various systems and processes, as well as to be more responsive to market changes. Knowledge integration focuses on monitoring and evaluating knowledge management practices, coordinating experts, sharing knowledge and scanning the changes of knowledge requirements to keep the quality of their production or services in-line with market demand. Executives can promote knowledge integration by creating expert groups or steering committees to enhance knowledge quality and evaluate knowledge assets.

Follower's diversity of skills and interpersonal relations that is based on trust and reciprocity can improve the performance of group cohesiveness. In the process of knowledge integration, knowledge enters organizational processes and provides valuable contributions to products and services. Executives as leaders steering the organizational strategy facilitate this process, by undertaking initiatives that enhance dynamic relationships among employees and departments and improve knowledge transfer, thus enhancing the performance of employees and the implementation of effective changes to maintain the quality of products and services. Therefore, the burden of success when effective implementation of knowledge integration is concerned is heavily dependent on the capabilities of the organization's executives.

Executives must also curtail the knowledge within organizations. This knowledge needs to be reconfigured to meet environmental changes and new challenges and at the same time should not be leaked to the competition in any shape or form unless agreed upon by senior executives. When executives agree to share knowledge with other organizations in the environment, knowledge is often difficult to share externally. One reason is that other organizations have too much pride to accept knowledge or are apprehensive to expose themselves to the competition. Therefore, executives may lack the required capabilities to interact with other organizations , or distrust sharing their knowledge. In addition, just the notion of creating an expert group or steering committee may be shortsighted because such groups may not have sufficient diversity to comprehend knowledge acquired from external sources.

Based upon these limitations whether natural or caused, networking with business partners is a key activity for companies to enhance knowledge exchange and it should not take an award to be the impetus to initiate interaction. Networking is a critical concern for executives in this process is developing alliances with partners in external environments. Executives and their expert groups and/or steering committees are the ones who can make final decisions about developing alliances with business partners. Networking with external business partners may enhance performance, thereby developing a more effective vision incorporating various concerns and values of external business partners.

Knowledge transference among business partners can also improve corporate learning, which enables executives to empower employees through creating new knowledge and better solutions. Therefore, if executives in senior positions effectively implement knowledge management then they may be able to improve performance at the organizational level through increased learning opportunities.

In Conclusion

This article actually investigates the crossover potential of scholarly research and how it can be applied in the organizational boardroom. I offer practical contributions for managers at all levels of the organization. This article introduces a new and dynamic perspective of knowledge management within organizations, and adds to a relatively small body of literature but pays homage to the scholarly contributions. I stress that knowledge is a strategic resource for organizational portfolios.

This article suggests that knowledge management constitutes the foundation of a supportive workplace to improve firm performance and reduce operational risk. The key here is that there are positive effects of knowledge management on firm performance. When executives ensure the executive success they increase control and lesson operational risk. In fact, I suggest that if knowledge management initiatives are not completely in favor of supporting organizational processes, companies may become obsolete, taken over, or acquired.

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