Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Most often, generating value from such assets involves codifying what employees, partners and customers know, and sharing that information among employees, departments and even with other companies in an effort to devise best practices. It's important to note that the definition says nothing about technology; while KM is often facilitated by IT, technology by itself is not KM.

Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific outcomes such as shared intelligence, improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation. Knowledge transfer (one aspect of Knowledge Management) has always existed in one form or another, for example through on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, corporate libraries, professional training, and mentoring programmes. However, since the late twentieth century — additional technology has been applied to this task, such as knowledge bases, expert systems, and knowledge repositories. Knowledge Management programs attempt to manage the process of creation or identification, accumulation, and application of knowledge or intellectual capital across an organization. Knowledge Management, therefore, attempts to bring under one set of practices various strands of thought and practice relating to: intellectual capital and the knowledge worker in the knowledge economy the idea of the learning organization;

Knowledge Management by Elias Awad   The Knowledge Management Toolkit by Amrit   Knowledge Management PowerPoint Presentation Enterprise Excellence PowerPoint Presentations ABC's of Knowledge Management Knowledge Management Explorer Skyrme KM Resources Evolving Excellence Blog Events Calendar

• various enabling organizational practices such as Communities of Practice and corporate Yellow Page directories for accessing key personnel and expertise;
• various enabling technologies such as knowledge bases and expert systems, help desks, corporate intranets and extranets, Content Management, wikis, and Document Management.

While Knowledge Management programs are closely related to Organizational Learning initiatives, Knowledge Management may be distinguished from Organizational Learning by its greater focus on the management of specific knowledge assets and development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge flows.

The emergence of knowledge management has generated new organizational roles and responsibilities an early example of which was the Chief Knowledge Officer. In recent years, Personal knowledge management (PKM) practice has arisen in which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their role in the organisation and their career development.

While it has been applied to all industrial sectors, and increasingly to Government, Knowledge Management is a continually evolving discipline, with a wide range of contributions and a wide range of views on what represents good practice in Knowledge Management.