Essay online on Knowledge management

Depending on the area of ”‹”‹knowledge it is possible to name technological knowledge (knowledge about technology to create the product), market knowledge (about the groups of consumers, pricing, methods of product promotion, etc.) and macroeconomic knowledge (about the trends in currency exchange rates, foreign economic trends, prospects for increased domestic demand, etc.) It is also necessary to distinguish between individual and group knowledge. The traditional view is based on the fact that knowledge belongs to the individual, and the group is just a simple sum of the members of this group, so that group knowledge is the sum of their knowledge.  But there is another, modern point of view, according to which a group of people forms a team – a new entity with its unique characteristics. Under this view, we can talk about group behavior and group knowledge, as well as knowledge management. Thus, knowledge can be not only individual, but of a group of people. (Liebowitz 1999)

B. Gates, in his book “Business @ the Speed ”‹”‹of Thought” writes about the need to improve the predictive capacity of the organization, or corporate intelligence quotient (IQ). However, he has in mind not only the number of smart employees, but also the accumulation of knowledge in the company and the free flow of information, which allows employees to enjoy each other’s ideas. The ultimate goal of a high corporate IQ is that the group could develop ideas and implement them as effectively as a one man, concentrating their forces on solving the problem. “When recruited a critical mass of people with high IQ, working hand in hand with each other, the potential of the company simply flies up to heaven. This mutual stimulation generates a lot of new ideas and promotes the exit of less experienced employees at the highest levels of skill. The company as a whole begins to work better.” (Gates B. 1999)

However, knowledge alone can not solve all the problems of effective organization. Thus, there may be present quite advanced understanding of activities of individual employees, knowledge about the prospects, of the factors (“know why”). At the same time without proper motivation it is difficult to expect a high return on such knowledge. Construction of new knowledge is a comprehensive, interactive and non-linear process. Professional managers must act on all levels to create new knowledge: cognitive, advanced, system integration, creative and intuitive - and therefore to manage knowledge through training, incentives, appropriate organizational structures, control of the results.

Some researchers, including Stonehouse G. (1999), pointed out  a separate group of organizational knowledge. Organizational knowledge is a distributed set of principles, facts, skills, rules that provide information and decision-making processes, behavior and actions within the organization. Organizational knowledge is developed based on the knowledge of everyone in the organization. (Stonehouse 1999)



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