Knowledge Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 5000 words

Knowledge Management - Essay Example Thus, contemporary KM theories can roughly be classified into three major categories: 1. Technology-focused: primary focus on the enhancement of technologies that facilitate sharing/growth of knowledge. 2. Organisational: designing and reshaping the organisational environment in a way to facilitate knowledge processes. 3. Ecological: focus on the interaction process within the organisational environment involving people, knowledge and environmental factors (Gordon & Edge, 1997). A similar categorisation of the KM approaches is suggested in perhaps the only formal taxonomy of KM up to date. Michael Earl (2001) based his research on comprehensive empirical data to identify three major schools of KM: Technocratic: emphasis on information or technologies of KM. Economic: knowledge should be managed similarly to other assets (e.g. stock, bonds, etc). Behavioural: focus on knowledge exchange as a fundamentally social process (p. 224). However, modern models and theories of models are often difficult to fit in this taxonomy due to their integrative nature which encompasses elements of each school. The below overview provides some key concepts and theories associated with effective KM system. Main Body One popular KM approach widely used these days is a so-called 'pragmatic management'. Though it is not classified in the Earl's classical taxonomy pragmatic management is recently becoming increasingly popular, especially in the small to middle organisations. This approach seems rather close to Earl's behavioural paradigm that views knowledge management and knowledge exchange as fundamentally social processes. The main difference of this paradigm lies in the fact that it doesn't imply serious investments in the employees and their all-round... this paper describes the basic idea of knowledge management which is universal – doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources – its practical implementation may vary in each particular case. The variations are not too serious and mostly concern the share of attention paid to either technological or human aspect of KM while the key principles remain similar in the modern models of KM: explicit and tacit knowledge, interactive nature of KM processes, increased attention cognitive and motivational aspects of KM. Therefore, the differences in KM systems implemented are mostly associated with different organizational structures and demands of the companies. Although the challenges related to designing/implementation of effective KM strategy are serious the practice continues to demonstrate that they are not compelling. The most essential of these challenges are identified in the professional literature as well as the alternative ways and tools to cope with them. Tu sum up this paper approves that the major factors contributing to the failures of knowledge management strategies are highly changeable global environment, coupled with failure to take a holistic approach to designing the system of knowledge management, and substantial resources required to design and implement a truly effective KM programme. Evidently, the first of these drawbacks has received better recognitions from the theorists whom develop KM models, programmes, and strategies for modern organisations.