Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management within the organisations

In this economy where the only certainty is the uncertainty, the main safe resource for the competitive advantage that might last is KNOWLEDGE [Nonaka & Takeuchi, Professors at Tokyo, Stanford and Berkley Universities].

Among the experts who have developed studies about how to increase effectiveness of the Knowledge Management Process within the organisations, Professor at Berkley University Ikujiro Nonaka stands out as a forerunner of a wide range of Japanese authors who have worked about this topic as Kazuo Inumaru and Yogesh Malhotra.

From Professor Malhotra.himself we should obtain a first remark that underlines the obvious link between technology and human capacity to obtain an effective management knowledge within an organisation: “ Knowledge Management solves the critical matters about adaptation, survival and knowledge among the organisation itself, facing environmental change more and more discontinuous.

To sum up it is related to those organisational processes that combine the capacity to mix up information and process the information , with the creativity and the capacity to innovate that is typical of human beings.

Kazuo Inumaru then suggest the following definition of KM and of its role within the value creation process and in the productivity increase in a company :
“Knowledge became a keyword for the Top Management. In the past the main company resources where substantially three : People, Money, Equipments.
Today knowledge, defined as information that provide value, is considered a resource that coordinates the other three (People, Money, Equipments), providing added value useful to achieve the company objectives.
This approach to achieve new value consists with the integration and the systematic sharing of company knowledge and that one owned by each employee.

Knowledge Management is called the methodology to literally manage the Knowledge. The aim consists with to increase the organisation competitiveness or increase through the process management more conscious and controlled. In a company where KM is well managed, the employees share their knowledge applied validated by the experience and the Know-How obtained during their work, contributing to increase the productivity and the competitiveness.

Inumaru bases himself to the Knowledge Management model worked out by Ikujiro Nonaka and the fundamentals of this model are :
To build information with a value and shared by all the organisation; “knowledge, unlike information, are related to belief and involvement.
Knowledge, says Inumaru, should be divided in “what is individual, subjective and empirical (from experience) and what is social, objective and theoretical , in other words quoting what has been theorized by M. Polanyi, knowledge should be “explicit” or “tacit”.
This one, as Nonaka thought, is "highly personal and hard to formalize, making it difficult to communicate or to share with others.

This distinction therefore, does not impede to both typologies, to interact among the company process development, so that “knowledge, following this progressive process, increases and matures from “individual” to “organisational”.

From Professor Nonaka theory we should obtain four Knowledge Management typologies :

• “Kaizen” : knowledge to increase effectiveness in the company management, sharing and using the “knowledge estate”;
• Value increase: to make profit through the “knowledge estate”;
• Concentration of resources: organisational concentration of knowledge that at present are dispersed into the structure;
• Resources combine : the effort to make active employees and customers externally and internally in respect to the structure , making relationships and networks .

And four methodologies to its fulfilment within the organisation:

• Best Practices Sharing; Effectiveness increase through sharing and transfer of knowledge, through learning caused by daily activities and the Know-How resulting from company internal success history;

• Knowledge network dedicated : to link for examples in a global network people who own empowerment to decisions and dedicated knowledge inside and outside of the organisation, to solve problems or to undertake specific decisions. This combine allows to overcome the sum of the existing knowledge at individual level , collecting when necessary the knowledge in real time , using email and groupware.

• Knowledge Capital : to make profit using internally and externally in respect to the organization the knowledge estate that should be transformed in economic value; patents, licences, author rights, trade marks should be considered knowledge estate of the organisation.

• Sharing knowledge with Customers : Sharing knowledge with customers is fundamental as well as continuous knowledge offer to the habitual customer: Inside the organisational structure of the organisation, the Customers should be consciously involved.

Another very interesting element presented by Nonaka is related to Top Management in a Knowledge Management Process , so that the most critical task from the leadership point of view is to conceptualize a vision about kind of Knowledge Management to be developed and to put into action within a management system.
The vision, defined by the Top Management, links all the organisation participants to objectives and flexible tasks. This approach gives the opportunity to reduce the rigidity imposed by the management by objectives system that often brings to a mistake demonization in favour of a dialectic setting-out,, which is not aimed to the simple achievement of objectives defined but to the objectives designing and to the tasks planning more adequate to the “vision” fulfilment.

	2008 Presidio Sanitario Gradenigo / info@fadgradenigo.it This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. All the project's contents reflect the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.



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