Modern Knowledge Management Practices Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2750 words

Modern Knowledge Management Practices - Essay ExampleKnowledge is nowadays increasingly becoming an crowning(prenominal) warlike advantage either replacing or complementing such traditional sources of success as technologies, marketing mix, and often even financial resources (Malhotra, 1998). Modern parentage history lists a number of instances when association-centred management has helped create competitive advantage of organisations and even countries formerly limited in financial and other resources. For Microsoft, Dell, IBM (which is believed to be bingle of the founders of the paradigm), Compaq, British Airways, Ryan Air and other major organisations knowledge management has become the cornerstone of success. The uniform is true for such countries as South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong which rely on the national knowledge economy.Over the last two decades, organizations have often been described in terms of knowledge and learning with the help of such concepts as learning organisation, intellectual capital, people-centred approach or knowledge based management. Cakar and Bititci (2001) perfectly summarise this trend in the following rehearsal 1980s were all about automation. In the manufacturing industry FMS, FAS, Robots, AGVS etc. were commonplace. The 1990s have been about people, this is evident in the development of concepts throughout the 90s focusing on delegation, involvement, ownership cross functional teamwork, self managed works teams and so on The needs of modern business emphasize the role and importance of people and knowledge (p.2). The psyches of Peter Drucker (1994), whom was the first to use term knowledge worker, became widely recognised in 1980s, particularly the idea that investments in human resources were increasingly becoming more efficient than investments in machines. In 1986, European knowledge management pioneer Karl-Erik Sveiby described the concept of a know-how company (Doz, Santos & Williamson, 2001), an d in 1991 the ideas of knowledge management were reconsidered by Ikujiro Nonako (1991) whom presented the idea of knowledge-creating company. The 1996 could be considered the turning point in history of knowledge management the influence of this paradigm became overwhelming in the developed countries (Skyrme, 2002). While sooner on knowledge used to produce goods, these days it is used to produce other knowledge and information what is specific to the informational mode of development is the action of knowledge upon knowledge itself as the main source of productivity (Mishel & Bernstein, 1996 17). In other words, the process of creation and sharing knowledge has become the key for strengthening the competitive and successful outcomes of modern organisations. Probably the main reason for such shift is the improved understanding of the importance of knowledge created and shared within organisation. At the same time, the changed patterns of managing human resources made the businesses pay more attention to tacit knowledge the employees possess. Main discussionOriginally emerged in 1960s, the paradigm of HRM relied on the broad play of findings revealed by several outstanding organisational researchers. As Alan