Knowledge Management & Better Business Performance

Corporate culture is keen on adopting strategies it believes will lead to greater performance, both in terms of productivity and higher profits. In the early 1970s, distributed computing was viewed as the answer to higher performance, as, in the 1980s, office automation became a key goal. As the �90s unfolded, business process reengineering was met with open arms by corporate management. Now, as we enter the new Millenium, Knowledge Management (KM) is experiencing the same enthusiastic reception as these other phenomena as a means of achieving better business performance.

What is KM? According to Information Management Journal, "Knowledge management is concerned with systematic, effective management and utilization of an organization's knowledge resources. It encompasses the creation, storage, arrangement, retrieval, and distribution of an organization's knowledge" (Knowledge 4). Despite the increased performance which effective knowledge management provides, experts warn there are "dos" and "don'ts" involved in order for knowledge to be managed effectively. Many point to a "knowing-doing" gap, while others suggest there are cultural and other barriers involved in the effective management of knowledge. This analysis will discuss some of these "dos" and "don'ts" in order to demonstrate how effective knowledge management will lead to better business performance.

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ield of KM is a newly emerging one which creates some confusion and hype regarding its use, as well as making its application prone to more mistakes. Further, there are mental mindsets natural to human beings that must be altered in order for KM to work. As one author on KM notes "unwillingness to share is a trait we developed at a very early age" (Nunes 53). Despite obstacles such as this, however, KM comes naturally to human beings. For example, when we are little children we will naturally pickup a bag of marbles and sort them in order of size, color, smoothness, or other characteristics. Classifying information is a uniquely human skill, one that computers cannot truly perform. Technology is only so useful in enabling management to mine the potentially rewarding bodies of information that involve customers, transactions, employees, and other business-oriented knowledge. This is where management and employees are critical to the KM cycle. Traditional computers are programmed to perform a series of processes, but because what they do is typically already programmed into them experts warn that an over-reliance on technology can diminish the effectiveness of KM. People think, not computers. As Doug Dineley (50) notes i

Category: Business - K