Knowledge Management and Learning Challenges

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The next higher level of knowledge is “know-how” i.e., knowing how to decide on an appropriate response to a stimulus. Such knowledge is required when the simple programmable relationships between stimuli and responses, which are the essence of “know-what” knowledge, are inadequate. This might be the case, for instance, when there is considerable “noise” in symptomatic information so that the direct link between symptoms and a medical diagnosis is uncertain. “Know how”-type knowledge permits a professional to determine which treatment or action is best, even in the presence of significant noise.

Tacit Knowledge is usually developed over a long period of time through trial and error processes. King goes further to indicate that knowledge is initially tacit in nature and it inhabits the mind of people.

“Knowledge management is the planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling of people, processes and systems in the organization to ensure that its knowledge-related assets are improved and effectively employed. Knowledge-related assets include knowledge in the form of printed documents such as patents and manuals, knowledge stored in electronic repositories such as a “best-practices” database, employees’ knowledge about the best way to do their jobs, knowledge that is held by teams who have been working on focused problems and knowledge that is embedded in the organization’s products, processes and relationships.” King (2009)

The knowledge management process involves acquisition of knowledge, creation, refinement, storage, transfer, sharing, and utilization. The knowledge management function in the organization operates these processes, develops methodologies and systems to support them, and motivates people to participate in them. The goals of knowledge management are the leveraging and improvement of the organization’s knowledge assets to effectuate better knowledge practices, improved organizational behaviors, better decisions and improved organizational performance.

(King, 2009) indicates that although individuals are able to personally perform all of the Knowledge Management processes, knowledge management is by far an organizational activity which mostly focuses on what managers can do to ensure that the goals of knowledge management are achieved as desired, and how the managers can motivate individuals to participate in achieving these goals and also how they can create social processes which can facilitate the success of knowledge management. There are social processes that include communities of practice, self-organizing groups of people that share common interests and expert networks which are well established and are available to give those with less expertise a chance to contact those with the expertise for their services. These social processes are very necessary mainly due to the fact that while knowledge initially exists in the mind of an individual, for knowledge management to be successful, knowledge its self must usually be transferred through social groups, teams, and networks among others.

It is therefore very clear that knowledge management processes are people-intensive, and less technology-intensive than most people think, however a modern knowledge-enabled enterprise must support knowledge management with appropriate information and communications technology

Knowledge management systems (KMS) are another area that must be looked at. Knowledge management systems are computer-based applications of the organization and are used for communication and information systems for the purpose of supporting the various Knowledge Management processes. They are not technologically distinct from the Communication and Information Systems, but however they involve databases. A major difference between most knowledge management systems and the organization’s Communication and information system is that the knowledge management may be less automated in that they may require human activity in their operation. Information systems do require that humans make choices in the design phase and then operate they automatically, Knowledge Management sometimes involves human participation in the operation phase. For example, if a sales database is designed, people must decide on its content and structure but after its design and it is no in its operational phase, it works and operates automatically all the organization has to do is employee and train a user.

Any organization must know and understand that knowledge management has dimensions. A site called Management Study Guide (MSG) indicates that the crucial element in any knowledge management systems is to ensure that tacit knowledge is captured and turned into explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to the initial knowledge that an individual may probably not be consciously aware of, for having to complete a given task. On the other hand, explicit knowledge refers to knowledge that an individual holds consciously mentally and in a form that can easily be passed on or communicated to others.

Different dimensions for distinguishing between different types of' knowledge exist. To implement knowledge management there must be several dimensions. Young (2010) clearly indicates four different knowledge dimensions which include the following;

Personal Knowledge management; young indicates here that this is a bottom up approach which brought about by the believe that improving employees’ abilities to capture, store and share their personal knowledge will lead to better knowledge management among the employees and the organization large and there will be better tackling of information over load in the organization.

The other dimension as per young’s explanations is team knowledge management, young indicates that a good number of organizations have implemented this dimension of knowledge management. He indicates that this approach comes from the realization and understanding that teams are knowledge engines of an organization. He indicates that it has been realized that a team that collaborates easily transfers knowledge among themselves faster and are more creative to create new knowledge. Thus productivity and production of good results by the organization.

The other approach is organizational knowledge management; Young here he indicates that most organizations have embarked on this approach and the main reason for this being to introduce a KM strategy and supporting infrastructure for creation, storage, sharing and applying knowledge across the entire organization as a whole. This approach basically sets out to identify the critical knowledge assets that are needed by the organization to achieve its objectives and works towards developing these assets as fast as possible. This is basically