Principles of Management

Introduction
Knowledge Management refers to a range of practices and
techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute
knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of
knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning
across the organization.
Knowledge management programs are typically tied to organizational
objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific
business outcomes such as improved performance, competitive
advantage, or higher levels of innovation. Of recent years Personal
Knowledge Management (PKM) practice has arisen by which individuals
apply KM practice to themselves, their role in the organization and
their career development,

Knowledge management is an evolving discipline. While knowledge

transfer (an aspect of knowledge management) has always existed in
one form or another, for example through on-the-job discussions with
peers, formally through apprenticeship, the maintenance of corporate
libraries, professional training and mentoring programmes, and —
since the late twentieth century — technologically through knowledge
bases, expert systems, and other knowledge repositories, knowledge
management programs claim to consciously evaluate and manage the
process of accumulation, creation and application of knowledge which
is also referred to by some as intellectual capital.

Approaches to knowledge
management

There is a broad range of thought on knowledge management with no

agreed definition current or likely. The approaches varying by author
and school. For example, knowledge management may be viewed from
each of the following perspectives:
• Techno-centric: Focus on technologies, ideally those that
enhance knowledge sharing / growth, frequently any technology
that does fancy stuff with information.
• Theoretical: Focus on the underlying concepts of knowledge and
truth.
• People view: Focus on bringing people together and helping
them exchange knowledge.
• Process view: Focus on the processes of knowledge creation,
transmission, transformation, and others.
• Organizational: How does the organization need to be designed
to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best
with what processes?
• Ecological: seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge
and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system
• Combinatory: Combining more than one of the above approaches
where possible without contradiction.
In addition as the discipline is maturing we see an increasing presence
of academic debates within epistemology emerging in both the theory
and practice of knowledge management. UK and Australian Standards
Bodies have both produced documents which attempt to bound and
scope the field but these have received limited take up or awareness.

Knowledge capture stages

Knowledge may be accessed, or captured, at three stages: before,
during, or after knowledge-related activities.
For example, individuals undertaking a new project for an organization
might access information resources to learn best practices and lessons
learned for similar projects undertaken previously, access relevant
information again during the project implementation to seek advice on
issues encountered, and access relevant information afterwards for
advice on after-project actions and review activities. Knowledge
management practitioners offer systems, repositories, and corporate
processes to encourage and formalize these activities.
Similarly, knowledge may be captured and recorded before the project
implementation, for example as the project team learns information
and lessons during the initial project analysis. Similarly, lessons
learned during the project operation may be recorded, and after-action
reviews may lead to further insights and lessons being recorded for
future access.

Drivers of knowledge
management
There are a number of 'drivers', or motivations, leading to
organizations undertaking a knowledge management program.
Perhaps first among these is to gain the competitive advantage that
comes with improved or faster learning and new knowledge creation.
Knowledge management programs may lead to greater innovation,
better customer experiences, consistency in good practices and
knowledge access across a global organization, as well as many other
benefits, and knowledge management programs may be driven with
these goals in mind.
Considerations driving a knowledge management program might
include:
• making available increased knowledge content in the
development and provision of products and services
• achieving shorter new product development cycles
• facilitating and managing organizational innovation
• leverage the expertise of people across the organization
• Benefiting from 'network effects' as the number of productive
connections between employees in the organization increases
and the quality of information shared increases
• managing the proliferation of data and information in complex
business environments and allowing employees to rapidly access
useful and relevant knowledge resources and best practice
guidelines
• facilitate organizational learning
• managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the
workforce (such as the expertise and know-how possessed by
key individuals) as individuals retire and new workers are hired
Knowledge management enablers

Historically, there have been a number of technologies 'enabling' or

facilitating knowledge management practices in the organization,
including expert systems, knowledge bases, software help desk tools,
document management systems and other IT systems supporting
organizational knowledge flows.
The advent of the Internet brought with it further enabling
technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative
software, content management systems, corporate 'Yellow pages'
directories, email lists, wikis, blogs, and other technologies. Each
enabling technology can expand the level of inquiry available to an
employee, while providing a platform to achieve specific goals or
actions. The practice of KM will continue to evolve with the growth of
collaboration applications available by IT and through the Internet.
Since its adoption by the mainstream population and business
community, the Internet has led to an increase in creative
collaboration, learning and research, e-commerce, and instant
information.

Knowledge management roles &

organizational structure
Knowledge management activities may be centralised in a Knowledge
Management Office, or responsibility for knowledge management may
be located in existing departmental functions, such as the Human
Resource (to manage intellectual capital) or IT departments (for
content management, social computing etc.). Different departments
and functions may have a knowledge management function and those
fuctions may not be connected other than informally

The value of knowledge

management
In an organizational context, data represents facts or values of results,
and relations between data and other relations have the capacity to
represent information. Patterns of relations of data and information
and other patterns have the capacity to represent knowledge. For the
representation to be of any utility it must be understood, and when
understood the representation is information or knowledge to the one
that understands. Yet, what is the real value of information and
knowledge, and what does it mean to manage it?
Without associations we have little chance of understanding anything.
We understand things based on the associations we are able to
discern. If someone says that sales started at $100,000 per quarter
and have been rising 20% per quarter for the last four quarters, I am
somewhat confident that sales are now about $207,000 per quarter. I
am confident because I know what "rising 20% per quarter" means and
I can do the math.
Yet, if someone asks what sales are apt to be next quarter, I would
have to say, "It depends!" I would have to say this because although I
have data and information, I have no knowledge. This is a trap that
many fall into, because they don't understand that data doesn't predict
trends of data. What predicts trends of data is the activity that is
responsible for the data. To be able to estimate the sales for next
quarter, I would need information about the competition, market size,
extent of market saturation, current backlog, customer satisfaction
levels associated with current product delivery, current production
capacity, the extent of capacity utilization, and a whole host of other
things. When I was able to amass sufficient data and information to
form a complete pattern that I understood, I would have knowledge,
and would then be somewhat comfortable estimating the sales for next
quarter. Anything less would be just fantasy!
In this example what needs to be managed to create value is the data
that defines past results, the data and information associated with the
organization, its market, its customers, and its competition, and the
patterns which relate all these items to enable a reliable level of
predictability of the future. What I would refer to as knowledge
management would be the capture, retention, and reuse of the
foundation for imparting an understanding of how all these pieces fit
together and how to convey them meaningfully to some other person.
The value of Knowledge Management relates directly to the
effectiveness with which the managed knowledge enables the
members of the organization to deal with today's situations and
effectively envision and create their future. Without on-demand access
to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed based on what
the individual or group brings to the situation with them. With on-
demand access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed
with the sum total of everything anyone in the organization has ever
learned about a situation of a similar nature. Which approach would
you perceive would make a more effective organization?
Personal knowledge management

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a concept that has grown

out of a combination of knowledge management (KM) and personal
information management (PIM) and cognitive human abilities.
More particular, the Personal KM is focused on helping an individual be
more effective -- to work better. While the focus is the individual, the
goal of the movement is to enable individuals to operate better in
groups and in corporations as well. This is as opposed to the traditional
view of KM, which appears to be more centered on enabling the
corporation to be more effective by "recording" and making available
what its people know.
A core focus of PKM is 'personal inquiry', a quest to find, connect, learn
and explore.
PKM is a response to the idea that knowledge workers increasingly
need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. They need
processes and tools by which they can evaluate what they know in a
given situation, and then seek out ways to fill the gaps when needed.
This frequently implies technology, but one can be good at PKM
without much in the way of special tools.
The nice thing about PKM is that the "what's in it for me” factor is
taken care of immediately, so you get quicker individual buy-in. The
difficult thing is how you show a traditional company that individual
employee effectiveness necessarily leads to better organizational
effectiveness.
PKM has recently been linked to social bookmarking, blogging or k-
logs. The idea is individuals use their blogs to capture ideas, opinions
or thoughts and this 'voicing' will encourage cognitive diversity,
promote free exchanges away from a centralized policed knowledge
repository that is additional to ordinary work.
Personal knowledge management
Skills
Skills associated with personal knowledge management.
• Reflection. Continuous improvement on how the individual
operates.
• Manage learning. Manage how and when the individual learns.
• Information literacy. Understanding what information is
important and how to find unknown information.
• Organizational skills. Personal librarianship? Personal
categorization and taxonomies.
• Networking with others. Knowing what your network of people
knows. Knowing who might have additional knowledge and
resources to help you
• Researching, canvassing, paying attention, interviewing and
observational 'cultural anthropology' skills
• Communication skills. Perception, intuition, expression,
visualization, and interpreting.
• Creative skills. Imagination, pattern-recognition, appreciation,
innovation, inference. Understanding of complex adaptive
systems.
• Collaboration skills. Coordination, synchronization,
experimentation, cooperation, and design.
 Conclusion

We all know the value of knowledge in today’s

world. There is a very rapid change in
education system and on going process on
coming up with new ideas, therefore it is very
necessary to keep that knowledge updated. In
organizations today you enter with a post
graduation degree at an executive post but it is
very vital to keep yourself updated with the
latest of the information and knowledge