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Unit 11: Managing Knowledge in the Digital Firm

But hardly ever can individuals from faraway reaches of the enterprise search via shared or Notes
linked data repositories. Instead, information is more probable to be managed into a closed
system where it is used by one efficient user group for a particular set of tasks. What is obtainable
to one workgroup is not obtainable to another. This is the basic design of knowledge management
nowadays.
Knowledge management, as it appears at most organizations, addresses the limited requirements
of individual departments and workgroups, is duplicative, and distributed. Wouldn’t it be more
competent to frame an enterprise-wide knowledge management infrastructure that crosses all
functional boundaries inside the organization, and generates general data objects and definitions
that can be accessed with equivalent ease and success by all employees? This is what we call
Enterprise Knowledge Management (EKM), and it is a critical feature of any business plan in the
information age.
Researcher and advisor Karl-Erik Sveiby and others have illustrated knowledge management
as the management of an organization’s insubstantial assets. There are three types of insubstantial
assets:
 External: relationships, brand names, reputation, and image

 Internal: patents, concepts, models, and processes
 Individual: skills, education, experience, and values.
The role of knowledge management has typically been seen as the conversion of individual
assets – those connected with the employees – into internal assets – those preserved by the
organization.

Notes We have noticed recently that knowledge management is playing a larger role in
the attraction and retention of staff.
Every one of our employees needs to know how they will cultivate in their jobs and what they
will study from us. Actually, it is the major query on their minds – right after how many stock
choices they are going to obtain.
So Knowledge Management is now having a dual role:

 To attract employees to the organization and retain them, if possible
 To retain their knowledge, if not.
Organizations cannot efficiently influence the control of knowledge management until the
framers of organizational communication look at the “big picture” of a company’s organizational
resources and requirements.

!
Caution The cautious execution of an enterprise-wide knowledge management system
will provide increase to a cross-functional and consolidated corporate data repository
depending on open data access standards that generates new levels of communications,
remove inefficiencies, and is translucent to its users.

Task Make distinction between external and internal asset.

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