knowledge cafe

Knowledge Cafe:

Implementing Knowledge Management in organisations:

Knowledge Management after much research was proved to be very much essential for an organisation. Now let’s see how this can be successfully implemented in an organisation taking into account the barriers. Earlier, Knowledge management was pertained to only large organisations. As the time is changing now arises a need for implementation of KM in even small and medium sized enterprises. There are many Critical factors to be taken into account for the successful implementation of KM in organisations. Two factors make an impact on an organisation’s success:

• Internal factors: Infrastructure, creation and sharing culture of knowledge, technology, frequent learning, systematic processes
• External factors: Environmental

Analysis:

It is not compulsory that every organisation should follow all the rules, it depends on an organisation Internal factors on what to consider and what not to take into account. Choosing a factor even though it is not necessary may also lead to a system failure. (Amidon and Skyrme 1997). Many people have done a research on the factors out of which IT remained as a common factor. This explains the importance of IT. People like Norton, Arora, Suen, Kaplan, Ahmed and many more have done much research since a long time. It is not necessary that all the SME’s should have in common all these factors. It may vary from one organisation to another depending on the requirements of the organisation. Many people have done research in this field and have identified different attributes based on their study and it is very complicated to generalise these factors completely. Some of the general factors are:

• Leadership of Management and Support: It plays a very important role and is based on the behaviour of management towards the staff and explains the qualities that should be possessed by a leader like the willingness to move around and share knowledge, search and learn for knowledge. Much of support should be from the higher management and on a regular basis.
• Culture: A good culture should be practiced in an organisation where knowledge can be shared, created and implemented.
• IT: It is very much important to use the right tool which should be easily understood by everyone and should be simple to use while satisfying all the requirements.
• Strategy: A definite and clear strategy on how things have to function should be implemented.
• Measurement: Organisation should measure KM so that they come to know where they fall.
• Processes: Processes like the sharing, creation, implementation of knowledge should be run according to a systematic way and implementing different strategies to successfully complete every process.
• Motivation: What si the use of implementing everything unless the staff is not motivated. It makes a big impact on the productivity. Staff may be motivated by acts like incentives depending on their individual contribution to all the processes in a group.
• Resources: Resources should be checked on a regular basis and ensure that resources are available to the individuals accordingly.
• Training: Training also plays a major role where the staff should be trained with the objectives and goals so that they remain object oriented at all times.
• HRM: HRM should be managed properly in organisations to ensure that the new arrived staff have knowledge so that they donot create a negative impact on the team they are going to join. Staff should also be provided with a chance to grow in the organisation inorder to prevent retention so that the knowledge stays within the organisation.

Conclusion:
In order to implement KM in an Organisation the factors should be considered accordingly depending on the organisation or incase a wrong step is taken at this stage it may create a huge negative impact on the growth of the organisation. It may not be necessary that every aspect should be compulsorily implemented in all the organisations as it may vary from one another.Implementation of KM should be given priority like the implementation of IT in an organisation as it helps an organisation to pertain to their standards and produce high quality goods.

References:

• Wong, K,Y, (2005, “Critical success factors for implementing knowledgemanagement in small and medium enterprises”, Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 105 No. 3, pp. 261-79. Retrieved on March 31, 2009 from: ugr.es.
• Gillingham, H and Roberts, B 2006, “Implementing Knowledge Management: A Practical Approach”, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice, Vol. 7, No. 1, Retrieved on March 31, 2009 from: google scholar.
• Skyrme, D. J. (1998), Measuring the value of knowledge, Business Intelligence: London.
• Hwang, AS 2003, “Training strategies in the management of knowledge”, Journal of knowledge Management, Vol. 7, No. 3; pp156-166. Retrieved on March 31, 2009 from google scholar.
• Michael H. Zack,2001, ‘If managing knowledge is the solution, then what's the problem?', Knowledge management and business model innovation, Idea Group Publishing, Hershey, PA. Retrieved March 31, 2009 from Acm Digital Library.