Is Knowledge Management Really Necessary? Report (Assessment)

Introduction

Denham Grey has worked extensively on management issues and describes knowledge as an far-reaching utilization information resources. He further explains that this is whereby knowledge is combined with individual skills, original ideas, core competencies, motivated intuitions and motivation.

In the current world economies, the main resources that comprise knowledge include people, education, capital, power and other competencies. Knowledge really becomes more relevant for sustainability of business than capital especially land and labour. Nevertheless, knowledge has remained so much disregarded.

Knowledge in practise will offer the capabilities of individuals to react positively to new work situations. This is why holistic perspective considers knowledge to me in critiques, ideas, relationships, perceptions and concepts.

Knowledge Management is an assessment of intellectual resources that underscores inimitable sources, decisive functions and possible bottlenecks which could interfere with the flow of knowledge to the point of utilization.

This guards intellectual assets from destruction, searches for opportunities to improve decision making, products through addition of intelligent, offer flexibility and adds value. Knowledge management complements and augments other idea of organization administration for instance Total Quality Management among others.

Why Knowledge Management

In order to offer the best services to customers and also to remain valuable and sustainable in business, companies are required to be able to cut down their cycle times and function within the minimum overhead costs.

They must also be able to reduce product development resources including raw material and time, must empower their manpower, be innovative, flexible and adaptable, superior customer care and offer very high quality product.

The purpose of the paper was to address the problems in knowledge management that are affecting customers who procure capital goods on the unfamiliar technologies. The case study here is the Northumbrian Water Ltd, a role that is targeting sludge treatment which had resulted in unforeseen departure.

The study reveals that even though generating better skills for the process of procurement and other operations, the adaptation that the organisation has to make for these changes were very difficult (Hansen & Rush, 1998, p. 555).

Analysis and Findings: sludge is produced at the effluent treatment works at Bran sands. The company responsible is setting up a strategy to make it reusable rather than disposing it. Sludge is collected from several places across north east England. Due to its potential, the site attracted the eye of the world and made the region a leading edge when it comes to the treatment of sludge.

There are some critical problems that are usually very common in such projects especially the knowledge management like learning from one project to the next or even various steps of the same project. In such cases, the like way of learning is unofficial and haphazard (Hansen & Rush, 1998, p. 555).

The paper identifies five contexts of learning in Knowledge management

1. Pre-project learning is the ways scoping, development of options and conducting of feasibility phases are done. For this study case, this was evident as Northumbria water ltd (NWL) had to establish internal confidence that it was gaining the best knowledge and relevant solution. However it also had to establish that in an area of technology where the people were so less knowledgeable, drying sludge.
2. Detailed designing is an important concept here. In the conventional project management strategies, sharp boundaries between project activities as a way of breaking down the process into section that is manageable is critical. For instance, Phase one of this project insisted that the contractors should have distinct separation of projects.
3. Operational learning is a unique way of gaining experience. Procurement of capital resources is a complicated process that involves input of several groups in the organisation like operations team. It is however not necessarily that every group will appreciate other group’s challenges. This could set up another hindrance to better KM as every individual group concentrated on its own objectives and the knowledge to assist them to achieve the objectives.
4. Across-phase learning helps information to flow from one phase to the next. The implementing groups in the context of NWL learnt from the operational problems that they faced.
5. Organizational learning is that experience that workers gain as they familiarise themselves with the process of doing tasks like drying sludge.

The significance of the paper was to show how organisation comes to terms with new changes in technology particularly. Even one of the project managers at the form noted that these days when a sewer flows in one end of the firm and out through the other have been overtaken by time.

The new technology will create a process that is sustainable and environment friendly as it seeks to reuse the sludge could have otherwise been disposed and gone to waste. Some of the shortcomings of the highlighted project include lack of the new technology.

This means that the workers would not be very confident in doing their job and therefore may not exploit their full potential. There are several challenges to be dealt with at once because of it being a new technology. This could be a barrier to better service and outcomes. It could still cause even more complex problems as knowledge transfer is hindered.

The purpose of this paper was to study the progress that legal firms have been having in terms of knowledge management. Some of the firma in this sector have been looking at KM as a new ideology that is very competitive whereas another have taken it as a way of improving the way knowledge is currently utilized. A fictitious Bluestone Law Company has been used here (Avison & Fitzgerald, 1995, p. 34).

Analyses and interpretation of the knowledge management concept has shown that knowledge is the main element in this ideology. The issues that are related to knowledge are the challenges that are encountered when dealing with knowledge. Managing information is important to knowledge management.

Making this concept relevant in the practise of law, then the issue has to be approached in a pragmatic manner. Basically law does not usually deal with distinct problems with clear definitions rather most of the cases are those where client have intuitive knowledge perception (Avison & Fitzgerald, 1995, p. 34).

The significance of the study to the industry is that firms will learn to set objectives that are in line with their strategies of knowledge management. In this way, those employees who are striving to meet the objectives of the firm are likely to be dedicated to a project in knowledge management in line with those goals (Avison & Fitzgerald, 1995, p. 34).

For the legal firm in this case, the paper shows that the objective of the firm was to become the best legal service company, support its customers in areas of understanding the intellectual property laws, labour regulations and taxation. Even with general objectives, knowledge management still finds application here.

Shortcomings are observed in the organization as external people can be very expensive to maintain or incorporate in the business. Tasks can be very challenges for various classes of employees. For instance, those performing secondary duties may not be very acquitted with the primary duties.

Another challenge is acquiring new technology and knowledge. There needs to be an extra plan of education. Containing the knowledge resources and the money to be spent on implementation is a challenge as it is very costly.

This paper addresses the reason why conceptualization is very crucial when arguing in an argument and also why natural tools like language processing helps in domain ontology.

In the 1990s, this new ideology of knowlegde management pulled the throttle with full speed and has been increasing to various industries as a very important asset in governance and business organizations. The paper focuses on a sceneraio where stakeholders are encouraged to take part in the policy making discussions.

Analysis and interpretation show that this paper supports translation of resources into work (product and service creation). For this cause, the domain knowledge, that is knowledge about matters of discussion have to be explicit, in a coherent language and official.

This has to be then translated into informal, in a natural language and then into labour, ability to handle extensive tasks and provide superior results. There can be a problem of bottleneck knowledge acquisition and this has low adaptability. The paper proposes a framework that will be better for organization that wants to push new ideas and make them valuable.

Winch, G. 2001. ‘The Management of Projects as Generic Business Process, in Projects as Guiding Motives for Business, A. Lundin, F. Hartman and C. Navarre, Eds, Dordrecht: Kluwer.

The writer of this paper understand that there are various forms of projects that require knowledge management, for instance innovation projects that deal with technology, implementation project which usually handle introduction of new ideas or even the capital goods which are more complicated.

These are usually bound by schedules that determine the lifecycle of the project. These are the factors that affect management style that permeates activities that are project based. Definition of projects actually means that projects are temporary and restricted to a program with defined steps.

Partly, emerging from the previous concerns, there are additional stakeholders of any project. Whereas projects are characterised by several stakeholders for whom not all risks matter or with varied risk and consequences, they are all important.

New stakeholders come into business due to time restriction and boost the scope and complications of the project (Hedlund, 2007, p 77). Most projects need managers amplify their influence to take in political and social sectors. This is a critical venture which makes sure that there is continued acceptance and support for these ventures.

There are five major projects that have been identified by Winch – Definition of the mission of the project, mobilization of resources, running project life-cycle, spearheading the coalition and sustaining the resources. Most literature deals with discrete projects and integration which is concerned with harmonization and organization of various activities that are critical for successful achievement and delivery of services.

This paper is a practical tool that is used for analysing and enhancing several types of Knowledge management actions in the process of innovation of firms. The paper mainly focuses to firms with better developed and sophisticated parts of innovation like Research and Development.

There is development of Audit Tools from recent studies of ethnography defining the connection between innovativeness and knowledge management in the circumstance of evolutionary economics structure that seeks to appreciate potential impact of knowledge management.

This paper developed a critical and specific objective dealing several activities (Gold et al, 2001, p. 185). The case in this study has categorised several groups of attributes for management.

Only some of the insights are relevant from the knowledge based companies and organization. There is need to understand the complicated knowledge creation and dissemination. The difference although somehow indistinct, supplants conservative economist relatively inadequate concept of knowledge as public good with non-rivalry in the patterns of consumption.

There is a greater growth in the tacit knowledge since studies of technology recognise it as critical component of management (Gold et al, 2001, p. 185).

Basically, from a perspective of innovativeness, the nation-specific innovation trajectories are influenced by the society, which greatly impact on the diffusion of knowledge that the industry needs.

Reference List

Apistola, M. 2001. Knowledge Management for Law Practice: Do we really need it? 17th BILETA Annual Conference, pp 2-10

Avison, D.E., & Fitzgerald, G.,1995. Information systems development- methodologies, techniques and tools, London, McGraw-Hill

Coombs, R. & Hull, R. 1998. “Knowledge management practices and path dependency,” Research Policy, vol. 27, pp. 237-253,

Gold, A.H., Malhotra, A & Segars, A.H. 2001. Knowledge Management: An Organizational Capabilities Perspective, Journal of Management Information Systems Issue: Volume 18, Number 1 / Summer 2001 Pages: 185 – 214

Hansen, K.L & Rush. H. 1998. “Hotspots in complex product systems: emerging issues in innovation management,” Technovation, vol. 18 (8/9), pp. 555-561

Hedlund, G. 2007. A model of knowledge management and the N-form corporation, Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 15, Issue 2, pp. 73-90

Ivory, C.J., Alderman, N., Thwaites, A., McLoughlin, I.P., & Vaughan, R. 2001. Knowledge Management for New Technology Procurement: The Case of a Sludge Treatment Centre

Van Engers, T.M., 2001. Knowledge Management- the Role of Mental Models in Business Systems Design, dissertation Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Belastingdienst,

Winch, G. 2001. ‘The Management of Projects as Generic Business Process, in Projects as Guiding Motives for Business, A. Lundin, F. Hartman and C. Navarre, Eds, Dordrecht: Kluwer