Knowledge management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Knowledge management - Essay Example The paper tells that the aim of knowledge management is to create a connection between people’s knowledge and actions they need in particular situations. According to Binney knowledge management entails making known to you what you know, what you have no idea of and at the same time striving to create sense of what you know. In organizations people are exposed to different trainings where they learn new ideas and skills. Consequently the question is, â€Å"How does one apply this learnt knowledge appropriately in order to realize best results?† This is where knowledge management comes into play, by ensuring that all learnt knowledge has been turned into useful knowledge in the decision making processes. The main aspect of knowledge management is â€Å"sense making†. Sense making has four major steps: gathering information, classifying, evaluating and digesting the information, sharing and finally reusing the information. A variety of explanations have been put fo rth to explain the sense making aspect of knowledge management. For instance there is the â€Å"Weick’s concept† which identifies three stages involved in sense making. The first step according to Weick is enactment which involves putting information in its environmental context. It is then followed by selection in which one attaches selectively meanings to the information. Retention finally follows where one is faced with the obligation of storing the resulting sense, hence adding to the existing knowledge. Bolloju, Khalifa and Turban (2002, P. 165) explains that the stored information is therefore made available when needed in the decision making process. Dervin also tries to give an explanation to the sense making process. According to her sense making is a thing of our everyday live as we try to give meanings to what we come across (Feng, Chen and Liou, 2004, p. 92). She says sense making is goal oriented and has three main aspects: situations, gaps and uses. Situa tions refers to the context in which we want to make sense, gaps is what triggers us to look for new knowledge and uses the goals of trying to make sense. From her explanations we can say that people do not start searching for knowledge aimlessly, but rather they have something that initiates the search and a purpose of doing it (Feng, Chen and Liou, 2004, p. 93). Damodaran and Olphert (2000, p. 407) says from the above explanations, one will then be wondering what the meaning of effective utilization of existing knowledge in its sense making and practical use is. Hence it is important to understand that we have different types of knowledge that need to be sorted out in order for them to give out sensible meaning. Binney, (2001, p. 35) concur that one need to do an epistemology study so as to come up with a valuable understanding of what knowledge is. Epistemology studies knowledge from its different perspectives. It helps an individual to understand the different types of knowledge and the various views that are attached to them. Organizations have different types of knowledge that need to be utilized appropriately in order attain its goals. Such typologies include: encoded, embrained, encultured, embodied and embedded (Binney, 2001, p. 35). Knowledge is not a process but rather is a static thing whose impacts can only be felt