Strategic Knowledge Management (SKM) is mainly associated with those activities and structures that are used by the organisation to achieving, implementing and distributing knowledge for the strategy formulation and making strategic decisions. The comprehensive method which is adopted by the firm in order to arrange its knowledge resources and competencies to the intellectual needs of the Strategy is defined by the knowledge Strategy. For having a sustainable competitive advantage, it is important to have a strategie attitude. The knowledge strategy of the organisation helps in highlighting the organisational approach and the different knowledge resources and competencies to logical requirements related to the strategy. Therefore, it helps in bridging the knowledge gap between the required and existing knowledge of the organisation. For the success of the business, only strategic management is not required. As we all know that manpower is the greatest and precious asset of the organisation. Therefore, strategic knowledge management that has special focus on the knowledge management is the part of HRM, though the responsibility of this is not only on HRM department. Thus, senior manager, line manager and employee should also fulfil their responsibilities. Strategic knowledge management is indicated as a long-term activity which utilised both the implied and implicit knowledge in order to promote the organisational knowledge. This knowledge is further distributed among the members of the to accomplish the strategic objectives. As every strategic management has a certain comprehensive organisational objective which has to be fulfilled, thus the philosophy of knowledge management is strategic in nature.
5 Ps of Strategic Knowledge Management
Figure 1: 5 Ps of Strategic Knowledge Management
- It should clarify knowledge goals and establish effective values and processes to support these directions.
- Takes time and demands perseverance.
- Requires ongoing monitoring and measurement.
- Progressive review and re-planning to handle changing environment.
People
- The most important aspect is to recognize that strategic knowledge management lies with the people.
- People manage the system and processes.
- Need is to convince people about the benefits of strategic knowledge management.
Processes
- Knowledge management principles need to be put into application via effective workplace practices.
- Careful management of the alignment of strategies, principles, processes and practices needs to be done.
- Messages about what is important might be perceived differently across the organisation.
- Need of the hour would be to monitor the actual process regularly to ensure that it reflects knowledge priority.
Products
- Each organisation builds its own knowledge Output. Might be shared to client or exist as internally shared knowledge objects.
- Explicit knowledge should be captured and distributed efficiently and timely.
- Example — Intranet.
Performance
- Regular review to ensure that the financial and social capital investment is positively influencing the intellectual and social capital of the organisation.
- Regular evaluation to consider how well knowledge management is integrated into the business context.
Phases of Knowledge Management
Knowledge is a unique component of the business, the greater we use it, better it comes out to be. The most important aspect of knowledge value and versatility in the different organisations is the way it can be shared and copied among the different individuals. The time required to learn new skill and information can be controlled at a greater level and a lot of costs associated with the lost chances can also be prevented. With the help of their works, individuals create knowledge as a continuous process. When a person faces the new events, information or other individuals, evolution of knowledge takes place. It may be contained within a person in the form of personalised knowledge, can be utilised using others or can be stored in the form of a retrievable artefact. Artefacts are mainly the sources of the knowledge that others can reutilise and redevelop. These can be seen as the precious tools for sharing the results of the knowledge creation. Collective and individual contributions govern the organisational knowledge. When the Other individuals evaluate, implement and learn from the different authentic knowledge sources, there will be advancements in organisational knowledge, Organisations are treating the development of knowledge and innovation as the main business and a lot of work time is involved by the individuals in the development and innovation. When it comes to different think tanks, meetings or projects, the individual knowledge takes the form of mutual activity which is aimed to the development of knowledge pool for the organisation implementation.
The five different stages of the organisational knowledge development are depicted by the Figure 2. Knowledge development process is active and receptive in nature and it takes a lot of cues and feedback for a wide variety of sources with the help of different steps. The successive knowledge development may be affected by the feedback and additional feedback cues will be facilitated by it which will be taken into account and appraised. The Stages involved in knowledge development are as follows:
Figure 2: Phases of Organisational Knowledge Creation
Knowledge Sourcing: The motivation for starting the knowledge development process is received when the knowledge gap between what is already known and what is required to be known, is identified. When the knowledge gap is recognised, the current sources of guidance are evaluated by the organisations which are possessed by the different person or various organisational activities. This process of collecting the maximum number of informed knowledge sources is known as knowledge sourcing. The different sources which are to be utilised will consist of specialised and earlier knowledge which are possessed by the different people in an organisation, and expen assistance from individual are also required. For example, consultants, organisational records or the firm’s intranet. A major source of guidance is provided by the learning from the earlier experience especially when there are some vital resourcing consequences related to the problem to be investigated. Knowledge creation includes an important stage which is knowledge sourcing. The results will be greatly affected by the productivity and availability of current and known sources. For example, a new customer marketing method has to be adopted by an organisation. The suitable guidance sources may consist of following:
- Marketing experts.
- Customer feedback.
- Data related to the previous methods and their success.
- Published literature.
- Proofs from the methods which are carried out by the rivals.
- Staff involvement having experience in developing successful methods.
Knowledge Abstraction: Once the knowledge sources are evaluated, the development of common principle and concept is done for the development of the new knowledge. This activity is termed as knowledge abstraction. With the help of knowledge abstraction, the input obtained from the knowledge sourcing can be developed and new knowledge which has occurred from the basic rules and issues can be concluded. If the individual Who is looking for the knowledge is highly expert, they will trust their own knowledge and this knowledge will be supported and enhances by different sources. There will be greater dependence of the inexperienced individuals on outside source. Now recall the customer marketing methods which are included in the earlier part. The target customers may be explained, some methods can be filtered out and some comprehensive principles may be established. The difficulty in the different factors to be considered can be controlled with the help of abstraction of the various sources and facilitates the concepts to be organised into the results with the help Of comprehensive guidelines. There may be a long time in the abstraction process — especially if there is a politically sensitive, trivial knowledge or requires to have a group consensus (committee). Unfortunately, not a lot of time is given by most of the organisations to evaluate and reflect the different sources before abstraction. Defective reasoning and poor result can be created due to failure of developing some clear principles for governing the knowledge creation process. It is important for the knowledge worker to understand the significance of reflection and consideration related to the knowledge creation process.
Knowledge Conversion: With the help of abstract foundation, the knowledge can be transformed into different useful applications which can be evaluated and distributed among others. In knowledge conversion, different phases are elaborated in which different principles and ideas are advanced to a certain result. Either codification or embodiment of the knowledge can be done. The knowledge that can be stored and utilised by the others whenever it is required is termed as codified knowledge. It can take the shape of different artefact, e.g., equations, models, principles. The tacit knowledge of people is termed as embodied knowledge. It can be distributed by using different metaphors, stories or personal suggestion whenever it is needed. In the absence of a continuous involvement with the knowledge creators, accessing the embodied knowledge is quite complex. The codified knowledge related to the customer marketing plans might be used in the form of a marketing plan and execution principles. On the Other hand, embodied knowledge can be retrieved from the guidance and input from the expert and project Most of the firm relies on both type of knowledge conversion during the development of new knowledge.
Knowledge Diffusion: When the knowledge is codified or embodied, the distribution of knowledge is termed as knowledge diffusion. Communication media (e.g., news-letters, the intranet, meetings, seminars or videos), demonstrating new practices, and displaying or coaching in a particular process can be used for diffusion in organisation framework. The level of past knowledge which is possessed by the audience and the efficiency of the available channels for the knowledge sharing will determine the knowledge diffusion success. When there are a better understanding and integration of inputs in the mental construct of the recipients, the diffusion can be done in best manner. It will be tough to distribute the embodied knowledge to the others which depend on major expertise, experience and learning. With the help of same examples, it is possible to distribute the promotion of new marketing methods in a different manner by internet, presentation, published principle related to the method and so on. Sharing the knowledge to those who can be benefited most is the main objective. The individuals who do not have any direct participation in the method will have a limited significance of the forum for the employee in the organisation.
Knowledge Development and Refinement: Reshaping of knowledge is done continuously and with the help of additional feedback and experience, it is further evaluated. This important activity of knowledge development and refinement is seen as one of the important elements of knowledge management which make sure that knowledge is updated and helpful. In fact, because of this, organisation experiences greater challenges for capturing and maintaining the knowledge to be utilised by others. It is important for these types of organisations to make sure that there are a regular evaluation and updation of created knowledge in order to present any newly gained insight. Let us think of marketing method again. One important issue related to the developed process can be highlighted by the pilot study of the methods. Therefore new knowledge is created by the pilot study that has to be transformed and dispersed.