Human Resource Role in Knowledge Management

Last Updated: 12 May 2021
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But now, an employee ay leave his or her workplace due to much better prospect offered by other companies. With such short scenario that has been Illustrates above, It Justify the emerging concept of knowledge management. There are also other essential factors that made knowledge management at present becomes more and more important to an organization. As described from Shelia Deposit writings: Knowledge is the process of translating information (such as data) and past experience into a meaningful set of relationships which are understood and applied by an individual.

As the values of employees and organizational data have become ore crucial to the organization's outcomes and competitiveness, the concept of knowledge management has emerged. Knowledge management is the process of identifying, capturing, organizing and disseminating the intellectual assets that are critical to the organization's long-term performance.  The statement above shows the imperative of knowledge management to an organization with regard to ensuring its survivability.

But then, what is the relation of human resource role in knowledge management? Where actually human resource management and knowledge management Jive together? It Is therefore, the alma of his paper is to provide the impression of the human resource role in knowledge management. This paper is divided to two parts, the first part start with the explanation of knowledge management in general inclusive definitions then followed by the description on the concept of knowledge management, the value chain In knowledge management and it enablers.

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The second part of this paper, It will begin with the discussion on the role of human resource management in knowledge management. In this part also it will describe on performance management, human resource management and it support for knowledge management as well Its Implication In the knowledge sharing firm. Lastly, on the second part of this paper, it will discuss knowledge management system with mainly System known as TLD Net as the model.

Knowledge Management

As in general, knowledge management can be describe as sharing knowledge of ways doing things, continuously communicate through various methods or systems created and to ensure the standard of competitiveness of an organization would always at the highest level. There are many definitions and descriptions on giving the idea of what knowledge management all about and this paper deliberately listing own seven of the definitions and descriptions in order to distinguish the importance of knowledge management to an organization.

List of the non-exhaustive definitions and descriptions are as follows: Knowledge management (KM) is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization. Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge artifacts. Processing data can be performed by machine, but only the human mind can process knowledge or even information. The leveraging of collective wisdom to increase responsiveness and innovation.

Knowledge Management is intended to allow organizations to protect and develop their knowledge resource.  Knowledge Management is a management discipline that focuses on enhancing knowledge production, integration and use in organizations. A cycle of knowledge creation, integration and dissemination. KM [Knowledge Management] involves blending a company's internal and external information and turning it into actionable knowledge via a technology platform. Base on all of the description above, this paper acknowledge that knowledge ultimately when describing the availability of resources in an organization, it will mint to the human capital as one of the most important resources. In simple language, KM is an effort to capture not only explicit factual information but also the tacit information and knowledge that exists in an organization, usually based on the experience and learning of individual employees, in order to advance the organization's mission. The eventual goal is to share knowledge among members of the organization.

Knowledge Management Concepts Identify Knowledge. Knowledge-based assets may be explicit (e. G. , patents, trademarks, business plans, marketing research, supply strategy) or tacit (e. G. , now-how in people's heads). Both tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge must be captured and made accessible and useable. This is especially difficult with tacit knowledge. It is important to establish a way to create a culture of knowledge- sharing; to identify tacit knowledge-holders; and to build institutional memory to support future work; to identify, recognize, generate, share, and manage tacit knowledge.

Below is the list distinguishing the tacit and explicit knowledge in the military:

  • Tacit Knowledge
  • Minute sheets
  • Experiences from the course
  • Experiences from the activity
  • Decisions making ; Explicit Knowledge Military Act, Memos and Procedures
  • Book of References, Charge Books (restricted, confidential) reports (restricted, confidential) o Exercise report (restricted, confidential)
  • Returns (monthly, quarterly, yearly)
  • Courses Develop Communities of Practice.

A community of practice is a group of like-minded people who create, refine, communicate, and use shared knowledge about a shared practice. They engage in ongoing, collaborative learning about this shared practice. Use Technology Appropriately to build a common database only to find that it is grossly neutralized. While technology enables knowledge management; it is not knowledge management. The technology must fit the strategy and culture of the organization, and be widely used by members of communities of practice.

Measure Results and Allocate Rewards must incorporate the organizational commitment to knowledge and its quality, and of linking the activities of communities of practice to organizational goals and objectives. Reassess is important to all business processes, the knowledge management process should be the focus of continuous improvement efforts.

Knowledge Management Value Chain A knowledge value chain is a sequence of intellectual tasks by which knowledge errors build their employer's unique competitive advantage.  Each stage adds value to raw data and information as they are transformed into usable knowledge. Further understanding on the value chain described by Luau & Maid:

  • Knowledge acquisition
  • Document tacit and explicit knowledge
  • Creating knowledge
  • Tracking data from TIPS and external sources ;
  • Knowledge storage.

Management must:

  • Support development of planned knowledge storage systems
  • Encourage development of corporate-wide schemas for indexing documents
  • Reward employees for taking time to update and store documents properly ;
  • Knowledge dissemination.

Training programs, informal networks, and shared management experience help managers focus attention on important knowledge and information. ; Knowledge application. To provide return on investment, organizational knowledge must become systematic part of management decision making and become situated in decision-support systems. The Navy Plan 2011. Royal Malaysian Navy Strategic Planning known as The Navy Plan is the short and long term planning toward a direction to achieve a planned mission and vision. The Navy Plan is use as a strategic management tool, performance management tools and also as a link to achieve mission and vision.

The Navy Plan is being developed by various tools which included Brainstorming, Benchmarking, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SOOT) analysis, Critical Success Factor (SF), Balanced Scorecard and Key Performance Indicator (KIP). The main elements for The Navy Plan are as follows: [pick] The Navy Plan 2011 ; The navy's vision ; The navy's mission statement ; The navy's main value ; The navy's perspective ; The navy's Strategic objectives The Navy Plan is being evaluated from time to times in according to the Ana development.

Further to that, details on the strategic guidance in order to achieve The Navy Plan, the RAN also published its Strategic Plan. The Navy Strategic Plan map is as shown below: knowledge management practice. Knowledge Management Enablers Driven by Senior Management and Pervasive Throughout the Organization. The initiative must be driven by corporate executive officers. There is a need for knowledge management leadership at the senior executive level to drive integration into all business processes. There is also a need for widespread (deep and broad) individual responsibility for sharing and using knowledge.

The core values of the organization must propel the program to get buy-in from users/recipients. The leader or sponsor must show commonalities across dissimilar business units to motivate consistent use of knowledge management processes/systems. Chief Knowledge Officer (COOK). The development of the COOK function suggests a growing recognition that for many an organization, intellectual capital - the knowledge, experience, and ideas of people at every level of the firm - impacts a firm's products, services, processes, and customers.

Moreover, these positions send an important signal to the organization that knowledge is an asset to be managed and shared.  The need to manage knowledge more effectively is necessitated by changing competitive environment. When functioning in a global economy, companies can no longer expect that the products and services that made them successful in the past will keep them viable in the future. Instead, companies will differentiate themselves on the basis of what they know and their ability to know how to do new things well and quickly.

Hence, the changes and pressures of a rapidly changing global, information-based economy make knowledge vital to organizations.

Organizational Culture Supports Knowledge Management Process/System

An organization culture audit may reveal significant barriers to implementing a knowledge management process and system. The first step for many organizations is to create a knowledge-sharing culture in which employees believe that knowledge sharing is a critical success factor at the individual and group levels. There are a number of organizational culture barriers that, if present, must be addressed.

These include: ; Unwillingness to share knowledge ; Fear of knowledge sharing ebb security) ; Mistakes are not tolerated ; Too little time to share knowledge ; Don't have or don't use appropriate technology ; Information overload ; Equate information or data with knowledge Command and control culture pressures reduce time available ; Organizational rigidity restricts flow of knowledge Documented Organizational Knowledge Management Strategy. The knowledge management process/system must be based on a solid business case that demonstrates how to use knowledge to benefit stakeholders/constituencies.

This requires those driving the initiative to link knowledge management to organizational strategy, goals and objectives. Opportunities to improve the organization's competitive position must be assessed on an ongoing basis. The strategy development steps include addressing three critical components. These are: ; WHO (people) ; WHAT (Knowledge) Information? Knowledge? ; HOW (Tools, Techniques, Technology - in broadest sense of word) Knowledge Management is Integrated into Business Processes. The knowledge management framework integrates human, organization, and information management resources.

The knowledge management process, in turn, must be part of the standard operating procedures and built into other business processes to facilitate both the use of existing knowledge and the creation and capture of new knowledge. Key questions include: ; What knowledge needs to be harnessed? Who should codify/How should it be catalogued? ; How will it be maintained and disseminated? ; Who should receive it? ; How can the process constantly evolve? Adequate Resources Allocated on an Ongoing Basis. Adequate human, financial and technological resources must be made available long-term to support the knowledge management process.

On the human resources side, employees must be encouraged and rewarded for sharing knowledge and making use of the knowledge management system a daily priority. Time must be allocated for knowledge sharing by experts and novices. Adequate funding must be provided via the budgetary recess on an ongoing basis. Appropriate technology must be employed; employees must be trained to use it; and regular, widespread use must be encouraged.

The Role of Harm in Knowledge Management

HER has a pivotal role to play in the KM movement. Key HER processes includes Corporate Education, Performance Management and nurturing (sharing, doing and caring) culture, have a very significant role in the development of the knowledge- based enterprise. Talent management, which is the domain of HER and knowledge management are closely interrelated. While Talent Management focuses at individual f an individual, knowledge management focuses on people at collective level, how to leverage the collective knowledge of the enterprise, through Mentoring and knowledge sharing and collaborative team working. KM should be developed into a key competency of the people.

Human Resource Management

People's commitment to knowledge management strongly determines whether the process will succeed or fail. Organizations rely on employees to embrace the knowledge philosophy and its underlying values so that knowledge management becomes core behavior. Human Resource Management gained much popularity in the asses. Moreover, the debate surrounding HARM can be characterized by four predominant approaches ; That HARM is no more than a renaming of basic personnel functions, which does little that is different from the traditional practice of personnel management. That HARM represents a fusion of personnel management and industrial relations that is managerially focused and derives from a managerial agenda. ; That HARM represents a resource-based conception of the employment relationship, some elements of which incorporate a developmental role for the individual employee and some elements of cost minimization. That HARM can be viewed as part of the strategic managerial function in the development of business policy, in which it plays both a determining and contributory role.

HARM Support for KM HARM describes the organizational processes and systems that help with staff recruitment, selection and management, and provide guidance on the required work activities, behavior and values. HARM supports both employees and employer from the time people start as employees to the time when they leave the workplace. HARM therefore serves three main purposes: [xvi] ; To staff the organization with people who have appropriate knowledge and expertise for the required roles ; To develop systems and processes that encourages good practice.

Recognition of the strategic value of knowledge enables to gain employee commitment to knowledge sharing or knowledge use. HARM help direct employee attention towards those organizational priorities through its clarification and publicizing of the standards, role expectations and rewards that are applied in the organization. HARM systems which support these processes include the recruitment and selection of new staff, where the value of the position is reviewed. Defining Knowledge competencies will increase focus on clarifying the competencies employees should demonstrate.

Competencies associate with knowledge management settings include expertise relating to collaboration, information skills, management, strategic planning and relationship management. Valuing Knowledge and learning will build respectful cultures which value and exploit the individual knowledge of their members. Workplace learning occurs in many contexts through work activities and experiences, by sharing of expertise, through mentoring by more experienced colleagues, and via formal learning opportunities within the organization.

Integrating Knowledge into HARM Processes seeks to align its strategic oils and priorities with the functional roles and tasks undertaken. HARM can help by linking support for those priorities to rewards, basic systems and processes. An effective knowledge community aims to merge these levels into a whole, so that strategic needs are reflected in HARM practices. Performance management identifies who or what delivers the critical performance with respect to the business strategy and objectives, and ensures that performance is successfully carried out.

Moreover, the recommendation that a balance scorecard approach be adopted if employees are to realize that the firm is taking knowledge management seriously. Performance management needs to consider the different ways in which individuals contribute knowledge. Managers need to consider: Knowledge acquisition - What knowledge has the individual brought into the organization? ; Knowledge sharing - How has the individual applied their knowledge to help others to develop? Knowledge re-use - How frequently has the individual re-used existing knowledge and what has been the outcome? Knowledge and skills? How well has the individual applied his/her learning? HER Processes and Impact To KM HER processes and practices that should be aligned to strengthen knowledge management. In general it includes: Internship not only important during the initial months but also for a long time after that. The role of the mentor in the later period would be to challenge the executive to look beyond the obvious, look for past learning and base decisions on a more informed platform.

Job rotations which is not only for people development, but also provide an important vehicle for transfer of knowledge and best practices, even though an organization cannot obviously depend on this as the main source of knowledge transfer. Networked organization with people playing multiple roles, Ewing part of multiple teams. HER should play a key role in developing such a networked organization, through sponsorship and or facilitation of knowledge communities (teams), cutting across formal organizational silos.

Training related to learning and knowledge are inter-linked. Knowledge strategies should encompass learning initiatives and knowledge initiatives need to converge with training initiatives. A Company's training program needs to focus on functional and business specific skill development programs as well as competency development focused programs. Knowledge communities (Teams), as the owners and users of the knowledge, should play an active role in developing suitable course material for the functional and business specific courses. E- Learning is online learning. It is made available through company web sites (Intranets), and even through CD-Rooms. It allows the learner to enroll into courses or programs of their choice and acquire knowledge at their own pace at the place of their choice. Corporate online universities, exclusive learning space to induct managers or develop future leaders, on going programs for sales personnel and induction into new products and services are some of the e-learning offerings, some f the companies are making available to their employees to develop themselves.

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Human Resource Role in Knowledge Management. (2018, May 06). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/human-resource-role-in-knowledge-management/

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