What is the role of knowledge management and knowledge management programs in

business?
Define knowledge management and explain its value to businesses?

Knowledge management is the set of processes developed in an organization to create,

gather, store, maintain, transfer, apply and disseminate the firms knowledge.
Knowledge management promotes organizational learning and incorporates
knowledge into its business processes and decision making. As the textbook points
out, knowledge management enables the organization to learn from its environment
and incorporate this new knowledge into its business processes.
Knowledge management helps firms do things more effectively and efficiently and
cannot be easily duplicated by other organizations. This in house knowledge is a
very valuable asset and is a major source of profit and competitive advantage. It refers
to a multi-disciplinary approach to achieving organizational objectives by making the
best use of knowledge.

Describe the important dimension of knowledge?

Knowledge is a firm asset. An intangible asset, requires organizational resources,

experiences network effects as its value increases as more people share it.
Knowledge has different forms. Can be either tacit or explicit, involves know-how,
craft and skill, involves knowing how to follow procedures, and involves knowing
why, not simply when things happen.
Knowledge has a location. Its a cognitive event involving mental models and maps of
individuals have both a social and an individual basis of knowledge id sticky, situated
and contextual.
Knowledge is situational. Its conditional, its related to context.
Different frameworks for distinguishing between different 'types of' knowledge exist.
One proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes
between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge represents
internalized knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of, such as
how he or she accomplishes particular tasks. At the opposite end of the spectrum,
explicit knowledge represents knowledge that the individual holds consciously in
mental focus, in a form that can easily be communicated to others.

Distinguish between data, knowledge, and wisdom and between tacit knowledge and
explicit knowledge?
Data by itself has no meaning but is the first step in the creation of knowledge.
Knowledge includes concepts, experience and insight that provide a framework for
creating, evaluating, and using information.
Wisdom is the collective and individual experience of applying knowledge to the
solution of problems.
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that can be readily articulated, codified, accessed
and verbalized. It can be easily transmitted to others. Most forms of explicit
knowledge can be stored in certain media. The information contained in
encyclopaedias and textbooks are good examples of explicit knowledge. The most
common forms of explicit knowledge are manuals, documents, procedures, and howto videos. Knowledge also can be audio-visual. Works of art and product design can
be seen as other forms of explicit knowledge where human skills, motives and
knowledge are externalized.
Tacit knowledge is the expertise and experience of organizational members that has
not been formally documented. Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that is
difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalizing it.
However, the ability to speak a language, play a musical instrument or design and use
complex equipment requires all sorts of knowledge that is not always known
explicitly, even by expert practitioners, and which is difficult or impossible to
explicitly transfer to other users. In the field of knowledge management, the concept
of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge possessed only by an individual and
difficult to communicate to others via words and symbols. Therefore, an individual
can acquire tacit knowledge without language.

Describe the stages in the knowledge management value chain?

There are five value-adding steps in the knowledge management value chain. Each stage in
the value chain adds value to raw data and information as they are transformed into usable
knowledge. Effective knowledge management is 80% managerial and organizational and
20% technology.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Knowledge Acquisition
Knowledge Storage
Knowledge Dissemination
Knowledge Application