Knowledge Management Process Essay

Knowledge Management process

Knowledge Management process is a simple act of transforming data into knowledge. These processes are universal for every organization. It involves systematic capturing, distributing and application of knowledge within an organization. Following are the basic ways every organization handles knowledge at different stages of its life cycle.

- Knowledge Acquisition

- Knowledge Organization & Storage

- Knowledge Dissemination

- Knowledge Application

Knowledge Acquisition:

Knowledge discovery deals with the creation and development of new knowledge from the existing information present in a firm. High degree of effort and experience is required in order to accumulate and recognize this knowledge as it involves sorting

Presence of variety of portals, emails, instant messaging applications, search engines, social networks have created a very supportive culture for firms to use push and pull sharing strategies. [2]

Furthermore, office systems and applications that help in sharing calendars, documents, data and graphics have greatly speeded up this part of the KMS process.

Knowledge Application:

This KMS process is the key part for any firm. Using the knowledge that has been gathered, classified, organized and stored is the step that adds value to an organization. [2] This accumulated knowledge is used to its potential only when it forms a systematic part of management decision making and enters into decision-support systems.

Management supports and encourages this new knowledge to be built into the organization processes and key application systems in order to promote new practices, products and services.

Knowledge Management Models:

Four knowledge management models are as follows. They all have ability to handle growing demand.

Zack Model (1996)

In Mayer and Zack approach, the major development stages of knowledge management cycle are designed to be logical and standardized. These stages are:

-Acquisition

-Refinement

-Storage