Knowledge And Storytelling

Knowledge management is used to create, store, share and manage the knowledge and information of an organization. Nowadays, there are many methods to manage information and knowledge. One of them is storytelling. It is very usual in human’s daily life. The problem is how to apply it to knowledge management. The following content is the literature review of the usage of storytelling for managing knowledge, which includes the definition and role of storytelling, relationship between storytelling and knowledge management, benefits of using storytelling as a tool for knowledge management and the way to create and tell a successful story.

Storytelling

Storytelling is an old technique in human history. It has many purposes at different context.

They help describing organizational competencies and commitments. Revealing personal story can convey one 's own commitment and ability. For organization stories, Wilkins (1984) notes that the key function is to generate commitment. It can be used to transfer the trustworthiness of the organization to its employees, which employee commitment will be enhanced or reduced. Share tacit knowledge: Since stories provide context and focus, they can be used to express and share tacit knowledge in a more manageable way, which enables a more efficient communication. A story is a medium to transfer tacit knowledge from storyteller to listener’s mind. The canonical wisdom and knowledge of the organization is often not enough to solve practical problems appeared in people’s everyday life. In such situations, tacit knowledge is the key to solve those problems. To store and teach such tacit knowledge in an efficient way, stories are suitable to

Benefits of using Storytelling as a tool for Knowledge Management

There are many benefits of using storytelling as a tool for knowledge management. Since storytelling builds trust within a short time and unlocks audience’s passion and feeling, it groups people together and provides a natural methodology for cultivating a sense of community (Becerra, F., et al., 2007).

People always remember matters within a shorter period when a lifelike image is generated from people’s own experience. As a result, stories can help people to memorize knowledge quicker through elaboration (Eric and Amit, 2009).

Stories make information easy to understand and cultivate creativity. Shauna and James (n.d.) mentions that many researches reflect that stories can be stored in human’s memory easily so they are effective. Elaborations and connections are promoted to audience’s personal experience. Audience are more likely to pay attention to the information given in the