KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT DEFINED

Knowledge management is ‘any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organizations’ (Scarborough et al, 1999). They suggest that it focuses on the development of firm-specific knowledge and skills that are the result of organizational learning processes. Knowledge management is concerned with both stocks and flows of knowledge. Stocks included expertise and encoded knowledge in computer systems. Flows represent the ways in which knowledge is transferred from people to people or from people to a knowledge database. Knowledge management has also been defined by Tan (2000) as: ‘The process of systematically and actively managing and leveraging the stores of knowledge in an organization’.

Knowledge management involves transforming knowledge resources by identifying relevant information and then disseminating it so that learning can take place. Knowledge management strategies promote the sharing of knowledge by linking people with people, and by linking them to information so that they learn from documented experiences.


Knowledge can be stored in databanks and found in presentations, reports, libraries, policy documents and manuals. It can be moved around the organization through information systems and by traditional methods such as meetings, workshops, courses, ‘master classes’, written publications, videos and tapes. The intranet provides an additional and very effective medium for communicating knowledge.