Knowledge Management And Knowledge-Based Organisations

Noorman A. Mooradian

Knowledge Management was once a well-known term used by technology merchants and consciously information professionals. It conceded its significant position to agreeability earlier but, like agreeable, it characterizes a set of problems that will remain vital to information management professionals for the long term. Academic researchers again continue to discover Knowledge Management & generate acumens and tools that’ll be of excessive value to information professionals. Another new book, “Creating Knowledge-Based Organisations,” edited by Jatinder Gupta and Sushil Sharma, is an example of such research.

The objective of the author in his book is to provide theoretical groundwork for the construction of Knowledge-based organisations. Despite the active predicate in the title, the book is typically not about how-to guide for a structure such organisations — or even forming a blueprint. Relatively, it is further like an attempt to carry out the basic architectural principles that would go into the construction of Knowledge-based organisations.

Although the core topic of the book is Knowledge Management as it is usually understood, the focus on Knowledge-based organisations ranges its scope to contain anything that contributes to the intelligence of an organization, including, for example, organisational learning & e-commerce. The authors are primarily academicians with fortes in the area of Computer Information Systems. The readers for which the book is appropriate would similarly be Information System professionals, over many essays it will be of interest to information professionals overall. The essays have general bibliographies, and there is a detailed index at the bookend.

The work is divided into five sections: Section I, “Knowledge-Based Organisations”; Section II, “Evolving Electronic Markets”; Section III, “Knowledge Management”; Section IV, “Learning Organisations”; and Section V, “Future Organisations.” Each of the sections includes essays written by diverse authors, often clusters of authors. The extensiveness of the topics is covered to a broader reader of information professionals differs.

Section I and III arranges the core substance on Knowledge Management. They ought to be fascinating and valuable to record professionals attempting to apply and cover their proficiencies into the Knowledge Management domain. Moreover, section II focuses on system architectures and models for e-commerce. Another thing is there is also an essay application service provider (ASP) business model. The value and significance of these documents to record professionals are doubtful.

Then section IV and V drop somewhere in the middle on the relevance continuum. Nonetheless promising as topics, the documents are inclined to be too slight and hypothetical to shed much light on matters in Record and Information Management (RIM).

The two sections explicitly on Knowledge Management comprise of some acceptable contributions. The introductory or first chapter, “An Overview of Knowledge Management,” defines the antiquity of the subject and delivers several tables and graphs that illustrate key characteristics of Knowledge Management, including methods and mechanisms. For example, one table lists core disciplines and know-how. Oddly, records management is absent, but collection science document in the section, “Information Technology Assessment for Knowledge Management,” will likewise be of boundless benefit to RIM professionals.

The author also shows tables and flow charts to layout a technology model for Knowledge Management similar to the Open System Interconnect (OSI) model accustomed to apprentices of network architectures. The various levels in the model are well explained. The portrayal of the knowledge repository level, positioned in the middle, will be of certain interest to RIM professionals.