The main goal of knowledge management is to improve an organization's efficiency and save knowledge within the company.

Knowledge management is an essential and conscious process within an organization. It has to do with the definition, retention, sharing, structuring of knowledge, and employee experience within the organization. With knowledge management, it is easy to improve work efficiency within the organization and retain knowledge.

In short words, knowledge management refers to how you train your employees and how they learn within the organization. Knowledge is created, audited, shared in a manner that ensures growth and effectiveness in the organization. Knowledge management also ensures that employees within the organization are knowledge seekers.

If knowledge management is successful in an organization, it will help the growth of the organization. This way, employees with specialized knowledge won’t leave the company void of their experience when they go to other companies or retire. Also, other employees will be able to use this knowledge in their presence or absence. This will also create a better awareness of the situation and opens the door for organizational learning and improvement.

Types of Knowledge

There are different types of knowledge, and when it comes to knowledge management, you have to consider them. The kind of knowledge determines the ease of sharing.

Two different types of knowledge can be discussed within the framework of knowledge management.

●      Explicit Knowledge

This type of knowledge can be taught and codified easily. This involves simple things like mathematical equations or changing a printer's toner.

●      Tacit Knowledge

This type of knowledge is not as easy to package or share as explicit knowledge, as it is more intuitive. Understanding body language and innovative thinking are good examples of tacit knowledge.

Reasons for Knowledge Management within Organizations

The decision-making ability and increase in work efficiency of an organization are some of the reasons why knowledge management is important. You have to build a smart workforce capable of making quick and informed decisions for the company’s good. This is how to ensure information is retained within your organization. Also, this ensures that you can easily foster innovation in your company. It reduces employee turnover and is also beneficial for your customers.

Year after year, we see knowledge management becoming more important within the business setting. The increased competitiveness of the marketplace makes knowledge management even more critical as you’re able to keep your knowledge and experience and remain ahead of the curve. With a good knowledge management strategy, you will be able to spot problems and deal with innovations and new information very decisively.

A few other reasons for knowledge management within an organization are as follows:

●      The need to retain knowledge within the organization due to the retirement of essential and experienced personnel

●      An acquisition or merger might be the apparent need to codify knowledge and encourage knowledge sharing among the different teams.

●      A recruitment drive that proves the importance of knowledge management in training new staff

Best practices for improving knowledge management

• Decision making: decentralized vs. centralized

The discussion on whether to centralize or centralized decision making is an important one for company executives. Emphasizing centralized, corporate, and hierarchical structures within the organization can negatively affect the executive’s ability to exert changes in the organization.

Meanwhile, a decentralized structure may help improve managerial and departmental interactions. Centralization of leadership may affect the opportunity for the growth of relationships among departments, business units, and managers.

In order be more effective, company execs have to reshape the organization’s structure. This means that the organization’s command center can pass information across a decentralized manner while being organic instead of through a centralized, hierarchical command center.

Another advantage of the decentralized structure is the power shift in decision-making down to the lowest levels. This would inspire the organization members to be creative and innovative with ideas and implement them as well. This won’t happen with centralized structures in which interdepartmental communications and the exchange of knowledge are inhibited.

• Knowledge Management and IT

There is no doubt that knowledge management signified an improvement in the organizational performance of a business. Many business scholars already affirm that knowledge management boosts an organization's performance through innovation, learning opportunities, quality of services and products, customer satisfaction, and increased sales. If the organization’s structure doesn’t fully favor knowledge management, company executives won’t be able to effectively manage the organization’s knowledge so that they can improve the organization's performance. In this case, the organization is at risk of losing its position within the industry and becoming obsolete.

In order to successfully ensure knowledge management within your organization, information technology is critical. This is because it facilitates communication and the flow of knowledge. IT can help you realize how effective your implementation of knowledge management is and how the employees have associated it with the use of IT, systems, and software to improve strategic decision-making. Company executives need to implement IT for the organization’s knowledge management by hiring IT professionals and ensuring that they get enough budgetary allocations to ensure the organization's sharing and utilization of knowledge.

All over the world, business executives have realized that to create the best atmosphere for growth and learning in their organizations, and then they have essential roles to play.  Executives must create an environment where learning is easy and where knowledge can be shared transparently among the employees. This will ensure that information that is sought is found can be used instantly. For this to happen, executives need information technology as a communication, deployment, mechanism manifestation, and decision-making tool.

Conclusion

Knowledge management is essential for the growth and improvement of performance within an organization. It is crucial in the business world today to ensure that companies can retain their position in the business world and grow innovatively. Knowledge management helps to create efficiency within the workplace and provides faster and more effective decision-making. It develops organizational knowledge and also boosts collaboration among departments. The process of training and onboarding an employee is optimized, and employee retention rises as you have happier employees.

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Author Bio

Emily Harrinson is one of the most influential editors at write my essay for me company in London. She has been working in this company since 2006 providing essay writing service. Her hobby is reading books. But besides that, Emily is fond of sports and music. She is a very positive person.