THE ROLE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN ORGANISATIONS

In today’s corporate world, the importance of knowledge is rising as a significant business resource, that constrained the CEO’s of the organisation to look at the knowledge beneath their business giving rise to Knowledge management initiative in the organisations, it is also been seen in many organisations that due to the advancement in IT is making the life easier in acquiring, storing and distribution of knowledge in an efficient manner than ever before. As a result most of the organisations are implementing IT in order to smooth the progress of knowledge sharing and integration; however there should be a consideration of KM complexity and type of IT available in the market and here comes the challenge of selecting the right kind of IT that supports the KM of that particular organisation.
Tierney, Nohria and Hansen,(1999) have stated that there are there lies two basic concepts on which IT could support Knowledge management , and those are codification and personalisation. Where the codification deals with more of explicit and at the same time the structured knowledge is being stored in Knowledge bases after is been codified, this is in order to the share and usage of knowledge by the people from a common storage area, the electronic knowledge repositories is an suitable example of IT tool for codification. Personalisation deals with more of tacit and the unstructured knowledge being shared personally through communications, and here IT plays the role of connecting all the people by improving communication in order to achieve complex knowledge transfer. And an example for personalisation is knowledge expert dictionary and video conferencing tools.
With respect to the implementation of IT in KM, the organisations are classified on two different dimensions, namely product based vs. Service based and high volatility context vs. Low volatility context. The importance of this classification is in order to describe the basis of competitiveness of the organisation and for the application of suitable KM approaches and the role of IT in KM.
The competitive base are different in product base and service based industries , the product base industries not only compete for physical products but the services an processes of marketing is also important, were us service base industry mainly competes for the services offered. Hence product based industries have more of diverse area in which knowledge could be made use of, in order to gain competitive advantages. and here a computer manufacturing companies like Hewlett Packard would be a good example, were it can enhance its sales knowledge , its sales person, that will also enhance the product development., companies like Erns & Young would be a good example for service based industries who’s concentration is being on service oriented knowledge giving cost-efficient services to their customers
The volatility dimension has an impact on business changes and leads to a situation where knowledge can be re-used.the business environment here is being referred to the market status, technological, regulatory and socio-cultural context.
In the high volatility context the knowledge is being time sensitive and hence the stored knowledge need to be refreshed often, for example, the Microsoft corporation who’s software products have short term life cycle and need updating often (Clayton and Foster,2000) were as in low volatility context, the knowledge comparatively less time sensitive and the lifespan is also longer without any up gradation.
According to Teigland, Fey and Birkinshaw(2000), the above stated types of organisations and contexts can be related to each others as,-product - based organisation in low volatility context, product based organisation in high volatile context, service based organisation in low volatile context and service based organisation in high volatile context.

Implication for practice

In accordance with the discussion and analysis of the above stated content, the personalised approach is to be adopted by the product based organisation in low-volatility context to compete on the basis of physical products, and also the combination of expert directories with collaboration tools like discussion forum and video conferencing would enhance employee communication and hence the knowledge.
Both personal and codification need to be adopted by the product based organisation in high volatility context, where again the expert directories and collaborations tools would support personalization approach ti knowledge management and common knowledge base with support codification to knowledge management .
Service based organisation in low volatility context must go with the codification approach to knowledge management where apart from technical aspects of knowledge, employees are to be provided with attractive incentives to encourage knowledge sharing.
The service based organisation in high volatility is to adopt personalization approach to knowledge management, which also would require IT tool support like media. As the knowledge is being shared on the basis of one to one, it should be encouraged by returning the calls by the employees by the executives, and by rewarding the employees sharing the knowledge. And hence in this way, the role of IT would be success full in knowledge management.

References

[1]Atreyi Kankanhalli, Fransiska Tanudidjaja,Juliana Sutanto, and Bernard C.Y. Tan.2003. THE ROLE OF IT IN SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INITIATIVES. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM.vol-46, issue-9.pg-69-73
[2]Clayton, S. and Foster, P. Real world knowledge sharing. Knowledge
Management 4, 2 (2000); 26–28.
[3]Hansen, M.T, Nohria, N. and Tierney, T. What’s your strategy for
managing knowledge? Harvard Business Review 77, 2 (1999), 106–116.
[4]Teigland, R., Fey, C.F. and Birkinshaw, J. Knowledge dissemination in
global R&D operations: An empirical study of multinationals in the
high technology electronics industry. Management International Review
40, 1 (2000), 49–77.