The Importance of Knowledge Management (KM) in Business
Uploaded by spootyhead on Mar 20, 2007
The Importance of Knowledge Management (KM) in Business
Starting from the late 90's, enterprises started to talk about "Knowledge Management (KM)" as they have figured out that without proper KM strategies, it will cause problem and inefficiency in the organization. For example, loss of important information when there is someone leaving the company or it takes a long time to retrieve certain piece of data from a large pile of files. Therefore, internal KM budgets increased by folds in recent years. It is expected that spending for KM products will reach $10 billion by 2004. (Greg Dyer, International Data Corp.)
Although many company aware of the importance of KM, they faced a big problem when they are implementing KM in their workplace: not all staffs are willing to share the knowledge or information they obtained. Therefore, motivation or incentive scheme becomes a hot topic in KM strategies. The following passage will talk about how to enhance the willingness for staff to share knowledge.
First of all, when we talk about incentive scheme, it is certain that monetary reward for the staff sharing useful and important knowledge or information will definitely be one of the best and most welcomed practice, especially in times of the economic downturn. This is because people will prefer keeping money in their pocket rather than any other forms of rewards. This universal principle will always work.
At the same time, the above reward can be transform into some other ways like granting extra holidays to the staff providing outstanding knowledge for the company. Or giving a free tour for the staff, if possible with his/her family members to some leisure places like Thailand, Hawaii, etc. These alternative forms of reward are having the same effect as money and they will be more welcomed by staff who do not want everything to be calculated in money.
However, not every staff in a company is solely looking for money. Some of them are seeking some other forms of rewards. Some of them may hope themselves to be well known by others within the organization. In other words, they want to be "famous". To deal with this type of staff we should located them out (Expert Locating) after they have shared information and let the company know who they are. With such...