Function of knowledge management and its relationship with organizational learning

Time: April 29, 2002 00: 52: 53 Author: Wang Rufu, Xu Jinfa, Xu Ai Source: Unknown reading times: 1306

This paper first points out that knowledge management is an inevitable requirement in the era of knowledge economy, then analyzes the basic functions of knowledge management, the composition and requirements of knowledge base, and finally analyzes the relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning. Keywords: knowledge management; Knowledge base; Organizational learning [b] 1, knowledge management is an inevitable requirement in the era of knowledge economy [/b] With the advent of the era of knowledge economy, enterprises will gain competitive advantages mainly through knowledge rather than financial capital or natural resources. The knowledge of an enterprise will become the most important resource alongside human resources and capital. Laurence Prusak pointed out that the only thing that can give an organization a competitive advantage is what it knows, how to use the knowledge it has, and how fast it can acquire new knowledge. Knowledge management is a process of capturing the collective knowledge and skills of an enterprise, regardless of whether these knowledge and skills exist in a database, printed on paper or in people's minds, and then distributing them to any place that can help the enterprise achieve the maximum output. The goal of knowledge management is to transfer the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, so that they can make the best decision. Knowledge management is an inevitable requirement in the era of knowledge economy. This is because: first, knowledge management is the basic work to cultivate the ability of enterprises. In the era of knowledge economy, the cultivation of enterprise's internal capabilities and the comprehensive application of various capabilities are regarded as the most critical factors for enterprises to obtain maintenance and competitive advantage [2]. The success of enterprise competition is no longer regarded as the result of fleeting product development or strategic management, but the result of enterprise ability. The task of managers is to enable enterprises to engage in production and business activities in a broad field and give full play to their abilities through selection. After strengthening knowledge management, employees can quickly adapt to changes in the external environment by learning foreign knowledge, and learning internal knowledge can enhance their ability to solve similar problems. Only by strengthening knowledge management can enterprises gradually accumulate, summarize and upgrade tacit knowledge in the course of business operation and form valuable wealth of enterprises. Secondly, knowledge management is the basis for enterprises to make effective and correct decisions in the era of knowledge economy. Without knowledge management, when an employee needs a certain kind of knowledge, he may not get the exact knowledge he needs in time. If he can't get the knowledge he needs, then his decision may be to "pat his head"; If he can't get the knowledge he needs in time and conveniently, it will affect the efficiency of decision-making, so he can't adapt to the rapid changes of the environment quickly; If he gets outdated or wrong information, his decision may be incorrect, which will have a fatal impact on the enterprise. Thirdly, compared with other resource management, knowledge management has its own characteristics. Knowledge resources have the following characteristics: (1) Knowledge can appear in the database in the form of publications and contents, and can also exist in the minds of employees. Knowledge is not as tangible as other resources, but almost intangible and difficult to measure; (2) Part of the enterprise's knowledge comes from outside the enterprise, which requires the enterprise to keep an eye on it at all times and find useful knowledge and information from the vast ocean of knowledge sensitively and timely; Another part of the knowledge of an enterprise depends on the accumulation and induction of the enterprise itself in the process of production practice. Knowledge cannot be found in the market like human resources needed by enterprises, nor can it be raised in the financial market like financial capital; (3) Knowledge will not be used by more people, and the less loss everyone gets or produces, but the greater its scope of action, the greater its value to the enterprise. (4) Whether a person is willing to share the knowledge in his mind with everyone depends on his own will and cannot be forced. These characteristics of knowledge make knowledge management have its own characteristics, so we should study how to manage knowledge. The second and third parts of this paper expound the basic functions of knowledge management, the composition and basic requirements of enterprise knowledge base, and the fourth part analyzes the relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning. [b]2 Basic functions of knowledge management [/b] There are four basic functions of knowledge management [3], as shown in figure 1, namely externalization, internalization, mediation and cognitive process. (1) Externalization includes powerful search, filtering and integration tools to capture all kinds of knowledge useful for the present and future development of the enterprise from the external knowledge and internal knowledge of the organization; Secondly, the external knowledge base organizes and stores the knowledge searched by search tools according to the classification framework or standards; Thirdly, it is a file management system, which classifies the stored knowledge and can identify the similarities between various information sources. Based on this, clustering method can be used to find out the hidden relationship or connection between knowledge structures in company knowledge base. Ultimately, the function of externalization is to enable knowledge seekers to acquire the knowledge they have collected through internalization or mediation. (2) Internalization and externalization are to capture useful knowledge from the vast ocean of knowledge outside the organization, discover all kinds of knowledge existing inside the organization, especially tacit knowledge, and integrate and spread it, while internalization is to try to find the knowledge structure related to specific consumer needs. In the process of internalization, the knowledge related to knowledge seekers in enterprise knowledge base is discovered through filtering, and this knowledge is presented to knowledge demanders. Internalization can help researchers communicate about a problem or interesting point of view. In internalized high-end application software, the extracted knowledge can be rearranged or presented in the most appropriate way. Words can be simplified as key data elements and presented in the form of a series of charts or summaries of original data, thus saving the time of knowledge users and improving the efficiency of knowledge use. For example, researchers of international pharmaceutical companies can ask questions about their projects, quickly browse the previous research related to this, and dig out the required knowledge summary from the voluminous records and reports. (3) The process of intermediary internalization emphasizes the transmission of clear and fixed knowledge, while the intermediary aims at the knowledge that cannot be encoded and stored in the enterprise knowledge base, matching the best knowledge source for knowledge seekers. By tracking personal experiences and interests, intermediaries can connect people who need to learn a certain subject with those who have experience in this field. Imagine that the researchers of a pharmaceutical company have questions about a series of unusual side effects of a drug, but they can't find any relevant information in the company's information database; But intermediate technology provides researchers with the names of researchers from another country. The characteristic information in the system shows that he has rich experience in the same experimental field, so the two researchers can share their knowledge and experience on the potential causes of drug side effects. (4) Cognitive process cognition is the application of knowledge acquired through the exchange of the first three functions, which is the ultimate goal of knowledge management. The existing technology can rarely realize the automation of cognitive process, and usually adopts expert system or artificial intelligence technology, and makes decisions accordingly. Insurance companies use automated systems to determine whether customers' compensation cases should be prosecuted or paid. With the emergence of fully automatic cognitive system, the technology of realizing merged cognition in workflow has also developed simultaneously. However, if the workflow system is endowed with the ability to use existing knowledge, the workflow engine can make decisions automatically according to the approximate situation. [b]3 Composition and requirements of enterprise knowledge base [/b] The enterprise knowledge base is composed of the following knowledge [4]: [list = 1] [*] Basic information of the enterprise, including enterprise relationship information, annual report, publications, enterprise profile and other [*] organizational structure information of the enterprise, including address, agents, branches and service centers. Including technical expertise and service features. [*] Basic process information [*] Information about patents, trademarks, copyrights and licenses to use other enterprise technologies and methods [*] Customer information [/list] determines whether a piece of information is stored in the knowledge base to see whether it is needed by employees for learning and whether it can help employees effectively achieve their learning and business goals. The knowledge in the knowledge base must be needed by employees, but it is not limited to the knowledge generated by enterprises. Many enterprises also have information about their competitors and their products and services in the knowledge base. This information can be the analysis result of the enterprise competition analysis department, or it can be purchased from the external industry tracker. Information knowledge is explicit knowledge, which can be easily expressed by words and data. A lot of this information already exists in paper, company publications or reports, but due to limited distribution, it cannot reach the people who need it most. Storing it in the knowledge base can solve this problem. Part of the knowledge possessed by employees is implicit and comes from experience rather than facts. Some enterprises strive to turn this tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. Because each employee only has tacit knowledge of a certain link in the whole process, as a knowledge management department, it is necessary to integrate the knowledge owned by each employee into process knowledge. The degree of integration depends not only on the difficulty of revealing tacit knowledge, but also on the difficulty of keeping tacit knowledge confidential. Because this part of knowledge is the most important part of the enterprise's core competence, the purpose of managing it is to expand the scope of this kind of knowledge in the enterprise, but at the same time, it is necessary to prevent this kind of knowledge from spreading to other enterprises and provide certain possibilities for other enterprises to follow suit. Knowledge management must create a good environment for knowledge enjoyment [5]. Because tacit knowledge is the private information of employees who are closest to business processes. Many employees will think that this part of private information he has is his personal value. If this part of tacit knowledge is shared with everyone, he may lose his job because it is worthless. This is contrary to the goal of knowledge management, which is not conducive to the formation of the overall core competence of enterprises, and the scope of core competence is extremely limited. Therefore, employees should be encouraged to contribute tacit knowledge to share with you, and the evaluation index of employees should add the degree of their contribution to enterprise knowledge. For example, the five-level marketing staff system of a company stipulates that when a lower-level marketing staff is promoted to a higher-level marketing staff, in addition to assessing the annual sales, it is also necessary to assess how many classes he has given to the marketing staff and how many lower-level marketing staff he has trained. This greatly promotes the mutual learning of tacit knowledge. In order to achieve the purpose of knowledge management, there are some basic requirements for knowledge base [4]: (1) Organize the database and make it effective. If the knowledge base is to become a learning tool, it must be well organized, with new knowledge and easy to access or query. If it is difficult for employees to find what they need in the library, they can either find the knowledge they need in their work more effectively through other channels, or do jobs without the required knowledge. (2) Accuracy of knowledge in the database. In some databases, once data are entered, even if they are outdated or can be replaced by more accurate data, they will not be updated. Assure employees that the information they get from the library is accurate, timely and reliable. If he doubts the accuracy of the data, he will stop using the knowledge base before long. (3) Let all employees directly enter the knowledge base. Due to the sensitivity of data, special parts may need passwords or other security measures. Every employee can enter the knowledge base he needs in his work without consent, otherwise it will violate the principle of timely learning. [b]4 Relationship between knowledge management and organizational learning [/b] Knowledge management depends on the knowledge in the knowledge base being used by employees to play its role. Employees should first learn knowledge from the knowledge base, so as to increase their talents, make correct decisions or improve work efficiency. Peter Shengji [5] said that the reason why real enterprises are so short-lived is because they have defects in their learning ability, that is, "learning obstacles", which make enterprises unable to respond quickly when the environment changes, thus seriously damaging the survival and development of organizations and making them dominated or even swallowed up by an invisible force. This shows the importance of organizational learning for the survival and development of modern enterprises. Fig. 2 is a schematic diagram of organizational learning in enterprises [6]. Organizational learning can be divided into the following three categories: (1) learning of explicit knowledge. The knowledge in external resources has the nature of public goods, but it will not naturally increase the ability of enterprises because of its existence. Only through their own learning can enterprises truly understand and apply this knowledge. The study of these knowledge can't form the core competence of enterprises, and can't give enterprises competitive advantages, but it is necessary for enterprises to survive and keep up with social progress, otherwise enterprises will fall behind the development of society and be eliminated. Enterprises can learn this part of knowledge and apply it to production practice activities to generate the core competence of enterprises. (2) Process learning, that is, learning from business activities, also known as "learning by doing", determines the value-added of knowledge in business activities. In other words, different enterprises will learn different lessons from similar business activities because of their different learning abilities. Most of these experiences and lessons are methodological knowledge, which belongs to the core competence of enterprises and can enable enterprises to gain competitive advantages in similar business activities in the future. For example, DuPont used to run the dye industry, from which it learned the knowledge necessary to make outstanding achievements in the field of synthetic fibers, that is, the knowledge of dye synthesis and use. This knowledge convinced the company that it had the ability to solve the dyeing problem of nylon, so the company began to develop nylon and later achieved great success. (3) Tacit knowledge learning is mainly manifested in mutual learning among employees. People who participate in business activities always have more knowledge about the core competence of enterprises learned from business activities, which may be meaningful to the work of other departments of enterprises, so it is necessary to expand the scope of core competence through internal learning. Internal learning can take the form of mutual communication, master taking apprentices, etc. It can be seen that knowledge management runs through the whole process of organizational learning. For example, tacit knowledge acquired in process learning is integrated through knowledge management and stored in the knowledge base of enterprises. Knowledge management provides a suitable source of knowledge and a convenient tool for organizational learning. Knowledge management collects and stores all kinds of knowledge useful for enterprise development in the knowledge base for employees to carry out various types of learning and improve learning efficiency. Only through organizational learning can knowledge management be transformed into the strength of employees' work, and knowledge can truly become the most important resource of enterprises and play a role. Knowledge management and organizational learning complement each other and promote each other. In the near future, they will be the magic weapon for enterprises to win. About the author: Wang Rufu, Ph.D. student Xu Jinfa of School of Business Administration of Zhejiang University, Xu Ai, vice president, professor and doctoral supervisor of School of Business Administration of Zhejiang University, Institute of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade of Fujian Foreign Economic and Trade Commission, author: School of Business Administration of Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 3 10027, reference 1. Translated by Na Wei Avery Verna Alai and Liu Minhui. The evolution of knowledge. Zhuhai publishing house. 1998-09 2. Edited by Nicholas Fowles and Christian Knudsen. Translated by Li Donghong. Theory of enterprise's universal enterprise-oriented ability. Dongbei University of Finance and Economics Press. 1998 3. compiled by Chen. Define knowledge management. BBS.net.tsinghua.edu.cn Shui Mu Tsinghua Station BBS. Building Knowledge Networks, Management Review, April, 1998 5. Peter senge, the fifth discipline-the art and practice of learning organization. Published by Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore. 1997- 10 6. Jin Chen, Wang Rufu. Knowledge economy and the cultivation of enterprise's core competitiveness. China soft science.