Knowledge Management and Creative Human Resource Management
Knowledge Management and Creative HRM
Professor Ingi Runar Edvardsson University of Akureyri, Iceland
Occasional Paper 14 Department of Human Resource Management University of Strathclyde 2003
Knowledge Management and Creative HRM
Introduction Knowledge management (KM) is about developing, sharing and applying knowledge within the organization to gain and sustain a competitive advantage (Petersen and Poulfelt 2002). How, then, is human resource management (HRM) related to knowledge management? Scholars have argued recently that knowledge is dependent on people and that HRM issues, such as recruitment and selection, education and development, performance management, pay and reward, as well as the creation of a learning culture are vital for managing knowledge within firms (Evans 2003; Carter and Scarbrough 2001; Currie and Kerrin 2003; Hunter et al 2002; Robertson and Hammersley 2000). Stephen Little, Paul Quintas and Tim Ray go as far as to trace the origin of KM to changes in HRM practices: One of the key factors in the growth of interest in knowledge management in the 1990s was the rediscovery that employees have skills and knowledge that are not available to (or ´captured´ by) the organization. It is perhaps no coincidence that this rediscovery of the central importance of people as possessors of knowledge vital to the organization followed an intense period of corporate downsizing, outsourcing and staff redundancies in the West in the 1980s (2002: 299). The aim of this paper is, first, to analyse which impact HRM practices, such as strategy, selection and hiring, training, performance management, and remuneration have on the creation and distribution of knowledge within firms. Second, the paper attempts to assess whe ther or not knowledge management requires a particular human resource strategy. This paper is a work in progress based on a literature review. However, at the end of the paper a synthesis of previous debate is presented to enrich the
Professor Ingi Runar Edvardsson University of Akureyri, Iceland
Occasional Paper 14 Department of Human Resource Management University of Strathclyde 2003
Knowledge Management and Creative HRM
Introduction Knowledge management (KM) is about developing, sharing and applying knowledge within the organization to gain and sustain a competitive advantage (Petersen and Poulfelt 2002). How, then, is human resource management (HRM) related to knowledge management? Scholars have argued recently that knowledge is dependent on people and that HRM issues, such as recruitment and selection, education and development, performance management, pay and reward, as well as the creation of a learning culture are vital for managing knowledge within firms (Evans 2003; Carter and Scarbrough 2001; Currie and Kerrin 2003; Hunter et al 2002; Robertson and Hammersley 2000). Stephen Little, Paul Quintas and Tim Ray go as far as to trace the origin of KM to changes in HRM practices: One of the key factors in the growth of interest in knowledge management in the 1990s was the rediscovery that employees have skills and knowledge that are not available to (or ´captured´ by) the organization. It is perhaps no coincidence that this rediscovery of the central importance of people as possessors of knowledge vital to the organization followed an intense period of corporate downsizing, outsourcing and staff redundancies in the West in the 1980s (2002: 299). The aim of this paper is, first, to analyse which impact HRM practices, such as strategy, selection and hiring, training, performance management, and remuneration have on the creation and distribution of knowledge within firms. Second, the paper attempts to assess whe ther or not knowledge management requires a particular human resource strategy. This paper is a work in progress based on a literature review. However, at the end of the paper a synthesis of previous debate is presented to enrich the