research paper

Knowledge management is a set of business processes to create, store, transfer and apply knowledge in the organisation. Knowledge management increases the ability of the organisation to learn from its environment and to incorporate knowledge into its business processes. Businesses need knowledge management programs because knowledge has become a central productive and strategic asset in today’s information economy and a potential source of competitive advantage. Much of a firm’s value depends on its ability to create and manage knowledge. Knowledge management promotes organizational learning by increasing the ability of the organisation to learn from its environment and to incorporate knowledge into its business processes. Effective knowledge management systems require organisational and management capital to promote a knowledge culture and programs for knowledge management, including the creation of a chief knowledge officer.
There are three major types of knowledge management systems:
• Enterprise wide knowledge management systems
These include capabilities for storing both structured and unstructured data; tools for locating employee expertise within the organisation; capabilities for obtaining data and information. They also include supporting technologies such as portals, search engines, and collaboration tools like e-mail, instant messaging, groupware, blogs, etc.
These provide a range of capabilities that can be used by many if not all the workers and groups in an organisation. For example social bookmarking makes it easier to search for, and also to share information by allowing users to save their bookmarks to Web pages on a public Web site and tag these bookmarks with keywords. Also learning management systems (LMS) provide tools for the management, delivery, tracking and assessment of various types of employee learning and training.
• Knowledge work systems
Knowledge workers include researchers, designers, architects, scientists and engineers