Knowledge Management (KM) is the art and science of utilizing knowledge as the most important resource towards gaining competitive advantage in today's business environment. Despite the huge and growing interest in KM, there has been no serious attempt to bridge theory and practice, the practices of East and West, the soft side (organizational capabilities) with the hard side (information technology), or the practices of large companies with start-ups. Until now. Written by the Dean of Hitotsubashi Business School in Tokyo, the world's leading centre of KM, and featuring contributions from thought leaders around the world, this book will provide a synthesis towards the emerging field of KM. It brings together the latest trends in the field and re-ignites the debate on the future form of knowledge management.
Knowledge when properly leveraged and harnessed contributes to effective organizational performance. How much an organization benefits from knowledge would depend on how well knowledge has been managed. There have been challenges to implementing knowledge management in today’s dramatically different world from before. This comprehensive reference work is a timely guide to understanding knowledge management. The book covers key themes of knowledge management which includes the basic framework of knowledge management and helps readers to understand the state of art of knowledge management both from the aspects of theory and practice, from the perspectives of strategy, organization, resources, as well as institution and organizational culture. This reference work reflects the increasingly important role of both philosophy and digital technologies in knowledge management research and practice. This handbook will be an essential resource for knowledge management scholars, researchers and graduate students.
Presents an ultimate theory of knowledge-based management and organizational knowledge creation based on empirical research and an extensive literature review. It explores knowledge management as a global concept and is relevant to any company that wants to prosper and thrive in the global knowledge economy.
When The Knowledge-Creating Company (OUP; nearly 40,000 copies sold) appeared, it was hailed as a landmark work in the field of knowledge management. Now, Enabling Knowledge Creation ventures even further into this all-important territory, showing how firms can generate and nurture ideas by using the concepts introduced in the first book. Weaving together lessons from such international leaders as Siemens, Unilever, Skandia, and Sony, along with their own first-hand consulting experiences, the authors introduce knowledge enabling--the overall set of organizational activities that promote knowledge creation--and demonstrate its power to transform an organization's knowledge into value-creating actions. They describe the five key "knowledge enablers" and outline what it takes to instill a knowledge vision, manage conversations, mobilize knowledge activists, create the right context for knowledge creation, and globalize local knowledge. The authors stress that knowledge creation must be more than the exclusive purview of one individual--or designated "knowledge" officer. Indeed, it demands new roles and responsibilities for everyone in the organization--from the elite in the executive suite to the frontline workers on the shop floor. Whether an activist, a caring expert, or a corporate epistemologist who focuses on the theory of knowledge itself, everyone in an organization has a vital role to play in making "care" an integral part of the everyday experience; in supporting, nurturing, and encouraging microcommunities of innovation and fun; and in creating a shared space where knowledge is created, exchanged, and used for sustained, competitive advantage. This much-anticipated sequel puts practical tools into the hands of managers and executives who are struggling to unleash the power of knowledge in their organization.
How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself with the master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.
This book brings together the research of a number of scholars in the field of knowledge creation and imparts a sense of order to the field. The chapters share three characteristics: they are all grounded in extensive qualitative and/or quantitative research; they all go beyond the mere description of the knowledge-creation process and offer both theoretical and strategic implications; they share a view of knowledge creation and knowledge transfer as delicate processes, necessitating particular forms of support from managers.
The creation and management of knowledge has become a central concern to business and management, both as a source of value and as an opportunity to achieve and sustain competitive advantage. This new book brings together leading thinkers in the area of knowledge and innovation management in a state of the art collection of studies in this field.
Knowledge when properly leveraged and harnessed contributes to effective organizational performance. How much an organization benefits from knowledge would depend on how well knowledge has been managed. There have been challenges to implementing knowledge management in today’s dramatically different world from before. This comprehensive reference work is a timely guide to understanding knowledge management. The book covers key themes of knowledge management which includes the basic framework of knowledge management and helps readers to understand the state of art of knowledge management both from the aspects of theory and practice, from the perspectives of strategy, organization, resources, as well as institution and organizational culture. This reference work reflects the increasingly important role of both philosophy and digital technologies in knowledge management research and practice. This handbook will be an essential resource for knowledge management scholars, researchers and graduate students.
The seventh International Conference on Knowledge Management in Organizations (KMO) brings together researchers and developers from industry and the academic world to report on the latest scientific and technical advances on knowledge management in organisations. KMO 2012 provides an international forum for authors to present and discuss research focused on the role of knowledge management for innovative services in industries, to shed light on recent advances in cloud computing for KM as well as to identify future directions for researching the role of knowledge management in service innovation and how cloud computing can be used to address many of the issues currently facing KM in academia and industrial sectors. The conference took place at Salamanca in Spain on the 11th-13th July in 2012.
