Paulo Freire: la praxis reflexiva del educador

More work has been invested in trying to create a clear-cut one size fit all definition to the subject of knowledge management but this has proven to be of great challenge, however, some authors have been able to come up with some basic definitions as a result of experiences derived from their work environments (Servin and Brun, 2005).

Table 2.3: Definition on Knowledge Management

AUTHORS DEFINITION

Jeremy Wyatt (2001) Clinical knowledge management means improving how knowledge is identified, shared and applied to results of research relevant to clinical practice in health and social care.

Abell and Oxbrow, 2001 Creating a management environment, which encourages knowledge to be created, shared, learnt, enhanced, applied, organised and used for the benefit of the organisation and its customers.

Maggie Haines, NHS Acting Director of KM (2003)

Knowledge management is a process that places emphasis on generating, capturing and sharing knowledge and integrating these into business practices and decision making for greater organisational benefit.

BSI’s A Guide to Good Practice in KM (2001)

The ability of teams within an organisation to capture the knowledge that is vital to them, consistently improve it, and share it in the most effective manner to those in need of it, so that they can exploit it creatively to add value as a normal part of their work.

Peter Drucker (1998) “Knowledge is power, which is why people who had it in the past often tried to make a secret of it. In post-capitalism, power comes from transmitting information to make it productive, not from hiding it!”

Yankee Group (1997) Knowledge management involves rightly networking those with the knowledge with those who need to have the knowledge thereby converting personal knowledge into organisational knowledge.

IBM (as cited in Servin and Brun, 2005)

Knowledge management is not about data, but about getting the right amount of information to the right people at the right time in order to impact the overall bottom line.

Nonaka& Takeuchi, (1995) The ability of an organisation to generate new knowledge, share it throughout the organisation and incorporate it in products, services and systems.

Office of thee-Envoy, (2002) Knowledge management is a relatively young corporate discipline and a new approach to the identification, harnessing and exploitation of collective organisational knowledge, experiences, talents, expertise and know-how.

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David J Skyrme, (1997) “Knowledge management is the explicit and systematic management of vital knowledge and its associated processes of creating, gathering, organizing, diffusion, use and exploitation. It requires turning personal knowledge into corporate knowledge that can be widely shared throughout an organisation and appropriately applied.”

Davenport (1994) “is the process of capturing, distributing and effectively using knowledge”

Quintas et al,( 1997) “is the process of critically managing knowledge to meet existing needs, to identify and exploit existing and acquired knowledge assets and to develop new opportunities”

Brooking (1997) “is the activity which is concerned with strategy and tactics to manage human centred assets ”

Wiig (1997) “is to understand, focus on, and manage systematic, explicit, and deliberate knowledge building, renewal, and application--that is, manage effective knowledge processes”

Gartner Group (1999) “Promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, retrieving, sharing, transferring and evaluating an enterprise’s information assets. These information assets may include databases, documents, policies and procedures, as well as the un-captured tacit expertise and experience stored in individual worker’s heads”

Alavi and Leidner (1999) “refers to a systemic and organisationally specified process for acquiring, organizing and communicating both tacit and explicit knowledge of employees so that other employees may make use of it to be more effective and productive in their work”

Tserng and Lin (2005) “is creating, securing, capturing, coordinating, combining, retrieving, and distributing knowledge”

Greiner et al. (2007) “includes all the activities that utilize knowledge to accomplish the organisational objectives in order to face the environmental challenges and stay competitive in the market place”

Armstrong, (2009) “any process or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing, and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organisations”

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Ma and Yu (2010) “is defined as a systematic process of gathering, organizing, sharing, and analyzing knowledge in terms of resources, documents, and people skills within and across an organisation”

Knowledge management is seen to be a fundamental tool to organisations competitiveness and effectiveness. No matter the pool of knowledge gained or created by an organisation, if it’s not properly managed could yield wasted efforts and resources. One of the key fundamental definitions of knowledge management is the capturing, creation, sharing and transfer of knowledge for improved competitiveness. However, for knowledge to be adequately managed, it needs to first and foremost be captured. Knowledge on how to implement knowledge capturing initiatives in projects, the question of why we need to manage captured knowledge and where such knowledge resides will create the right perspective needed to embarking on this study. One aspect of KM that is central and core to the successful delivery of KM initiatives is the codification of knowledge which is discussed in the next section.