Knowledge Management: Problem or Resolution?

http://ow.ly/92hOC

An article by Teresa Pritchard Schoch posted on law.com on the LTN webpage.

This article discusses knowledge management practices, and the adoption of such practices by corporations.

The article states, "So what is KM in simple terms? It is perceived as collectively and systematically creating, sharing, and applying knowledge to achieve an organization's objectives. People, processes, and technology are usually the primary components that comprise knowledge management. Other than that, there is not much consensus on the definition of KM, even though there have been numerous contributions to defining the concept by many information professionals.

Experts distinguish between tacit and explicit information. Tacit information is the unexpressed knowledge that people have, while explicit information has been expressed in oral or written form to share tacit information with others; externalization makes tacit knowledge explicit knowledge. The reason these concepts are relevant is because knowledge creation is perceived as the conversion of tacit information to explicit, then back again."

The article further states, "On the electronic side of records management, a firm that has adopted a retention schedule, and, is applying it to its electronic records, will have developed a system for capturing certain information about a document (that is considered a record) at the time of its creation. The decision as to whether a document should be part of the firm's knowledge management system can be made at the time of the document's creation. Ideally, a prompt regarding whether a final document should be included in the knowledge management system would exist in the records management system. Again, the combination of records and knowledge management would be seamlessly achieved."