Theories of Knowledge Management. Literature Review
Table of Contents
Introduction
Types of Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management Cycle
Knowledge Management Models
-Zack Knowledge Management Model
-Bukowitz and Williams Model
-McElroy Model
-WIIG Model
References
Introduction
Knowledge Management is a discipline that seeks to promote an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving and sharing all of an organization's assets. The assets included here are the databases, documents, procedures, policies and previously uncaptured expertise and experience in individual workers. The concept of knowledge management came about when companies wanted to link their departments so that its information can be shared among these related departments. The most important function of knowledge management is to capture the information and make available to others in the organization. Knowledge management can also be described as the movement to reproduce the information environment known to favor successful research and development [1]. This involves rich, broad and open communication and information accessibility coupled with deploying the said information across the organization.
The different types of knowledge management systems include expert systems, groupware, document management system, decision support systems, database management systems and simulation systems. Expert systems, used in artificial intelligence, is a computerized system that imitates the decision-making ability of a human expert. The systems are designed to help in solving complex glitches by reasoning about knowledge presented in the form of codes. The expert systems are divided into inference the engine and the knowledge base. The former is designed to represent facts and rules while the latter applies the rules drafted to the known facts to gather new facts. Inference engine includes explanation and debugging abilities as well. It is well known for its automated reasoning ability that appraises the present state of the knowledge-base. It subsequently applies appropriate rules and then affirms new knowledge into the existing knowledge-base [2].
Interference engine also involves the abilities to explain so as to explain to the user the reasoning chain so as to draw a conclusion by making a track of back over or rules that arose in the affirmation process. Groupware refers to the technological system developed to assist people to team up. The groupware tools include communication, conferencing and collaborative management tools. Communication tools are used for transmitting messages and files such as emails, web publishing and file sharing among others. On the other hand, conferencing tools include video conferencing, audio conferencing, chats and forums. Finally, collaborative management tools are used in the group management activities such as project management systems, workflow systems, and information management systems. Groupware helps in facilitating sharing of explicit knowledge through publishing and communication tools. It supports the process of creation of knowledge. Document management systems are systems that help in publishing, storage, indexing and retrieving documents [3]. The various features of document management systems include multiple platform support, customizable interfaces, workflow modules and file and format conversions. A particular type …
