1. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
Knowledge Management has been the focal theme in many projects undertaken
by different organizations. Despite this, there is some dispute over what exactly
knowledge management is. For example, some in the field define knowledge
management simply as information that has value for action, but others, like Snowden
(1999), defines knowledge management as the identification, optimization, and active
management of intellectual assets, either in the form of explicit knowledge held in
artifacts or as tacit knowledge possessed by individuals or communities. Malhotra (1998)
maintains that knowledge management caters to the critical issues of organizational
adaptation, survival and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental
change and essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic
combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies,
and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings. Most researchers and
practitioners however agree on the point that knowledge management involves processes
of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge (Devenport, 1994). In this
sense knowledge management is about harnessing the intellectual and social capital of
individuals in order to improve organizational learning capabilities, recognizing that
knowledge, and not simply information, is the primary source of an organization?s
innovative potential (Swan et al., 1999).
It is observed that knowledge management researchers have spent considerable
energy into defining knowledge, much less is written on the term management. This is
because most researchers believe that the idea of management is something that makes

2. common sense (Alvesson and Karreman, 2001). In general, the traditional understanding
about management suggests that it involves planning, organizing, coordinating, and
controlling work.
Benefits of Knowledge Management
The effective deployment of KM will reduce a lot of repeated efforts in
reinventing same solution to perennial problems that involve customer, supply chain
partners and operations. It requires an investment in KM system and technologies, and
organizational commitment to continuous use, which can happen through a cultural
change. The efforts will lead to many benefits. For example, re-use of existing knowledge
elements prevents recurring costs related to repeated research of the same marketing
problem, and repeated generation of similar solutions. It will also evolve access to in-
depth knowledge elements for support staff, partners, and customers that improve the
customer service experience and squeeze the time from problem statement to problem
resolution. In another situation this will make marketing faster and closer to customer due
to more accurate assessment of customer requirements.
Creation of an enterprise-wide knowledge management system is a difficult task.
However, the benefits of a well-designed KM system are well reported. Offsey, (1997),
Guns and V 䬩 kangas (1998) reported following benefits of KM:
 Better Awareness ? Everyone knows where to go to find the organization?s
knowledge, saving people time and effort.

3.  Better Accessibility ? All individuals can use the organization?s combined
knowledge and experience in the context of their own roles.
 Improved customer satisfaction ? The ultimate of any business is to have satisfied
customers. KM helps in knowing the customer?s requirement better and supports
organizational activities to achieve this.
 Better Availability ? Knowledge is usable wherever it is needed ? from the home
office, on the road or at the customer?s side. This increases responsiveness to
customers, partners and co-workers.
 Improved Timeliness ? Knowledge is available whenever it is needed, eliminating
time wasting distribution of information ?just-incase? people are interested.
 Improved Productivity: Knowledge Management helps to facilitate knowledge
flows and sharing to enhance the productivity of individuals and hence the
enterprise. Productivity increases because the knowledge does not have to be
recreated through training, experience, and so on. Productivity also increases
because the ?time to output? for a task is reduced as well. For example, ensuring
that a piece of software can be used in several places, it eliminates the need to
write it again, and speeds up the accomplishment of tasks dependent upon it.
Customer satisfaction improves when problems are resolved quickly. KM-
repository can be interfaced with other functional domains so as to evolve a real repository
of collective organizational wisdom. Organization can use this to handle problems across a
broad range of functions such as new product development, advertising plan, dealership

4. network design, complaint redressals, packaging redesigns, inventory management,
logistics planning, supply chain integration etc.
DATA, INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE
In literature, researchers have identified three entities in their understanding of
knowledge. This requires a distinction among data, information and knowledge. These
are related yet differently treated in literature. The confusion between knowledge and
information has caused managers to sink billions of dollars in information technology
ventures that have yielded marginal results (McCampbell et al., 1999).
Data include facts, images, sounds etc and generally need some restructuring for
being suitable for a decision-making environment. Information is the filtered, formatted
and summarized data. Vance (1997) defines information as data interpreted into a
meaningful framework whereas knowledge is the information that has been authenticated
and thought to be true. In this sense knowledge is a more comprehensive than data and
information. It is a mix of contextual information, value, experience, expert insight, and
grounded intuition that actively enable performance, problem solving, decision-making,
learning and evolving. For example, during a laboratory-experimentation of measuring
temperature, pressure and volume of a gas by changing these parameters the result
obtained are data. A tabulated summary of the results for a wide variety of gases,
pressure, temperature and pressure is information. Based on the tabulated information
and lessons learned, a rule or a system that enables an engineer to select ideal pressure
and temperature so that a particular gas occupies certain volume is knowledge. Majority
of researchers suggest that a hierarchy can be perceived from data to information to

5. knowledge with each varying along some dimension, such as context, usefulness, or
interpretability (Alavi and Leidner, 1999).
An opposite view however argues that knowledge is needed, before data are
collected and indeed it determines what data to store (Tuomi, 1999). Spiegler (2002)
compares the two views and discusses their relevance to the generation of knowledge.
Spiegler (2000) suggested a recursive and spiral model of linking data, information and
knowledge, where ??yesterday?s data are today?s information, and tomorrow?s
knowledge, which in turn recycles back through the value chain into information and then
into data.??
Nonaka (1994) explains that information is a flow of messages, while knowledge is
created and organized by the very flow of information, anchored on the commitment and
beliefs of its holder. He also maintains the most important element in knowledge is
action.