Knowledge management (Handout) Sub: Leadership and Management in Nursing Organization Md.Akramul haque ID No.

55910276

Contents Introduction History of knowledge management What is knowledge management? Key points of knowledge management Knowledge Life Cycle Optimizing the Knowledge Management Process The idea behind knowledge management Why is knowledge management important today? Knowledge sharing Organizational Perspectives on Knowledge Management The social nature of knowledge

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What is knowledge transfer? What is Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge? Integrate knowledge management into Daily Life Organizational learning and social capital 14 14 15

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Knowledge Management is Not New 17

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Future challenges for knowledge management

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Conclusion References 19 20

Knowledge Management (KM) is the set of professional practices which improves the capabilities of the organizations human resources and enhances their ability to share what they know.

Introduction
The ability to manage knowledge is becoming increasingly more crucial in today's knowledge economy. The creation and diffusion of knowledge have become ever more important factors in competitiveness. More and more, knowledge is being regarded as a valuable commodity that is embedded in products (especially hightechnology products) and in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. Although knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a commodity or an intellectual asset, it possesses some paradoxical characteristics that are radically different from those of other valuable commodities. These knowledge characteristics include the following: Use of knowledge does not consume it. Transferral of knowledge does not result in losing it. Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is scarce. Simply, knowledge management (KM) is the process of maintaining and using company information and integrating knowledge workers experience. Knowledge Management is tied to Knowledge Work, the work that involves the development and

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transmission of knowledge and information and implies a greater amount of ambiguity, searching, researching, and learning in the job environment. Overall, KM strategies allow firms to handle more clients and projects by saving time and reducing both research and communication costs. According to Kulkarni, Ravindran, and Freeze, KM can be viewed as the process by which organizations leverage and extract value from their intellectual or knowledge assets. . . . Knowledge is embedded and flows through multiple entities within a firm, including individuals with domain expertise, specific best known methods, or lessons learned from similar experiences, documents, routines, systems, and methods. Effective knowledge management requires an organization to identify, generate, acquire, diffuse, and capture the benefits of knowledge that provide a strategic advantage to that organization. A clear distinction must be made between informationwhich is digitizableand true knowledge assets which can only exist within the context of an intelligent system. As we are still far from the creation of artificial intelligence systems, this means that knowledge assets reside within the human knowers and not the organization per se.
A knowledge information cycle can be envisaged as the route information follows in order to become transformed into a valuable strategic asset for the organization via a knowledge management cycle. One of the major KM processes aims at identifying and locating knowledge and knowledge sources within the organization. Valuable knowledge is then translated into explicit form, often referred to as codification of knowledge, in order to facilitate more widespread dissemination. Networks, practices, and incentives are instituted to facilitate person-to-person knowledge transfer as well as personknowledge content connections in order to solve problems, make decisions, or otherwise act based on the best possible knowledge foundation. Once this valuable, field-tested knowledge and know-how is transferred to an organizational knowledge repository, it is said to become part of "corporate memory." This is sometimes also referred to as "ground truth."

Knowledge management is emerging as a key concern of organizations, particularly those who have already redesigned their business processes and embedded a total quality approach into their practices. Major consulting firms are now gearing up to add knowledge management to their lines of business. What does this mean to library and information service professionals? Does it mean that the nirvana of public appreciation and value is here? After all, don't librarians organize and provide access

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to knowledge? Is it yet another management fad of the type referred to by Hilmer and Donaldson that promises to be the technique to manage organizations smartly and effectively? Does it reflect a shift of balance in the business world to an emphasis on the knowledge end of the data-information-knowledge spectrum? Is knowledge management just a new income stream for consulting firms when other buzz words lose their luster? Or perhaps knowledge management is an oxymoron, and it will be followed in a few years by "managing wisdom" when neither are really possible. Some of the knowledge management hype creates a distinct feeling of dj-vu.

History of knowledge management

Although the phrase "knowledge management" entered popular usage in the late 1980s (e.g., conferences in KM began appearing, books on KM were published, and the term began to be seen in business-oriented journals), KM has been around for many decades. Librarians, philosophers, teachers, and writers have long been making use of many of the same techniques. However, it could also be argued that knowledge management has been around far longer than the actual term has been in use. Denning (2000) relates how from "time immemorial, the elder, the traditional healer and the midwife in the village have been the living repositories of distilled experience in the life of the community" (available from his website at: http://www.stevedenning.com/history_ knowledge_management.html). Some form
of narrative repository has been in existence for a long time, and people have found a variety of ways of sharing knowledge in order to build on earlier experience, eliminate costly redundancies, and avoid making at least the same mistakes again. For example, knowledge sharing often took the form of town meetings, workshops, seminars, and mentoring sessions. The primary "technology" used to transfer knowledge consisted of the people themselves. Indeed, much of our cultural legacy stems from the migration of different peoples across continents. H.G. Wells (1938), though never using the actual term knowledge management, described his vision of the "World Brain," which would allow the intellectual organization of the sum total of our collective knowledge. The World Brain would represent "a universal organization and clarification of knowledge and ideas" (p. xvi). Wells anticipated the World Wide Web, albeit in a topic idealized manner, when he spoke of "this wide gap between ...at present unassembled and

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unexploited

best

thought

and

knowledge

in

the

world we live in a world of unused and misapplied knowledge and skill" (p. 10). The World Brain encapsulates many of the desirable features of the intellectual capital approach to KM: selected, well-organized, and widely vetted content that is maintained, kept up to date, and, above all, put to use to generate value to users, the users community, and their organization.

What is knowledge management?

Knowledge management is defined as the art and science of changing or transforming data and information into useful knowledge. Knowing what to fix is the first step in quality improvement. We must know what is wrong, and have the ability and resources to fix it. An organization is a system within itself. All systems have inherent active failures, like an act of omission or commission, and latent failures, like a hazardous condition or flawed process designed into policies, protocols, and procedures, which, in the correct sequence of events, will allow the system to fail. Healthcare is a complex system comprised of multiple subsystems, each of which operates independently and creates a ripple effect throughout the entire organization. Systems have interactions at the interface of various processes. The more interfaces there are, the more complex the system, and the more opportunities there are for error. Complex processes are more prone to fail than simple processes, thus increasing the occurrence of an unplanned and undesirable event. There are many definitions of "knowledge", but there are two that seem to stick out and that are related in an interesting fashion: The first defines "knowledge" as "digested information". To put it navely, if you buy a book, you buy information; if you have read the book and understood ("digested") it, you have knowledge. This interpretation of "knowledge" is quite appealing, but not very helpful in connection with computers, since it does not directly involve them. Hence computer scientists tend to use a somewhat weaker second interpretation of "knowledge": "knowledge" is "information in context", i.e. massive amounts of interrelated material that, in itself and the relation and "linkage" between its parts, keeps dynamically changing. The connection between the two definitions is that the second can be seen as an

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"electronic shadow" of the first, of the mapping of (at least parts of human) knowledge into computer systems.

Key points of KM
If written directions alone would suffice,
universities attached. libraries wouldn't need to have the rest of the

Judith Martin (1938-) Washington Post columnist and author 1. KM is not necessarily "completely new" but has been practiced in a wide variety of settings for some time nowalbeit under different monikers. Knowledge is more complex than data or information; it is subjective, often based on experience, and highly contextual. There is no generally accepted definition of KM, but most practitioners and professionals concur that KM treats both tacit and explicit knowledge with the objective of adding value to the organization. Each organization should define KM in terms of its own business objectives; concept analysis is one
way of accomplishing this.

2. KM is all about applying knowledge in new, previously unencumbered or

novel situations.

3. KM has its roots in a variety of different disciplines.

The KM generations to date have focused first on containers, next on communities, and finally on the content itself.

Knowledge Life Cycle

Learn

Create

Store

Knowledge Management is the

Use Find

Acquire

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management of this cycle for optimal performance across all aspects of the Knowledge six pack. Knowledge in business can be seen to have a lifecycle of its own. It must be created either within or outside the organization. This is typically comprised of iterative tacit and explicit loops until the knowledge is ready for distribution to those outside the creating group. It can then be stored somewhere, either tacitly or explicitly so that it is accessible for others to find and use. Those who need the specific knowledge must then find out where it is, when they need it, by searching in the right places and / or asking the right people. Once the knowledge source is found, the user will then go through the act of actually acquiring it. This will involve gaining personal knowledge from other humans or documented sources. Once acquired, the knowledge can be put to use towards some productive purpose. Having been used, perhaps repeatedly, the user will learn what worked well and not so well as a result of applying the knowledge gained. This can then be taken as significant input into further iterations of the knowledge creation and distribution process. A key contributor to the effective management of this cycle is the concept of learning. Without the learning component, the cycle is devoid of knowledge. It merely, becomes an information delivery strategy, which becomes disconnected from the leverage of more effective human experience. The application of the delivered knowledge to operating the business (Find, Acquire and Use) will have some initial value but the delivered knowledge will be immediately out of date unless continuously renewed with the latest lessons learned from the application of the delivered knowledge (Learn, Create and Store).

Optimizing the Knowledge Management Process

The objective of knowledge management is to make this cycle more effective as well as more efficient. This implies that corporate knowledge be made available in

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forms which are readily accessible. This could take the form of Knowledge Documents, Processes, and Rules. These could be found embedded in Human Resources, Information technologies, or in the design of Facilities. The embedded knowledge, in this way is accessible for reuse and ongoing evaluation for effectiveness and improvement. This challenge of performance improvement of the knowledge management lifecycle is critical to organizational success, for without it, overall business performance will suffer. Getting the best knowledge through the cycle quickly before it erodes is a major goal of many organizations in intellect-based fast-paced companies. This challenge applies at the individual, workgroup, companywide and inter-company levels. Each new level offers a greater degree of leverage and business results but also brings with it a set of more difficult issues, as long standing ways of doing things must be overcome. Knowledge management is all about creating and maintaining the optimum environment to make this happen. Knowledge Management closes the loop, which continuously converts tacit knowledge, based on experience into explicit knowledge for wider communication and back into tacit again through inference, experience and learning.
Lessons Learned Internally Documented Knowledge

Processes

Rules

Lessons Learned Externally

Deliver Enhanced Knowledge Capability

I1 Business Opportunities

Operate Business
2

O1 Business Results

Capable Humans

Technologies

Facilities

The idea behind knowledge management

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The crucial insight that has made knowledge management (KM) important is that the value of an organisation does not only depend on the material assets of the organisation (like buildings and machinery), but also on the "knowledge inside the heads" of the employees, on what is called the corporate knowledge. Indeed, the value of a company in some areas (and software development companies are prime examples of this) is often based more on this corporate knowledge than on any other component. Some companies acknowledge this already openly by not just producing "financial balance sheets" but also "knowledge balance sheets": the value of an organisation may consist up to 80% not of material assets but of corporate knowledge: once this crucial fact is accepted it is obvious that organisations must make sure that corporate knowledge is nurtured, protected and archived and increased as much as possible. This leads to two consequences: one is to assure that knowledge is captured so that it can be used and cannot be lost (this is addressed by KM tools), and two is to assure that such knowledge is continuously increased, and this is done using tools for knowledge transfer.

Why is knowledge management

application of KM lie in four key areas:

important today?

The major business drivers behind today's increased interest in and

Globalization of business. Organizations today are more global multisite,

multilingual, and multicultural in nature.

Leaner organizations. We are doing more and we are doing it faster, but we also
need to work smarter as knowledge workers, adopting an increased pace and workload.

"Corporate amnesia." We are more mobile as a workforce, which creates problems

of knowledge continuity for the organization and places continuous learning demands on the knowledge worker. We no longer expect to spend our entire work life with the same organization.

Technological advances. We are more connected. Advances in information

technology not only have made connectivity ubiquitous but have radically

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changed expectations. We are expected to be "on" at all times, and the turnaround time in responding is now measured in minutes, not weeks. Today's work environment is more complex because we now need to attend daily to the increase in the number of subjective knowledge items. Filtering over 200 emails, faxes, and voicemail messages on a daily basis should be done according to good time management practices and filtering rules, but more often than not, workers tend to exhibit a "Pavlovian reflex" when they note the beeps announcing the arrival of new mail or the ringing of the phone that demands immediate attention. Knowledge workers are increasingly being asked to "think on their feet," with little time to digest and analyze incoming data and information, let alone retrieve, access, and apply relevant experiential knowledge. This is due both to the sheer volume of tasks to address and to the greatly diminished turnaround time. Today's expectation is that everyone is "on" all the timeas evidenced by the various messages expressing annoyance when voicemails are not responded to promptly or e-mails are not acknowledged.

The basic idea of KM is to try to store as much as possible of the information that usually only resides as corporate knowledge in the brains of employees in suitable computer systems. If this can be achieved, the benefits are obvious. If the knowledge of employees is (to some extent) available electronically then e.g. the dangerous "reinvention of the wheel" will happen much more rarely. After all, one of the big frustrated sighs of many CEOs is "if our employees only knew what our employees know, we would be a much better company." However, the benefits of computerised corporate knowledge go much further: if crucial persons get sick or leave the company, it is much easier to overcome the "hole" left by their absence; failures and successes in past projects will help in new projects; supervision of projects and cooperation between teams will be much more effective; and new employees can soak up the necessary knowledge much more readily (hence the close connection between KM and KT!). It is thus one of big challenges of information technology today to provide tools for KM. Are there any KM systems available today? The answer to this is a clear "NO". There are two reasons for this: one is that certain aspects of human knowledge are subtle to the extent that we don't know how to formalise them, i.e. we don't know how we could even create "shadows of such knowledge" in a computer system, to stick to the above mentioned comparison; indeed, it is not clear to what extent we will ever be

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able to do this completely. The second reason why full knowledge management systems are not only not available, but are actually not even in sight is that to formalise certain knowledge processes, much restructuring of processes will have to take place in the organisations concerned, first. Thus, although there are no fullfledged KM systems, there are indeed systems that allow handling essential parts of KM. One such system, Hyperwave (see http://www.hyperwave.com) received one of the main IT awards of the commission in 1997. (The interested reader is referred to concerning Hyperwave, and for its role in KM). Hyperwave is a sophisticated system that allows storing and structure large parts of corporate knowledge in a way that makes it accessible to various groups at the level needed. Although Hyperwave cannot cover all of KM, Hyperwave allows reducing the amount of corporate knowledge that is not available in computerised form dramatically. This is achieved by a seamless combination of the four major information-access paradigms available: searching, structuring, attributing and linking, with sophisticated automatic data-, link- and access-rights management. There is not enough room to go into details, but it is worth noting that using Hyperwave, the structure, tasks, directories etc. of an organisation, work flow and staging mechanisms, quality control procedures, achievable email- and other asynchronous communication facilities can be combined with synchronous communication, with "digital background libraries" (see the EU project LIBERATION at e.g. http://www.iicm.edu/LIBERATION and the presentation under http://wbt.iicm.edu/KM_KT) to indeed capture many important aspects of KM. This is true because Hyperwave allows different views of the same information for different groups, made possible by the definition of arbitrarily many overlapping access structures, the use of access rights and enhanced by notes and links that can be made visible to arbitrary small or large groups of users.

Knowledge sharing
Some of the factors that made it difficult to share tacit knowledge included attitudes that knowledge was power, not knowing who the expert was, not knowing if

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the knowledge exists, and loss of knowledge when people left the company. Some suggestions that were made to improve tacit knowledge sharing included recognizing the value of tacit knowledge, improving relationships within the organization, and increasing opportunities for people within different parts of the organization to interact. The ideal knowledge-sharing culture was thus one where communication and coordination between groups were emphasized, where experts would not jealously guard their knowledge, and where knowledge sharing would be actively and visibly encouraged at all levels of the hierarchy through recognizing and rewarding knowledge sharing and through embedding such statements in corporate and individual performance objectives. A culture that promotes knowledge sharing would be one where tools and taxonomies are standardized to make access and exchange easy, where there are a significant number of semi-social events such as workshops for sharing with experts and other groups, where organizational goals explicitly include knowledge sharing, where trust is prevalent in all interactions, and where the communication channels flow across geographical, temporal, and thematic boundaries.

Organizational Perspectives on Knowledge Management

Wiig (1993) considers knowledge management in organizations from three perspectives, each with different horizons and purposes: Business Perspectivefocusing on why, where, and to what extent the
organization must invest in or exploit knowledge. Strategies, products and services, alliances, acquisitions, or divestments should be considered from knowledge-related points of view.

Management

Perspectivefocusing

on

determining,

organizing,

directing,

facilitating, and monitoring knowledge-related practices and activities required to achieve the desired business strategies and objectives. Hands-on Perspectivefocusing on applying the expertise to conduct explicit
knowledge-related work and tasks.

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The business perspective easily maps onto the strategic nature of knowledge management, the management perspective is parallel to the tactical layer, and the hands-on perspective may be equated with the operational level.

The social nature of knowledge

Knowledge management needs to view knowledge as something that is actively constructed in a social setting (McDermott, 2000). Group members produce knowledge by their interactions, and a group memory is created. Social constructivism views knowledge not as an objective entity but as a subjective, social artifact (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Social constructivists argue that knowledge is produced through the shared understandings that emerge through social interactions. As individuals and groups of people communicate, they mutually influence each other's views and create or change shared constructions of reality (Klimecki and Lassleben, 1999). The social con-structivist perspective views knowledge as context dependent and thus as some-thing that cannot be completely separated from "knowers" (Lave and Wenger, 1991). Context helps distinguish between knowledge management and document management: whereas document management can be carried out in a more or less automated manner, knowledge management cannot be accomplished without involving people as well as tangible content. Huysman and deWit (2002) describe a collective acceptance of shared knowledge as being the key method of generating value to the organization. Until knowledge is collectively accepted and institutionalized across the organization, organizationallevel learning cannot occur and organizational memory cannot be developed. Ortenblad (2002) explained that, unlike the functionalist paradigm in which learning starts in the individual, the interpretive paradigm suggests that learning begins in the relationships between individuals. As the community grows and its knowledge base is more broadly shared across the organization, the community's practices become regularly, widely, and sufficiently adopted so as to be described as institutionalized knowledge (Huysman and DeWit, 2002). Since individual memory is limited, we need to embed this knowledge in useful, more permanent forms such as documents and e-mails. This institutionalized knowledge

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then becomes an organizational legacy that remains in the corporate memory for subsequent generations. It is critical to remember that the context of each item of knowledge must also be captured: when it occurred, who is knowledgeable about it, who submitted it, and so on. Without this context, the knowledge product is not complete and cannot be successfully used, applied, or even understood. An illustration is provided in the vignette Thomas & Betts.

What is knowledge transfer?

Knowledge transfer is the process through which one network member is affected by the experience of another (Inkpen & Tsang,2005,p. 146) Trough knowledge transfer, recipients increase their stock of knowledge and exploit it in ways that improve organizational processes. Thus, organizations that are able to transfer knowledge effectively among its members are better capable to complete and respond to environmental changes (Argote, McEvily & Regans, 2003). David DeLongs book Lost Knowledge describes knowledge as the capacity for effective actions or decision-making in the context of organizational activity. Accordingly, lost knowledge would decrease this vital capacity and help undermine organizational effectiveness and performance. The goal of transferring knowledge to others [known as Knowledge Transfer] is to: Identify key positions and people where potential knowledge loss is most imminent. Assess how critical the knowledge loss will be. Develop a plan of action to ensure the capture of that critical knowledge and a plan of action to transfer it.

What is Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge?

A key distinction made by the majority of knowledge management practitioners is the distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge

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is often subconscious, internalized, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge - knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction, tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have arranged into an organized system. Tacit knowledge is often difficult to access. People are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how valuable it may be to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and experiences. Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust. Explicit knowledge is relatively easy to capture and store in databases and documents. It is shared with a high degree of accuracy. It may be either structured or unstructured: Structured - Individual elements are organized or diagramed in a particular way for future retrieval. It includes documents, databases, and spreadsheets. Unstructured - The information is not referenced for retrieval. Examples include email messages, images, training courses, and audio and video selections.

Integrate knowledge management into Daily Life

One approach to KM claims that the key to success is to bake specialized knowledge into the jobs of highly skilled workers to make knowledge so readily accessible that it cant be avoided. This is done by using the technology used by knowledge workers as part of their daily life. The goal is to eliminate extra effort, motivation and time spent on KM activities. Embedding KM activities into daily tasks is easiest for low skill workers and complexity increases as job complexity increases. There are several keys to success, beyond the right technology, for embedding knowledge into daily tasks.

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Support from the Best and Brightest An Expert and Up-to-Date Knowledge Base Prioritized Processes and Knowledge Domains Final Decisions by the Experts A Culture of Measurement The Right Information and IT People

Organizational

learning and social capital

Human capital refers to a person's education, skills, and background necessary to be productive in an organization or profession. However, sociologists such as Coleman (1994) and Granovetter and Swedborg (2001) argue that there is much more to explaining the differences in individual success than individual characteristics alone. The concrete personal relationships and networks of relations generate trust, establish expectations, and create and enforce norms. These webs of social relationships influence individual behavior and ultimately organizational success. The term social capital has been coined to refer to the institutions, relationships, and norms that shape the quality and quantity of an organization's social interactions (Lesser and Prusak, 2001). Social capital is not just the sum of the individuals that comprise an organization; it is the glue that holds them together. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) define social capital as "the sum of the actual and potential resources embedded within, available through, and derived from the network of relationships possessed by an individual or social unit. It is thus comprises both
the network and the assets that may be mobilized through that network" (p. 243). While the concept is still evolving, there have been increasing calls for expanded "investment" on the part of business, government, and other organizations to promote the development and maintenance of social capital. Social capital facilitates the creation of new intellectual capital. Organizations, as institutional settings, are conducive to the development of high levels of social capital. It is because of their denser social capital that firms, within certain limits, have an advantage over markets in creating and sharing intellectual capital.

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Knowledge-sharing communities are the primary producers of social capital, as they provide the opportunity for individuals to develop a network with members who share similar professional interests. The community provides a "Who's who" in the form of yellow pages to help make connections between members. The community provides a reference mechanism to quickly enable members to evaluate content, solve problems, and make decisions based on vetted, validated, and current knowledge. Social networks can increase productivity by reducing the costs of doing business. Social capital facilitates coordination and cooperation. At the same time, social capital has an important "downside" (Portes and Landholt, 1996): communities, groups, or networks that are isolated, parochial, or working at cross-purposes to the organization's collective interests. A broader understanding of social capital accounts for both the positive and negative aspects by including vertical as well as horizontal associations between people, and includes behavior within and among organizations, such as firms. This view recognizes that horizontal ties are needed to give communities a sense of identity and common purpose. However, without "bridging" ties that transcend various social divides (e.g., religion, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), horizontal ties can become a basis for pursuing narrow interests, and can actively preclude access to information and material resources that would otherwise be of great assistance to the community (e.g., tips about job vacancies, access to credit).

Knowledge Management is Not New

To what extent does your organization already have one or more of the four steps in place? Libraries, as information-based services, should understand the importance of each of these steps and some are taking the lead in their organizations with the encouragement of senior management. Others wait to be asked, which I suggest has never been a wise tactic! Boynton is clear that knowledge management is not new. It is something that good firms have been practicing for many years. But few have understood its importance or seen knowledge management as a purposeful management technique with multiple dimensions and impacts. The firms which are currently being cited as leaders in knowledge management in the United States, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, and Australia have also been leaders in the careful application of other management techniques. Knowledge management is an evolution

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of their management practices, not something they have suddenly discovered which can be implemented in six months. Having recognized the importance of knowledge management and knowledge work processes, they find that they already have some of the foundations well implanted in their people and organization. They do not see knowledge management as a 'solution' but as a way to better use the expertise within and available to their organizations. These organizations span many areas: finance, pharmaceuticals, engineering, automotive manufacturing, service industries, consulting firms, healthcare, and public service organizations.

Future challenges for

knowledge

management
The gem cannot be polished without friction. Chinese proverb

Knowledge management objectives are ambitious and almost always involve change at the individual, group and organization levels. As a result, the objectives are almost never easily achieved or straightforward. A number of critical challenges must be successfully addressed in order to obtain the maximum value for KM investments in terms of both budget and time and human resources. This chapter explores some issues facing knowledge management, such as political issues regarding Internet search engines, the shift to knowledge-based assets, and how to provide incentives for knowledge sharing to successfully incorporate KM into organizations. The major challenges facing KM include focusing on people or cultural issues, overemphasizing technology, conducting KM in isolation from business goals, ignoring the dynamic aspects of content, and opting for quantity of content over quality. Although this is not an exhaustive list, there does appear to be a fairly good consensus on the most important challenges that are facing KM. These can be found as recurring themes in KM discussion groups, conferences, and publications (e.g.,

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Firestone and McElroy, 2003; Tannenbaum and Alliger, 2000). The major problems that occur in KM usually result because companies ignore the people and cultural issues. In an environment where an individual's knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes tacit knowledge and encourages employees to share it is critical. The need to sell the KM concept to employees should not be underestimated; after all, in many cases employees are being asked to surrender their knowledge and experience the very traits that make them valuable as individuals. One way companies motivate employees to participate in KM is by creating an incentive program. However, there is the danger that employees will participate solely to earn incentives, without regard to the quality or relevance of the information they contribute. The best KM efforts are as transparent to employees' workflow as possible. Ideally, participation in KM should be its own reward. If KM does not make life easier for employees, it will fail. This is why the role of organizational culture is so important, together with any cultural change that needs to take place in order to better accommodate any KM initiatives.

Conclusion
Knowledge management is not owned by any one group in an organization, nor by any one profession or industry. But if librarians and information specialists want to be key players in the emerging knowledge management phenomenon, they need to understand the multiple perspectives of the other players. Some of the journal articles referenced at the end of this paper are useful starting points in coming to grips with the language and concepts behind knowledge management. Knowledge management requires a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to management processes and an understanding of the dimensions of knowledge work. Knowledge management should be the evolution of good management practices sensibly and purposively applied. The Knowledge into Action Review is taking an innovative approach to redesign the service model for knowledge management and reposition it at the heart of delivering the Quality Strategy aims of safer, more effective, personcentred care. Findings to date point to a new service model which moves knowledge

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managers out of the physical library to collaborate with clinicians, improvement teams and other knowledge managers. The evidence tells that future knowledge services should provide a dynamic and flexible source of expertise in: inquiry, evidence search and synthesis; production of pathways, evidence bundles, decision support and other forms of actionable knowledge; dissemination of knowledge through web and social media and through facilitating personal, interactive knowledge exchange and learning. Through collaborative leadership and synergies with quality and safety, this review aims to set knowledge management on a new footing that recognizes its vital contribution to quality of care.

References
Maurer, H. (1997) What We Want from WWW as Distributed Multimedia System. Proc. VSMM97, Geneva:.IEEE, 148-155. Maurer, H. (1998) Modern WISs. C.ACM, 41, 7: 114-115. Maurer, H. (1998) Web-Based Knowledge Management. Internet Watch, Computer, March 98, IEEE, 122-123 Maurer, H. (1998) Using the WWW System Hyperwave as the Basis of a General Networked Teaching and Learning Environment. CIT vol. 6, 1: 63-72. Adams, E., and Freeman, C. (2000). Communities of practice: bridging technology and knowledge assessment. Journal of Knowledge Management, 4(1): 38-44. ALA. (1989). Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. Final Report. Chicago:
American Library Association, 1989. Available from http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/ acrlpubs/whitepapers/presidential.htm.

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Anklam, P. (2003). KM and the social network. Knowledge Management Magazine,

6(8). Available from http://www.kmmagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.2CE3D98A-36A0-4D67-A4E17852ABAE6AC1/articleid.F79B4E31-7854-4B6A-9202-164FB 18672D3/qx/display.htm.

APQC. (1999). Creating a knowledge-sharing culture. Consortium Benchmarking

Study. Houston, TX: American Productivity and Quality Center.

Bartlett, J. (2000, December). Knowing people. Knowledge Management. Available at

http://www.destinationcrm.com/km/dcrm_km_article.asp?id=830.

Berger, P. L., and Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. New York:
Doubleday and Co.

Maurer, H. (1998) A critical look at current Web Based Training effort. Proc. ICCE98, Beijing: CHEP, Beijing and Springer Heidelberg, 30-33.