In order to thrive in a continuously and unpredictably changing environment enterprise needs to continuously acquire new knowledge. Corporate knowledge (acknowledged synonyms are intellectual capital, intellectual property, knowledge assets, or business intelligence) is seen as the only sustainable source of competitive business advantage. Organisations therefore need to be able to learn faster than their competitors. However, new knowledge only acquire value when it is applied, which in turn brings about change of the environment, which generates value.
In addition to the application of new knowledge ‘agility’ is very important, for example an ‘agile enterprise’ or ‘agile manufacturing’. The word agile is associated with cats that are both physically adept at movement and also mentally adept at choosing the appropriate movement in a given situation. Like cats, an enterprise or a Community of Practice (means a group of people that are committed to particular work or professional practices) must closely align systems to changing business needs in order to retain a competitive edge.
People are at the heart of knowledge management. Organisations therefore must manage its employees in order to ensure the organisation’s knowledge agility. This requires both a change in organisational culture (i.e. informality and openness in knowledge sharing) and in human resource management (HRM) practices to allign both to the business strategy. One of the many aspects (read about other in an article about my DPhil consulting intervention - Download Groenewald.PDF ) to consider, is to make use of focussed work-based learning in order to 'enculturate' a newcomer.
Groenewald, T. (2004). Electronic document management: a human resource management case study. SA Journal of Human Resource Management, 2 (1),54-62.
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