Knowledge management helps organizations to lead the way to business performance.
KNOWMAN is an Erasmus+ project designed by a consortium of organizations from Estonia, Italy, Poland and Romania, aming to design and offer an open-access friendly and interactive educational platform in the field of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). More details are available here.
In the Management literature, all knowledge created and accumulated throughout an organization, that support the attainment of competitive advantages, profits, and innovation, represent intangible resources amounting to intellectual capital. It is generally accepted in academic works that intellectual capital consists of human capital, structural or organizational capital, relational capital (with internal and external dimensions), as well as renewal capital.
Knowledge management is concerned with the effective handling – both at the strategic, as well as operational level – of knowledge that is acquired, stored, applied, shared, or protected in various organizational areas. In the current, knowledge-based economy, the unique or specific knowledge that organizations acquire and utilize to make strategic decisions, to be successful, to make profits, to innovate, etc., has become essential in most businesses. Effective knowledge management is a defining characteristic for companies that capitalize on products and services in areas such as IT development or consulting services. Such companies are known in the literature as KIBS (Knowledge-Intensive Business Services).
Successful KIBS, and particularly large companies recognize the economic and strategic value of knowledge gained from various sources. This knowledge might be related to the human resources’ competences and skills, the organizational culture, the managerial philosophy, the transfer of knowledge between internal and external stakeholders, including through collaborative networks, and so on, and so forth. In high-performance KIBS, there are dedicated knowledge management capabilities that focus on knowledge acquisition, analysis, storage, protection, and sharing, with the view to achieve organizational benefits. Knowledge can be transferred tacitly among individuals, or explicitly, through codification for example in strategies, procedures, organizational processes, databases, etc.
At the same time, successful companies regularly appraise their performance in what concerns the management of knowledge, making the necessary adjustments in order to adapt to market fluctuations, to minimize risks, to innovate, to gain competitive advantages and to increase profits.
