Innovative Guidelines To Enrich Knowledge Management And Improve .

International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)Volume 110 – No. 9, January 2015Innovative Guidelines to Enrich KnowledgeManagement and Improve Organization PerformanceAdel Hamdan MohammadComputer Science DepartmentFaculty of Information TechnologyWISE UniversityAmman, JordanABSTRACTKnowledge and knowledge management are key factors forsuccess in any organization. Knowledge exists into two formswhich are explicit and tacit. Managing knowledge is not aneasy task since knowledge is available in different forms andhas different types. This paper introduces types of knowledgeand shows how appropriate knowledge management isprecarious for success. Additionally, it demonstratesnumerous innovative guidelines to enrich knowledgemanagement and to improve organization performance. Theseguidelines are built based on extensive reading of relatedstudies and previous researches for us related to this issue.KeywordsKnowledge, knowledge management, tacitexplicit knowledge, organization performance.knowledge,1. INTRODUCTIONNo doubt that knowledge is the main aspect of success indigital era. Nonaka [1] divides knowledge into two mainparts. Explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge: Explicitknowledge is the knowledge which can be expressed inwords, numbers, or any form of scientific data. Tacitknowledge can be defined as knowledge which resides inpeople’s heads and can’t be easily codified; it is intangibleand not easy to articulate [2, 3]. Knowledge management(KM) involves a set of strategies, practices, and approachesused in any organization to identify, create, represent andenable adoption of insights and experiences [4]. Theknowledge management can be considered as a key option toenrich human wealth. Also knowledge is the most valuableassets for any organization and KM has become one of themost important fields in the area of information system (IS)[5]. Managing knowledge can be divided into two parts:managing tacit knowledge such as knowledge embedded intohuman minds, proficiencies, skills, and insight and managingexplicit knowledge [6]. Knowledge discovery or extractioncan be defined as the creation of knowledge from structuredand unstructured sources [7]. Knowledge discovery aims tocollect this appreciated intellectual capital from documents,texts, relational databases, images and experts’ minds.Actually there are some available tools and techniques likedata mining are useful for knowledge discovery [8].Actually many organizations don’t know exactly how toexpand human capital so they try to solve the problem. As aresult organizations want to achieve this by managingknowledge. KM has begun to be introduced within policy,process, and procedures [9]. Managing intellectual capitalinvolves managing human and structural capital. Mau [10]says that KM can provide us with resources and means tomake information more powerful and expertise moreinfluential. Halawi [11] says that KM has to increaseorganizations’ intellectual assets. Several researchers talkedabout KM and its relation with intellectual capital. Knowledgemanagement and human capital have serious effects onorganizations and their success. Converting tacit knowledgeinto forms of explicit knowledge required good understandingof organization’s elements [11, 12, 13]. Knowledgemanagement selection needs a knowledge management teamto decide whether the knowledge required is important or not[14]. This paper aims at improving organization performancethrough clarifying the main guidelines of KM.This paper is organized as follows. In the next section, we talkabout knowledge management and organization performanceand we emphasize on related literature review. Section threeproposed our guidelines to enrich knowledge management inspecific details. And the last section of this paper presents ourconclusion2. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ANDORGANIZATION PERFORMANCEExplicit knowledge and sometimes referred to as know-whathas several forms such as manuals, documents, procedures,videos and audios [15]. Explicit knowledge has severaldefinitions; such as articulated knowledge, knowledge whichcan be expressed in words, numbers, and codes [1]. Forexample, whenever a person reads a book, a newspaper and amanual he is expressing an explicit knowledge.Goh [16] talks about knowledge management and he saysthat KM is an organized method of improving data,information and other forms of assets inside an organizationto expand an organization’s capability and competence.Markus [17] shows that explicit knowledge can be captured,articulated and codified. Sunassee [18] says that explicitknowledge is easy to express, easy to capture and can bedistributed into different formats. Another researcher says thatexplicit knowledge is anything that can be documented,collected, and codified [19]. Soltero [20] demonstrates thatexplicit knowledge is any knowledge which can be transferredby using proper, organized and official means. FurthermoreBelbaly [21] shows that explicit knowledge can be articulated,collected, organized, and categorized into certain media. AdelMohammad [22] exhibits forms of explicit knowledge andtacit knowledge (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). These forms identify mosttypes of explicit and tacit knowledge.4

International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)Volume 110 – No. 9, January 2015Forms of Explicit andGuidelinesJournalOthers .ArticlesFigure 1. Forms of Explicit Knowledge.Forms of Tacit �Skills,ExperiencesOthers .Figure 2. Forms of Tacit Knowledge.Explicit knowledge has several characteristics such as explicitknowledge can be tested, improved, reviewed and discussed.Explicit knowledge can be used to identify which type ofknowledge is valuable and capable of contribution in decisionmaking and which are not. One of the most major benefits ofexplicit knowledge is its capability of making organizationknowledge is visible. No doubt that making knowledge asexplicit knowledge allows the organization to discovershortages in knowledge assets [22].Knowledge acquisition is an important action in anyorganizations that seek for still and survive. Knowledgeacquisition deals with the process of finding proper and usefulknowledge to acquiring it from its sources [23]. Abdullah [24]in his research says that knowledge acquisition involvesseveral sequential steps which should be taken intoconsideration to make sure that knowledge will be collectedand acquired from the right people, time and place.Knowledge acquisition could be considered as the main factorin building knowledge base system (KBS). Additionally, thereare several knowledge acquisition techniques which make itdifficult to evaluate them to select the proper one. Besidethat there is no suitable method of retrieving knowledge isproper for all types of knowledge since each type ofknowledge has different method of retrieving and one of themis best suited [13, 25, 16]. Elizabeth A. Smith [26] says thatknowledge plays a key role in the information revolution.Also we say that organizations must begin to create workercentered environment to encourage sharing and using allforms of knowledge. Berger [3] demonstrates that tacitknowledge management can help increase acceptance andencouragement for any organization wish to develop amethodology for tacit knowledge sharing. Tacit knowledge isthat knowledge related to skills, know-how, know why, andhigh level of expertise [27, 28]. Several researchers talk abouttacit knowledge and say that whether tacit knowledge is anindividual issue or something which can be shared byindividuals and groups. [29 ,30].3. PROPOSEDGUIDELINESTOENRICHKNOWLEDGEMANAGEMENTTo enrich knowledge management and improve organizationperformance, several guidelines are demonstrated. Explicitknowledge is the knowledge which can be articulated [1, 2,3]. Tacit and explicit knowledge will be the base for buildingthese guidelines (Fig. 3).5

International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887)Volume 110 – No. 9, January 2015Figure 3. Guidelines to enhance knowledge management and improve organization performance. Intellectual CapitalIntellectual capital is the value of the company which includesemployees’ knowledge and information resources. No doubtthat intellectual capital is a very important aspect inside anyorganization and it considered or classified as the true capitalcost. Managing intellectual capital can help organizationsimprove their performance. Besides that Managingintellectual capital include collecting documented andundocumented knowledge, generating organized policies andstrategies for short, medium, long periods. Finally managingintellectual capital involves managing tangible (machines,lands etc.) and intangible (human, information resources etc.) assets. All organizations have to manage intellectualcapital properly to enhance organization performance.Managing intellectual capital can be done by identifyingorganization intellectual capital. Then organizations have toevaluate it. After that organizations have to develop a suitablemanagement information system. Finally writing suitablereports to managers and perform a continuous process offeedback and developing. Managing intellectual capitalrequired a high skill employee staff and high level educatedmanagers. Demand/supplyDemand and supply is critical and vital for any organization tosuccess and survive. Managers have to read and understandthe outside markets to create their short and long termstrategies. Demand and supply is a variable factor which maybe affected by several economic and political factors. Relatedto this factor organizations have nothing to do except keep aneye on markets to create short and long term policies and theyshould take into concern the outside markets and newemergent competitors. GlobalizationsGlobalizations have become a hot challenge. WTO (WorldTrade Organization) and NAFTA (North American FreeTrade Agreement) are two examples of bilateral tradeagreements. Actually globalization affects many organizationsall over the world. Large and mid-size organizations have tounderstand all market environments and situations. No doubtthat globalization can affect all markets in non-industrycountries and third world countries. Organizations in thirdworld countries have to create their long term strategiescarefully. One of the most valuable solutions to faceglobalization is the combination of medium and smallorganizations into one large organization. ComplexityOrganizations are social entities which contain a group ofresources, categorized as human and structural capital,coordinated and managed by several level of managers,covers several processes and activities to perform certaingoals. Complexity here is the presence of several independententities, agents and objects. Also organizations face severalsets of difficulties such as diversity inside and outsideorganizations. Beside that nowadays most organizations facethe problem of ambiguity. Several studies, survey results,statistics, facts, and measurements become less reliable due touncertainty. we think that the type and size of an organizationcan affect overall methodologies and policies used to developorganizations’ vision and tactics. RestructuringRestructuring means reorganizing operational, legal, andfunctional structure of companies. Restructuring aims atmaking the organization works successfully, professionally,and to increase profits. Beside that restructuring aims atimproving, enhancing and expanding organizations’ position.Organizations have to hire novel decision makers to helporganizations restructure. Restructuring can’t be ignored6