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Hello friends, Let us discuss something on the lines of knowledge management which is very much the next step after training & development. During the past several years, there has been a marked shift from goods based production to high skill, high technology and service based growth in developed as well as some developing countries and central to the success of such knowledge based economies is the knowledge in the form of complex problem solving, technological innovation, creative exploitation of new markets and the development of new products or service. Some of the broad trends that are playing a significant role in this current development of knowledge are: -
- The globalization of the economy, which is putting a terrific pressure on the firms for, increased adaptability, innovation and process speed. - The awareness of the value of specialized knowledge in coping with the pressure of globalization. - The awareness of knowledge as a distinct factor of production. - Cheap networked computing which at last has given us a tool for working with and learning from each other. As Peter Drucker says, "knowledge is the only meaningful resource today." In fact there is no sustainable advantage other than what a firm knows, how it can utilize what it knows and how fast it can learn something new. And knowledge in this new meaning is knowledge as a utility, knowledge as mean to obtain social and economic results.
During the last few decades the amount of information in science and technology and other fields has shown an exponential growth. Besides the amount of information the opportunities for accessing the information has dramatically increased with the onset of Internet revolution. While the quantity of knowledge and information is steadily increasing, only a very small share of available information is subject to issues like organisation and retrieval of information, which is still a big question mark.
Contrary to the growth of the amount of available information, the capacities of information processing have not developed in manner that would enable the individual information seeker to cope with the complexity of the search of relevant information. This mismatch in availability of information in capacity of processing has lad to a information overload which could ultimately result in problem like increased expenses in the search for information or missing some relevant information leading to loss of business opportunities or in the worst case wrong decision.
Besides finding the right information, the information seeker may encounter difficulties concerning the judgement of the quality of the information as well as the credibility of the source. These incongruities between the supply and demand for information pose the need for coordination between the players i.e. information sources and information seekers in the market of information. The B-schools can and should serve as one of such information intermediaries for the management students and also the practicing managers to start with.
The following course of actions can be suggested to the management institutes in achieving this objective:
- Management institutes should increasingly subscribe to books and journals in electronic/digital media. For example IMT library is having offline databases such as Vans electronic library, VANS.COM, Prowess, Capitaline ole, Capital Stock etc and is shortly going to have the full text database which covers a large number of full text journals in the areas of IT and Management on internet as well as on CD-ROMS. - All the faculty members and the students of the institute should have easy access to this electronic library. - The institutes should have there own websites where brief reviews of important current articles and books prepared by the faculties of the relevant subjects are regularly put. The faculties may be encouraged to put their classroom teaching materials in the electronic media, which can be put in the web site. Infact, IMT has recently started a management course on Internet so as to pioneer the concept of virtual B-school in the country. - Important developments and trends in the different industries- in terms of technology market and global opportunities may be presented in the site. Management institutes can collaborate with individual companies and industry associations in preparing the required brief. - The web sites should be made accessible not just to the students and alumni of the institute but the outside world as well and if these websites, which would speak for the quality of the institute are made interactive and rich with relevant information for the students and practicing managers, they can also attract commercial advertisements
The B-schools in India have a very important role to play in this transformation and they can do well by sharing their resources in an effective manner. Also, the collaboration with industry would further enhance the quality and relevance of the information and consequently the knowledge to be derived from this information by the info-seekers - Adapted from Knowledge Management through Internet (The role of B-schools) by Prof. A.K Biswas, Professor - Marketing Waiting for more views on KM. Regards, sabi
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