Improving application of knowledge management systems in organizations: case of Nairobi city water and sewerage Company
Abstract
Knowledge is an asset to any organization and has become a vital resource to organizations and
hence a growing need for knowledge management (KM). Knowledge is described as information
provided in context to produce an actionable understanding; it is what makes an organization take
action or provides the ability to take action.
Knowledge is classified as either tacit or explicit. Tacit knowledge exists in the minds of people
and is very difficult to manage while explicit knowledge is the documented information, presented
in the form of journals, books, policy manuals, and processes among others.
Research has noted that capturing, storing and utilizing both tacit and explicit knowledge is critical
to an organization’s success in the fast changing market place. If organizations don’t manage
knowledge, we will lose a lot in terms of productivity trying to reinvent the wheel when there are
changes.
This research demonstrates how the development of a knowledge management system can be
developed and used in organizations, using a case organization. The KM system prototype
developed and presented in this research project is for managing both tacit and explicit knowledge.
The knowledge management system enables capturing of tacit knowledge through the use of
discussion forums and articles onto a database which the employees can search to retrieve stored
posts. From the data collected, the prototyped solution showed that if adopted and developed
further, knowledge capture, storage, dissemination and sharing in organizations would be more
efficient and would increase the productivity of employees.
Publisher
University of Nairobi
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United StatesUsage Rights
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/Collections
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