Knowledge Management Definition (Reply back to Prof. Mark Woodman comments)

This blog is a reply to the comments given by Mr. Mark Woodman and Samir Sheikh to my blog under the topic name Knowledge Management Definition.

If I go back to the date when we discussed this topic (knowledge management definition) in our class I had two objections on existing definitions of knowledge management definitions. One of the objection was there is no generic definition of knowledge management as if not all of them but most of them talk about the knowledge management only on an organisation level which in my point of view is not right and this was the reason I come up with a generic definition which can be fit in any scenario.

I truly agree with professor Mark comments that I haven’t described the word “entity” which I have used in my definition.

Today in this blog first I would like to high light my views about the generic definition and also the word entity and then I will give the organisation level definition of knowledge Management.

First of all in my view, a definition is something which fits in all the scenarios rather than a specific one so this was the reason I didn’t stick only to the organisation level definition but tried to give a generic definition.

Secondly, the word entity which I have used in my definition means anything from this world (materialistic or non materialistic) has some characteristics associated with it. For example stars, galaxies, oceans, humans, animals etc so whatever you name, it has characteristics associated with it and these characteristic is some how a knowledge for someone. It may not necessarily be knowledge to some of us but it definitely has knowledge associated with it, that’s why I used a general word “entity” to describe it.

Now I come to my actual point in which I will give an organisation level definition of Knowledge Management which will be as follow

“Knowledge Management is the process of Knowledge Creation or refining the existing knowledge, Filtration, Storage and Dissemination of knowledge in an organisation.”

The only difference between the previous and this definition is, I have replaced the last part (any single entity of this universe) with knowledge in an organisation.

So the same definition can be generic only by changing one word “entity” with organisation.

Example:
In my organisation (Hotel) we encourage our guests to leave their comments (guest comments) to improve our services and quality, which they drop into the guest comments box which is located at reception.
Asking guests to enter the comments is knowledge creation and by using that knowledge; management refines/filter the knowledge provided by guests and use that refined/filtered knowledge to improve the quality of the services provided by my company. The management of my hotel input that filtered information in a form of a report which is storage of the knowledge and then that report is send to the head office. The head office examines that report closely and measures the necessary steps to prevent the common problems occurring in other branches which guests have commented.
The head office sends a memo to all the branches to adopt certain procedures to avoid the same or relevant problems which is dissemination.