2.  An attempt by an organization to explicitly
manage and control the knowledge of its
workforce for reuse of knowledge and
thereby creating value.

3.  Explicit: Objective, technical, formal,
structured and easy to codify (to document
or systematically record).Examples:
Knowledge gathered from formal education,
training or research.
 Tacit: Subjective (personal) and experiential
knowledge gathered over time and difficult
to codify. Examples: Understanding,
interpretations, insights, trade secrets,
know-how, wisdom etc

4.  Codification: Based around the use of IT systems
where people codify their own knowledge and use
the knowledge repository to search for any
knowledge they do not possess. It is mainly aimed at
extracting explicit knowledge of the workforce.
 Personalization: Based on sharing of tacit knowledge
through meetings, communications in teams, and in
informal social events.
 Hybrid: Capturing and sharing both explicit and tacit
knowledge
 Example: Tata Steel: Project Knowledge Manthan
addressed the explicit knowledge sharing and project
MASS aimed at tacit knowledge from grass root to top
management through brainstorming.

5.  People don’t have to spend as much time looking for
answers.
 Everyone knows in the organization as to who knows
what; help is handy during crisis.
 Expertise of the workforce can be better utilized
without looking for outside consultancy
 Share best practices within the organization
 Better decision making with low costs
 Each worker creates prospects for career growth
once his knowledge base is made public. A world wide
exposure of his talents is made through IT based
knowledge repository.
 A worker can secure right to his intellectual property
if his skills and approaches are original and novel. IPR
is possible only when he goes public with his
innovations.

6.  Psychological:
People generally are unwilling to share
knowledge as it is assumed that knowledge is
Power and sharing it may mean “giving
away” one’s value and indispensability in the
oganisation.

7. Organisational:
 Inter departmental rivalry
 Loss of autonomy felt by supervisors due to greater levels of
standardization of work procedures
 Lack of interpersonal trust (between employer and employees
and between employees) Workers fear that their labour will be
wasted/ stolen if organization does not protect his right over that
knowledge.
 Nature of employment relationship: permanent workers are less
resistant to share knowledge.
 Lack of leadership examples( people in leadership positions do
not actively share knowledge even if they champion the idea of
KM)
 Lack of facilitating environment: Mechanism to share knowledge
may not be user-friendly;
 If supervisors do not encourage knowledge sharing; lack of
reward and recognition for steps taken to share and access
knowledge.

8.  Training and Development
 Performance Appraisal
 Pay and Reward

9.  Resource: Unlimited and available, but
difficult to extract
 More you spend, more it grows, yet difficult to
convince people
 Knowledge is power, still we expect people to
share it with others.
 Improves productivity, but still we find difficult
to spare sometime
 Benefits of KM are difficult to quantify, but
return on investment is warranted.
 Meant to be shared at the same time has to be
protected (IPR)


10.  Not only Education and research sector,
corporate houses today realize that KM
actually increases revenue in the long run
through sharing of best practices and reuse
of knowledge and experience by the
workforce.
 Companies see KM as a means of securing
competitive advantage and thus, KM is
regarded as an important HRM practice.