Knowledge Management Defined

Beccerra Fernandez, Gonzalez and Shaberwal define knowledge management as 'Performing the activities involved in discovering, capturing, sharing and applying knowledge so as to enhance, in a cost effective fashion the impact of knowledge on the unit's goal achievement'
The book also claims that there is no general agreement on a definition for knowledge management.


However according to Jashapara, A. in his book 'Knowledge Management- An Integrated Approach'defines KM as 'The effective learning process associated with exploration, exploitation and sharing of human knowledge (tacit and explicit) that use appropriate technology and cultural environments to enhance an organization's intellectual capital and performance'

But analyzing the fundamental attributes of the two words, 'Knowledge' and 'Management' KM can also be defined as,

"The process of planning, organizing and controlling explicit and tacit knowledge that reside in various knowledge resources, with the use of activities involved in knowledge discovery, capture, sharing and applying, in order to minimize the knowledge loss in an organization and improve its performance"

As aforementioned this definition was derived by understanding the basics of the two words;

Knowledge- can be introduced in two types:

• Tacit- Knowledge that resides in individuals' mind.
• Explicit- Knowledge that resides in documents, artifacts, manuals etc

Management- Planning, organizing and controlling resources in order to perform a set of tasks and achieve the goal.

Therefore, in terms of managing knowledge, a set of  tasks needs to be performed:

• Knowledge Discovery- discovering new knowledge.
• Knowledge Capturing- Storing/ capturing discovered knowledge.
• Knowledge Sharing- Exchanging the knowledge with other entities.
• Knowledge Applying- Applying the gathered knowledge to perform activities.

Finally, by performing these tasks KM strives to achieve a goal: 

• Minimize the loss of knowledge resources in an organization due to employee retirement and leaving the organization and
• Improve organizational performance.