Defining knowledge management in the pandemic recovery context
This article proposes an updated definition for knowledge management as companies recover from the pandemic and build resilience
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In hybrid-working models, knowledge is a driver of a more cohesive work environment as we recover from the pandemic. The origin of knowledge is thought to have been created by Peter Senge at the Academy of Management around 1997.
In his Harvard Business Review article Communities of Leaders and Learners, Senge highlighted the importance of learning. Shortly after Senge, Peter Drucker in his The Futurist article The Future That Has Already Happened, made a comment that reverberated among scholars and practitioners.
Drucker posited that “the productivity of knowledge and knowledge workers will not be the only competitive factor in the world economy”.
“It is, however, likely to become the decisive factor, at least for most industries in the developed countries,” Drucker noted.
While the origin is genuinely unknown, we feel that these two prominent scholars created a snowball effect which linked The Learning Organization with the Knowledge Worker, that created what we call knowledge management today.
Now in the post-pandemic era, we need a more comprehensive definition of knowledge management that both scholars and practitioners can agree upon because knowledge management is a multidisciplinary discipline.
This article attempts to conceptualize the two perspectives of knowledge management, technology and processes, to present a more comprehensive definition for it in a post-pandemic recovery. We may need a more modernized, clear understanding of the concept of knowledge management that synthesizes and extrapolates prior definitions of knowledge management.
Our goal is to present a pertinent definition that can help organizations prosper with innovative and creative solutions to current and future problems that may arise.
Technological perspective
While knowledge management is progressive and all-inclusive, it has incorporated the very fiber of organizations today and this can be found in their technology. The technological perspective represents a vital part of knowledge management as an organizing organizational communication.
A prominent view of the technology perspective can be found in the MIS Quarterly, which highlights the work of the scholars that are well-known in the Academy of Management. The recent MIS Quarterly article Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues provides insight that plays a crucial role in an organization’s connections across the organization chart.
Related podcast: Improving knowledge work
These prominent scholars’ contribution to the literature is vital for sharing knowledge, creating memory and disseminating information as a central component to the effectiveness and usefulness of knowledge management.
Process perspective
Everyone would agree that the post-pandemic recovery is a process. With any process, finding the best way to manage new knowledge to facilitate day-to-day operations from the office coupled with remote locations has been key to organizational success.
Read PEX Network’s report: Mastering change in hybrid-working models
Thus, the process perspective of knowledge management applies to the practice of operational risk management and how it is managed. Embodying new knowledge into day-to-day operations has always been pertinent to success.
When the pandemic first began, disseminating the knowledge effectively was immediately improved upon so that its use could be directly applied to the operational process. Using knowledge quickly, adequately and appropriately can lead to resilience and protects organizations from an operations-risk-management perspective.
Definition of knowledge management
Based on these two perspectives, we provide a comprehensive definition of knowledge management:
“Knowledge management is an ongoing effort to improve organizational communication, build stronger technological and electronic networks, to constantly update and replenish knowledge as it exists in real-time, and to disseminate the most recent knowledge to the right people at the right time so that knowledge encourages individuals, stakeholders and organizations to strive to continuously improve.”
This article highlights the impact of the new corporate mind-set on knowledge management. Since it is so crucial for the post-pandemic recovery, embracing it as a corporate contingency can help organizations become more resilient.
The post-pandemic recovery is still vibrant and company executives will continue to succeed with the viable compilation of knowledge management efforts. Leaders now need to continue to foster effective knowledge management practices.
This is not a time to let our guards down as leaders of the corporate world. We must embrace the post-pandemic recovery and build solid platforms to improve knowledge management initiatives and keep employees satisfied, equitable and engaged.
References
Alavi, M., & Leidner, D.E. (2001). Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues. MIS Quarterly, 25(1), 107-136.
Drucker, P. (1998). The future that has already happened. The Futurist, 32(8), 16-18.
Senge, P.M. (1997). Communities of leaders and learners. Harvard Business Review, 75(5), 30-32.
