Knowledge Management

Knowledge management (KM) plays a dynamic role in the success an organization, particularly through effective planning, organizing, monitoring and coordinating the KM assets related to intellectual capital. Thus, KM could enrich knowledge sharing and overall performance (Hossain et al., 2013). Higher education institutions (HEIs) are considered to be knowledge-intensive organizations (Howell and Annansingh, 2013; Ramachandran et al., 2013) and knowledge-creating institutions, and they are also considered to be in the knowledge business (Rowley, 2000). They create new knowledge through research, disseminate knowledge through teaching and learning, research and development, communication, dissemination of science, and create jobs through spin-offs (Alexandropoulou et al., 2009; Fullwood et al., 2013). In a knowledge economy, the knowledge management is recognized as one of the determining factors for innovation and competitive advantage (Darroch, 2005; Dasgupta and Gupta, 2009).

There is evidence that KM could be important in supporting in teaching and research activities; however, there is also evidence that the approaches adopted are passive and inconsistent (Donate and Canales, 2012). Cranfield and Taylor (2008) suggested that the need to develop a common understanding of KM before they can begin to see the benefits on an organizational-wide level. However, research into KM in universities is limited (Alexandropoulou et al., 2009; Fullwood et al., 2013), and such research, as has been conducted, focuses either on specific aspects of the knowledge process, such as the individualistic nature of research and loyalty to discipline (Tippins, 2003), or on the specific elements of KM, such as knowledge sharing amongst academics (Cheng et al., 2009; Fullwood et al., 2013). Some studies have examined obstacles to KM in the areas of knowledge creation (Fullwood et al., 2013; Ramachandran et al., 2013). However, most of this research has been conducted in countries with mature higher education systems; furthermore, the development is viewed as key to the economic, social and cultural development.

Kidwell et al. (2000) supported the notion for suitable places to apply KM practices to support functional and operational processes. It is therefore not surprising to insist there is a need for KM in the education sector (Sallis and Jones, 2002). This is because of the posited to profit greatly from the development and application of certain KM mechanisms that assist in identifying not only what is known, but also what must be known, similar to business organizations (Tippins, 2003). Hence, KM practices need to be effective as society moves from the industrial to the knowledge age to improve teaching and learning, and as well to provide a strong knowledge base for research practices and strategies. Looking back at the work of Davenport and Prusak (1998), knowledge is defined as coming from one’s experiences, values, contextual information and expert insight, which then provides the basis for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. KM can be seen as the way that people create, transfer and adopt knowledge resources at different levels of interrelationships or networks. The work by Phelps et al. (2012) identified those network levels to be interpersonal, intra-organizational and intra-organizational. Within a construction organization, KM is a set of tools and practices developed and implemented to gather, store, share, protect and make project-related experience and training available for use.

Knowledge management has many meanings within a variety of areas. Girard and Girard (2015) found that KM has been defined differently by various authors in different disciplines. This also highlights the fact that within each context, people perceive and use the term differently, and it is appropriate to define KM within the context of HEIs. One of the definitions captured by Levinson (2007) is that KM is the process through which organizations generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based asset. Concerning knowledge as an asset, Frost (2010) defined KM as the systematic management of an organization's knowledge assets for the purpose of creating value to meet organizational objectives at the operational, tactical and strategic levels.

The definition of KM in the literature is challenging due to numerous conceptual origins of this study field. For instance, organizational knowledge includes personnel known as subject matter experts and information stored in devices (Richey et al., 2010). A broader concept of knowledge was developed, which includes both explicit aspects, such as language and documentation, and tacit aspects, such as experience and skills (Nonaka, 1991). However, the obvious definition of knowledge is that organizational knowledge creation theory defined knowledge as three complementary elements. First, knowledge is reasonable true belief. Literature justifies the truthfulness of their beliefs based on their communication with the world. Second, knowledge is the experience that was obtained from performance and knowledge, allowing individuals to describe, arrange, shape and learn to solve a task or problem. Third, knowledge is situated on a continuum from explicit to tacit knowledge (Nonaka and Von Krogh, 2009). There are also challenges in the definition of KM due to the various conceptual understanding of knowledge and how organizations describe their management. KM can be a systematic way of administering a valuable resource through the promotion of an incorporated approach used in the identification, capturing, organizing, structuring, sharing, retrieving, as well as evaluating the knowledge assets of a given enterprise (Kim and Ju, 2008).

In addition, KM involves the acquisition, storage, diffusion as well as the implementation of tacit knowledge in addition to tacit knowledge, both within and out of the boundaries of the organization in a way that is aimed at making the organization attain corporate objectives with highly efficient means (Magnier-Watanabe and Senoo, 2008). Thus, the KM can be defined as the process of effectively managing both the tacit knowledge and the explicit knowledge, within the organization so as to enhance organizational competitive advantages. Furthermore, it could form an environment within the organization that enables to create, transfer and share knowledge, which leads to managing knowledge effectively (Bratianu, 2011). However, one obvious definition of KM is that an organization has the ability to establish a set of activities or procedures that may constantly create an environment within an organization that assists in the creation, transfer and sharing of knowledge (Alex et al., 2017; Akhavan et al., 2013; Bratianu, 2011). According to Sharimilah Devi et al. (2008), for organizations to remain competitive resilient, they must effectively and efficiently create, capture, organize, share and apply organizational knowledge and expertise. Therefore, it is essential for organizations to apply KM to achieve competitive benefits (Choi and Lee, 2003). However, many organizations failed in applying KM because effective implementation requires eliminating KM obstacles (Huang and Lai, 2014).

Knowledge management is essential to organizations dynamics. A key aspect is to create KM awareness, skills development, career development and strategies to initiate the creation, sharing and transfer of knowledge within the organization. For this reason, the need to encourage an open institutional culture with incentives to promote the integration of individuals knowledge, skills, and experiences into institutional knowledge and recognize the many strengths of knowledge utilization formally and informally, and technology to support KM activities. Social relations, networking and interaction are some of the elements of KM practices, the need to learn new knowledge is to enhance employees continuous learning and development.