Human Resource Management and Knowledge Management: Revisiting Challenges of Integration Dr
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IJMBS VOL . 1, ISSUE 2, JUNE 2011 ISSN : 2330-9519 (Online) | ISSN : 2231-2463 (Print) Human Resource Management and Knowledge Management: Revisiting Challenges of Integration Dr. Sumi Jha National Institute of Industrial Engineering, Mumbai, India Abstract organizations and rapid change. This in turn requires drastic Organisations are facing ever-increasing challenges, brought on change within HRM to respond to the changing demands of the by marketplace pressures or the nature of the workplace. Many knowledge economy. Knowledge development and utilization organisations are now looking to knowledge management (KM) can be facilitated by human resource practice. At the individual to address these challenges. Such initiatives are often started level increased delegation of responsibility and freedom for with the development of a knowledge management strategy. To creativity may better allow for discovery and utilization of local be successful, a KM strategy must do more than just outline high- and dispersed knowledge in the organization. Although KM level goals such as ‘become a knowledge-enabled organisation’. is typically defined to be the holistic combination of measure Instead, the strategy must identify the key needs and issues within for managing people, processes and technology, the explicit the organisation, and provide a framework for addressing these. integration of human resource management into KM initiatives The objective of this paper is to study how human resources is seldom examined. This paper investigates several steps management (HRM) practices and employees' knowledge taken by HRM for enhancing capturing and utilizing knowledge influence the development of strategies and, by extension, a firm's within the firm. Empirical evidences confirm that KM and HRM performance. The paper has also identified various studies which practices are complementary to each other. This paper first have tried to portray the importance of HR practices in strategy understands the concept of knowledge management and then building, giving emphasis on knowledge creation and steps of links it with the Human resource management to understand integration of both. the importance of integration of both the domain for the long term strategy of organisation. Keywords Human Resource Management, Knowledge Management, II. Knowledge Management Strategy, Innovation Knowledge management is a managerial philosophy, which is perceivable in the practices of different organizations. I. Introduction Knowledge management is not an ultimate tool that solves We can define knowledge management as the discipline that all information and knowledge creation problem. However, promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, utilizing knowledge management, better performance can retrieving, sharing, and evaluating an enterprise’s information be achieved by interaction between individuals or groups. assets. These information assets may include databases, Moreover to be efficient, knowledge management requires documents, policies, and procedures as well as un-captured, storage for information and knowledge, which is open to tacit expertise and experience resident in individual workers. organization member for searching critical information, Knowledge is increasingly claimed to be key critical resource knowledge or the best practices. Thus KM is the learned and source of competitive advantage in the modern global method for knowledge sharing and interaction and furthermore, economy, especially with the rise of service sector economy. KM clarifies which way to operate. Knowledge management The growth in the number of global workers, the increasing should be considered an organizational process, which is used rapid flow of global information and the growing recognition of to achieve better performance due to effective knowledge the importance of intellectual capital and intellectual property sharing and organizational learning, recognizing and developing rights. Knowledge with its intangible aspects is becoming a competencies, and gaining from individually different skills and definite characteristic of economic activities, as opposed to knowledge. tangibles such as goods, services or production processes. Table 1: Serban, A. M. and Luan, J., (2002), overview of Coordination of intangible aspects may contribute to the knowledge management, new direction for institutional efficiency of the creation and exploitation of knowledge. The research, 113, 5-16 KM can be presented as a competent team where a tacit Variables Explicit Tacit knowledge organizational competence improves the productivity through Knowledge selecting and allocating competent people. (Eliasson, 2000). Features Codified Personal Knowledge itself is not of any value to an organization unless Stored Context specific these contextual aspects are clearly understood. Much of the knowledge, both tacit and explicit remains largely untapped Transferable Difficult to formulate in most organizations. Without the thorough understanding Easily Difficult to capture, of the context, it will not be possible for HRM or KM to expressed and communicate, share support the development of management and leadership shared capabilities to support innovation and creativity. Much work Sources Manuals, Informal business in HRM has focused on identifying facilitators and inhibitors of policies, process and innovation. Additionally, interdisciplinary team-work, regrouping procedures communication, Personal employees with different characteristics, knowledge expertise data base and experiences, Historical and skills, may be conducive to innovation. The rise of the reports understandings knowledge economy has seen a proliferation of information and communication technologies, coupled with greater In developing a general framework for understanding KM, we organizational complexity, the growth of virtual and global refer to perhaps the most influential framework for knowledge 56 INTERNAT I ONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGE M ENT & BUS I NESS STUD I ES www.ijmbs.com ISSN : 2330-9519 (Online) | ISSN : 2231-2463 (Print) IJMBS VOL . 1, ISSUE 2, JUNE 2011 creation developed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) in their Do we reward knowledge sharing? studies of knowledge creation and use in Japanese companies. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995, p.8) distinguish between two III. Knowledge Management and Human Resource types of knowledge, explicit and tacit. Tacit knowledge is Management basically experiential, whilst explicit knowledge is expressed, In terms of the HRM function, the rise of the so-called knowledge and often seen as transferable in one way or another; it includes economy has had a major impact, with a considerable shift from cognitive and technical elements. Cognitive elements operate HRM as a bureaucratic ‘personnel management’ operation through mental models, working worldviews that develop to the development of discrete HRM functions over the past through the creation and manipulation of mental analogies. few decades. This has been accompanied by the integration Mental models (like schemata, paradigms, perspectives, of these functions to support competitive advantage and a beliefs and viewpoints), according to Nonaka and Takeuchi, more strategic thrust. It has been suggested that one way for help individuals perceive and define their world. The technical HRM to reinvent itself is through its contribution to effective element of tacit knowledge includes concrete know-how, crafts, linkages between human capital management and knowledge and skills. Explicit knowledge is about past events or objects management within organizations (Gloet, 2004). The rapid “there and then”, and is seen to be created sequentially by growth of technology has led to an economy where competitive “digital” activity that is theory progressive. advantage is increasingly based on the successful application Serban and Luan (2002) cited 5 reasons for interest, emergence of knowledge (Lengnick-Hall & Lengnick-Hall, 2003). Traditional and growth in the field of KM a) information overload and HRM functioned under narrow operational boundaries; in Chaos b) information congession c) information and skill the knowledge economy the role of HRM needs to expand, segmentation and speculation d) workforce mobility and looking both within and outside the organization. The traditional turnover e) competition. focus on managing people has been broadened to managing Hansen, Mors and Lovas (2005) examined the three phases organizational capabilities, managing relationships and of knowledge sharing- deciding to seek knowledge, searching managing learning and knowledge (Ulrich, 1997; Lengnick- for knowledge and transferring knowledge- on the part of Hall & Lengnick-Hall, 2003). The emphasis on discrete HRM human assets in various social settings. There are a number practices is also broadening to a focus on developing themes of common situations that are widely recognised as benefiting and creating environments conducive to learning, as well as to from knowledge management approaches. While they are not the acquisition, sharing and dissemination of knowledge within the only issues that can be tackled with KM techniques, it organizations. A revitalization of the HRM function to respond is useful to explore a number of these situations in order to to the demands of the knowledge economy and to develop provide a context for the development of a KM strategy. Beyond linkages with KM requires major changes across four key areas: these typical situations, each organisation will have unique