Importance Of Building Knowledge Capital For Competitive Advantage

Significance of knowledge capital in gaining sustainable competitive advantage

Write an essay of 1500 words outlining the importance of building knowledge capital in order to gain competitive advantage.It explores how knowledge resources can be grown in order to gain sustainable competitive advantage. How they pertain to future managers, then compare and contrast these insights

This essay will compare and contrast the insights associated with knowledge management and holistic theory of knowledge in adult learning. According to the author Lubit (2001) the inputs to sustainable competitive advantage are implicit knowledge and the knowledge management (LUBIT, 2001). He explored how organizations can best develop their data resources to construct a competitive advantage along with sustainable competitive advantage. His research has also illustrated the significance of knowledge building to obtain competitive advantage. He also mentioned that how the knowledge sources can be developed to acquire sustainable competitive advantage. The point of his argument is that continuous competitive advantage can only be accomplished by promoting implicit knowledge, which is a compilation of experiences, practices, individuals’ or group experiences in an organization. He has mentioned that to obtain tenable competitive advantage organizations should have the capability to develop innovative ideas and cultivate the type of knowledge which cannot be simply copied by the competitors. The implicit knowledge can be used in common with others in an organization in different ways, for instance obtaining mentors’ guidance, having immense connections of people with equal interests and learning and recording from past works (Awad and Ghaziri, 2004). Better management of implicit knowledge can be obtained by having a culture that involved knowledge sharing and by supporting personnel to speak out and even oppose with superiors. The author has also enquired whether the tacit knowledge and knowledge management is linked with the workplace experience. He has enquired whether workplace relies simply on precise knowledge in terms of guidelines and procedure to compete in the industry; whether the administrative center have mentors who guide workers and assist them initiate new innovations and ideas; whether an appropriate mechanism is present to direct implicit knowledge throughout the organization and whether the workers are compensated for innovation and brainstorming and whether the staff are confronted when they oppose the suggestions of the superiors. The author has mentioned that having complicated knowledge management department is of utmost importance (Dubey, Goel and Sahu, 2013). Innovative technologies show considerable challenges but can also generate overload of information. Including effective systems to discover specialists and acquire helpful knowledge are important to efficient knowledge management. Particularly trained managers associated with knowledge management in association with the experts within an offered field are required to assist catalogue, record and guide knowledge in data banks in a mode that makes the process readily available to those individuals who can get profit from it. Knowledge librarians can assist individuals find data they require that is stored within the databases or maintained by the individual somewhere else within the firm. The knowledge map creation can assist challenges to search experts on the particular subject of interest (Thompson, Jensen and DeTienne, 2009).

Comparison and contrast of knowledge management and holistic theory of knowledge in adult learning

The author has mentioned that it is not only important to support individual to record knowledge and search for recorded knowledge. Individual should catalogue knowledge in a manner which makes the thing possible for those people who search for instruction to be proficient to locate the data gathered in databases and also to recognize the specialists who have that information, expertise and ideas they search for. The integration of innovative knowledge ad practices should be rewarded and measured and maintained by the civilization and identified by the endorsement decisions (Dubey, Goel and Sahu, 2013). With no such attention to the integration of knowledge, individuals within the organization are probable to learn instruction but after that fail to alter their behavior in advantageous ways. The cultural development, human resources and organizational design promoting the knowledge application and sharing is considered as a complicated endeavor. However, the rewards in the context of constructing a continuing competitive benefit are also terrifying. The efforts of knowledge management of most of the companies have restricted effectiveness. Mostly organizations too often establish electronic knowledge transfer means and storage is considered as the initiation and end of an organization’s effort to management of knowledge. Consequently, individual who go ahead of the fundamental stages and improve the organizational capabilities and culture required for promoting exceptional management of knowledge will include a tenable competitive advantage.

For tenable knowledge to become a central proficiency for an organization and mot merely the knowledge of a little group of specialists, organizations should make attempts to extend the knowledge. The managers should be taught the way to guide those individuals who they supervise and should be inspired to do the same by the organization’s measurement, culture, reward system and role modeling and statements of higher management. Companies can further promote the tacit knowledge transfer by assigning resources to improve learning histories (Awad and Ghaziri, 2004). The designing of the work groups also influences knowledge transfer. Working in groups that have swift access to the subject matter specialists could be very cooperative in transferring both tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge. Being a part of an organization this article will definitely help. Initially it has been seen that the organizations offer explicit knowledge only during first few months of joining, but tacit knowledge within such situations can merely be obtained by being practical. The fresher should not hide or recoil from enquiring queries from the trainer and the seniors of the organization. As soon as the fresher starts getting experiences they increase their contacts and networks, make contacts with other members of other departments and commonly take few months to add up of whole series of operations being performed within the company. The gradual experience and networking in an organization assist an individual to construct a reputation of being an expertise in managing difficult grievances.

On the other hand, the article by Yang (2003) stated a holistic Theory of Knowledge and adult learning (Yang, 2003). This article illustrates a holistic knowledge based theory and adult learning. The theory speculates that knowledge comprises three invisible aspects and each and every aspect comprises three layers, these are foundation, orientation and manifestation. The holistic theory necessitates a dialectical point of view regarding the active associations among these three factors to understand adult learning in a better way. The author’s point is that the areas of adult learning, facilitating learning for organizations and individuals and human resource development learning is one of the main role for the human resource development personnel. Yang has reviewed already existing literature and nicely compared with each other on the holistic theory of knowledge and adult learning. He has made a theoretical framework of learning and knowledge to support the related concepts and characterized the three knowledge aspects (Thompson, Jensen and DeTienne, 2009). He has also illustrated the complexities associated with these three knowledge aspects; also linked learning as active interactions among the knowledge aspects. Yang’s illustration helped individuals of organizations to correlate with their respective personal lives. His illustration focused on obtaining knowledge from experienced based learning. It is said that knowledge is solely derived from experience and the relationship between the knowledge and experience are optional or astrict in nature. It is also mentioned that the HR managers should support the staff to understand the fundamental cause of a problem and find out solutions which should have a long term effect. It is the HR managers’ responsibility to understand the importance of theorization and also make the concept understandable to the employee at the organizational and group level in order to explore the efficient ways of organizational learning and knowledge management.

So to conclude, it needs to be mentioned that the two pro-forma are based on the two selected articles one on organizational dynamics and the other one on human resource development. Both have included the importance of knowledge, experience and knowledge management which are the essential part of an organization to successfully run in today’s market. Both the articles have intended to help the HR managers or the practitioners so that they can apply the awareness from the articles to develop organizational learning or lead to organizational change. The different is that two papers have been structured in two different perceptions one based on experience based learning and the other structured the holistic theory of knowledge and adult learning. It is particularly highlighted that learning is the key concept in the area of human resource development, adult education and also facilitating learning for organizations and individuals is the main function for the human resource management personnel. One article mentions the importance of theorization that needs to be implemented and followed for organizational development and the other article mentions the importance of tacit knowledge and knowledge management. The article by Yang has illustrated each and individual factors that are associated with knowledge and proper criteria of building theories. And the article by Lubit has mentioned the importance of knowledge management within an organization. This essay has systematically compared and contrasted the insights associated with knowledge management and holistic theory of knowledge in adult learning.

References

Awad, E. and Ghaziri, H. (2004). Knowledge management. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall.

Dubey, A., Goel, G. and Sahu, G. (2013). Effective implementation of competitive advantage and sustainable competitive advantage: a conceptual model. IJBIR, 7(5), p.519.

LUBIT, R. (2001). Tacit Knowledge and Knowledge Management: The Keys to Sustainable Competitive Advantage. Organizational Dynamics, 29(4), pp.164–178.

Thompson, M., Jensen, R. and DeTienne, K. (2009). Engaging embedded information. Competitiveness Review, 19(4), pp.323-341.

Yang, B. (2003). Toward a Holistic Theory of Knowledge and Adult Learning. Human Resource Development Review, 2(2), pp.106-129.