Discuss about the Knowledge Management In E-Commerce.
Knowledge Management refers to the process of making the right knowledge available for all. It needs to be mentioned that in today’s world, knowledge management is given utmost importance at the time of business decision-making (Hislop, 2013). Different types of business activities are done with the help of knowledge managemnment like data storage, data retrieval system, analysis of business data, application of different kinds of business designs and many others. Thus, it can be said that there is a significant importance of knowledge management in the business organizations. On the other hand, twenty-first centuries has seen the progress and expansion of e-commerce for different kinds of business industries like retail business industries and others. In today’s business environment, e-commence plays an integral part in breaking down the geographical barrier from the business. The use of e-commerce is helping the business organizations in different kinds of ways. Significant connection can be seen between knowledge management and e-commerce as without the help of effective knowledge, it is not possible to access various aspects of e-commerce (Holsapple, 2013). Thus, it can be said that both the aspects of knowledge management and e-commerce are crucial in the business organizations.
In today’s business organizations, the effective management of knowledge has significant importance. In order to gain necessary competitive advantage, it is necessary for the business organizations to create and diffuse knowledge. At the time of discussing about knowledge management, it is necessary to discuss about certain specific characteristics of knowledge. They are: the use of knowledge does not consume knowledge; at the time of transferring knowledge, there is not any lost of knowledge; the nature of knowledge is abundant, the ability to use knowledge is considered as scare; at the end of the day, much of the valuable knowledge of the companies walk out from the door (Liebowitz & Frank, 2016). These are the major characteristics of knowledge. Some specific objectives are there behind the use of knowledge management in the business organizations as the use of knowledge management helps in the achievement of these objectives. The first objective is facilitating in the processing of smooth business transactions. The second objective is minimizing the loss of corporate memory due to various reasons like retirements, attrition and many others. The third major objective of the use of knowledge management is the identification of critical resources and critical areas of knowledge in the business organizations. The fourth objective is to develop tools for the companies so that potential loss of intellectual capital can be prevented. These are the major objectives of knowledge management (Holtshouse, 2013).
One of the major aspects is that in the business organizations, the management of knowledge leads to the creation of knowledge in the business organizations. It is the concern of many of the organizations managers that how to distribute knowledge among the members and employees of the companies. Another major aspect is how to capture the organizational knowledge after distributing them among all the employees and members of the companies. It can be seen that different types of business organizations use different approaches in order to distribute and capture knowledge in the companies. It can be seen that most of the companies use the knowledge in order to develop and address critical performance of the business organizations (Lin, Ma & Zhou, 2012). It can be seen that most of the business organizations have been able to create a specific environment that is full of knowledge and this process helps the business organizations in the process of decision-making. On the other hand, it has been seen that the adoption and use of various digital platforms has made it easier for the organizational managers for the capturing of knowledge (Fuller, 2012).
Thus, from the above discussion, it can be seen that knowledge management helps the business organizations from different angles. In this regard, it needs to be mentioned that two kinds of knowledge can be seen in the business organizations. They are Explicit knowledge and Implicit knowledge. In the business organizations, explicit knowledge in the business organizations can be captured and written down in the business document or business database (Siemens, 2014). Thus, it can be seen that explicit knowledge can be used for further references in the companies. Some of the major examples of explicit knowledge are instruction manuals, different written procedures, learned lessons, best practices and others. Another type of organizational knowledge is tacit knowledge (Zhang, Pablos & Zhang, 2012). Tacit knowledge is the kind of knowledge that the organizational people capture in their heads. It can be said that that the nature of tacit knowledge is less concrete than that of explicit knowledge.
As per the above discussion, it can be said that knowledge management plays integral part in the development of different aspects of the businesses. In case of the employees of the organizations, knowledge management plays an important role (Argote, 2012). Knowledge management helps the employees to perform their job responsibilities by saving the time. In addition, knowledge management helps the organizational managers in the decision-making process and in the solving of various types of organizations problems (Wiig, 2012). The management of knowledge helps the employees to stay up to date and it helps to develop bandings among the organizational employees. Knowledge management largely contributes towards the development of the business organizations. With the help of knowledge management, the business organizations are able to drive the organizational strategy (Ritala et al., 2015). For example, the knowledge management strategy of Australian Local Government Association can be mentioned. With the help of Local Government Knowledge Management toolkit, the staffs of the organization use to recognize the opportunities in order to discover and share knowledge. With the assistance of knowledge management, the business organizations are able to implement different kinds of best practices in the companies. The employees of the companies become able to improve their knowledge regarding the various products and services of the companies. A positive connection can be seen between innovation and knowledge management as knowledge management helps the business organizations to implement various aspects of innovation. Most importantly, it needs to be mentioned that the business organizations become able to get necessary competitive advantage with the effective management of knowledge (Durst & Runar Edvardsson, 2012). For another example, ARK Group Australia can be considered. In this organization, the expert panel of the company uses the discussion of various strategies, case studies and others in order to share knowledge in the organizations. In this way, the company uses to manage the organizational knowledge. Based on the above discussion, it can be said that with the help of knowledge management, both the business organization and organizational people can become largely beneficial.
Another major aspect of the business organizations is the use of e-Commerce. E-commerce refers to the process of online transactions of the companies (Laudon, K. C., & Traver, 2013). In this regard, it needs to be mentioned that there are six kinds of categories of e-commerce; they are Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), Business-to-Administration (B2A) and Consumer-to-Administration (C2A). In case of B2B, online business transactions take place between the companies (Chiu et al., 2014). In case of B2C, the online business transactions take place between the businesses and final consumers. In C2C, online transactions take place between consumers. It needs to be mentioned that with the help of e-commerce, business organizations can avail some major benefits. They are discussed below:
There are some major benefits of the use of e-commerce in the business organizations. First, with the assistance of e-commerce facility, the business organizations can conduct the processes of buying and selling in a quick basis, as online transactions do not take much time to be processed (Sila & Dobni, 2012). This is also convenient for the buyers as they can search and buy products without losing additional time. Second, a major advantage of e-commerce is that the business organizations can carry on the process of buying and selling on 24×7 (Andam, 2014). In this case, the example of Kogan can be considered. Kogan is an Australian homegrown online retailer. The customers of this company can order various kinds of food products from online. This company is well known for its e-commerce based business model. As the process of buying and selling continues for all the time, the business organizations become able to fetch more amounts of revenues and profit (Chavan, 2013). Third, this is the most important benefit of e-commerce as it helps to break down all geographical barriers at the time of business operations. E-commerce can be held responsible for the expansion of businesses as there is not any geographical barrier. Businesses of one country or state easily operate their business operations with the companies from another country or state (Mohapatra, 2013). In this process, the companies do not have to bear high operational costs and at the same time, companies are able to provide superior quality of services with the help of e-commerce. In the recent years, virtual companies without any physical presence are being developed with the help of various e-commerce facilities and this process helps to reduce the operational costs of the companies (Rule, 2012). From the perspective of the customers, they can easily select and purchase products without moving around from one place to another (Barnes & Hunt, 2013). At the same time, customers do not have to bear any switching costs in this process. Thus, from the above discussion, it can be seen that there are many benefits of e-commerce for the business organizations.
From the above discussion, it can be seen that both knowledge management and e-commerce have their significance in today’s businesses. Companies can improve their business operations with the help of knowledge management as this process helps to capture and store knowledge in the companies. On the other hand, with the help of e-commerce facilities, companies can expand their businesses without any geographical constrain. Both of the aspects helps to reduce the operational costs of the companies by increasing the efficiency of the business operations.
References
Andam, Z. R. (2014). e-Commerce and e-Business.
Argote, L. (2012). Organizational learning: Creating, retaining and transferring knowledge. Springer Science & Business Media.
Barnes, S., & Hunt, B. (Eds.). (2013). E-commerce and v-business. Routledge.
Chavan, J. (2013). Internet banking-Benefits and challenges in an emerging economy. International Journal of Research in Business Management, 1(1), 19-26.
Chiu, C. M., Wang, E. T., Fang, Y. H., & Huang, H. Y. (2014). Understanding customers’ repeat purchase intentions in B2C e?commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and perceived risk. Information Systems Journal, 24(1), 85-114.
Durst, S., & Runar Edvardsson, I. (2012). Knowledge management in SMEs: a literature review. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(6), 879-903.
Fuller, S. (2012). Knowledge management foundations. Routledge.
Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press.
Holsapple, C. (Ed.). (2013). Handbook on knowledge management 1: Knowledge matters (Vol. 1). Springer Science & Business Media.
Holtshouse, D. K. (2013). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.
Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2013). E-commerce. Pearson.
Liebowitz, J., & Frank, M. (Eds.). (2016). Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press.
Lin, Y., Ma, S., & Zhou, L. (2012). Manufacturing strategies for time based competitive advantages. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 112(5), 729-747.
Mohapatra, S. (2013). E-commerce Strategy. In E-Commerce Strategy (pp. 155-171). Springer US.
Ritala, P., Olander, H., Michailova, S., & Husted, K. (2015). Knowledge sharing, knowledge leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study. Technovation, 35, 22-31.
Rule, C. (2012). Quantifying the economic benefits of effective redress: Large e-commerce data sets and the costbenefit case for investing in dispute resolution. U. Ark. Little Rock L. Rev., 34, 767-833.
Siemens, G. (2014). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.
Sila, I., & Dobni, D. (2012). Patterns of B2B e-commerce usage in SMEs. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 112(8), 1255-1271.
Wiig, K. (2012). People-focused knowledge management. Routledge.
Zhang, X., De Pablos, P. O., & Zhang, Y. (2012). The relationship between incentives, explicit and tacit knowledge contribution in online engineering education project. International Journal of Engineering Education, 28(6), 1341.
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