Empowering Knowledge in Organizations Assignment

Empowering Knowledge in Organizations - Assignment Example192).That is why we cannot deny the fact that the process of spreading knowledge is facilitated by the development and diffusion of brand-new study technologies. The growth of telecommunications and the multiplication of computers had accelerated the spread of information, giving more people access to more information sooner. That broader access undermines the centralized control of information that was a principal basis for centralized decision making. In the end, as Cleveland (1985) noted, more and more forge gets done by horizontal process-or it doesnt get done. More and more decisions are made with wider and wider consultation-or they dont stick (p. 192).This is why a new aspect on how knowledge is harnessed was formed. The term knowledge management (KM) has been defined as doing what is needed to get the most out of knowledge resources. Although KM can be applied to individuals, it has recently attracted the attention of organizations. KM is viewed as an increasingly alpha discipline that promotes the creation, sharing, and leveraging of the organizations knowledge. Peter Drucker (1994), whom many consider as the father of KM, best defines the need for KMKnowledge has become the key resource, for a nations phalanx strength as well as for its economic strength is fundamentally different from the traditional key resources of the economist-land, labor, and even bully we need systematic work on the quality of knowledge and the productivity of knowledge the performance capacity, if not the survival, of any organization in the knowledge society will come increasingly to depend on those two factors (pp. 66-69).Thus, it can be argued that the most vital in empowering the businesses today is the collective knowledge residing in the minds of an organizations employees, customers, and suppliers. Learning how to manage organisational knowledge has many benefits, some of which are readily apparent separa tes are not. These benefits may include leveraging core business grapplencies, accelerating innovation and time to market, meliorate cycle times and decision making, strengthening organizational commitment, and building sustainable competitive advantage (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). In short, they make the organization better suited to compete successfully in a much more demanding environment. This is why organizations are increasingly precious for their intellectual capital. An example of this fact is the widening gap in the midst of corporate balance sheets and investors estimation of corporate worth. It is said that knowledge-intensive companies around the world are valued at three to eight times their financial capital. Consider, for example, Microsoft, the highest valued company in the world, with a market capitalization that was estimated at around $284 billion as of July 2003. Clearly, this figure represents more than Microsofts net worth in buildings, computers, and other physical assets. Microsofts valuation also represents an estimation of its intellectual assets. This includes structural capital in the form of copyrights, customer databases, and business process software. It also includes human capital in the fo