Role of IT in Knowledge Management:

These days the use of Knowledge Management has a major impact on organizations. All the Organizations are in the process of Managing Knowledge. There is no specific definition for knowledge management but it can be explained generally as creating, sharing, applying, and transferring of knowledge.

According to (M.Alavi & D. Leidner, 2001) IT can lead to greater depth and breadth of knowledge creation, storage, transfer and application in organizations and they further say that increase in the greater depth and breadth of knowledge will result in the greater use of knowledge management and also the use of the available knowledge but on the other hand ( Powell, 1998) disagrees that use of IT results in greater use of Knowledge Management, rather he says that IT plays a limited role in Knowledge creation and IT is only helpful if an individual knows what he is looking for

However Information Technology plays an important in this modern era of technology as the standards have gone up. According to Chung Kai “IT is considered as a facilitator of Knowledge Management”. Information technology provides solution to the knowledge management, with the help of information technology we develop, design and implement methods for information system in order to protect, store, transmit the data securely. This can be done with the help of KM .Knowledge management is a practice which is followed by many organizations where they adopt new techniques along with the old practices comprising knowledge. We transmit the data or share the data with the help of information systems which is a branch of Information Technology. We transmit data via intranet, internet, over the phone and by many other services available in the market, but we should make sure that we are doing it in a systematic and in a secure way.
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Knowledge Management does not totally depend on IT, rather it takes the support of IT because there are many other methods that support KMS. Some organizations still are dependent on traditional methods instead of employing IT systems, however the implementation of IT totally depends on the organization.

Information Technology does play a major role in Knowledge Management. However, it is not necessary that IT alone drives Knowledge Management System. In short, IT supports Knowledge Management Systems. And traditional methods are also present other than IT to support KMS. Traditional methods are also effective, however depends on many aspects when it comes to comparing which one among the two i.e., traditional methods or IT and coming to a conclusion on which one is the best. Smaller organizations can go with the traditional methods instead of employing IT systems, however it depends on the organization alone whether it want to employ IT or not.

According to (R. Demott, 1999) Information technology has led many organizations to imagine a new world of leveraged knowledge. E-mail and the Internet have made it possible for professionals to draw on the latest thinking of their peers no matter where they are Located. In every organization IT plays a major role as it makes the sharing of knowledge easier, I can support it wit an example the company that I was working with had headquarters in Chicago, but we used to share our views and opinions from India and this was done only with the help of IT, we used share our knowledge through emails, video conferencing, and using the new technology Web 2.0. And the use of technologies like video conferencing, emails helps in transfer of knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).

Most of the organizations use Information Technology to store the knowledge from different individuals of their organization and create a database of all the information that they have acquired and store them for future references and the use of technologies like video conferencing, emails helps in transfer of knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995), The purpose of storing the knowledge is to prevent the risk of loosing the Knowledge when an individual employee leaves the organization. Hence by storing the knowledge we can overcome the loss.

There may be many traditional methods such having group meetings, training sessions, conferences, exchanging views through Telephones, Meetings, where effective. Knowledge transfer occurs and they are also efficient. However, I think IT also plays a major role when it comes to the usage of Internet and Intranet. They both are highly productive and efficient and help in the transfer of knowledge easily which is helpful for the organization as said by (R. Demott, 1999) that “knowledge involves thinking with information”. There are many effective uses of IT in an organization, the most used technology is Video conferencing as it is an effective way to transfer knowledge in an organization, emails also contribute to transfer of knowledge and also use of blogs help the knowledge to transfer within the organization and also outside the organization which means that there is transfer of explicit and tacit knowledge through the use of IT.

References:

1). Powell. W, Learning from Collaboration: Knowledge and Networks in the Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries, California Management Review, 1998. Retrieved on 1st April, 2009.
2). Maryam Alvi & Dorthy E.Leidner, Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems, 2001, retrieved on 2st April, 2009
3). Sin Chung Kai, The role of IT in knowledge management, 2005. Retrieved on 1st April, 2009.
4).Richard Mc Dermott, why Information Technology Inspired but cannot deliver Knowledge Management. 1999. retrieved on 2nd April, 2009.
5). I.Nonaka and H. Takeuchi, 1995. The Knowledge Creating Company, 1995. retrieved on 1st April 2009.