Knowledge Management

We choose this topic to know weather the NGO’s use Knowledge Management System or not.

Our project focuses on studying a Knowledge Management system within a Non Profit Organization, and our focus in on R.H.Aid

To see how much Knowledge Management System is incorporated in this NGO

If it is incorporated then how well is it working for the employee, employer, and other person’s of the company.

This Non Profit Organization is a Half breed

Meaning it is a Consultation firm as well as being an NGO

The Head of the Organization is now focusing on completely turning it into a fully functional NGO.

Aim of the organization

The most important aim is to provide help to the people who require it and also giving consultations to the other NGO’s for better performance.

“KM is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of the enterprise’s information assets. These information assets may include databases, documents, policies and procedures as well as previously unarticulated expertise and experience resident in individual workers.”[Loshin, D 2001, 8]

Kar Erik Sveiby describes Knowledge Management as “The art of creating value by leveraging the intangible assets”.

Knowledge management may be referred to as a procedural methodology integrating the technical, organization and behavioral issues associated with enterprise knowledge.

There are two ways of sharing

Tacit: or unarticulated knowledge is more personal, experiential, context specific, and hard to formalize; is difficult to communicate or share with others; and is generally in the heads of individuals and teams.

Explicit: explicit knowledge can easily be written down and codified.

Hatch (2010) defines it as: "When group knowledge from several subunits or groups is combined and used to create new knowledge, the resulting tacit and explicit knowledge can be called organizational knowledge."

(Ekinge & Lennartsson 2000) "individual knowledge, shared knowledge, and objectified knowledge are different aspects or views of organizational knowledge"

Virvou & Nakamura 2008, "Information internalized by means of research, study or experience that has value to the organization".

It is a process of instilling the culture and helping people find ways to share and utilize their collective knowledge. To manage knowledge main focus is on five tasks:

Generating knowledge Accessing knowledge Representing and embedding knowledge Facilitating knowledge Transferring knowledge

The value of Knowledge Management relates directly to the effectiveness with which the managed knowledge enables the members of the organization to deal with today's situations and effectively envision and create their future.

We interviewed the Head of the Organization (Dr. Tariq Rahim).

We got to know that the organization had prior knowledge about knowledge management and they use the knowledge in order to effectively function and try to enhance the system

No measurement of knowledge management in this particular system

They are a small group of people working together.

Knowledge Management is not promoted in this firm.

The supervisor agreed that they use some of the ways of Knowledge Management.

Sharing of explicit knowledge is encouraged but the tacit knowledge is somewhat encouraged.

Knowledge is given by training of the new persons and most of the shared knowledge is tacit

The knowledge which the people have acquired at early stages of their job experiences.

The knowledge which is captured is through the personal seeking of the employee’s only when there is need of some particular knowledge

Knowledge Management policies has increased the efficiency of the firm a lot, having a small group which is always working together.

The knowledge is shared in every direction, it’s done through trainings which can be said to be vertical and personal level which leads to the horizontal knowledge sharing

This has improved the client and customer relations.

We have to report that our organization is not purely an NGO but its making its way towards being one. We tried to figure out if the organization has any policies or strategies of the discipline of Knowledge Management.

Organization does not use that much of practices but the practices which they use have increased the efficiency of their work in many aspects.