Challenges in knowledge management education

Abstract

The members of panel will discuss the opportunities and challenges facing knowledge management education. The panel will share their experiences in the development of four knowledge management programs at Kent State University, Dominican University, University of Oklahoma, and Nan yang Technological University in Singapore. Today's organizations are faced with many challenges, such as producing the desired objectives (efficacy), solving the right problems (effectiveness), and using the minimal quantity of resources (efficiency) in a competitive and complex environment. Among other necessities, organizations have to identify knowledge sources and assess their value when possible. They need to be proactive and/or adapt to the rapid pace of change. They should be able to recognize the needs of their costumers or users and be able to develop or adapt mechanisms that permit them to measure their intellectual capital and build the technological infrastructure that would facilitate knowledge sharing and utilization. Organizations also need assess and create a culture that allows knowledge sharing, socialization, collaboration, and the creation of communities of practice. Knowledge workers and knowledge professionals are an important, if not vital, component of the knowledge organization. Regardless of the industry, type of organization (profit or nonprofit organization), or the business sector, they all require a new breed of information professionals who are able to work closely with the knowledge workers, understand their needs and communicate their concerns to the management of the organization. Knowledge professionals will help organizations identify opportunities, deal with competition, generate synergy, and create a knowledge-sharing environment. Traditionally, information professionals' roles were limited to the identification, acquisition and organization of explicit knowledge or information. Today, that role is being expanded to include other forms of knowledge activities– tacit and implicit knowledge in the form of skills and competencies. Tacit knowledge is personal and gets transferred through human interaction, training, observation and replication in different environments. It can only be shared by socialization, interaction and training, and it requires interpersonal communication. As knowledge professionals need to deal with human resource issues as well as organizational issues, a new set of skills and competencies are needed. Such skills and competencies require a multidisciplinary program and cannot be catered for by one single discipline. Disciplines involve include information technology, information science, communication and cognitive science, and business and management. At the moment, most knowledge management practitioners and self -proclaimed experts come from various backgrounds with different levels of skills and competencies. Clearly there is a need for a formal qualification for knowledge management to the increased demand for knowledge professionals. Given the fact that knowledge management is an interdisciplinary area and requires the participation of people from different disciplines, designing a balanced and practical knowledge management curriculum will always be a challenge. There is very little agreement on what characteristics knowledge management professionals should have, and the roles that they should play. Many organizations are creating knowledge management positions, which have a diversity of names and descriptions. Some of these roles could be associated with knowledge management practices, but others may be more IT-related. As knowledge management evolves, educational institutions around the world are beginning to develop programs in response to the market needs of knowledge management professionals. These programs have taken different approaches: Library and Information Science, Information Technology, Communication Studies, or Management. An essential question for higher education institutions in the Knowledge Management arena is–how they can prepare and help students and organizations to achieve their goals in a changing environment in which the creation of knowledge and new skills is a constant necessity, and at the same time there is the need to integrate different conceptual approaches. The challenges in knowledge management education are diverse: defining the skills and competencies of knowledge management professionals based on the market needs; educating information professionals rigorously enough so that they will be able to meet the demands of knowledge management work; integrating and coordinating different disciplines that are the foundations of knowledge management.