'Empowering women to make confident choices for themselves': exploring knowledge management strategies for enhancing WIRE's information service

Abstract

Knowledge management (KM) concerns the effective capture, use and exploitation of human knowledge and expertise for organisational advantage. It involves planned decisions on how to structure and utilise an organisation’s know-how. While the human dimension remains the primary focus of KM, information and communication technologies are important enablers for organisational KM initiatives. Knowledge management (KM) systems have been widely implemented in large commercial and government organisations since the mid-1990s. However, investment in expensive proprietary KM systems is out of the question for small community organisations operating with limited resources, tight budgets and a heavy reliance on volunteer labour. WIRE – Woman’s Information is a knowledge-intensive community organisation facing escalating costs from labour-intensive information management practices. For the survival of organisation such as WIRE, it is imperative that the effective KM strategies, processes and systems be implemented. A preliminary analysis has been undertaken at WIRE of current information and knowledge flows and processes ad potential KM strategies for enhancing its women’s information and referral services. The paper identifies six major management challenges for community organisation that arise from the distinctive characteristics of the sector, and uses WIRE as a case example to explore how KM strategies could help to address those challenges.Presented at: 5th Community Networking Conference; 2002 Jul 4; Melbourne, Australia. 20 leaves.