Knowing what knowledge to share: Collaboration for community, research and wildlife

Abstract

Wildlife conservation organizations have the core business to manage and conserve biological resources sustainably. Their management processes are foremost operational and strategic depending largely on research not only of natural resources, but also the human relations and interactions with local communities living adjacent to wildlife conservation areas. Research that informs decisions are mostly explicit sources not only informing short term conservation decisions, but also acts as secondary sources for future longitudinal studies determining long term impacts. In addition, tacit sources abound in wildlife conservation organizations but the value of tacit knowledge sources is seemingly unrecognized and their management is completely neglected. An obviously knowledge-rich and knowledge intensive organization that is unaware of the knowledge that they own is probably also unaware of the potential value of such knowledge as a knowledge asset. The focus of the organization is not on knowledge as strategically important resources of the organization, but remains secondary to the operational management of the natural resources. Yet, the knowledge itself has value and the re-use of knowledge leads to innovation. This research addressed the question of how an organization recognizes the knowledge that they own in order to intentionally manage the knowledge as a valued strategic resource. The actual need for knowledge management was identified and the knowledge sources and organizational behavior associated with knowledge generation and sharing was mapped. Knowledge management processes for re-use of existing knowledge sources, initiating the process to leverage collective wisdom in order to increase responsiveness and innovation was proposed. Further research was recommended to establish attainable procedures for effective collaboration in a geographically remote rural region where technology is an unreliable knowledge sharing enabler and a blended approach is needed for efficient collaboration.