HRM and Knowledge Management: Responding to the Challenge

Knowledge is increasingly claimed to be a key critical resource and source of competitive advantage in the modern global economy, especially with the rise of the service economy, the growth in the number of ‘knowledge workers’, the increasingly rapid flow of global information, and the growing recognition of the importance of intellectual capital and intellectual property rights. It is also increasingly claimed that all organisations will have to excel at creating, exploiting, applying and mobilising knowledge to create and maintain sustainable competitive advantage. The resource-based view of the firm suggests that organisations will need to be able combine distinctive, sustainable and superior assets, including sources of knowledge and information, with complementary competencies in leadership and human resource management and development to fully realise the value of their knowledge. Issues for HRM include how organisations should be structured to promote knowledge creation and mobilisation, and how to develop a culture and set of HRM policies and practices that harness knowledge and leverage it to meet strategic objectives. This paper outlines the challenges posed by knowledge management for HRM, and presents a model of knowledge creation, knowledge migration and knowledge profiles as a key agenda item for HRM research and practice