Issues in Knowledge Management - A Singapore Perspective

The field of Knowledge Management (KM) is an important evolving area of interdisciplinary research and practice with global shifts toward a knowledge-based economy. Within organisations, knowledge resources are fast becoming critical intellectual assets with strategic roles in organisational survival and competitiveness. KM is the formalisation of and access to experience, knowledge, and expertise that create new capabilities, enable superior performance, encourage innovation, and enhance customer value (Beckman 1997). The key objectives of KM can be summarised as: firstly to make the enterprise act as intelligently as possible to secure its viability and overall success, and secondly, to otherwise realise the best value of its knowledge assets (Wiig 1997a). In essence, KM involves the creation of the environment and opportunities to enhance the potential for co-ordination and synergism between networks and pools of knowledge. KM can be examined at different levels and explored along a wide range of perspectives. This reveals the diversity and complexity of KM in research and practice (Wiig et al. 1997; Wiig 1997b; Garvin 1998; Nonaka 1998; Shariq 1998)