Knowledge Management in Practical and Theory

Book: Knowledge Management in Practical and Theory

Author: Kimiz Dalkir

Literature Review (Topic 2: The Knowledge Management Cycle)

The article emphasizes on the phases and applications of the knowledge management cycles in different situations. The author introduces four models in the article which are the Zack, from Meyer and Zack (1996), the Bukowitz and Williams(2000), the McElory(2003), and the Wiig(1993) KM cycles. Organizations can apply those approaches to make knowledge information into the valuable knowledge asset.

First, the Meyer and Zack KM cycle consists the notion of added value to the original KM to reform a new KM. It repackages the old one with new value in order to provide new analyses for users. For example, company can derive competitive intelligence and synthesize into meaningful value and put into action immediately. The model addresses information product is easy to extend to knowledge product. Since author mentions information content is the data for the resulting information products. Meyer and Zack developed KM cycle into five stages that are acquisition, refinement, storage/retrieval, distribution, and presentation/use. In this section, repository and the ‘refinery’ together enable the management of valuable knowledge of a firm. Meyer and Zack pointed out that organization have to continue renew and modify the repository and refinery as to avoid obsolescence.

Second, the Bukowitz and Williams KM cycle is “how organizations generate, maintain and deploy a strategically correct stock of knowledge to create value” (p. 32). This cycle mostly apply in tactic situation since the get, learn and contribute phases are result in day-to-day use of knowledge. The scholars stated that users should not only emphasize on the explicit knowledge but also the tacit knowledge. It is because sometimes most valuable knowledge