CONTENTS

Declaration
Certificate
Acknowledgement
S.NO

Label/Description

Page No

Executive Summary

Introduction

Literature Review

11

3.
1
3.
2
3.
3
3.
4
3.
5
3.
6
4

Knowledge Management

11

Knowledge ,Tacit and Explicit Knowledge

11

Why Knowledge Management

13

Knowledge Management Models

14

Knowledge Management Strategies

17

Knowledge Management and Business Strategy

19

Research Methodology
4.
1

Data Collection
Analysis & Results

5.
1
5.
2
5.
3
5.
4
5.
5

21
22
23

Analysis I

23

Analysis II

34

Analysis III

40

Analysis IV

44

Analysis V

47

Findings & Conclusion

49

Limitation

51

Future Research

52

Bibliography

Annexure

List of Figures attached

Figure Number

Label

Page Number

Fig No .1

Types of Knowledge

12

Fig No .2

Eight stages Process of KM Model

16

Fig No .3

Implementation strategy at Wipro

34

Fig No. 4

Implementation strategy at Patni

35

Fig No.5

Implementation strategy at Accenture

36

Fig No. 6

Implementation strategy at Infosys

37

Fig No.7

Implementation strategy at HCL

38

Fig No.8

Implementation strategy at TCS

39

Fig No.9

KM Model at Infosys

40

Fig No.10

KM Model at Accenture

41

Fig No.11

KM Model at Wipro

42

Fig No.12

Analysis

48

1. Executive Summary
Knowledge Management is a rapid growing field that covers diverse disciplines. KM is
organization learning, organization memory and expertise management. In order to attain

competitive advantage which includes cost reduction and cost leadership too, companies are
implementing KM. Various KM initiatives are taken by the organizations through KM
programmes in order to enhance productivity, efficiency and innovation. The KM initiatives
can be measured through business performance of the organization and usefulness of its KM
initiatives.
Organization uses KM as a tool for sustaining and improving their business performance
.Thus for any of the KM programme to be successful it must be aligned with the organization
vision, goals, mission and with the corporate strategy. If KM fails to add value to the
organization, it is only cost intensive, useless, or even counter productive.

The purpose of this research was

i)

To establish the extent to which organisations are aware of knowledge

management, take it seriously and are pursuing initiatives to implement it and
benefit from it.

ii)

To find out the various implementation strategies of Knowledge management.

iii)

To study the various models adopted by the companies for the Knowledge
Management

iv)

To study the relationship between the Business and the knowledge management
strategy and the success of Knowledge Management initiative.

v)

To derive potential sustainability of the organizational impact Is the KM

system used and can it survive without strong support by top management?

A survey based research in 100 companies combined with a case based research study was
conducted in 9 Indian companies (having global operations) and 3 foreign companies having
operation in India in order to gain a deeper insight about the nature of the relationship
between business strategy, knowledge strategy and KM strategy within a company.
The findings suggest that organisations need to be effective at managing the realisation of
financial benefits. The findings also strongly suggest a relationship between the success of
KM in terms of improving business performance of the organization or business unit and the
alignment of KM strategy and business strategy. The findings show a matching fit between

KM strategy and business strategy. An organization whose business strategy requires

efficiency of processes should rely primarily on a codification strategy. The process of
transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is known as codification or articulation.
An organization whose business strategy requires product or process innovation should rely
primarily on a personalization strategy. In short, the KM initiative should support the
objective of the business strategy and should be initiated by the top management or specific
to that business unit.
Keywords
Knowledge management, tactical knowledge, explicit knowledge, knowledge management
models, Management strategy

2. Introduction
Knowledge management is a dazzling, multi-faceted, and controversially discussed concept.
Philosophers and representatives of a variety of different disciplines are debating the
meaning, definitions, and dimensions of knowledge and knowledge management. Knowledge
is the greatest asset today not just knowledge but leveraging it and applying it to attain
organizational objectives and to attain competitive advantage. Management gurus and
academicians from last two decades are treating KM as a tool for achieving innovation and
competitive advantage.
In todays business scenario where there is lot of competition, only source of lasting is
Knowledge. The importance and attention given to the acquisition of knowledge in literature
as well as practice increased in the past years. It is argued that knowledge management is a
necessity due to changes in the environment such as increasing globalization of competition,

speed of information and knowledge aging, dynamics of both product and process
innovations, and competition through buyer markets. Knowledge management promises to
help companies to be faster, more efficient, or more innovative than the competition. Also,
the term management implies that knowledge management deals with the interactions
between the organization and the environment and the ability of the organization to react and
act.
Various researchers then gave the various definitions on Knowledge Management and still its
the buzzword today. Knowledge management is the process through which we can manage
human centered assets efficiently and effectively. The function of knowledge management is
to guard and grow knowledge owned by individuals, and where possible, transfer the asset
into a form where it can be more readily shared by other employees in the company. KM
refers to activities aimed at enhancing knowledge processing. These activities are
interventions designed to affect how knowledge processing is done. The tools, techniques,
and strategies to retain, analyze, organize, improve, and share business expertise. Knowledge
management promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, retrieving, sharing
and evaluating enterprise information assets. These information assets may include database,
policies, procedures and documents and as well as uncaptured tacit expertise and experience
stored in the heads of individual workers.
Knowledge management is the information having some intent that can be interpreted and
made available. Knowledge management is the concept rather than a technology as
commonly misunderstood by the C.E.O of most of the companies. KM addresses the need for
information that is used for making effective decisions. For example, comments posted over
discussion boards that can be converted into useful FAQs. Knowledge Management gives us
the ability to leverage and combine the collective abilities of our knowledge workers. KM
helps share knowledge amongst employees irrespective of their geographical locations and
helps build competitive advantage by improving productivity and capability to innovate. KM
is nothing but having customized information tailored to the needs of each user. As a KM
practice provides a structured way of capturing knowledge that exists within the organization,
it gives an organization the ability to improve the productivity and knowledge of its
employees by means of knowledge sharing. Thus knowledge management can be defined as
something which can be shared by the people acting as the organizational assets that can be
used to define the best practices in the business environment and used to enhance
productivity and efficiency of the organization by making the best use of knowledge available

in the organization. Knowledge Management (KM) involves aligning processes, people, and
information technology to continuously capture, maintain, and reuse the key information and
judgments that improve business performance. In simple term it is said Knowledge
management seeks to make best use of knowledge available in the organization and helps in
creating a new knowledge in the process. Thus benefits of well designed Knowledge
management systems are: Awareness, Accessibility, Availability and Timeliness. According
to Steve Offsey, Director, Knowledge Management Products, Dataware Technologies, Inc.,
Knowledge sharing is becoming the central driver of the 21stcentury

3. Literature Review
It is helpful to make a clear distinction between the knowledge and information/data.

Information is a message that has sender and receiver while data is in the form of a structure
but has not yet interpreted. Information can be stored in the computer but, knowledge is in the
head of the people. Knowledge is the information to which intent are attached. Knowledge
has been defined as the power to act and make decisions with information in context coupled
with an understanding of how to use it by professional expertise appropriate for the domain
defining things that are held to be true and drive people to action justifying personal belief
that increases an individuals capacity to take effective action, an information that has been
authenticated and thought to be true, integrated information in context with information

made actionable in a way that adds value to the enterprise .Some even contend that
knowledge exists only in a human mind (Nonaka, 1994), which is similar to the concept
expressed by Churchman(1972) that knowledge resides in the user and not in the
collection.
Knowledge has various properties like Context specificity the extent to which knowledge is
contextualized and dependent on the environment, Dispersion how widely held is the
knowledge, Tacitness the extent to which the knowledge is codifiable, Transferability
transfer between and within firms, Reception or absorption ability to absorb knowledge
and Complexity difficulty in comprehending .
According to the Industries, Tacit knowledge is the knowledge about Insights and context
from the inner i.e what the knower knows and is difficult to articulate and represent.
Embedded knowledge is the Organization understanding manifested in process manual etc
that are stored and made available through the KM system. Explicit Knowledge is defined as
the Knowledge made available through articulates like documents, books etc. Tacit
knowledge is possessed by experts, that is difficult to capture, yet repeatedly demonstrated in
contexts as varied as factory floors, research laboratories, army basis and corporate board
rooms. Another major distinction in knowledge is cultural knowledge which is defined as the
assumptions, beliefs, and values of people.
Fig 1: Types of Knowledge
Explicit Knowledge Knowledge gaps
Known as well as documented
Known but not documented

Tacit knowledge

Unknown gaps

Unknown but can be documented

Unknown and not documented

A better understanding is possible by looking at Blacklers (1995) study in which he

identifies five classifications of knowledge, which are embrained, embodied, encultured,
embedded and encoded: Embrained knowledge is knowledge that is dependent on
conceptual skills and cognitive abilities. Cognition is the human capacity to perceive,

interpret, and reason about environmental and conceptual environmental or organizational

stimuli and meta-cognition is the capacity to think about thinking .This is the abstract
knowledge or personal insight, models, systems thinking, and shared visions in a general
account of organisation thinking. Embodied knowledge is likely to be only partly explicit
and partially oriented in nature which is acquired by doing and is rooted in specific contexts.
Encultured knowledge is defined as the procedure of achieving shared understandings and
heavily dependent upon language thus to be socially constructed and open to negotiation.
Embedded knowledge is defined as knowledge that resides in systemic routines analyzable
in systems terms such as technologies, roles, formal procedures, and emergent routines.
Encoded knowledge is information conveyed by signs and symbols. However, information
encoded by decontextualised, abstract symbols is inevitably highly selective in the
representations it can convey. There are five pillars of knowledge management that have
technical as well as non technical solutions as defined by the industries

Business intelligence using concept of data mining

Collaboration: Groupware, working with people

Knowledge Transfer: distance learning and computer education training

Knowledge discovery and mapping: Document management and categorization of

essential prerequisite

Expertise: Expert networks, like the knowledge networks

Why Knowledge Management ?

Main Objective of implementing the Knowledge Management is value creation. The ease to
access the information and using it to improve business processes and to achieve competitive
advantage are the major challenges faced by the modern day organizations. In order to create,
develop and extract value from knowledge and information, the right operational and
strategic processes are needed to put into place. Knowledge management leads to structure
and management methods based upon idea sharing thus giving voice to customers, workers
and partners. From the organizational perspective, the objectives of