DIGITAL AGE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

LAIZER EDWIN N BAPRM 42691

              Corporate communicators work in an information society and their corporate clients work in knowledge based environments. Their stakeholders too are increasingly enmeshed in a global information society. The corporate communicator needs to have access to the extensive range of data, information and intelligence resources which represent their clients and stakeholders interests. From the basis of these collective resources corporate communication strategy, policy, message and response can be built to develop image, identity and reputation.

Knowledge management: elements of an operational definition

 Knowledge management attempts to represent a comprehensive approach to exploiting what is known in order to gain insight, beneficiality and greater control over actions and their outcomes.

Knowledge management strategies represent useful approaches to gaining outcomes through knowledge discovery, transfer, sharing, utilisation and creation.

 Knowledge may be derived from data, information, and intelligence and above all from experience and learning. Different tools, techniques, methods and principles and circumstances are used (as methodologies) to support strategies and management.

 Knowledge management, knowledge strategies and knowledge methodologies can operate in both personal and collective domains, and in the private and public domains.

Seeking highly structured, generalized and watertight definitions of knowledge and its practices is neither practical nor realistic. This view is consistent with the tacit, implicit, fuzzy, soft, metaphorical, metaphysical, probabilistic, sticky characteristics of the components of knowing and knowledge; the experiential, the social, the embedded, the partial and the circumstantial aspects.

A programme for practice in information and knowledge management

Suggestions for a programme in information and knowledge management in corporate communication are offered as a basis for practice. The themes presented are based on a module offered in a postgraduate course delivered to students of corporate communication Thames Valley University (Roberts, 2002).

Information management

                 The preceding discussion has presented the main concepts of information management which form a foundation for knowledge management. The first step is to acknowledge the importance of more formalized information management as a part of corporate communication practice. This will be assisted by the incorporation of some studies of information and its management in programmes of training and education; the value of journalistic, advertising and similar media skills and training is already acknowledged in corporate communication. This awareness will enhance practitioner skills and in due course will raise a more strategic awareness of information professionalism in the field. The ever more widespread use of the ICTs in business and professional practice will reinforce information use and personal skill in a variety of ways: word processing, working with databases and spreadsheets, use of websites and search engines, experience with multimedia and so on.                          Given the appropriate settings and scales of activity, the further professionalization of this usage and a perception of enhanced service based upon them will be seen as relevant. Support for the use of ICTs can lead to a demand for better management of service and the provision of added value and resource enhancing services. Corporate communicators need access to professional support and expertise to deliver effective information management, but can benefit from personal skill enhancement.