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.
No comments:
Post a Comment