An organisation need not save all the knowledge it collects
and not all employees possess knowledge that is worth saving.

The strategic importance of knowledge in today's organisation has been discussed extensively. Researchers have characterised knowledge as tacit and explicit. Tacit knowledge is highly complex to acquire due to the qualitative form it usually takes and is hard to extract, as opposed to explicit knowledge. Researchers have also proposed repository and network models for acquiring and using such knowledge. While repository models focus on representing knowledge for storage and use, the network models emphasise an understanding of many organisational links individuals use to share and pass on knowledge to others. So, if a firm is interested in developing a knowledge management system, it needs to understand the complexities associated with making tacit knowledge explicit and to recognise the organisational context (culture and information associations) within which such knowledge is acquired and shared.

Of course, the degree of knowledge that is made explicit for capture and reuse and the intensity of network links an individual uses to share knowledge are somewhat influenced by the "knowledge goals" of a firm and the way it organises itself to support the sharing and use of such knowledge. Note the specific emphasis on "knowledge goals" as opposed to traditional business goals such as sales or profit growth. While the knowledge goals (use of organisational knowledge in performing various activities, establishing a culture that supports knowledge sharing and learning, etc) can help a firm achieve its business goals, sometimes this may be realised over a long time horizon and, without an explicit linkage between these two, a firm may have a difficult time convincing its employees to share and use the knowledge.

Lastly, an organisation need not save all the knowledge it collects and not all employees possess knowledge that is worth saving. So, knowing what is to be saved and from whom has to be consistent with the knowledge goals of the firm. At times, enforcement of knowledge collection across the board and in explicit detail may actually impede creativity by burdening employees with unnecessary paperwork.

So, a challenge for a firm is to articulate its knowledge goals and relate its various strategies and activities to various knowledge collection processes so as to reach these knowledge goals. In the case described below, a framework shown in Figure 1 is used to perform a knowledge audit and the results summarised in Table 1.

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TATA INFOTECH - TOTAL SOLUTIONS TOTAL COMMITMENT