Knowledge Management (KM) activities help in improving the performance of processes and human resources of organizations. Organizations should update their knowledge to improve their capability of innovation. With the help of organizational learning, an organization can retain some important knowledge management practices. A lot of literature reports support that organizational learning helps innovativeness among the organizations. After a thorough analysis of the feedback received from top 1,000 manufacturers and top 100 financial firms listed in CommonWealth Magazine, Shu-Hsien Liao, and Chi-chuan Wu reported that organizational learning is the mediating variable between knowledge management and organizational innovation. Neeru Mundra, Karishma Gulati and Renu Vashisth, in their paper “Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge Management and Innovation: Empirical Evidences from the Indian IT Sector”, addressed the problem whether KM will be influential to maximize innovation and attain optimum competitive advantage, so as to assess the feasibility of spending on Research and Development (R&D) of various ways of managing knowledge. They worked with five different hypotheses, and tested them to achieve their objective, with the feedback collected from field surveys in 15 IT companies. From the results, they interpreted that innovation and IT act as crucial ingredients of Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), and such KM and innovation, in turn, contribute to achieve competitive advantage for the firms.

U Syed Aktharsha and H Anisa, in their paper “Knowledge Management System and Learning Organization: An Empirical Study in an Engineering Organization”, investigated the relationship of demographic profiles of employees with KMS and learning organization. They worked with a sample of 65 managers and engineers in a private engineering organization. They concluded that demographic characteristics and effects, learning organization and usage of KMS are independent. Using factor analysis, they extracted four factors from 13 variables. Finally, they concluded that KMS help the organization in improving its performance in terms of innovation and better decision making, by transforming it into a learning organization.

In a project life cycle, closing phase is very important to identify and capture new knowledge and to prepare the knowledge for knowledge transfer to other projects. Since projects encapsulate a lot of knowledge at each phase about various problems, appropriate solutions and experience of the team members, such embedded knowledge is very helpful for other planned and new projects. This helps the organizations to reduce the redundant work and training time for the new employees, ultimately saving time and cost. The paper,“A Model to Capture the Embedded Knowledge of Implemented Projects at Iranian Motor-Vehicle Industry”, by Mohamad Ali Shafia, Iman Raeesi Vanani, and Somayeh Faghih Mirzaei, presented a model to capture the embedded knowledge of previous projects in the Iranian automobile industry. Based on several methods and techniques on capturing tacit knowledge, the authors developed a framework and tested it in one of the projects of motor-vehicle industry. In each phase of the model’s methodology, delivery items have been determined and used to identify knowledge elements, and harvest knowledge forms for capturing knowledge. They finally concluded that those companies which are only capturing the knowledge, are not as successful as the companies which are successfully utilizing the captured knowledge for the next projects.

According to Christian Leuz, the convergence of US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is only one of many changes expected in the accounting and audit fields. In the paper “Knowledge Management for Converged IASB and FASB Standards”, the authors, Zane Swanson and Ron Freeze worked on a cost/benefit analysis of applying a KMS that incorporates accounting’s conceptual framework project, codification initiative and financial statement presentation proposal into a complete ontology in convergence of FASB and IASB standards.

They introduced KM as a means of organizing Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), its conceptual framework and the XBRL supporting system into one framework. They placed three accounting bodies of knowledge, namely FASB, IASB and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the KM framework. This paper presented a general background on KM and ontology and then presented a development plan of a multifaceted GAAP knowledge management.

-- Nasina Jigeesh
Consulting Editor