Knowledge Audit

BCom (Hons) IT Management

Knowledge Management

ITM8X04

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Opinion Paper 1

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Why is it necessary for your company to conduct a knowledge audit and which steps should be followed in conducting this audit?

4 August 2014

University of Johannesburg

Name:

Student Number:

Lecturer: Dr. Z Barnard

Contents

Introduction 3

Aims of a knowledge audit 3

Methodologies available 4

Value of a knowledge audit 6

Conclusion 6

References 8

Introduction

“Knowledge is always provisional as an aggregate – whether in the human mind, in a technical handbook, as an organizational knowledge base, or in a science. This goes to the very core of human understanding of the world” (Becerra-Fernancdez & Leidner, 2008).

Knowledge management is capturing tacit and explicit knowledge that is currently in use within the company. Before we can start a knowledge audit, the company should ideally have some sort of knowledge structure in place, and when you do a knowledge audit the results will assist you to establish processes and systems to address shortcomings (Thomas, What is a Knowledge Inventory?, 2007).

A knowledge audit will attempt to identify what knowledge is needed to support the company’s goals. It will give you an idea of what knowledge exists within your company, who is accessing that knowledge i.e. who is it used by, how the knowledge moves around within the company and where the knowledge is lying. A knowledge audit should also point out the flow of knowledge between departments or how it travels through the company. Your smaller sized companies might have problems using conventional ways of capturing knowledge due to scarce resources (people, time and money) (Schiuma & Jarrar, 2004).

A knowledge audit aims to capture all knowledge available in a company and make it available to all employees that need it. How does one capture explicit and...