Information Management

TOUROU UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL

MARLON D. RICHARDSON

ITM501

MODULE 1 CASE ASSIGNMENT

“INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT”

DR. KEITH PRATT

“Information and Knowledge management”

Introduction

“The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of the rich men in the country” (Lewis, 1995-2004). “A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle” (Lewis, 1995-2004). Organizational learning, organizational knowledge and knowledge management are the key contributing factors that affect the continuity within organizations. All three are equally important and each has a major role in the success of a business and their future growth. Depending on whom you ask, the definition of these terms will slightly vary but what it all boils down to is organizations being able to draw from their knowledge base to improve productivity, operations and generate profits. “Not all information is valuable. There fore, it’s up to individual companies to determine what information qualifies as intellectual and knowledge based assets. In general, however’ intellectual and knowledge based assets fall into one or two categories: explicit or tacit” (Santosus and Surmacz, 2001).

Organizational Learning

Organizational learning is the process by which an organization utilizes its resources to improve the performance of the organization. “Organizational learning has been described as occurring when an organization is able to engage in the process of detection, diagnosis, and correction of errors such as to potentially change its behavior in a favorable direction and reduce errors” (Unknown, 2005). Generally, organizational learning is broken down into two categories, which are adaptive learning and proactive learning. Adaptive learning tends to occur more often when employees have to react to changes within the work environment and correct errors by...