Competitiveness and Innovations: Role of Knowledge Management at a Knowledge Organization

Abstract

In the middle of the tenth decade of the last century a lot of researchers and heads of organizations started to show interest in the importance of knowledge for organizations. Pioneers of knowledge management are Sveiby, Drucker, Quinn, Nonaka, Takeutchi and others. Fast changing and hardly predictable, turbulent environment conditions force organizations to focus their attention to competitive ability, which organization’s success, place in the market, and survival depend on. It is probable that economic recession will stimulate Lithuanian organizations to faster re-orient management philosophy as well. Organization’s success, attraction and the place in the market depend very much on its chosen strategy and implementation, which are inseparable from the processes of information data system and knowledge expansion. In the 21st century, which is named as the globalisation century, knowledge economics, knowledge management or knowledge society is the most frequently used term in scientific literature. One common feature – the aspect of knowledge – joins these concepts.Modern theories of organizations’ management admit that knowledge resources are the necessary condition for organizations’ competitiveness and innovativeness. Knowledge is the means, which are necessary to possess in order to improve, develop and maintain business processes, to fast and adequately react to changing environment conditions. Knowledge being intellectual workforce, without doubt, does not belong to such traditional resources as usual workforce, raw materials, etc.Undoubtedly knowledge does not belong to such traditional resources as workforce, raw materials or land. Knowledge is named as abilities, competence, experience, intellectual capital, which has special meaning both in managerial and economic environment – the organizations that produce, adapt and use knowledge improve their activity, make it more effective by creating more useful, more perfect and larger-profit bringing products, as well as support and encouragement of cogitation activity that creates knowledge creates premises for organizations to develop in acquiring strategic advantage.Knowledge contributes to more effective problem resolution, decision-making as well as determination of purposive strategy in attaining organization’s aims. This obligates them to continuously and systemically assess, to re-assess, to disseminate and to use deliberately. Spender (2000) points out that without doubt most publications on the topic of knowledge management reflect high objectives to understand this phenomenon; but, in its turn, it brings some disorganization in its approach. This should not surprise if we estimate many methods and ideas, which begin to penetrate into this field. According to Davenport and Prusak (1998), recently more and more attention is paid to how systems of knowledge management can conduct and support assimilation and diffusion of hidden knowledge, which is the basis of organization’s memory. Transmission of such knowledge will require certain conditions in order to be able to identify, to formalise, to abstract and to improve knowledge.