...Definition of Knowledge Management 2.1. Contribution of KM to organizations 2.2. KM creates Learning Organization 2.3. KM as Communities of Practise 2.4. KM as Information Technologies like KMS 2.5. KM as HR issue 2.6. KM as combination of all of the above 2.7. KM provides competitive advantage 2. KM as an IT fad 3.8. Failures of KM 3.9. Promises of KM vs what it has delivered Conclusion References Introduction With the changing trends in the field of business management one can see Knowledge management emerging as one of the major areas of importance. Many organizations have learnt the importance of implementing the KM initiatives to gain competitive advantage over their rivals and reaped the benefits while some other companies have gained bitter fruits. When few companies gained competitive advantage, how is it that the others had bitter experiences? This question has led to many people voicing their opinions against the KM initiatives. The aim of this paper is to clarify this question, without any prejudice, by providing both the pros and cons of KM initiatives. 1. Definition of Knowledge Management Srikantaiah & Koenig (2000) defined knowledge management as a ‘discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets.’ Successful organizations are realizing the importance of knowledge management. Coulson...
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...UNIVERSITY, ISLAMABAD (Department of Business Administration) WARNING 1. 2. PLAGIARISM OR HIRING OF GHOST WRITER(S) FOR SOLVING THE ASSIGNMENT(S) WILL DEBAR THE STUDENT FROM AWARD OF DEGREE/CERTIFICATE, IF FOUND AT ANY STAGE. SUBMITTING ASSIGNMENTS BORROWED OR STOLEN FROM OTHER(S) AS ONE’S OWN WILL BE PENALIZED AS DEFINED IN “AIOU PLAGIARISM POLICY”. Course: Human Resource Management (5532) Level: MBA Semester: Autumn, 2010 Total Marks: 100 Pass Marks: 40 ASSIGNMENT No. 1 (Units: 1–4) Q. 1 Why HR is called the most important asset and competitive advantage of any organization in the world? (20) Your Solutions 2 Helping Material HR and Competitive Advantage In order to have an effective competitive strategy, the company must have one or more competitive advantage, factors that allow an organization to differentiate its product or service. Wal-Mart builds its low cost leader strategy on the dual competitive advantage of a satellite based inventory and distribution system, and on employment policies that help it to achieve extraordinary low employment costs. Southwest Airlines achieves low cost leader status through employment policies that produce a highly motivated and...
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...------------------------------------------------- Home Appliance Industry ------------------------------------------------- Designing an HR system for a changing industry Gwendolyn Hill, Cheolhyun Park, and Kexin Xu May 7, 2012 Professor Lepak, HR IV Table of Contents I. Industry Trend & Major Business Implications 3 II. Clear explanation of the impact on managing people 4 1. Employee Competencies 5 2. Motivation/Effort 8 3. Opportunities to Contribute (Work Design) 9 III. Ideal HR System 10 1. Work Design & Workforce Planning 10 2. Managing Employee Competencies 12 3. Managing Employee Attitudes & Behaviors 14 IV. Major Hurdles & Strategies to Overcome Them 17 Bibliography 19 I. Industry Trend & Major Business Implications Home appliance industry includes manufactures of household cooking appliances, laundry machine, refrigerator, dishwasher, water heater, and other household appliances. Like other retail industry, household appliance manufacturing business had hard time with recent recession. Especially fallen housing market directly affects the industry because people generally purchase new appliances for new homes. Moreover, cost of raw material and labor as well as government regulations for energy efficiency product raised price of product. Consequently, industry revenue and employment growth rate were below zero in past five years. According to IBIS industry report, in US market, Whirlpool has 43.8% market...
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...Bateman−Snell: Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World, Eighth Edition I. Foundations of Management Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2009 Foundations of Management • Managing • The External Environment and Organizational Culture • Managerial Decision Making Planning: Delivering Strategic Value • Planning and Strategic Management • Ethics and Corporate Responsibility • International Management • Entrepreneurship Strategy Implementation Organizing: Building a Dynamic Organization • Organization Structure • Organizational Agility • Human Resources Management • Managing the Diverse Workforce Leading: Mobilizing People • • • • Leadership Motivating for Performance Teamwork Communicating Controlling: Learning and Changing • Managerial Control • Managing Technology and Innovation • Creating and Managing Change Bateman−Snell: Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World, Eighth Edition I. Foundations of Management Introduction © The McGraw−Hill Companies, 2009 PART ONE Foundations of Management The three chapters in Part One describe the foundations of management. Chapter 1 discusses the imperatives of managing in today’s business landscape and introduces the key functions, skills, and competitive goals of effective managers. In other words, it discusses what you need to do and accomplish to become a high-performing manager. Chapter 2 describes the external environment in which managers and their...
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...June 20, 2012 Reflection Summary Week one discussed three chapters which were managing, the external environment and organizational culture. Management In chapter one, we learned about the four key elements that make the current business landscape very different from the one we knew in the past. These are known as globalization, technological change including the development and applications of the Internet, knowledge management and collaboration across organizational boundaries. Managing in the New Competitive Landscape We learned that globalization is one of the most important part is any business. Many corporations do business worldwide and globalization helps them interact with other countries worldwide. It helps companies grow. Technology is another part of the business world, which created opportunities. Knowledge management helps learn new ideas, collaborate, and put those ideas into success. We also learned that one of the most important processes of management is to make sure people in different organizations communicate and collaborate the right way in different departments. Collaboration across organization boundaries is the main key for any business to succeed. Managing for Competitive Advantage Another very important section was the discussion on how to survive in any business. To do so, people must assure themselves they can compete with other competitors, gain advantage so they can also gain profit. Innovation plays a big role because it helps introduce...
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...knowledgebased economy, globalize economy, digital economy. When economy need knowledge more than other tangible assets, the human resources are become the vital resource and assumed as an asset to an organization. Knowledge workers or called human capital have different characteristics contrast to non-knowledge workers. To be competitive advantage in present marketplace, human capital should be treat as a capital to an organization and must be managed significantly and neatly. Human Resource Department becomes an important part to deal with a lot of challenges in managing human capital in new economy. Keywords : New economy; Knowledge – based economy; Human capital; Knowledge Management; Intellectual Capital INTRODUCTION In this 21st century, the global economy was shift to new economy or be known as knowledge – based economy (k-economy) There is no longer agricultural and industrial economy but we are now entering to knowledge society which is work is linked to knowledge and learning. The rise of the new economy, the knowledge component of products and services has increased dramatically in importance and has become the dominant component of customer value. There are two types of knowledge, tacit, which is embedded in the human brain and cannot be expresses easily, and explicit knowledge, which can easily codified (Nonaka, 1991). Due to tacit knowledge as in human brain, thus, human capital needs to be managing considerably. Human resources are not a mere cost factor any more, they ...
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...research has acknowledged the fact that organizations have begun to realize that sustainable advantage relies on managing intangible resources such as the knowledge embedded assets. According to Stewart (2002), in the 21st century, knowledge embedded assets have become more important to the organizations than financial and physical assets. Therefore, in order to compete in this millennium, organizations must have the ability to create value, be agile and sensitive to the market. Knowledge embedded assets like ideas, practices, talents, skills, know-how, know-what, relationships and innovations, that arise from the creation of IC, have become a pre-eminent economic resource and the basis for competitive advantage (Stewart, 2002; Finney, Campbell and Powell, 2004; Demediuk, 2002; Graves, 2002). According to Sveiby (1997), knowledge embedded assets can be found in three areas: the competencies of the employees; organization’s internal structure such as patents, models, computer and administrative systems; and organization’s external structure such as brands, reputations, relationship with customers and suppliers. Stewart (2002), on the other hand, suggests that knowledge embedded assets comprise of talents, skills, know-how, know-what, relationships and also include machines and network that can be used to create wealth to an organization. In short, many IC theorists termed the knowledge embedded assets as IC (e.g., Demediuk, 2002; Sullivan, 1999; Stewart, 1997). There is a multi-faceted...
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...strategy 18 Chapter 10 Strategy methods and evaluation 21 Chapter 11 Strategy development processes 23 Chapter 1 Introducing strategy Strategy is the direction and scope of an organization over the long term, which achieves advantage in a changing environment through its configuration of resources and competences with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. Strategic decisions are about… * The long-term direction of an organization * The scope of an organization’s activities * Gaining advantage over competitors * Addressing changes in the business environment * Building on resources and competences capabilities * Values and expectations of stakeholders which affect operational decisions Therefore strategic decisions are likely to be complex in nature, are made in uncertain situations, affect operational decisions, require an integrated approach and do involve considerable change. Levels of strategy 1. Corporate level strategy is concerned with the overall purpose and scope of an organization and how value will be added to the different business units. 2. Business level strategy is about how to compete successfully in particular markets. 3. Operational strategies are concerned with how the component parts of an organization deliver effectively the corporate and business level strategies in terms of resources processes and people. The...
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...KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT THROUGH STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT PROCESS ABSTRACT Knowledge Management (KM) is the key factor for the organizational success and survival. In the competitive business environments, knowledge management involve strategic management processes. The processes consist of formulating stages, implementation stages, and controlling stages. With a systematic strategic management approach, organizations are able to generate competitive advantage and achieve organizational objectives. This paper provides an approach for organization to manage KM through strategic management process. KM currently is a discipline which is growing very fast. Therefore to support business viability and competitiveness, organization needs to integrate fragmented landscape of KM with strategic management process. Keywords: Knowledge Management, Strategic Management. 1.0 INTRODUCTION According to Webb (1998), KM is the process of identification, optimization and active management of intellectual assets to create value, increase productivity and gain and sustain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, Murray (1998) said KM is a strategy that turns an organization’s intellectual assets and the talents of its members to produce new productivity, value and increase competitiveness. Therefore, we can conclude that KM is a discipline, designed to provide strategy, process, and technology to increase organizational learning. A part from that, strategy is the major plan to be undertaken and allocating...
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...Introduction Swot analysis is a method of analysing our internal capabilities which are our strengths and weaknesses as well as external traits that involves with opportunities and threats. The external aspects will be analysed based on the PEST criteria which are politics, environmental, social and technology. While for the internal aspects, personal characteristics and attributes that a person has will be analysed. Further from the identification of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, personal development action plan will be developed. 2.0 Strengths In this report, the analysis of personal strength will be done by using few criteria. Personal capabilities, accreditations and qualifications, philosophy, values, also knowledge and experience are the criteria that will be used to analyse my personal strength. From my educational background, I had my primary and secondary education in Sultan Ibrahim Girls School, Johor Bahru. Being in girls’ school since primary until secondary school has taught me to be an articulate person. In the school where I have same gender friends, I don’t feel shy to point out my ideas because it seems like the way of thinking with same gender friends are same. This has made me an articulate person. In 2004, I was offered to continue secondary education in MRSM Kuala Berang, Terengganu. Entering mix gender and far away from home school was a new environment for me. In addition, MRSM is boarding school and the learning styles were just...
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...bulls of materials * Sales and marketing: Identifying customers, making customers aware of products, selling the products * Human resources: hiring employees, evaluating employee job performance, enrolling employees in benefits * Finance and accounting: paying creditors and employees, creating financial statements, managing cash accounts * Define business process and describe the role they play in organizations. * Business process is the steps and tasks that describe how a business’ work is organized. A business process is important so that each employee follows the same steps and tasks when working for an organization. * Identify and describe the different levels in a business firm and their information needs. * Senior management: makes long-range strategic decisions. They need information about the overall performance of the business. * Middle management: carries out decisions that senior management make. They need information specific to the region or department they oversee. * Operations management: responsible for managing the daily operations of a...
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...07-079 Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage Alan MacCormack* Theodore Forbath** Peter Brooks ** Patrick Kalaher** *Harvard Business School, Boston, MA **Wipro Technologies, Product Strategy and Architecture Practice, Boston, MA Copyright © 2007 by Alan MacCormack, Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks, and Patrick Kalaher. Note: This is one of two papers reporting the results from this research. The other is “From Outsourcing to Global Collaboration: New Ways to Build Competitiveness,” HBS Working Paper 07-080. Working papers are distributed in draft form for purposes of comment and discussion. It may not be reproduced without permission of the copyright holders. Copies are available from the authors. Innovation through Global Collaboration: A New Source of Competitive Advantage Date: August 14th 2007 Alan MacCormack* Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA 02163 Theodore Forbath, Peter Brooks, Patrick Kalaher Wipro Technologies 75 Federal Street, Boston, MA 02110 * Corresponding Author Abstract Many recent studies highlight the need to rethink the way we manage innovation. Traditional approaches, based on the assumption that the creation and pursuit of new ideas is best accomplished by a centralized and collocated R&D team, are rapidly becoming outdated. Instead, innovations are increasingly brought to the market by networks of firms, selected for their unique capabilities, and operating in a coordinated...
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...Abstract. This paper tries to emphasize why in the era of globalization human resources are viewed as a source of competitive advantage? Therefore, the aim of this paper is to reveal that human resources management is essential to ensure the success of any organization which is based on the belief that an organization gains competitive advantage by using its people effectively and efficiently. Regarding this new challenge of HRM, this paper strives to identify whether the HRM can be considered as a source of competitive advantage of the firms or not? Finally the result of this study highlights the value of human resources (HR) and its strategic activities which have an influence on organizations performance and competitive abilities. 1. Introduction The term ‘human resource management’ (HRM) is simply the reflection of three words that does not provide much enlightenment. Where, ‘human’ implies it has something to do with people; ‘management’ places it in the domain of business and organization; but ‘resource’ is a highly ambiguous concept that many people find difficult to relate to [1],[2]. Now the question arises what exactly is the ‘HRM’? According to Storey [3], HRM is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic development of a highly committed and capable workforce. On the other hand, concerning to HRM, American Management Association (AMA), mentioned it can be described as the organizational function...
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...efficiency as a strategic ➔ Analyse how strategic capabilities might provide sustainable competitive advantage on the basis of their value, rarity, inimitability and nonsubstitutability. ➔ Diagnose strategic capability by means of value chain analysis, activity mapping, benchmarking and SWOT analysis. ➔ Consider how managers can develop strategic capabilities of organisations. Photo: Glyn Kirk/Action Plus Sports Images capability. ECS8_C03.qxd 94 10/15/07 CHAPTER 3 3.1 14:23 Page 94 STRATEGIC CAPABILITY INTRODUCTION Chapter 2 outlined how the external environment of an organisation can create both strategic opportunities and threats. However, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda all compete in the same environment, yet Tesco is a superior performer. It is not the environment that distinguishes between them but their internal strategic capabilities. The importance of strategic capability is the focus of this chapter. There are three key concepts that underpin the discussion. The first is that organisations are not identical, but have different capabilities; they are ‘heterogeneous’ in this respect. The second is that it can be difficult for one organisation to obtain or copy the capabilities of another. For example, Sainsbury’s cannot readily obtain the whole of Tesco’s retail sites, its management or its experience. The third arises from these: if an organisation is to achieve competitive advantage, it will do so on the basis of capabilities...
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...Cand. Merc. IMM INTERNATIONAL MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT “Is there an optimal strategic approach in gaining superior financial performance in a hypercompetitive environment?” Topic no. 2 Authors: Kristofer Edholm Alexandra Johansen Advisor: Magdalena Dobrajska Date of Hand-in: 19/12 – 2012 “IS THERE AN OPTIMAL STRATEGIC APPROACH IN GAINING SUPERIOR FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE IN A HYPERCOMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT?” ABSTRACT Hypercompetition has made competition more aggressive, and effective strategies have become vital in order for companies to remain competitive in the vigorous marketplace. The paper will study the two most commonly used theories within strategic planning, the Industrial Analysis and the Resource-Based View, to see which is more effective in order to increase financial performance in a hypercompetitive environment. The paper will first look at the overall effect of hypercompetition on the marketplace. Secondly, the Industrial Analysis effect on financial performance in hypercompetition will be examined, and thirdly, the effect the Resource-Based View has on financial performance considering hypercompetitive challenges. Finally, the paper ends by concluding that a strategy based on RBV will have greater effect on financial performance in a hypercompetitive environment, which suggests that managers' should spend more resources concerning companies' internal environment than the external in order to increase their return on investments. 2 INTRODUCTION ...
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