Definition
Knowledge management is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organisation. It refers to a multidisciplinary approach to achieving organisational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
What is ‘Knowledge Capital’
An intangible asset that comprises the information and skills of a company’s employees, their experience with business processes, group work and on-the-job learning. Knowledge capital is not like the physical factors of production – land, labor and capital – in that it is based on skills that employees share with each other in order to improve efficiencies, rather than on physical items. Having employees with skills and access to knowledge capital puts a company at a comparative advantage to its competitors.
Explaining ‘Knowledge Capital’
Businesses develop knowledge capital by encouraging employees to share information through white papers, seminars and person-to-person communication. Knowledge capital is important because it reduces the odds that a company will have to “reinvent the wheel” each time a particular process is undertaken because its employees have access to documents detailing the necessary steps, and personnel who have undertaken similar activities.
Further Reading
- Estimating the knowledge-capital model of the multinational enterprise: Comment – pubs.aeaweb.org [PDF]
- Estimating the knowledge-capital model of the multinational enterprise – pubs.aeaweb.org [PDF]
- Reconciling the Evidence on the Knowledge‐capital Model – onlinelibrary.wiley.com [PDF]
- R&D spending, knowledge capital, and agricultural productivity growth: A Bayesian approach – academic.oup.com [PDF]
- Institutions as knowledge capital: Ludwig M. Lachmann’s interpretative institutionalism – academic.oup.com [PDF]
- Physical capital, knowledge capital, and the choice between FDI and outsourcing – onlinelibrary.wiley.com [PDF]
- News and knowledge capital – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
- On the efficient use of mathematics in economics: Some theory, facts and results of an opinion survey – onlinelibrary.wiley.com [PDF]
- An empirical comparison of published replication research in accounting, economics, finance, management, and marketing – www.sciencedirect.com [PDF]
