Knowledge Sharing: A Key Role in the Knowledge Management Process

Abstract

Knowledge is and has remained a core competence of all thriving organizations and so, the management of knowledge will remain a key competitive strategy for any organization that wants to remain innovative, sustainable and profitable in this dynamic world of business volatility. The difference between one organization and another, in term of performance and skill utilization has been linked not only to the quality of their knowledge repositories, but also to how knowledge is shared among organizational members. This paper reviewed some extant literature and discovered that the most important of all knowledge management processes lies in knowledge sharing. Rather than keeping our stock of both tacit and explicit knowledge to ourselves, we should endeavor to share knowledge because our stock of knowledge does not deplete when we share it. Rather, knowledge sharing reinforces our knowledge base and makes knowledge to stick and become more permanent. As a matter of fact, the tacit knowledge which resides in the knower goes with the holder when he or she dies. This paper also supports the formulation of a conceptual framework that will establish a link between knowledge management and the organizational learning process.