Can Zakat Institutions Adopt Consumer-Centric Knowledge Management Successfully to Alleviate Poverty?

Abstract

Drawing upon Consumer-Centric Knowledge Management (CCKM) approach and poverty alleviation efforts, this chapter elaborates the adoption of these approaches in Zakat Institutions (ZI) in their search to alleviate poverty. It assesses the interrelationships of the two approaches in ZI considering the poor and needy as the main envisioned stakeholders. The investigation deliberates the landscape of poverty alleviation by key agents of knowledge change, reviewing their contributions to establish communities of practices in creating and sharing knowledge on poverty alleviation. Similarly, it relates major strategic focus of poverty alleviation to CCKM processes. It explores knowledge management gaps that could affect ZI outreach highlighting the main internal and external challenges. The substances of outreach stipulate the importance of poverty intelligence portfolio that utilizes key elements of CCKM, namely poor and needy intelligence, demand intelligence, situational intelligence, and networking intelligence. As a result, the effective engagement of ZI in the two approaches is valued with respect to knowledge on poverty alleviation.