Effective Knowledge Management through Measurement

Abstract

Knowledge is now recognized as the most important factor of wealth creation, meaning there is no clearer way to prosperity than assigning priority to learning and knowledge creation. This is of greater significance to educational institutions because they are the primary drivers in the generation, accumulation, and dissemination of knowledge. As such, the value of an educational institution to society will depend on its capacity to create and share knowledge, which is an unremitting cycle of discovery and dissemination, or the conversion of knowledge from implicit to explicit. The source of an institution’s value to society lies in its ability to continuously improve that process by developing a strategy for acquiring and effectively and efficiently managing its knowledge base as well as understanding how and why its value is changing. In this chapter, the authors consider how an institution knows whether it is managing its knowledge assets in a sustainable way and whether they have increased or diminished over a certain period by looking at several propositions already in existence. It then proposes its own strategic approach, the Knowledge Management Monitor, to assist in this management process.