Knowledge Management (KM) involves rethinking how management relates to employees. At issue is how to reward the mentors and other knowledgeable employees for the incremental value they create in the company through sharing their knowledge. In many regards, the basic principles of Knowledge Management go against human nature, in that employees, as well as managers, are naturally reluctant to give up their hard-won advantages. This reluctance to share the real core of information isn’t limited to business but is also prevalent in academia, which is established around Knowledge Management principles. Researchers often offer statistical summaries and generalizations instead of raw data, and the technical details of leading edge technologies are rarely published in a timely manner unless tenure or significant funding is at stake.
Meanwhile, in other side, the Knowledge Management consists of knowledge workers. knowledge workers are central to the operation of a knowledge organization. Not only do they represent the greatest potential for multiplying the value of a company, but they also represent the greatest risk to value loss. Furthermore, managing knowledge workers is challenging because of the competing goals of encouraging knowledge sharing thorough communities of practice while maintaining control over the general direction of the corporation through information hiding and filtering. For knowledge workers who represent a positive value multiplier, providing consistent supportive feedback through the corporation’s touch points, investing in knowledge worker education when economically feasible, and maintaining the processes associated with knowledge worker loyalty all maximize the value that the knowledge worker can bring to the corporation.