Question

determine right from wrong in a knowledge management process pertaining to knowledge sharing, protecting intellectual capital of individuals and corporate intelligence of organisations as well as social and cultural sensitivity.

Answer 1

A Knowledge Management Process (KMP) is considered to be a process of finding, selecting, organising, disseminating and transferring valuable information for the purpose of problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making. It deals with the effective management of an organization’s intellectual capacity to achieve competitive advantage. This management process is extremely important for dealing with the rapidly changing business environment so as to adjust to it and achieve success. But the management practices related to KMP are met with ethical dilemma. Ethics of KMP help in distinguishing right from wrong. For ethical Knowledge Management Process, it is important to have an insight into the ethical issues in the field of Knowledge Management Process.

In the process of Knowledge Management, distortion can occur due to the introduction of biases in the presentation of information. The manipulation can be based on the interests of a favoured party. This is unethical in the Knowledge Management Process. When knowledge is shared with the employer, it results in the creation of intellectual property for the employer. The new owner of the knowledge is now the employer, not the individual. So, knowledge shifts from being individual to collective. Herein lies the ethical issue of the intellectual property rights. The ethical dilemma here is that knowledge which originated from an individual which should be safeguarded under human rights to “privacy or security-of-person” or should it be treated as organisational knowledge which bestows them with the right to buy, sell and use their corporate knowledge. The practice of Knowledge Management faces the challenge of removing cultural barriers in the area of knowledge sharing. The issue is created by sentiments rising from information sharing. The competition between employees motivate them to hoard knowledge. But this may hurt the sentiments of the organization. If the organisation moves tacit knowledge or knowledge of the workers into data warehouses, the importance of knowledge worker will be reduced. This will hurt the sentiments of knowledge workers. Competitive Intelligence (CI) relates to the process of data mining to obtain competitive advantage over the rival. CI is achieved by regularly reviewing competitors’ profiles and publicly available reports, conducting patent searches, monitoring news alerts and financial reports, and tracking sales force reports. This kind of information is developed from public domains which are known as “open sources.” The threat to one’s information is also created by “grey literature”, which is available to insiders.