Knowledge Management
Mohammad Mehdi Mohtadi; Mohammad Milad Ahmadi
Abstract
Background and Objectives: Today, the knowledge can be considered one of the key assets in the organizations due to its high importance. To address such importance, the concept of knowledge management was developed to manage the capital of organizational knowledge and its acquisition, maintenance, and ...
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Background and Objectives: Today, the knowledge can be considered one of the key assets in the organizations due to its high importance. To address such importance, the concept of knowledge management was developed to manage the capital of organizational knowledge and its acquisition, maintenance, and republishing, as well as proposing various KM strategies. Like government and public organizations, the mission of institutions is based on the full participation and cooperation of volunteers. In addition, the management of their vast knowledge, which is regarded as implicit and scattered in the minds of volunteers, has certain complexities and serious differences with the same process in other organizations. The present study aims to prioritize knowledge management strategies in the above-mentioned situations by focusing on a set of institutions related to war-zone tourism in Iran. The war-zone tourism program in Iran, which focuses on visiting the monuments in the operational areas during the eight years of holy defense, is known as the "Rahian-e Noor" trips, which is held every year with the participation of various organizations throughout the country, along with integrated planning and coordination, and servicing various pilgrims by a large number of volunteers. The accumulated experience and tacit knowledge of the aforementioned factors, which are related to pilgrims and tourists, is among the key factors in the success of the Rahian-e Noor program, which is considered as a clear example of inclusive activities based on voluntary participation. The present study seeks to assess the known knowledge management strategies with the highest priority for such organizations.
Methodology: The present study is regarded as applied and descriptive in terms of objective, and quantitative in terms of data type. The population included 20 experts familiar with knowledge management and research environment, who were selected as the statistical sample. To select candidate strategies, the knowledge management framework was used and four main strategies including externalization, internalization, combination, and socialization were considered as applicable alternatives. The present study aims to prioritize and determine the most appropriate strategies in the studied conditions. To this aim, the Analytical Network Process (ANP) was utilized and the obstacle structure was determined. Thus, externalization, internalization, combination, and socialization strategies are regarded as alternatives for the obstacle and the issues related to the people, knowledge management processes, technology applied, and governance are considered as criteria for prioritizing the above-mentioned alternatives.
Findings: The network of relations between the criteria was drawn after structuring the obstacle. Then, the weight of criteria and sub-criteria were calculated using a pairwise comparison questionnaire. The values formed an initial supermatrix, which was weighted linearly, and the final weights were obtained from the partial shape of the aforementioned supermatrix. In the next step, decision options were ranked based on the data. Finally, the weight of the combination, internalization, externalization, and socialization strategy were 0.288, 0.224, 0.188, and 0.300. Based on the results, the proposed knowledge management strategies for the Rahian-e Noor are as follows, respectively:
Discussion: 1) Socialization: The collective nature of the caravans in the Rahian-e Noor emphasizes the social strategy of knowledge management because what is central to various programs of the Rahian-e Noor under the headings of "narration" recreates the pattern of turning tacit knowledge into tacit knowledge. The "narrator" is regarded as the axis in a large part of the knowledge, which is achieved by visitors from historical and surrounding events. 2) Combination: As the second priority, the Rahian-e Noor headquarters should record the knowledge acquired in various fields in the organizational information systems and utilize the capacity of virtual social networks to communicate with different classes of the audiences. 3) Internalization: Internalization can be observed when experienced managers or experts lecture. Once internalized, new knowledge is applied by those developed and reorganized it in their existing tacit knowledge base. As the third priority, the Rahian-e Noor headquarters should develop approaches which help internalize knowledge. 4) Externalization: The set of activities for recording experiences and documenting historical narratives and what is transformed from the words, thoughts, and ideas of experts into sound, text, image, and map realize the externalization strategy.
