In the modern economy, knowledge is considered as a capital. In the old days temporal knowledge had limited value. Knowledge mainly implied spiritual knowledge or Brahmvidya. In those days knowledge was considered as the best purifier. Today knowledge is considered as a primary commodity in the present knowledge based economy. Now-a-days the main asset of production is intellectual capital as opposed to the tangible assets which earlier pushed manufacturing based economy.

Obviously knowledge is acquired through formal and informal education. While dealing with the learning community Bhaskar Chatterjee opines, “Lifelong education is not something that is intended only for non-illiterates, neo-literates and drop-outs. It is also for the so called educated members of society. It should provide opportunities for teachers, housewives, truck drivers, social and political activists, local leaders - in fact every literate member of society to learn, and, where necessary to unlearn”. Now our ideal is 'education for all'. Now-a-days there are various modes of learning, various modes of acquiring knowledge such as print media, electronic media (audio-visual) as well as personal contact and through correspondence.

Knowledge gives the ability to perform properly. It helps us in carrying small or big projects, running an organization and doing research. To acquire, disseminate and utilize knowledge we need knowledge management.

Knowledge management is a comparatively new term. Dr Yogesh Malhotra, chairman BRINT Institute elaborates on knowledge management as follows: “Knowledge management refers to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival and competence against continues environmental change. Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings”. He further adds: “Knowledge management is more about pragmatic and thoughtful application of any concept or definition, as it is not in the definition but in the real world execution where opportunities and challenges lie. Any definition, therefore, must be understood within the specific context of expected performance outcomes and value propositions that answer the question 'why' about relevance of knowledge management (KM).

Francisco Javier Carrillo writes: 'Knowledge management as a discipline has evolved simultaneously in several planes. It has grown in depth, impact and reach. In terms of depth, it is coming to terms with its philosophical and scientific foundations. In terms of impact, it is consolidation as an approach to the strategic development of knowledge-based organizations. In terms of reach, it has grown from its origins as a business movement to its presence in all forms of human organizations'.

After Second World War Japan was badly damaged. To put its economy on track American statisticians have suggested in factories and workshop the scheme of 'Quality Circle'. The idea behind implementation of Quality Circle (QC) was to gather organizational and work knowledge from even the smallest workers and QC functioned at various levels. The starting QC was at the organizational unit level. After the weekend work all the workers of unit were expected to assemble and give presentation on their experience gained to improve efficiency of the unit.

Similarly, there was scheme of department level QC thereafter organization level QC. By the implementation of QC the economy of Japan benefited a lot. Now-a-days almost all the organizations have research and development wing, inter-net connectivity and library. There is great thrust to build up institutional knowledge. To enhance institutional knowledge personal knowledge management has also gained currency. Personnel knowledge management has been defined as a process by which individual workers try to keep track of information which is encountered by him in his daily work lives. The need of workers is separate from that of corporate management system.

Knowledge management system (KMS) collects, stores, disseminates and above all accomplishes the corporate information gathered through personal knowledge or other means for acquiring profit. Companies do not hesitate to buy out knowledge. KMS uses techniques for systematic collection, transfer, security and management of information gathered through various means (i.e. QC internet, library, etc) within the organization so that the know-ledge so gathered may be used in the best way.

(Courtesy: The Sangai Express)