Page 64 - Volume_14

Jurnal PPM: Journal of Malaysian Librarians
Vol. 14, 2020

KNOWLEDGE ISSUES THAT ARE OPPORTUNITIES FOR LIBRARIES
Organisations have issues with knowledge and some do not care to admit it. Some of the
symptoms such as relying on key individuals, continuously repeating mistakes and staff
relearning the same thing exists in organisations. Let us discuss them in a bit more detail.

• Organisations do not know what they know and do not know what they do not know.
This is a situation where most organisations do not want to admit or simply assume
they know. The truth is that most do not have a clue. Even if they know, they do not
know where they can find certain knowledge within the organisation. The symptoms
are the same as stated above. The worst part is when two different departments are
suppose to know what the other is doing or having, fail to do so. This could lead to
the inability to maximise the resources and thus, a lot of wastage. The case of
reinventing the wheel will be enormous is such a case.

• It is worse when organisations do not know what and where are their strategic
knowledge assets. Worst when these knowledge assets leave or are lost in the
organisations
The issue of not knowing what organisation know will be compounded when they do
not know what critical knowledge assets the organisation has. These are knowledge
assets that if something happens to them, the organisation’s value would be
downgraded, worst the organisation will cease to exist.

• Critical knowledge resides within a few key individuals and not shared as collective
understanding or expertise.
The other knowledge issue that an organisation has is that their critical knowledge
assets reside within a few of their staff in the organisation. In this case, it is not just
enough to know what are they and their location and it is critical to democratise these
knowledge so that everyone can have access to and more importantly, the
organisation can manage the risk of these knowledge walking away or lost in
whatever means and ways. Another issue with this is that not everyone that have the
knowledge would want to share them.

• Organisations do not capitalise or leverage their knowledge assets to their advantage.
Organisations can only capitalise and leverage their knowledge asset if only they are
visible and accessible. The biggest knowledge issue for organisations is that their
assets are firstly not visible. This invisibility can be due to knowledge is not shared
or is buried somewhere within the many systems in the organisation. Most KM

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