Page 71 - Volume_14

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

The indicators for learning and growth improved its R&D function, reinforced the
utilisation of new technologies and new business fields as well as new products and
services. KM programme supports R&D firstly by making knowledge resources
available and accessible. Secondly, making available the lessons learnt from trevious
research by making all the research conducted so far available.

Mitigating the Potential Knowledge Loss
We can have a list of benefits of KM and many literature and research have proven to
this fact. However, the biggest concern of any organisation about knowledge is the
potential loss of their knowledge due to various reasons. Knowledge loss is a global issue
and most organisations retained their knowledge for organisational use in the form of
explicit knowledge - documents, reports and repositories; and tacit knowledge within
human or group of humans. The potential knowledge loss can happen due to downsizing
of human resources, retirement, resignation, job rotation, placement and worst of all of
their knowledge are not properly captured, kept and managed. At times when they are
captured and kept, the knowledge are kept in isolation or out of context without proper
linkages that in the end result in no other person can understand about the knowledge let
alone use them effectively. Thus, knowledge loss can happen in so many ways and
instances. What about the value of the knowledge loss? Thus, KM implementation in
any organisation will hugely reduce this possibility.

HOW TO START?
Librarians have the choice of taking a ‘big bang’ or a strategic organic approach of
implementation. Either way, libraries need to understand that implementing KM is not
about a KM unit or department. It is about the whole library and librarians living the KM
practice. To begin, it is recommendable for the library to do a strategic knowledge audit
of the library firstly to be comfortable with the process and then the whole organisation.

This is done to identify the strategic knowledge assets of the organisation. Where are
they, in what form and are they being managed properly. This process normally will also
identify the knowledge culture and process in the organisation. Understanding the
currently existing knowledge process is key as apart from the opportunity of improving
the process, new intervention could be embedded with the process value chain. There
are tools that can be used to do an effective knowledge audit. Figure 3 is an example of
a knowledge audit framework based on Strait Knowledge’s Wheel Of Knowledge .
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23 http://www.greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/wheel_of_knowledge_revisited/

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