Knowledge management: An intellectual tool to manage performance in the today's organizational world

Today is an ever changing environment of achieving competitive advantage where we expect a high -trust instititutional forms like communities of practice, creation of informal orgnizations, shifting of enterprise from product-centric to a knowledge centric view. So during this crucial time period, company cannot afford to under invest in using, reusing & losing knowledge possess by the employees,. The ability of companies to exploit their intangible assets has become far more decisive than their ability to invest and manage their physical assets (Davenport & Prusak,1998). By managing its knowledge assets, an enterprise can improve its competitiveness and adaptability and increase its chances of success. Organizations are discovering that they need to do a better job of capturing, distributing, sharing. Many of the organization believes that introducing information technology is sufficient for imparting data but it should be continuously backed up by Knowledge management Practices. Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody - either by becoming grounds for action, or by making an individual (or an institution) capable of different or more effective action. (Drucker 1989). Knowledge asset is the only intangible factors contributing to work performance but managing knowledge is not enough, it should be also accompanied with motivational and energy factors. Many Indian business houses have started implementing knowledge management programs in their organization. So, in this context, this paper focuses upon improving the organization performance by continuously strengthening the knowledge management practices as Information technology is successful only if knowledge management is continuously backed up by changes in people, organizational climate and organizational processes. It is becoming more popular as a discourse and more acceptable practice among development workers and learning organizations.