Knowledge Base

A knowledge base (or knowledgebase; abbreviated KB, kb or Δ) is a special kind of database for knowledge management, providing the means for the computerized collection, organization, and retrieval of knowledge.

Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be frequently asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual media, its pronunciation varies; "fack," "fax," "facts," and "F.A.Q." are commonly heard. Depending on usage, the term may refer specifically to a single frequently asked question, or to an assembled list of many questions and their answers.

Knowledge Management (KM) comprises a range of practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice.

Many large companies and non-profit organisations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often as a part of their 'Business Strategy', 'Information Technology', or 'Human Resource Management' departments (Addicott, McGivern & Ferlie 2006). Several consulting companies also exist that provide strategy and advice regarding KM to these organisations.

KM efforts typically focus on organisational objectives such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, and continuous improvement of the organisation. KM efforts overlap with Organisational Learning, and may be distinguished from that by a greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help individuals and groups to share valuable organisational insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoid reinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employees turnover in an organisation, and to adapt to changing environments and markets (McAdam & McCreedy 2000)(Thompson & Walsham 2004).

Strategies

Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities. Different organisations have tried various knowledge capture incentives, including making content submission mandatory and incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. Considerable controversy exists over whether incentives work or not in this field and no consensus has emerged.

One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance, individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as a database, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the repository.

Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide their insights to the particular person or people needing this (Snowden 2002).

Other knowledge management strategies for companies include:

• Rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)

• Storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)

• Cross-project learning

• After action reviews

• Knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a company accessible by all)

• Communities of practice

• Best practice transfer

• Competence management (systematic evaluation and planning of competences of individual organization members)

• Proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be either conducive or obstructive to knowledge sharing)

• Master-apprentice relationship

• Collaborative technologies (groupware, etc)

• Knowledge repositories (databases, etc)

• Measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)

• Knowledge brokers (some organizational members take on responsibility for a specific "field" and act as first reference on whom to talk about a specific subject)

• Social software (wikis, social bookmarking, Blogs, etc)

Technologies

Early KM technologies included online corporate yellow pages as expertise locators and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologies expanded in the mid-1990s. Subsequent KM efforts leveraged semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of e-learning tools for communities of practice (Capozzi 2007).

More recently, development of social computing tools (such as blogs and wikis) have allowed more unstructured, self-governing or ecosystem approaches to the transfer, capture and creation of knowledge, including the development of new forms of communities, networks, or matrixed organisations. However such tools for the most part are still based on text and code, and thus represent explicit knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-usable knowledge and ensuring that their content is transmissible through diverse channels (Andrus 2005).

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