In recent years, a dramatic change in the world economy
and the use of IT have affected the way businesses and
organizations operate. One of the changes is the
shift from a resource-based view of competitive
advantage for example capital, labour, and raw
material to a knowledge-based competitive advantage through
Knowledge Management (KM). This increased enthusiasm on
KM is a result of cost reduction in data management,
due to the rise of computing capabilities like the
Internet, electronic networking, and local database.
This also means an increase in an organization's
feasibility on acquiring,documenting, processing,
and distributing data and informationglobally.
The adoption of KM by businesses and organizations has
initiated the interests of researchers and academicians. Many
issues are being examined and studied, such as KM structure,
knowledge diffusion, KM implementation, KM performance
framework, and HRM strategy in KM. The earlier stages
of these studies tend to associate KM with information
technology, which was perceived as the main driver
for KM. However, technology is not the only requirement
of KM. What is more important is the knowledge
created by human beings. This view is also supported by
other researchers and academicians such as Mintzberg(1989).
Knowledge can be defined in many ways. A comprehensive
definition of knowledge is a fluid mix of framed
experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight
that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new
experience and information. It originates and is applied in the
mind of knowers. In organizations, it often becomes embedded
not only in documents or repositories, but also in
organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms.
