Knowledge and Learning in Business Success - Essay Sample

Introduction

The common definition of knowledge is the awareness or an understanding of particular people or things. It is an acquired skill that lets one be aware of the surrounding events, ideas, or performance. From a management perspective, knowledge can be seen as a strategic asset and a pool of experiences, facts, information, capabilities, and insight required for good business performance. Other than being an individually acquired skill from the philosophical and general perspective, it is termed as a shared resource that shapes various activities within and around a business. Business knowledge exists as tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge, or embedded knowledge. The Tacit type of knowledge is not tangible; hence; difficult to write, transfer, or visualize. It comprises individual skills that are founded on practice and experience. A common example is an intuition. Therefore, the creation and implementation of new knowledge is an important factor for the success of a business. All companies ought to always enhance the getting of knowledge for maximum performance and productivity. My company has specific approaches to the strategic management of knowledge, as well as learning. Some of the areas where knowledge is incorporated in the company comprise strategic development, strategic marketing, sustainability, competitive advantage, and corporate change.

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

Strategic Development

I work at a medium-sized company, and more success is seen through outsourcing training courses to well-researched business education institutions. The strategy ensures that the company taps into different business operation and training knowledge that could have otherwise been difficult to find from within. I would refer this to the Knowledge Management approach. Some of the goals of the strategy include an increase of awareness and understanding of knowledge management within the organization and communicate vital knowledge management practice. The company sets a good plan on where they are, their destiny, and the process of getting where it wants. My company does so through a clearly articulated business strategy and goals that include target audience, the mission and vision statements, distribution channels, and the products and services being delivered. My company is also good at describing various business-related issues such as the importance of collaboration among workers, the need for innovation, as well as the solutions to addressing data overload. Sometimes the management may call for the need to level the performance level. I have also seen significant ways of analyzing the recommended knowledge leverage points. Through these, most of the workers can find by themselves the things that can be done with knowledge, social, and infrastructure capital alongside knowledge artifacts.

The weakness that exists with the company is the lack of inventory where it can well list the available knowledge resources. A good inventory could be vital, especially in sourcing relevant information such as customer requirements as well as the business environment (Chen, Hwang, & Raghu, 2010). It could be a pool of extensive knowledge that could also assist it when stakeholders and potential investors wanted to look at the past performance. The way the company collects and shares information is important for better development and optimum performance. From the inventory, stakeholders and investors, as well as the employees can find worker experience, the design, and processes of the products, documents in paper form or digital forms, as well as the future expectations of the company that may include the unforeseen ideas for products and services. In terms of knowledge, the files of documents could, for instance, provide useful customer and supplier experience critical in the development of new products as well as the improvement of the existent ones. Furthermore, the skills and experiences of employees could be perceived as assets. My company has knowledgeable staff, but no one recognizes them. They could be invaluable in setting the company apart from other competitors, especially when they can be recognized. Therefore, it would be of importance to find instances such as brainstorming events and sessions to enhance the passing on of employee knowledge and skills to other colleagues and successors.

Strategic Marketing

Strategic knowledge-based marketing is vital for the success of any business. The knowledge asset outweighs other traditional processes of realizing business performance, such as perfect economic factors of production. My company strategically markets its products and services while integrating intellectual capital, which can be seen as a way of incrementing its market advantage. For that reason, it has always been at the top of most of its competitors around and beyond. The company values knowledge assets more than tangible assets. The main source of knowledge and learning, has been from the customers, similar competitors, various suppliers, as well as the strategic partners of its products. Since we are placed in a more revolutionized, globalized, and technologically advanced world, the assets are also sourced from various technologies used within the business and the ways of working. These are some of the ways that investors are attracted, even though they are not well integrated into our strategic development process. Organizational Learning is also enhanced by the central pillars comprising of information and knowledge (Zack, 1999). These have been developed and researched more through a central intellectual remit through the company's information technology combined with management science. The only evidence of strategic marketing from the integration of intangible assets is the behavior of the company that is characterized by the capability and demand of workers to increase their ability to dictate the results needed. There has been more demand for expansive patterns of thinking from all workers as well as stakeholders.

There is a good strategy regarding market information processing techniques that our company could embrace. These are descriptive of how the company's information is transformed into knowledge. It could be done comprehensively through generation and dissemination of the data, which are key aspects to the critical integrals of strategic market planning behaviors (Jantunen, 2005). The Marketing professionals allocated various organizational duties work redundantly. It is evident that from the chief executive officer of the organization to the departmental managers and the frontline employees, there is a great recognition of the significance of knowledge. Therefore, it is required that each of the workers become part of any knowledge management program created for all.

However, much the business nourishes in terms of performance and exhibits unique capabilities, a clearer strategic and well-defined approach still misses. I would characterize the gap being a utilitarian one that demands knowledge-based skills as well as well-designed organization strategies derived from the present organizational learning. These have also affected the managerial sector in that there are poor managerial skills and development, as well as internal communication. However, due to the struggle to focus on strategic marketing, there are efforts in the coordination of strategic activities. It has also been evident that the present Organizational Learning processes and mechanisms, as well as knowledge acquisition techniques, do not look into the associated psychological capabilities. These could be the resultant cognitive advantages that would let the managers be embraced for their commitment to the organization, the set objectives, and development.

Sustainability of Business

Maximum sustainability can only be achieved by organizations that focus on basic education and functional literacy for its constituent employees and integrate major problems as well as those unforeseen. My company, however, faces various challenges, especially in personal and individual learning. There have been weaknesses in accepting innovation and change. Some stakeholders and motivational speakers emphasize more on the shifting of the ways of thinking, but the entire management from the chief executive has been reluctant. Therefore, sustainability has not been imminent, especially concerning individual and organizational learning, organizational knowledge, and transformation. Most employees would cite the lack of time and technical assistance in accepting and implementing change (Isaksson, Johansson, & Fischer, 2010). From the top management, fear and anxiety could be the factor drawing down business sustainability. These issues embedded in the prevailing system of management contribute to business failure in some dimensions and more workload for employees. I always feel like many topics are left out during discussions that stakeholders may feel them undiscussable or risky for the business.

All managers within the business focus on performance improvement and the redesigning of various business strategies; they have a challenge in managing sustainability activities. There is negligence of the importance of knowledge and learning in implementing business change. Organizational Learning is an important factor to embed sustainability in business, even though most pieces of research conducted in the area are limited (Collis, 1994). Most of our competitor businesses focus on sustainable business practices through continuous learning about sustainability. Most of my workmates complain of the spreading of learning across the business is limited compared to other competitor companies. The learning process is dependent on the individual business, and this is one factor that is not yet understood by my company's management (Chinowsky & Carrillo, 2007). I have thought of various strategies to implement change such as focusing more on short-term goals in the existing processes before fully diving into the long-term goals, and forming working groups that assist each other in brainstorming the way forward in the modernized world. My business should have a participatory leadership style that could motivate workers and enhance the sharing of information and knowledge within the company. That could promote sustainability learning compared to the present directive leadership from the top management.

Competitive Advantage

An organization's competitive advantage is an attribute that ensures a company outperforms available competitors. A well-defined business strategy that ensures competitive advantage also encourages the achievement of superior operating margins related to the generic competition and generates added value for the entire organization and the shareholders. My company is well-defined and superior in this sector. Some of the key areas that the business does well in its environment include high employee skills, even though left unknown, more access to resources, which are restricted to our competitors, and brand image recognition. Knowledge management and learning from a business perspective can be all about exploiting information before others do and earning revenue from obsolescing that which remains unknown to others. The strengths held by my organization about competitive advantage ensure that we not only create opportunities but also challenges that others have not thought of creating. The culture of learning can also be associated with a competitive advantage (Hall, 1993). A company's operation without people is a weakness to its sustainable competitive edge.

Competitor companies always seem to be reluctant to knowledge management in the ever-changing environment that comprises similar target markets. Knowledge and learning are the ultimate integrals of competitive ad...