Knowledge-Focused Human Resource Management (HRM)

Essay

Introduction:

In today’s era where organizations have become economically and technically competitive in the global market, knowledge based human resource management is the fundamental step to be on edge. This text is about the importance of such knowledge focused human resource management which makes it possible for the organizations to create knowledge and innovation in their processes. In addition to this, the paper also critically evaluates the impact and challenges of such major shift in today’s organizations towards knowledge economy. Furthermore, the discussion is supported by the empirical studies and literary reviews to assess the topic in detail. It is also mentioned that the importance of Knowledge Management (KM) in Human Resource Management (HRM) is getting widely in focus and the philosophy is being implemented in increasing number of organizations day by day. Thus, one cannot underestimate the benefits and the role of KM in HRM. When it is implemented in any organization with true spirit, it produces effective results by creating knowledge and innovation.
Explanation:

Today’s organizations are very much intelligent and aware of their surroundings. Thanks to the increasing popularity of globalization and social media. Internet world has captured almost everyone in its virtual network, be it a young or old, individual person or a big organization; everyone is benefitting from this great opportunity. And why not, it is the time to search for perfection in almost every aspect of improvement. When it comes to knowledge based HRM, author suggests that the organizations can benefit from the philosophy if the seeds of knowledge based strategies are properly planted in the foundations of organizations. And such organizations are able to produce knowledge and innovation in their business operations.

It is a fact that implementing knowledge focused human resource management is a quite tedious job and that a lot of hard work and thorough efforts are needed to achieve the required knowledge and innovation in the organizations. And timely responding to its problems and challenges is critical for benefiting from the concept in the long term.
HRM creates concrete connections and effective communication among knowledge workers, activities and resources (Soliman, F., Spooner, K. 2000). A lot of firms and organizations have come to an understanding to make collaborative partnering and relationship with the knowledge workers as well as processes like ICT in order to make competitive advantages by centralizing the system. Knowledge based HRM has to understand and have the knowledge of how to acquire knowledge workers who do their business as part of the organizational philosophy and what type of HR services and benefits they expect to produce required results. Knowledge and innovation basically involve continued social processes that contain both formal and informal social interactions among workers and organizations.
Knowledge focused HRM helps to create Knowledge:

Debowski, S. (2006) elaborated the concept of knowledge to work practices as a main source of creating knowledge. According to him, “Applying knowledge to work practices depends on major support structures which consist of emotional and social structures as well as systems to capture and share knowledge in HRM”. It means it is not only a single process or policy that need to be re-invented rather the whole network of practices and procedures have to be re-designed for achieving the fullest results which includes, creating knowledge in the end products of business operations.

Whicker, L.M. and Andrews, K. M. (2003) categorizes people, knowledge processes, and knowledge products as the primary assets of knowledge economy. They also have proposed 4 opportunities for Human Resource Management to contribute to enterprise achievement: “Knowledge, Relationships, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Time Span of Discretion”. Hence the priority is always given to the knowledge to implement knowledge based human resource management in an organization. Such organizations help to create knowledge and application of knowledge by involving design, framework, review and application of social and technological processes to improve business strategy.

As suggested by Malhotra Y. (2003), “knowledge has become the most important factor in economic development, worldwide and knowledge assets are considered essential for economic growth, competitive advantage, human development and quality of human life”. For all the developed and developing nations, it is quite important that the employees should be skillful and knowledgeable to show productivity in their work and in return, be productive for the whole society. In addition to this, creating knowledge in the organization not only helps it maximize its operations but also map for the future improvement in its building blocks. History shows that those organizations succeed which aim for long lasting results and such is the case of KM in HRM to create knowledge.

“Complete transformation and shift of the HRM function to respond to the demands of the knowledge economy and to develop linkages with KM requires major changes across four key areas in HRM: Roles, Responsibilities, Strategic Focus and Learning Focus” (Jha, S. 2011). Roles in a sense that what specific job a worker is assigned, responsibilities in the broad context of shared knowledge, strategic focus on the ultimate goals of the company and learning focus on the ongoing and continuous learning and development in daily activities. According to Gloet, M. (2004), “Knowledge based HRM has been accompanied by the integration of these functions to support competitive advantage and a more strategic thrust. It has been advised that one way for HRM to transform itself is through its contribution to effective linkages between human capital management and knowledge management within organizations”. It is quite true that the KM should always be connected and in accordance with HRM, and the two cannot operate independently.

As per the opinion of Edvardsson, I.R. (2003), “Researchers argue that knowledge depends on people and that HRM issues, such as recruitment and selection, training and development, performance management, reward and benefits, as well as the creation of a learning culture are significant for managing knowledge within organizations”. Even in performance management, knowledge plays a dynamic role by calculating and assessing the individual progress. In such system, employees will also feel motivated if employees’ assessments are done on facts and measured on the basis of knowledge. This gives results in short term but its impact on the motivation level of employees is greater, which in turn will prove to be the real asset for an organization. While it is also true that if employee work so harder and they are not noticed by the management, such employees lose their confidence among their managers and show low productivity.

Hansen, M.T., Nohria, N. and Tierney, T. (1999) discussed that there are basically two strategies for managing knowledge. They term these strategies codification’ and ‘personalization’. The previous one refers to the use of knowledge and its storage in databases where it can be retrieved and used speedily by anyone in the firm. Such companies invest heavily in ICT for projects like intra net, data warehousing and data mining, knowledge mapping (identifying where the knowledge is located in the firm), and electronic libraries (elib). This increases effectiveness and growth. ‘The reusability of knowledge helps to save repetition of work, reduces the communications costs, and allows an organization to take on more projects and develop strategies.’ By connecting to the people through networking, the ultimate purpose it to share a timely information to reduce waste of time and money.
Knowledge focused HRM helps to create Innovation:

For every knowledge focused human resource management, it is always necessary that the people should be totally committed to knowledge management in order to implement and achieve innovation in the organization. The concept is not very new but it has got increasing importance due to the sudden shift of globally competitive economy. One example of innovation can be sensed from the statement of Kotler P. & Keller K.L. (2011), “In today’s era, organizations have to run so fast to stay in the same place”. From this statement, one can get the importance of change management and being innovative. In addition to this, it is a daily practice of giant organizations to show or launch something innovative every now and then, just to be fit in the race.

Just like it is said that all big brands target some particular segments or markets for marketing their products, but Knowledge based HRM targets knowledge workers who help to bring innovation. Based on such selection of human resource and on their trainings, companies often change their business strategies. Hence the importance of knowledge focused systems, strategies and knowledge workers cannot be ignored who help achieving the ultimate results in the form of innovation and developments. For this reason, identification of quality systems and technology helps the company focus on the common needs and interests of people, which can be used to bring innovation.

Besides enriching the students with wisdom, HR sectors offers unique techniques and procedures to differentiate their practice and improve their methods of hiring and developing process. Each one is trying to stand out from the other by offering statistically demanding methods according to market competition. For example, in the market of educational sectors, each institute attempts to offer the most demanding program by formulating latest techniques and following market trend. To be innovative, such institutes have to provide the unique features in their teaching methods and learning environments. Apart from educating the pupil, they also offer supporting features to attract more registrations. In this example, the ultimate purpose is use knowledge based data through research analysis on part of the HRM to formulate strategic business decisions.

Evans (2003) emphasizes on the role of HR managers in helping their organization to develop an organizational culture that supports knowledge building and sharing. If the managers play a leaders role in an organization, it will definitely foster a knowledge building and sharing culture. Here the word culture means a combined trend and lifestyle practiced by all the workers on mutual agreement. Knowledge building and sharing by HRM is clearly helpful in creating innovation. Market analysis and statistical research, mostly done by every big organization on frequent basis is the example of bringing innovation by knowledge focused human resource management.

“For multitude of knowledge workers, it is as motivating to have free and independent time to work on knowledge building projects, going to conferences, or spending time on interesting projects, as monetary rewards” (Depres and Hiltrop, 1995). That shows that the privacy and independence in the context of work are aligned to bringing quality results. Employees’ morale will be higher if they would get involved in the planning phase of any change and such involvement of employees can by in the form of suggestions, forms or feedbacks. Since employee is the greatest asset of any organization, their power should not be underestimated. It can put both positive impact as well as negative impact on the business progress. Hence the management should not ignore such underlying power they possess, and should engage the staff in every major process change or departmental changes. Research also shows that the employees also expect a greater level of individual autonomy while the management cannot afford to allow the employees to independent to that extent. Hence the organizations can successfully map a solution to offer interdependence instead of independence to the staff as part of creating innovation.
Conclusion:

Today’s world is busy in the race of going ahead in the competition. Companies are competing so fast to be at par and achieve knowledge and innovation by implementing the knowledge focused HRM. ‘HRM being the foundation of every organization plays an important role in the development and progress of any company’ (Plessis, M. 2007). It is also a fact that the proper investment in the sector (HRM) brings long lasting results that can help the company achieve competitive advantage. These days’ companies are busy in formulating the strategies that focus on HR needs to produce the best results. Knowledge and innovation have gained major importance in today’s market. For any business to be successful, it is the mandatory factor that makes it competitive to survive and make its presence felt in the global market. Companies formulated various processes and techniques to help achieve knowledge management in HR. But a lot of challenges are attached to it, if the processes lack the factor of knowledge and innovation in the organizations.

It is also very important to maintain the quality by meeting employees’ demands. It should be noted that workers’ demands change with time and trend. So, in order to implement KM in human resource management, market trend needs to be monitored closely as highlighted in the Strategic Management Accounting (SMA). But when we compare the level of its difficulty to the benefits it is bringing, we ignore all the challenges incurring in the way of implementing KM HRM (Scarborough, H. 2003). Considering the increasing power of internet as a tool in general, author is of the opinion that this will gain even further importance in time. Keeping this factor in mind, author views that such a powerful notion will have increasing popularity among masses in near future. To sum it up, for all the emerging countries, it is now must to implement knowledge focused HRM if they want to survive in the quest for producing knowledge and innovation in their organizations.

 

References:

• Debowski, S. (2006) ‘Knowledge Management’, John Wiley and Sons, Australia.
• Despres, C. and Hiltrop, J.M. (1995) ‘Human Resource Managment in the Knowledge Age: Current practice and Perspectives on the future’, Employee Relations, 17:1, 9-24.
• Edvardsson, I. (2008) ‘HRM and knowledge management’, Employee Relations, vol. 30, no. 5. pp.553-561.
• Edvardsson, I.R. (2003) ‘Knowledge Management and Creative HRM’, Occasional paper 14, University of Akureyri, Iceland.
• Evans, C. (2003) ‘Managing for Knowledge: HR’s strategic role’, Amsterdam: Butterworth-Heinemann.
• Gloet, M., Terziovski, M. (2004) ‘Exploring the relationship between knowledge management practices and innovation performance’, Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management, vol. 15, no. 5, pp.402-409.
• Gloet, M. (2004) ‘Linking KM to the HRM Function in the Knowledge Economy: a new partnership?’ Driving Performance through Knowledge Collaboration: Proceedings of the KM Challenge, SAI Global, Sydney.
• Hansen, M.T., Nohria, N. and Tierney, T. (1999) ‘What’s your strategy for managing knowledge?’ Harvard Business review, 77, 106-116.
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• Plessis, M. (2007) ‘The role of knowledge management in innovation’, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 11, no.4, pp.20-29.
• Scarborough, H. (2003) ‘Knowledge management, HRM and innovation process’, International Journal of Manpower, vol. 24, no. 5, pp. 501-516.
• Soliman, F., Spooner, K. (2000) ‘Strategies of implementing knowledge management: role of human resources management’, Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 337-345.
• Whicker, L.M. and Andrews, K. M. (2003) ‘Human Resource Management in the Knowledge Economy: Realising the Potential’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 42, 2, 156 –165.