It is now becoming necessary for firms to categorize knowledge assets in their possession. For business organizations, it is key to organize knowledge so that it is manageable. That way, the firm is able to determine the resources at their disposal and mark out their strengths and weaknesses. To carry out knowledge organization, you must get involved in the mapping, classification, indexing, and categorizing knowledge. The aim is to make it easier for storage, navigation, and retrieval.

Every company, therefore, needs to have a specifically assigned manager to carry out the knowledge organization processes. Shared knowledge must have been prepared so that it is identifiable, retrievable, and understandable by the user of the knowledge.

Knowledge organization can be done in the following ways:

Explicit Knowledge Organization

This works well in the organization and retrieval of knowledge. It employs IT-based systems that use ontologies and taxonomies for the classification and organization of knowledge and information. Through these methods, firms can create a hierarchical and logical knowledge map that can be navigated by category. The issue is that creating taxonomies can be very expensive. The explicit knowledge organization method also used tools such as data marts and libraries. Compared to tacit knowledge, explicit knowledge is not considered to be that valuable. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a working classification and retrieval method. That’s where explicit knowledge organization comes in.

Tacit Knowledge Organization

In this method of knowledge organization, sources of expertise are grouped on the basis of several criteria. They may employ expertise guides, focus groups, knowledge coordinators, and social network analysis. At its core, knowledge coordinators are used with the view of understanding the tacit knowledge creation context. Expertise locators are made up of knowledge maps such as social network analysis, corporate yellow pages, and others. These help in pinpointing the categories and location of the sources (experts) of tacit knowledge. Firms who employ this method can have an idea on the number of experts in a particular field of knowledge. If they find that there are too many employees in a certain knowledge category, they can proceed to plan for retiring certain employees.

Embedded Knowledge Organization

Firms can assess and organize embedded knowledge through workflow analyses, workplace design, and performance measures. Organizations can also use knowledge maps to outline embedded knowledge with the guidance of knowledge brokers. However, organizations need to, first, determine the importance of certain types of knowledge to them. Towards that end, criticality (knowledge severity) and knowledge availability should be considered. The knowledge that’s more critical and which is not available in the firm should be the most sought after. 6 Of the Biggest Trends during CES 2018

Knowledge assessment and organization doesn’t have a direct return on investment. That’s why most organizations view it is an unnecessarily expensive endeavor. They just can’t see how they are going to gain from the meticulous classification and organization of knowledge assets. But that doesn’t mean it is unnecessary. If anything, knowledge management and reuse are not possible without it. What organizations need are systems that make it possible to detect and organize knowledge.