Organization Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4250 words

Organization Management - Essay Example Knowledge management as a practice emerged at the beginning of the 1990s and, to a certain extent, is considered as still in its infancy. According to Bounfour (2003) "KM can be defined as a set of procedures, infrastructures, technical and managerial tools, designed towards creating, circulating (sharing) and leveraging information and knowledge within and around organizations". (Bounfour, 2003, p. 156) Therefore, from this perspective, KM involves several dimensions: individual, group, organisation and networks of organizations. KM which often consists of communities can be conceptualized as groups or organizations whose primary purpose is the development and promulgation of collective knowledge. Knowledge communities are a prevalent and increasingly important form of contemporary organization. For example, all of the major social sciences are organized as knowledge communities consisting of numerous researchers whose common goal is the advancement of knowledge within their discipline (Porter, 1995). Within such communities, knowledge is typically disseminated through a variety of mechanisms. These include formal routines and procedures, such as publication of original research in scholarly journals and presentation of work-in-progress at academic conferences. Knowledge is also disseminated through various informal mechanisms, such as circulation of unpublished manuscripts and the exchange of preliminary ideas and data through electronic mail. Whether formal or informal, such mechanisms are intended to facilitate the steady accumulation, integration, and rapid diffusion of emerging insights and innovations within the community. (Levine et al, 1999, p. 164) There are two types of mobilizable knowledge within an organization: Knowledge which is assimilatable to pure information, i.e. a stock of items, having a relatively weak combinatory potential, in particular in terms of innovation: commercial information on current customers, information on the priority sectors, information on the firm. Knowledge having, on the contrary, a high combinatory potential both inside and outside the firm: such is the case, in particular, for the best practices and grey literature, whose vocation is to affirm the potentially developable added value by the company. Being furtive by nature, best practices can be combined with other best practices to produce better 'new best practices'. The same applies to the grey literature; whose vocation is to affirm the definitely distinctive character of the company's supply. The publics targeted by the use and production of this knowledge can, to a certain extent, be differentiated. Thus information of a commercial nature is addressed initially to the players in a situation of sale or in a first approach to selling services. On the other hand, the grey literature concerns initially 'the intellectuals', i.e. those in charge of the development of new activities. (Bounfour, 2003, p. 164) How organizations learn In order to gain access to the learning of organizations, we have to dig history a bit. It started when classic bureaucratic organizations started to link learning to professionalization. Therefore researchers like Swieringa and Wierdsma (Swieringa and Wierdsma, 1992, p. 140) argued that the learning organization concept may be a

Dangerous and Natural Energy Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Dangerous and Natural Energy - Research Paper Example However, the risk that is close to the highest magnitude and frequency lies next to areas with the highest risk. As per the map, the western seaboard experiences the highest hazard of earthquakes (USGS: Science for a Changing World, 2012). Considering that the pink color represent areas with the highest earthquake hazard, Seattle lies in the green area, which is third to the least risky area. However, there are maroon areas surrounding it meaning that earthquakes may be experienced from these areas reaching the area (USGS: Science for a Changing World, 2012). In the past seven days, according to the earthquake center, there has not occurred any seismic activity in the area. The closest earthquake activity that occurred in the past seven days was in Canada and not in the USA. There has been seismic activity in the USA that has occurred in most recently, and in some cases up to this month on the 2nd of June in California. On a global scale, seismic activity seems to occur offshore in the areas bordering the land. This is particularly so in the areas around Alaska, the west coast of the USA, as well as the West coast of South America. Among all these regions, there is consistency in the occurrence based on fault lines around the world. These are mainly to the west of Alaska, East of Australia and the western side of the South American continent. There are, also, several earthquakes occurring in continental shelves in areas such as Alaska, China and India. In addition, there are several occurrences in the Middle East, an area with not much seismic activity. In Japan, 46 kilometers East of Namie, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake occurred on 2 July 2012. It occurred in an area where two fault lines lie (USGS: Science for a Changing World, 2012). Living in a red area is difficult following the high risk involved. However, I would be willing to live in such an area as long as I know the full implication of exposing myself to such a hazard and the benefits that come with