The members of panel will discuss the opportunities information professionals who are able to work closely and challenges facing knowledge management education.with the knowledge workers, understand their needs and The panel will share their experiences in the development communicate their concerns to the management of the of four knowledge management programs at Kent State organization. Knowledge professionals will help University, Dominican University, University of organizations identify opportunities, deal with Oklahoma, and Nanyang Technological University in competition, generate synergy, and create a knowledgeSingapore.sharing environment. Today's organizations are faced with many challenges, such as producing the desired objectives (efficacy), solving the right problems (effectiveness), and using the minimal quantity of resources (efficiency) in a competitive and complex environment. Among other necessities, organizations have to identify knowledge sources and assess their value when possible. They need to be proactive and/or adapt to the rapid pace of change. They should be able to recognize the needs of their costumers or users and be able to develop or adapt mechanisms that permit them to measure their intellectual capital and build the technological infrastructure that would facilitate knowledge sharing and utilization. Organizations also need assess and create a culture that allows knowledge sharing, socialization, collaboration, and the creation of communities of practice.Knowledge workers and knowledge professionals are an important, if not vital, component of the knowledge organization. Regardless of the industry, type of organization (profit or nonprofit organization), or the business sector, they all require a new breed of Traditionally, information professionals' roles were limited to the identification, acquisition and organization of explicit knowledge or information. Today, that role is being expanded to include other forms of knowledge activities--tacit and implicit knowledge in the form of skills and competencies. Tacit knowledge is personal and gets transferred through human interaction, training, observation and replication in different environments. It can only be shared by socialization, interaction and training, and it requires interpersonal communication. As knowledge professionals need to deal with human resource issues as well as organizational issues, a new set of skills and competencies are needed. Such skills and competencies require a multidisciplinary program and cannot be catered for by one single discipline. Disciplines involve include information technology, information science, communication and cognitive science, and business and management.At the moment, most knowledge management practitioners and self -proclaimed experts come from various backgrounds with different levels of skills and
2004
