Knowledge Management in Education: Often the Missing Link in Developing a Robust Learning Organization

Abstract

In March of 2020, we were sitting in our cubicles in Manchester, New Hampshire USA when an email went out to our colleagues from the President of our University asking us to calmly pack up our necessary belongings and directing us to take whatever technology was appropriate from our workstations to plan to work from our homes for the next two weeks as we watched the world in effect shut down to allow for the COVID-19 to pass. Soon, two weeks turned into two months and two months to two years. We were allowed back to our desks in a cascade effect, never at the same time out of an abundance of caution, to recover additional items and clear out our spaces for good with masks and gloves. Calendars and notes and cups with evaporated coffee were left obsolete, and untouched, as were processes on how we used to do things as we, in many ways, had to pivot on a dime to continue to offer the exceptional educational services to our students that they've grown to expect. As such, the need to rely on our knowledge management roots and pivot those slightly to not only embrace the process but also now embrace both the people who manage the process and the people who benefit from the process -those who are in the learning ecosystem became even more necessary. An outcome of How an Effective Knowledge Management Program Supports Critical Tacit Knowledge Retention Within a Higher Education Institution: A Qualitative Intrinsic Case Study this article explores how knowledge management can be leveraged as a tool within education to support the development of a robust the ongoing development and shift as an organization shifts toward moving toward being an organization that embraces what it means to become a learning organization.