Knowledge management in non-profit organizations

The author of this paper seeks to explore what strategies are available for a multinational organization to manage knowledge, and to what extent a non-profit organization (NPO) have applied the same tools for managing knowledge within the organization as a multinational corporation (MNC). Through studying how knowledge flows within a MNC (Nonaka et al. and then analyzing the strategies for handling these flows the thesis will have presented a picture of Knowledge Management (KM), the processes for dealing with learning in the organization, which can then be compared to how KM works in a NPO – the World Bank. Through this comparison, this case study shows that all strategies employed by the World Bank are also used in MNCs, giving us the indication that NPOs can adapt KM strategies from MNCs and face many of the same challenges as an MNC does. 4 Definitions Some of this thesis central concepts will be presented here to give the reader greater clarity when Non Profit Organization A Non-profit Organization (NPO), is " a corporation or an association that conducts business for the benefit of the general public without shareholders and without a profit motive " (legal-dictionary.com, 2010). This organization would not distribute any surplus of income to its owners, but rather reinvests it in the organization in order to further pursue its goals (The International Center for Not-For-Profit Law, 2010). A Multinational Organization (MNC) is a corporation which manages does business in more than one country. So that the organization has headquarters in one country, and operates in several other countries where they do not have a headquarter (Christos & Sugden, 2000). Knowledge Management (KM), " relates to both theory and practice, where its central issues are people and learning, …and the role of IT is mainly as a useful enabler rather than a central tenet of KM " (McAdam &McCreedy, 1999) " It can be defined in terms of processes of knowledge creation, followed by interpretation, knowledge dissemination and use, and knowledge retention and refinement " (Jarnet, 1996). Stickiness Stickiness is the term used to describe the difficulties associated with capturing and transferring tacit knowledge within an organization (Szulanski, 1996). 5 1 Background We are living in a society today, where knowledge has been described as the only source of sustainable competitive advantage (Drucker, 1988), and although the amount of knowledge available to the people in an organization has a drastic …