Knowledge management

SIS was among the first schools in North America to introduce a knowledge management (KM) focus in a professional master's program. KM seeks to identify useful and relevant knowledge in a given organization and to organize, merge, and synthesize knowledge in order to foster efficiency through reuse of knowledge and/or to facilitate creativity and innovation. Competitive intelligence (CI) is a related domain enabling organizations to develop knowledge of their competitive environment and to integrate such knowledge into innovative strategies.

More information about KM can be found in the Knowledge Management Fact Sheet ‎[.pdf]

Suggested courses

• GLIS 661 Course not available
• GLIS 662 Course not available
• GLIS 663 Course not available
• GLIS 664 Course not available
• GLIS 665 Course not available
• GLIS 693 Course not available

Careers in Knowledge Management

Practice settings

Knowledge Management (KM) is the systematic management of an organization’s knowledge ‎resources – those found in people and those found in documents, databases, and other repositories ‎of valuable content. KM specialists work in a wide variety of settings, from consulting, ‎pharmaceutical, and financial institutions in the private sector to government agencies and departments, as well as arts and volunteer organizations in the non-profit sector. Higher education institutions have ‎also started to employ KM specialists in the areas of knowledge taxonomies and ‎communities of practice. ‎

Primary responsibilities

Knowledge managers are involved in both the human resources and information technology required to help share and preserve knowledge. Responsibilities may involve:

• Succession planning, in which knowledge managers ensure that knowledge is transferred to new employees and input into the organizational memory system
• Design and management of KM systems
• Knowledge asset management, in order to support organizational goals and to gain and maintain competitive advantage
• Design of corporate information and KM policies on ‎access and quality control
• Maintenance of proprietary information
• Mapping of intellectual ‎assets
• Training/coaching/mentoring
• Establishing and supporting communities of practice
• Incorporating feedback, such as best practices and ‎lessons learned, into training content
• Helping users to gather, evaluate, analyze, synthesize, and ‎summarize knowledge sources
• Managing the competitive intelligence cycle and related assignments

Examples of job titles

Potential employers