Evaluation and Control Mechanisms of Knowledge Management Processes

Macro-economic scenarios and micro-economic contexts, with which present business models are required to face, reveal a very elastic tension, about the environmental complexity of reference, towards Knowledge Management, to be intended as a system of strategies, techniques and tools, to be implemented in an electronic format or not, that allow to identify, represent, distribute, share and develop business data, information and knowledge. Such a systemic vision, typical of the Information Society, is further motivated by the widespread exigency, even at an operative level, of a wider management, that comprehends and not fight the different business areas (commercial, administrative, technical, etc.). In fact, the compression and sometimes the unavailability of singular competences to a vision of the operations to execute (at a structural as well as systemic level), that would be really economic for the enterprise, very often generate myopias of business functioning, within the enterprise boundaries. Furthermore, neither must a similar horizon of business awareness understate that knowledge sharing represents a growth element (at an intellectual as well as operative level), also within a specific set of enterprise operations (function, process, project, activity, etc.). Besides, it is equally clear that knowledge sharing is by itself a sort of business culture objective: in fact, the intellectual effort, to be made in this way, is to be directed to the comprehension that information sharing does not mean decrease of the personal value merely, but, on the contrary, its enrichment. Indeed, the undoubted utility of knowledge sharing is an ideal platform for subsequently debate of a real Knowledge Management, which presently represents one of the management philosophies with a widest impact and most lively interest for the studies of the scientific community and the applications of the professional community.