Nada Banovic        30527068 BUS378 Essay Q’n: 2

Knowledge management combines all the available resources within an organisation in order to become more efficient and one of the most reliable components of an organisation's competitive advantage in the marketplace is one of its most readably available resources, its labour force and the knowledge it holds. Since knowledge management aims at retaining the existing knowledge of an organisation it can be of great benefit for an organisation to implement knowledge management (KM) strategies and organisational learning into its human resource management (HRM) as it will aid in gaining a competitive advantage over other organisations.

The primary focus of HRM is to match the job profile with the skill set of the people, in order to achieve the organisation’s goals, whereas KM at a primary level, aims at harnessing the existing knowledge in the organisation, to create a competitive advantage and at a more advanced level focuses on increasing organisational learning (OL) (Suresh, 2002). Hence there is a link between HRM and KM, since HRM looks at managing humans and knowledge creation is a human activity, businesses are realising a need for the integration between the KM initiatives and the human resource policies of the organisation.

The human resources department in most organisations handles high quantities of data and this data and the updating of it can be managed better by using effective knowledge management. Suresh (2002) claims that effective KM requires a combination of many organisational elements such as technology, human resource practices, organisational structure and culture. KM  can influence the way an organisation’s HRM go about the way of recruitment, retention, reward systems, performance management systems, training and organisational learning to foster knowledge retention and hence its competitive advantage.

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The recruitment function should focus on the extent to which the knowledge processed by a person is in line with fundamental strategy of the organisation. Whicker and Andrews (2004) state that the aim of recruitment and selection in the knowledge economy is to source high calibre talent possessing a range of skills and capabilities related to the strategic knowledge areas. New recruitments should comprise knowledge and skills that contribute value to the organisation, offer real or potential competitive advantage and are hard to replace. The function of the HR department is to select and recruit individuals who would subscribe to ...

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