ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Many enterprises downsize to adapt to more competitive environments. B ut unless they have captured the knowledge of their employees, downsiz ing can result in a loss of critical information. Similarly, as employ ees leave, organizations are likely to lose access to large quantities of critical knowledge. And as companies expand internationally, geogr aphic barriers can affect knowledge exchange and prevent easy access t o information. These and other forces are pushing enterprises to explo re better methods for knowledge management. Enterprise knowledge manag ement entails formally managing knowledge resources, typically by usin g advanced information technology. KM is formal in that knowledge is c lassified and categorized according to a prespecified-but evolving-ont ology into structured and semistructured data and knowledge bases. The overriding purpose of enterprise KM is to make knowledge accessible a nd reusable to the enterprise. The business world is becoming so conce rned about knowledge management that, according to one report, over 40 percent of the Fortune 1000 now have a chief knowledge officer, a sen ior-level executive responsible for creating an infrastructure and cul tural environment for knowledge sharing. This article surveys some com ponents of this young field.