Knowledge has become the primary business asset that is driven by changes in technology and in global business. These changes have been made human resource management orientation that focused on the tangible assets shifting to focus on the intangible assets. This also means that the comparative advantage that based on Natural Resources in the business shifting to the competitive advantage that based on the quality of human resources, and in this context that knowledge becomes a very important asset in the management / human resource management.
Knowledge, according to Davenport is a liquid mixture of experience, values, contextual information, and expertise that provide the framework for thinking to assess and integrate experiences and new information. This means that knowledge is different from the information, so information become knowledge if happen processes such as comparison, consequences, linking, and conversation. Knowledge can be divided into four types that are, a) knowledge of something; b) knowledge about doing something, c) knowledge to be yourself; and d) knowledge about how to work with others.
While the level of knowledge can be divided into three that are: 1) Knowing how to implement; 2) Knowing how to improve; and 3) Knowing how to integrate. With this kind of understanding about knowledge, then knowledge management can be defined as follows: “the process of translating the lessons that learned, which is in the self / mind of someone into information that can be used by every person“.
In this context, experts of human resource management see the knowledge management as a guarantee of knowledge which obtained then developed together with others in the organization. Thus, knowledge that obtained by the organization are fully available by providing the right environment, culture, structures and processes to motivate and encourage the sharing of knowledge at every level within the organization.
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