LL1: Organization as a Living Organism and the Intellectual Capital Management

LL1: Organization as a Living Organism and the Intellectual Capital Management

All the organizational theories and management comprises of metaphors or particular images that allows us to understand and visualize conditions in confined traditions.

Organizations all over the world are striving towards high-skilled and high value economies. Traditional factors of production are no longer considered to be the only contributors to economic development and growth. Nowadays, knowledge has become an important factor for achieving economic development. In order to achieve these goals, a well-educated and highly skilled workforce is necessary. A knowledge economy has increased the demand for a highly educated workforce, especially a workforce with university degree.

In developing a knowledge economy, a sustainable economy based on employment, innovation and education is needed.

Organizations as living systems environment on which they are dependent on each other to satisfy various needs. When studying and comparing organization with living organism it was determined that organizations share the same concept as of a living organism. An organization needs to have the right environment in order to survive, adapt, surpass turbulence and reproduce; the cycle of live. If not it will perish and die. The systems must adapt to environments, organizational life cycles, the factors influencing organizational health and development, different species of organizations, and their relationships.

As working relationship evolve through times, knowledge era focuses on working with a diverse culture, as member of the organization, which I believe is more flexible and effective.

Thinking that my affiliation is on the education industry, I think education, especially higher education, is important for knowledge economy development. Higher education institutions are import for the creation, dissemination, knowledge transfer, and spillover of knowledge to the industry.

I think higher education can be a main contributor and driver of knowledge economy development.

The key to becoming part of ‘creative industry’ does not always lie in creating something new. In fact, the most cost-effective way to become part of the creative community is to make good use of ideas and skills that you already possess, but which you have not yet fully exploited.

At its most simple, it is a matter of ‘knowing what you know’.  Intellectual capital can include the skills and knowledge that a company has developed about how to make its goods and services.  It also includes insight about information pertaining to the company’s history; customers; vendors; processes; stakeholders; and all other information that might have value for a competitor that, perhaps, is not common knowledge.  Intellectual capital is therefore, not only organizational knowledge, it is also industry knowledge.  It is the combination of both cognitive knowledge and intuitive/experience-related knowledge.

The importance of knowledge pertaining to external parties relevant to an organization has been emphasized as an especially important body of knowledge pertaining to all aspects of the organization.

The problem today in many organizations is employee attrition through layoffs, resignations, retirements, and other forms of employee separation from the company. Employees have extensive knowledge about their job, the business processes, the data that supports their jobs including how to make things happen, and what works best.  Unfortunately, in most instances today their knowledge has not been captured, transferred, or made available to others.