Overview of knowledge mapping:
A knowledge map is “an association of items of information (e.g. process, network, policy, geography…), preferably visual, where the association itself creates new“(Vail E. 1997).
“A knowledge map is the intellectual infrastructure for knowledge management initiatives. The basis for it consists of multiple taxonomies for content repositories, dynamic categorization of people, their expertise, and the communities they belong to, and finally a set of taxonomies for the variety of tasks that are performed within and by the company’s communities. The taxonomies of content, people, and tasks then have to be mapped across the three components in order to provide a foundation for such knowledge management enterprise projects as knowledge retrieval for both document based knowledge and the tacit knowledge located within the minds of the company experts.” (Anon, 2003)
(Grey, 1999) A knowledge map is a navigation aid to explicit and tacit knowledge, illustrating how knowledge flows throughout and organization. Knowledge map portrays the sources, flows, constraints and terminations of knowledge within an organization. Knowledge mapping helps to understand the relationship between knowledge stores and dynamics.
Knowledge mapping is the process of creating the knowledge map, which consist the steps of examining the documents and materials type, where the resources and materials located, where it is created, how it is moving around in the organization, where and when it is needed. The effective knowledge map should be created with reference to four elements i.e. the function of the map, knowledge type, the users or recipients and the map type (diagram or map).
(Davenport and Prusak, 1998) note that the developing a knowledge map involves locating important knowledge in the organization and then publishing some sort of list or picture that shows where to find it. Knowledge map typically point to people as well as document and databases.
Figure 1: Relationship between knowledge entities that produced the structure of knowledge in the organization
Knowledge mapping is one of the techniques to identify and translate knowledge in the organization. Knowledge of administrative personnel, support staff, management experts, researchers and academician exist in records such as minutes of meeting, memo, financial document, presentation slides, letters, research articles, conference papers and etc. The proper organization of those materials will support the knowledge translation through integration of knowledge map and conceptual framework for understanding many complex processes, resources and people involved in organization.
The objective of developing the filing structure in organization nowadays, should not only to produce standard guidelines in managing files and records, furthermore it should help us to understand how knowledge flows and where the asset are. The filing structure should be used as a comprehensive tools to understand complex processes, practices, and should be able to trace the non-efficient process flow in the organization.
