KNOWLEDGE FORMS OF ENTERPRISE AND THE RESEARCH

OF ITS IDENTIFICATION AND DISTRIBUTION

Z. D. Yu

School of management, Fudan University, No.220 Handan Road, Shanghai, China

Keywords: Enterprise, Knowledge, Identification, Distribution.

Abstract: Knowledge has been a kind of important factor in enterprise, the status of knowledge is the same as resource

and manpower under knowledge economy. To enterprise, knowledge is very abstract, in order to make use

of knowledge, we should know the basic forms of knowledge firstly, then we can identify the knowledge

and know its distribution rule. The knowledge is surveyed on the base of summarizing knowledge concept

in the thesis, and its rules of identification and distribution is also given.

1 INTRODUCTION

Enterprises are the basis of national economic

development. While they create a lot of GDP (gross

domestic product) for each country and help

countries accumulating vast wealth, enterprises also

provide a lot of jobs for the people. In the past,

economic development is totally dependent on the

natural resources consumption and low-cost labour,

but today the natural resources become more

expensive, and cost of labour are increasingly higher

and higher, which gives unprecedented pressure on

the enterprises. On the financial crisis there are

many business failures because of the cost.

Therefore, in the new conditions, in order to develop

enterprise, we must change the traditional model of

economic growth, especially in the era of knowledge

economy, people have become aware of the

knowledge and resources, labour, and other equally

important elements. Knowledge become the critical

element to improve the competitiveness of

enterprise, especially in a market economy,

knowledge has become the most important engine of

the economic growth and development of

enterprises. In order to obtain long-term

development, we must continue to make use of

knowledge to innovate and obtain knowledge

competitiveness.

Under knowledge economy, to make use of

knowledge and enhance competitiveness, enterprise

should clarify the forms and distribution of

knowledge and construct the relationship between

knowledge and competitiveness.

2 THE BASIC FORMS OF

ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE

Although people have realized the importance of

knowledge, there is no unified understanding about

what is knowledge yet. In our country, the

knowledge is defined as acquaintance and their

understanding of thing in the dictionary of

Ciyuan(1982).

It is defined as the result and crystal

of human cognition in dictionary of Cihai(1989),

and it points out that human knowledge is acquired

in the forms of social practice, a reflection of reality.

Knowledge is defined as the sum of cognition and

experience during the practice of people changing

the world in Modern Chinese Dictionary(1979). It

can be seen that knowledge can’t be separated with

human being, and the forms includes human

knowledge, outcomes, practice and experience.

In abroad, Nonaka (1994) considered that

knowledge is a confirmed belief, it is created,

organized and transferred by the belief model and

constraints of the knowledge holders and recipient.

Hedlund (1994) considered that knowledge is the

cognitive knowledge, technology in human’s minds

and concepts, and which is embedded in products,

services, or other vectors. The cognitive knowledge

is the experience of the surrounding environment,

the existing forms are personal experience.

Technology is the normative, in-depth and regular

knowledge that obtained on the basis of human

cognition. Davenport(1998) considered that

knowledge is the mix of experience, important

values, the scene of the information and the

367

Yu Z..

KNOWLEDGE FORMS OF ENTERPRISE AND THE RESEARCH OF ITS IDENTIFICATION AND DISTRIBUTION.

DOI: 10.5220/0003433203670370

In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2011), pages 367-370

ISBN: 978-989-8425-55-3

 2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

framework of evaluating, incorporating new

experiences and insights. Leonard(1998) considered

that knowledge is some kind of information which

has the character of relativity, actionable, subjective,

experiential and recessive. O, Dell (1998) pointed

out that knowledge is the action of making use of

information, which means that knowledge is the

actionable information, such as customer

information, product information, program

information and successful experience of

information. Zack (1999) considered that the rules of

information is knowledge, which emphasized the

relativity of information. Seviby(1999) pointed out

that knowledge is news, perception, knowing,

cognition, wisdom, determination, science,

experience, technology, insight, competence, know-

how, ability, learning, identification, etc., the

definition is decided according to its contents.

Long(2000) pointed out that knowledge is the

people's thinking, which is rooted in a particular

individual, group or process, it is situational, and the

knowledge embedded in language, stories, concepts,

rules and tools. Alavi (2001) divided knowledge into

five categories: mental status, target body, process,

use of information and capacity. Bhagat(2002)

considered that knowledge is obtained from the

changing, reconstructing and creating of different

information.

In the sum of the above consideration, we can

know the forms of knowledge:

(1) Know-how. People’s impression of reality which

is formed gradually in work, live and judgments

based on learning process. Action of know-how

comes from individual thinking, which is affected by

the individual factors, knowledge, experience,

undergoing, social status and social class. The forms

of know-how: ①Intuition. Intuition is the instant

cognition of some kind of phenomenon, this instant

feeling is a sudden feeling, the impression is

memorable, we have the feeling of know-how when

we judge something with intuition. ②Inspiration.

Inspiration is the sudden creative idea in the activity

of science, technology, production or the insight of a

phenomenon. The memorization of inspiration is

weak, it sometimes occur in a moment, and

sometimes disappear instantly, the occurrence of

inspiration is often inspired by something, objects or

situations, and it is also vulnerable to the

surrounding. Value of inspiration is different to

different people. ③Observation force. Observation

refers to the purposeful, conscious know-how

activity. It is an important method of gaining

experience in long process. Observation is a very

important activities of awareness, and it is widely

used in science and technology. ④ Mental models.

Mental models include assumptions, stereotypes and

impressions which are deeply rooted in people's

minds and affects how people understand the world

around them. ⑤Imagination and association.

Imagination is the awareness of people in the past,

which is constructed on the basis of things that he

did not experience or the ability of imagination.

Association is the judgments of other things about

the past experiences. The result of imagination and

association is human subjective consciousness,

despite it has some basis, the results are sometimes

not necessarily correct.

(2) Experience. Experience is based on the

understanding in the past and it is the effective

method of putting awareness of activities into

practice. Human being is continuing to explore the

survival since birth, and gradually master the

experience. Experience is gained through the

formation of knowledge. It is greatly influenced by

the individuals, and is difficult to be expressed with

language. Experience is very important in reality and

sometimes it plays a decisive role, such as the

producing of Swiss watches, the quality of watch

produced in Switzerland is better than in the other

countries, which is because of the difference of the

workers’ hand experience.

(3) Values. Values is a common approach and goals

of the organization. Values of enterprise is expressed

on enterprise culture, and which is the enterprise's

basic view of the long-term goals and values, it is

inherent in the basic activities of staff action.

Therefore, the enterprise should inspire employees

to make it consistent with enterprise values, which

cause them to put more enthusiasm in learning and

work.

(4) Information. Information is the regular useful

content that formed by the processed data. Peter •

Drucker said, "Information is the data of the

background and purpose given." We can say that

information is data on the nature.

(5) Technology. There are many forms of

technology in enterprise, such as production

technology, management technology, programs,

operating methods and skills. It is a very important

form of knowledge, which is accumulated during the

development of human being, and formed by the

continuous exploration and summary. Technology

can exist in the brains of people, and can also be

materialized in the machine tools and production

processes. The basic forms of technology: ①Trick.

The trick is a critical method that people solve

problems, which comes from practice. It is effective

method in the exploration of long-term, it is difficult

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to be imitated, the content is vague, and it can not be

taught; ②Techniques and skills. techniques and

skills are the ability knowledge of action which are

accumulated by employees in long-term practice,

such as the accuracy of operation; ③ Unique

technology. Unique technology is the master of the

regular organizations, which are capable of writing

and are easy to grasp sometime.

(6) Patents. Patents are commonly core knowledge,

and it is the weight of corporate competitive

advantage. Strictly speaking, the patent itself is a

technology, but it has different character: First,

protection. In order to protect the interests of the

patent’s owner, the country make patent laws, that

inspire the owner to be willing to carry out the

invention; second, openness. The patent of

technology must be open.

(7) Practices. Practice is commonly used in business

practices.

3 IDENTIFICATION AND

DISTRIBUTION OF

ENTERPRISE’S KNOWLEDGE

Occurrence of enterprise’s knowledge is divided into

two cases: exogenous (professional) and endogenous

(occurring in action). Exogenous knowledge is that

the enterprise creating and accumulating knowledge

by the purposeful and organized scientific research,

technological inventions, technology development,

or by accepting the dissemination of knowledge

from other organizations, or by knowledge

spillover. Ways of Exogenous knowledge: the first

one is learning; the second is that enterprise

cooperating with other enterprise and forming a

broad technology alliance. Endogenous knowledge

is that the enterprise accumulating the experience

and forming the rational knowledge in the process of

practice and trading, and continue to carry out such

processes through the accumulation of knowledge.

Knowledge is intangible, and the intangible

knowledge is difficult to be directly felt. It needs a

certain carrier in order to make use of knowledge.

The knowledge carrier can be person, objects and

processes. The person factors include the person

within the enterprise, such as senior leadership,

middle managers and knowledge workers, and the

external person are mainly customers, suppliers and

the third parties (consultants, etc.). The objects

factors include product, production material and

production tools. The process factors include the

production process, supply chain processes.

(1) Person’s Knowledge

Person's knowledge includes cognition, experience,

values, and technical knowledge of the

personification. Among them the person’s

knowledge is more complex. Person’s knowledge

hidden in the brain, and can be expressed by the

behavior of individual factors. In this case, it is

difficult to identify. For explicit knowledge, the

ability of obtaining explicit knowledge changes with

age, children before school-age mainly obtain

knowledge by imitation, memory and other aspects.

As entering into a higher school and increasing of

age, they begin to learn by understanding. Influence

factors of person’s knowledge distribution include

industry character, firm size, corporate standards and

business development stage.

① Industry of Enterprise. The industry of enterprise

is divided into three kinds: labour-intensive

enterprises, capital-intensive enterprises and

knowledge-intensive enterprises. To the labour-

intensive enterprises, as the content of knowledge is

very low, the leader hold the core of enterprise

technical knowledge, the workers also have some

experience, but these experiences is not important,

and the workers just repeated at a lower level of

production and processing. To capital-intensive

enterprises, the knowledge is dispersed in enterprise,

the leader hold the enterprise’s knowledge, and their

cognition, experience and value can affect the

enterprise. To knowledge intensive enterprises, the

content of knowledge is high, each people’s

knowledge is important.

② Enterprise Scale. The profit ability is affected by

the enterprise scale. In large scale of enterprise,

knowledge worker hold the core knowledge and can

affect the enterprise. In the middle scale enterprise,

the knowledge is hold by the general manager, they

can affect the enterprise. In the small scale

enterprise, the leader hold the knowledge and affect

the whole enterprise.

③ Business Norms. Business norms refers to the

modern enterprise system. To the high normative

enterprise, it will operate in accordance with the

modern enterprise model. The knowledge distributes

in enterprises, the cognition, experience, values and

technology of the enterprise’s knowledge workers

affect enterprise, and the manager only need to be

responsible for daily supervision and direction. For

the moderate normative enterprise, the common

managers master the core technology knowledge and

understanding, their experience, values and

technology affect the enterprise. For the low

normative enterprise, as the production is

KNOWLEDGE FORMS OF ENTERPRISE AND THE RESEARCH OF ITS IDENTIFICATION AND DISTRIBUTION

369

randomness, and the products are constantly

changing, the leader of enterprise master the

knowledge and the leader's understanding,

experience, values and technology affect enterprise.

④ Development Stage of Enterprise. According to

the life cycle theory, the life cycle is divided into

four stages: generation stage, development stage,

mature stage and decline stage. On the generation

stage, the founder holds the knowledge, the

understanding, experience, values and technology of

leader can affect the enterprise. On the development

stage, the knowledge gradually spread, and it is

mastered by the common managers, their cognition,

experience, value and technology affect the

enterprise. On the mature stage, the knowledge

spreads to each level of enterprise department, their

knowledge plays an important roles. On the decline

stage, knowledge begins to be fragmentation,

knowledge workers’ cognition, experience, values

and technology affect the enterprise.

(2) Knowledge of objects

Objects are the carriers of knowledge, which include

the company's products, raw materials and

production tools. The knowledge contained in

objects are patent, demand information, methods of

operation and skills. When identifying its

knowledge, we should identify the core factors, such

as core products, core raw materials and production

tools. The distribution of objects knowledge is as the

following table 1.

Table 1: The distribution of objects knowledge.

product patent

raw materials Patent, information

production tools Operating method, technique

(3) Knowledge of Process

The process includes production process and supply

chain processes, the former focuses on the

movement of goods, and its knowledge has the

character of liquidity, the later refers to the

manufacture process. the distribution of process

knowledge is as following table 2.

Table 2: The distribution process of knowledge.

Process of supply chain Information

Process of production Technics, patent and skill

4 CONCLUSIONS

The distribution of enterprise’s knowledge has the

character of dynamic nature, the reason is as

follows: (1) the dynamics of production and

operation. (2) knowledge flow and the stock of

enterprise is also changing. (3) levels of knowledge

carriers is diversity.

Knowledge is the core of enterprise

competitiveness, and enterprise in knowledge

economy has paid more attention to it, but it is

difficult to grasp on knowledge in practice, as

knowledge is more abstract. We can make use of

knowledge after the identification of knowledge.

The knowledge distribution character is shown from

two aspects of carriers and value activity.

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