Business, Social, and Ethical Implications and Issues

Question 1: Discuss knowledge management.

Answer 1: Knowledge management, or KM, is an attempt to generate, identify, and share insights and experiences that can expand the knowledge base of an organization. The goal of KM is improving organizational processes and performance, encouraging innovation, facilitating continuous improvement and integration, and providing lessons learned. It also helps the avoidance of redundant work, adaptation to new environments, and employee training. KM includes a number of strategies and practices intended to elicit insights and experiences. These strategies include the following:Having people share their experiences through reporting.Asking experts to share their knowledge.Offering rewards to those who share some insight or experience.Transferring knowledge within the organization by means of storytelling.Offering apprenticeships.Learning through social software.Maintaining knowledge repositories, such as databases.Using collaborative technologies, such as groupware.

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Question 2: Identify the following terms: globalization, outsourcing, and insourcing.

Answer 2: Globalization occurs when communication and trade cause the economic and cultural integration of different societies. With its ability to provide instantaneous communication between multiple points across the globe, information technology has been one of the primary drivers of globalization. Outsourcing describes the practice of subcontracting labor to an independent party—i.e., one outside the organization or business. In popular usage, outsourcing often implies the acquisition of labor from other countries. This is a common practice of multinational corporations, who cross national boundaries to subcontract labor. Because information technology allows organizations to acquire employees from anywhere, regardless of geographical location, it has enhanced outsourcing.Insourcing describes the practice of using internal resources to perform work. In this way, it takes the opposite approach of outsourcing. Insourcing can imply that a business is using internal specialists, or that it is hiring labor from within its own country. Organizations may choose to insource to protect company secrets or to save money.

Question 3: Identify the following business strategies: competition, reengineering.

Answer 3: Competition occurs when multiple businesses and individuals compete to gain a larger share of the market. In theory, competition creates an economic environment that encourages innovation in product, service, and technological development; increases the selection and quality of products available to consumers; and keeps prices lower than other economic models. Competition is one reason for proliferation and diversity in information technology. Reengineering involves analyzing the processes and workflows within organizations. Processes are simply sequences of logically order tasks that should complete a certain function. In many cases, the goal of reengineering is consolidating several different processes into cross-functional processes, thereby increasing the efficiency and productivity of business operations. Reengineering has helped create knowledge management, enterprise resource planning, groupware, collaborative systems, and many similar systems.

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