Abstract:

Our research paper aims to present the subject of knowledge management, the challenges that it’s facing in the year 2012 and its future perspectives. Together with the subject of knowledge management we show our interest in analysing and defining the terms knowledge and learning organizations. Our interest in this particular field started for us, as research economists, in order to find out the current situation worldwide and after that to be able to define its role and its development potential in Romania.

Of course, knowledge in terms of the fully use of information and data, has always existed and has always motivated people to go further and further, but knowledge management is far more than knowledge and also far more than knowledge combined with people’s skills, competences, ideas or intuition. For us, knowledge management is the ageless and broad process that governs the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge, which is much more than knowledge analysis, knowledge planning or knowledge technology. Moreover, knowledge management represents for us the process of audit of intellectual assets, which has unique potential and seeks new opportunities, products and services in order to gain and sustain competitive positions. Furthermore, the notions of knowledge and knowledge management can be associated as well with the complex notion of learning organizations, which refer to those companies that helps all the members to embrace it in order to generate change and better perspectives in terms of competitiveness.

Our study is structured as follows: in the introduction part we emphasize the role of knowledge management, and state our main objectives in terms of the subject research chosen; in the literature review part we summarize the most important studies, in our opinion, that were made by academics and researchers in the field of knowledge management and also the ones that we had access at; the content of the paper stresses the role of knowledge and knowledge management worldwide, presents a comparison between terms such as knowledge management, knowledge analysis, knowledge planning and knowledge technology and shows the evolution that can be encountered in the field of knowledge management; the case study that we have made discusses the place of knowledge management in Romania, a country that has a great but unused potential. In the last part of our research paper we put a particular accent on the conclusions that can be drawn in terms of knowledge management’s evolution, in a volatile and turbulent environment such as the one we are living in nowadays and also we state the limitations that our research analysis has. The most important part of our research paper focuses on the place and the role of knowledge management in Romania. In our opinion, Romania is a country where one can find great potential in terms of knowledge, but unfortunately its use is not at its real capacity. The idea that our case study starts with is that knowledge represents both the starting point and the driver for any economy, and therefore knowledge is the result of learning which provides the only form of sustainable competitive advantage. The question that comes next into discussion is the problem that refers to the use of knowledge in Romania. In order to create a clear image on knowledge and knowledge management in Romania, another great concern for us turned out to be the subject of learning organizations.

Keywords:

Knowledge, knowledge management, innovation, technology, economy, informatics, audit, global economic crisis, competitive advantage, learning organizations.