Knowledge Management in the Advertising Industry

Introduction

Knowledge is often defined as a “justified personal belief.” There is much taxonomy that specifies various kinds of knowledge. The most fundamental distinction is between “tacit” and “explicit” knowledge. Tacit knowledge inhabits the minds of people and is (depending on one’s interpretation of Polanyi’s (1966) definition) either impossible, or difficult, to articulate. Most knowledge is initially tacit in nature; it is laboriously developed over a long period of time through trial and error, and it is underutilised because “the organisation does not know what it knows” (O’Dell and Grayson, 1998, p. 154). Some knowledge is embedded in business processes, activities, and relationships that have been created over time through the implementation of a continuing series of improvements. The advertising industry is based on knowledge; passing commercial experience and wisdom; sharing the knowledge and developing creativity (Michael and Douglas, 2000). Organisations view ‘Knowledge Management’ as an important business strategy (Alton and Snehasish, 2013). Most of the jobs depend on knowledge rather than manual skills (Geraud, 2005); therefore, developing knowledge management is an important aspect in organisations. Knowledge management requires the creation of a knowledge environment that provides easy access and relevant information within an organisation (Geraud, 2005). Recognising the importance of KM, it is necessary to synthesise the KM related work from multiple disciplines that in our view may reveal the major research themes. But to study KM as a separate discipline of study, a number of difficulties are in the way (Dwivedi et al. 2011). Regardless of these challenges, a stream of research continues to be conducted for managing knowledge.