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Knowledge Works for Effective Management
By: Prof. Param J. Shah
Education is essential in order to make a living in this physical world, but in order to make a living a success, in order to experience every moment of life as new, everyday as a day of upliftment and blessing, and to have lasting peace, firstly, knowledge of self is of utmost importance.
“Know you” we are told and to this end many an orphan has made his long and arduous search to find or even to come across just the slightest trace of his physical parents. Further more, men have traveled far and wide amidst strange faces and in for distance places in an extremely costly search for their roots.
Work ethics for effective management covers four broad topics:
- Character and Conduct
- How to deal with corruption
- Quality of a leader
- Plan for action
These are the requirement to manage their business.
Management emanates primarily from the manager, relates to an individual, action he executes his composition what propels his action? At all times the inner personality alone is responsible for action. The mind-intellect equipment within propels the body to act. Therefore, a study of the mind and intellect assumes prime importance.
The quality of the mind and intellect determine the character of a person. The ethical values they entertain. They uphold these values set his obligatory function in the world. Determine the work ethics for effective management of his life and business.
I would like to discuss here only one and that is character and conduct how it affects for effective management.
Effective management requires an efficient competent manager with ethical and moral values to manage an institution what should be his nature? His ethical and moral code? His character and conduct? These facets of a manager form the backbone of proper management.
THE INDIVIDUAL:
Management essentially comprises action. And action emanates from an individual. The physical body evacuates various actions. The mind and intellect propel them. Mind and intellect together constitutes the inner personality. This drives the body to act. Therefore, it is important to know the nature of the mind and intellect and how they function.
The mind consists of impulses, feelings, emotions, likes and dislikes. Hence, mind is compared to fire it being insatiable too. The intellect is the facility of thinking, reasoning, judging, and deciding. The world comprises of two distinct classes of people depending upon the use of these equipment. Some act directly from the mind impulses, without intellectual participation, others examine the minds impulses with the intellect, think, declare and act. A human alone can examine and determine his action. No other being is endowed with this facility. Those who do not use reason, discretion, and judgment in executing action do not live up to the human status.
INNER CHARACTER
The character of a person rest on the strength and use of his intellect. A strong intellect to control his mind. The mind entertains endless desires, obsessions and the world presents temptations to lure the mind to indulge in them. In most persons the intellect remains underdeveloped not strong enough to withstand worldly temptations. It succumbs. The mind has its way. The individual loses self-control this mentality weakly caters to sensual and emotional demands and leads him to a base and unethical life.
The human intellect acts as the banks of a river and the mind as the flow of water. When the banks are strong, the flow is controlled. The land on either side becomes fertile. But with weak banks, the water inundates, devastates the land, similarly, with weak intellect the mind’s desires and obsessions gather tremendous momentum, destroy one’s personality. A strong intellect however controls the flow of thoughts and emotions. The mind flows ethical values, promotes growth of personality.
Another ethical value for effective management is a sense of camaraderie, friendship and love. A sense of belonging, love is identification with others, with your colleagues, sharing benefits with them. Identification engenders harmony, team sprit, co-operation among workers in any field of activity. However efficient you need to create a sprit of co-operation endeavor. Having developed this co-operative attitude you will be able to effectively manage any work or situation.
A third value that promotes effectiveness is attitude of kindness. A consideration for fellow-workers, a genuine interest in them, their working conditions and welfare. Consider them as you would consider yourself. In relation to work you would do unto them as you would unto yourself. With such a healthy atmosphere the organization works on its own.
A fourth value in management spells out another essential trait. A charitable disposition to accommodate another’s point of view, a sincere appreciation of others thoughts and ideas, developing a sense of belonging participation in management
A fifth management quality is to recognize the limitation if certain employees. Such an objective view in a manager helps, encourage his colleagues. They then contribute their best, enhance performance. The overall management improves.
The above ethical values together build the character in a person.
Individual tacit knowledge can be more widely possessed if there are explicit occasions for other to observe the knowledge being applied to real situations. The system of apprentice is one such device.
For organization whose knowledge management imperative is creating new knowledge through R & D, an important element of the knowledge management strategy is what knowledge acquires from outside and what to be created internally.
Organizational knowledge consists of a combination of the knowledge of all individual in an organization. It emerges out of a process of conscious and/ or unconscious among all members of the organization.
BUILDING KNOWLEDGE ORGANISATION
Knowledge management process as are essentially centered around knowledge workers and organization can use knowledge as a strategic resource only if it knows how to attract, retain and motivate superior knowledge workers.
Knowledge workers tend to be high achievers and hence expect tangible feedback and recognition for their performance the following presentation shows the factors contributing to concept of self of knowledge workers.
To conclude I can say that the World Development Report suggest that the growth in developed as well as developing countries is a function of the inclusion of knowledge. In those countries knowledge based industries such as I.T., Biotechnology, financial and insurance services and consulting have become more important in terms of their share in G.N.P and their growth potential. Knowledge management has its origin in these knowledge based industries.
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