It is imperative to enumerate the ways in which Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) can be crafted to bring in radical change, as against incremental change, in terms of organizational performance and to make better use of intelligent systems in an initiative to set the stage ready for reengineering in this direction. This article presents the ways in which KMS can be reengineered through the use of information technology, which is a key enabler.

Knowledge is derived from minds at work (Davenport et. al., 1998). When firms hire experts, it means that they are buying people with insights which come from their previous experience. Knowledge is intellectual capital which is the product of competence and commitment of the individual to the organization. It is the information in action. The characteristic feature of knowledge is that it is not consumed when used and at the same time it does not follow the law of diminishing marginal utility. The more knowledge one uses, there would be a temptation to make more use of knowledge in order to clarify and refine one's actions. In this process, one would end up violating the marginal utility theory in economics. When knowledge stops evolving, it can only be treated like an opinion and can no more be defined as true knowledge, which must definitely evolve from time to time. Knowledge management should not be isolated and should be given the highest priority like that for cost cutting, restructuring or international expansion (Morten et.al., 1999). The only source of lasting competitive advantage is knowledge (Nonaka, 2007) and the author also explains about the primary reasons for the success of Japanese companies in managing knowledge. The secret of success of Japanese companies like Honda, Matsushita, NEC and Sharp can be attributed to their ability to create new knowledge or innovate. Conscious overlapping of information, managerial activities and managerial responsibilities is the key organizational design feature of Japanese companies. At the same time, the western managers treat duplication as a wasteful activity. The Japanese organizational design encourages interaction and internal competition, which helps in sharing of ideas and also results in `best' approach. Job rotation is practiced in Japanese companies which help organizational knowledge to be more fluid to spread faster. Another peculiarity of Japanese companies is availability of all information to all employees irrespective of their rank. New knowledge is the result of utter chaos and confusion arising out of discrepancies in the meaning among various employees. Middle managers play a prominent role in the knowledge creation process as they interact with the senior managers and the frontline employees to create knowledge. Managers must challenge employees, who take things for granted, to kindle innovation. Table 1 shows various knowledge views and the corresponding KM focus to achieve the same. The knowledge can be viewed from five different angles, namely, state of mind, object, process of applying expertise, accessing information, and capability to influence future action.

Global CEO Magazine, Knowledge Management Systems, KMS, Information Technology, Japanese Companies, Commercial Applications, Project Management, Knowledge Organization, Real Simple Syndication, Social Networking Applications, Decision-making Process, Business Process Reengineering, Decision Support Systems.