Information and Communication Technologies (ICT’s) and knowledge Management

I. Introduction

What is it today that change the organization in this world? Is it a miracle or just happen by chance? Undoubtedly, one main factor to concern the most when talking about developing country is the advanced technology, which can transform the world into something special that people would have never expected before.

If we take a look at the past, people, company and especially the whole nation find it hard to cope with every sector in terms of education, health, economic, business and so on since the advanced technology did not exist yet. Therefore, thanks to the technology which enable everything convenient in different kinds of aspect and you can imagine how tough your life would be without technology. With this in mind, human being should not spoil but to use it in a good way in order to improve with what already exist especially try to invent with the thing that they are capable to for a better world. Hence, the following will discuss about basic concept of technology today, which aim to focus on role, history, effect, and how technology enhance knowledge creation by looking at the real world example today.

II. Definition & History of Technology

Ideally, people have faced and used technology from time to time with their daily activity but sometimes they still get confused and not sure what technology is. By all means, technology is the use of science in industry, engineering, and so on to invent useful things or to solve problems which include a machine, piece of equipment, and method (merriam-webster, 2013). Likewise, the term technology is a combination of the Greek technē, “art, craft,” with logos, “word, speech,” meant in Greece a discourse on the arts, both fine and applied. In 17^th century, it was used to discuss that applied to art only. By mid-century, technology defined as phrases of “the means or activity by which man seeks to change or manipulate his environment (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2013).” Even with a broad meaning but people still can not figure out the difference between technology and science.

III. Role of Technology Today

Generally speaking, technology plays an important role in our world today. We are living in a society which is called "technologically civilized" society (eassyforum, 2006-2014). So here we would like to name some of its main role in our life. In the name of technology, it provides us many consuming goods that we use from day to day unlike traditional cooking, which can make pollution and time consuming. More importantly, it makes life much easier by allowing us to get connected to the world, share, learn, and inspire by just accessing to the Internet. More than that, technology made multitask function so you can simply do many things at the same time with just a single device. The more work related to technology, the more we depend on it.

IV. The Effect of Technology in Society & Organization

Given with the advanced information technology it made the whole world be at ease. From the past until now technology has contributed, influence, and improve society in many different kinds of sectors. So take the case of education, technology empower student to search more for their study since sometimes only textbook at school is not enough, and they can use it as their personal productivity at a lower cost also. Anyhow, technology allows students to study anywhere and anytime not just in school. In term of the economy, it helps to change production structure by enhance and expand business area. As technology change the aspect of competition and investment, it also helps to boost investment rate dramatically. For example, Korea has been the value added amount of information and communication industry increase from 30 trillion won in 1995 to 43 trillion won in 1998. Consequently, its share in GDP rose from 7.9 per cent to 9.6 per cent (unescap, 1999). Equally important, technology revolutionizes remarkably especially for the healthcare sector by improving healthcare quality and safety. With electronic health care record, it gives the complete picture of our health which can improve overall health. It also increases the efficiency of health and service delivery since it make task work faster and more accurate in term of prescription which known as E-prescribing (ak-ehealth, 2013). Ironically, technology does not discriminate but aim to offer equal benefit to every sector unless you use it illegally. Moving on to the organization, unquestionably in the 21^st century organization will have difficulty to fight for their own place without technology. A combination of the internet, hardware, software, and computing power are pushing the limitations that hindered the productivity of the businesses. In this manner, technology acknowledge company to manage and report customer data, which could use for customer service activities and product development in order to satisfy their customer. With this point, company would maintain and gain better customer experience since it would be able to save a lot of time and speed up the workflow faster. On the other hand, communication in an organization has upgraded with both external and internal because it is unlimited by sending an email or chat through online with people in the organization. In addition, company has the ability to communicate to their customer or business partner by using tools such as mobile, technology, video conference and more. So the productivity of the company tends to increase even further since the company can produce more with fewer resources especially gain competitive advantage against other corporations. Following this further, technology would be able to uplift the process of screen, recruiting potential candidate. Business uses technology to advertise their opening job. So business should express gratitude to technology because screening tools allow the company to choose the right candidate and the right candidate will surely thrive a company to success. In particular, Coca cola face a problem with fuel-efficient which could decrease the carbon footprint. Fortunately, in 2007, Coca-Cola received its first installment of trucks in North America with Eaton’s hybrid electric system. As a result, not only have Coca-Cola’s hybrid trucks produced cost savings, but Coca-Cola has also reported a noticeable increase in driver satisfaction. Coca-Cola’s hybrid trucks technology uses approximately 30 percent less fuel than a standard delivery truck in a similar duty cycle (eaton, 2013).

V. How Technology Enhance Knowledge Creation

Moving on to the last part. We focus on how technology can boost the knowledge creation. With the previous part above, we can see the benefit of technology in an organization, society, and its many other main roles. Occasionally, you have used technology a lot and familiar with it firmly but sometimes you may not sure in which area might it fall into in relation to knowledge creation. With e-learning, it is one part among others to raise knowledge creation. Precisely, it is a computer based and online tools that provide with flexibility in time and place (Mikael Lindvall, 2002). E-learning consider as explicit-to-tacit knowledge, whereas e-teaching might play as tacit-to-explicit as long as teacher need to share knowledge that he or she got with student in different types of material including video, audio, and document. Not to be confused, both e-learning and e-teaching can also support tacit-to-tacit knowledge when a student and a teacher communicate. Beside of this, it is not specific that it always be like that as you can see today that people use website or blog with a different purpose, so it might come up with different types of knowledge conversion as well up to their willing. In the meantime, people may need a secure place to place their data, information, and knowledge which need to be carried out for their work. So knowledge portal is a great choice for the reason that it can pull information together from different sources and display accurately which perform as explicit-to-explicit knowledge (Mikael Lindvall, 2002). With the information that people can see, so knowledge portal bring it on together differently to show it off again to anyone by allowing people to approach easily. A study found that people in software organizations spent 40% of their time in searching for different types of information related to their projects (Henninger, 1997). With portal providing all of the information, time spend on looking for information can be reduce dramatically. Therefore, it would lead to have collaborative environment, which push people to share across the team such as shared vision, mission, objective, knowledge plan, and team member role. Another thing is an expert network, and it direct to build knowledge sharing when people come up with problems which commonly based on peer to peer support (Mikael Lindvall, 2002). It would be a tacit-to-tacit knowledge because individual might need to talk privately regarding to their own problem, or else they need to discuss first before handing it in to someone. In contrary, it would turn out to be explicit-to-tacit knowledge when someone has a solution and store a solution to their task. In other words, they will hand in to someone when they finished. Not to forget about knowledge server and knowledge service, it entitled to manage communication between people and network, which enable to access, create, and sharing knowledge that plays an important role for knowledge management technology. To demonstrate, with coca cola again recently added SharePoint Online, which is a virtual database that allows for communication between employees around the world. “Through the use of SharePoint Online, we’re able to educate our team so that they can find information and establish interdependencies across the different projects. SharePoint allows us to code and manage information so that we can get it very quickly” (Flowers, 2012). Additionally, Coca-Cola maintains a visible appearance on Facebook and other social networking sites such as Twitter. With over 34 million fans as of 2011, Coca-Cola harnesses the power of social networking to spread the word concerning new products, gather feedback and test advertorial campaigns (smallbusiness, 2013).

VI. Conclusion

In summary, no matter how strong you are, you will still need technology as your assistant to thrive to success. It is pivotal to understand the effect of technology. From the discussion, technology benefits into different areas including society, organization, and knowledge creation. Also, with the example of Korea and Coca cola company which mainly because of technology that make it become glory worldwide. Admittedly, not only coca cola and Korea that depend on technology, but also many big companies and countries around the world need technology as their fundamental source. So we as human and the whole nation need to protect and use technology wisely. Remember that two coin would always come up with two sides that is why technology also has its own disadvantage. Nevertheless, it becomes an integral part of our daily life mainly it can be our second parents, teacher, and advisor. Thus, technology provides aid the world more than expected. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (Arthur C. Clarke).

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