An Analysis of Knowledge Management and E-commerce in Business

This report delves into the critical relationship between knowledge management and e-commerce in contemporary business environments. It emphasizes the significance of effective knowledge management for gaining a competitive edge, including the characteristics of knowledge, objectives of knowledge management (such as facilitating smooth business transactions, minimizing loss of corporate memory, identifying critical knowledge resources, and preventing the loss of intellectual capital). The report distinguishes between explicit and tacit knowledge and their roles in organizational development, highlighting how knowledge management enhances employee performance, decision-making, and innovation. Furthermore, the report examines e-commerce, defining its categories (B2B, B2C, C2C, C2B, B2A, and C2A) and outlining its benefits, such as quick transactions, 24/7 availability, and breaking down geographical barriers. The report concludes that both knowledge management and e-commerce are essential for reducing operational costs and improving business efficiency, offering significant advantages for both organizations and their employees.

Running head: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
Knowledge Management and e-Commerce
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

1KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
Knowledge Management refers to the process of making the right knowledge available
for all. It needs to be mentioned that in today’s world, knowledge management is given utmost
importance at the time of business decision-making (Hislop, 2013). Different types of business
activities are done with the help of knowledge managemnment like data storage, data retrieval
system, analysis of business data, application of different kinds of business designs and many
others. Thus, it can be said that there is a significant importance of knowledge management in
the business organizations. On the other hand, twenty-first centuries has seen the progress and
expansion of e-commerce for different kinds of business industries like retail business industries
and others. In today’s business environment, e-commence plays an integral part in breaking
down the geographical barrier from the business. The use of e-commerce is helping the business
organizations in different kinds of ways. Significant connection can be seen between knowledge
management and e-commerce as without the help of effective knowledge, it is not possible to
access various aspects of e-commerce (Holsapple, 2013). Thus, it can be said that both the
aspects of knowledge management and e-commerce are crucial in the business organizations.
In today’s business organizations, the effective management of knowledge has significant
importance. In order to gain necessary competitive advantage, it is necessary for the business
organizations to create and diffuse knowledge. At the time of discussing about knowledge
management, it is necessary to discuss about certain specific characteristics of knowledge. They
are: the use of knowledge does not consume knowledge; at the time of transferring knowledge,
there is not any lost of knowledge; the nature of knowledge is abundant, the ability to use
knowledge is considered as scare; at the end of the day, much of the valuable knowledge of the
companies walk out from the door (Liebowitz & Frank, 2016). These are the major
characteristics of knowledge. Some specific objectives are there behind the use of knowledge

2KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
management in the business organizations as the use of knowledge management helps in the
achievement of these objectives. The first objective is facilitating in the processing of smooth
business transactions. The second objective is minimizing the loss of corporate memory due to
various reasons like retirements, attrition and many others. The third major objective of the use
of knowledge management is the identification of critical resources and critical areas of
knowledge in the business organizations. The fourth objective is to develop tools for the
companies so that potential loss of intellectual capital can be prevented. These are the major
objectives of knowledge management (Holtshouse, 2013).
One of the major aspects is that in the business organizations, the management of
knowledge leads to the creation of knowledge in the business organizations. It is the concern of
many of the organizations managers that how to distribute knowledge among the members and
employees of the companies. Another major aspect is how to capture the organizational
knowledge after distributing them among all the employees and members of the companies. It
can be seen that different types of business organizations use different approaches in order to
distribute and capture knowledge in the companies. It can be seen that most of the companies use
the knowledge in order to develop and address critical performance of the business organizations
(Lin, Ma & Zhou, 2012). It can be seen that most of the business organizations have been able to
create a specific environment that is full of knowledge and this process helps the business
organizations in the process of decision-making. On the other hand, it has been seen that the
adoption and use of various digital platforms has made it easier for the organizational managers
for the capturing of knowledge (Fuller, 2012).
Thus, from the above discussion, it can be seen that knowledge management helps the
business organizations from different angles. In this regard, it needs to be mentioned that two

3KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
kinds of knowledge can be seen in the business organizations. They are Explicit knowledge and
Implicit knowledge. In the business organizations, explicit knowledge in the business
organizations can be captured and written down in the business document or business database
(Siemens, 2014). Thus, it can be seen that explicit knowledge can be used for further references
in the companies. Some of the major examples of explicit knowledge are instruction manuals,
different written procedures, learned lessons, best practices and others. Another type of
organizational knowledge is tacit knowledge (Zhang, Pablos & Zhang, 2012). Tacit knowledge is
the kind of knowledge that the organizational people capture in their heads. It can be said that
that the nature of tacit knowledge is less concrete than that of explicit knowledge.
As per the above discussion, it can be said that knowledge management plays integral
part in the development of different aspects of the businesses. In case of the employees of the
organizations, knowledge management plays an important role (Argote, 2012). Knowledge
management helps the employees to perform their job responsibilities by saving the time. In
addition, knowledge management helps the organizational managers in the decision-making
process and in the solving of various types of organizations problems (Wiig, 2012). The
management of knowledge helps the employees to stay up to date and it helps to develop
bandings among the organizational employees. Knowledge management largely contributes
towards the development of the business organizations. With the help of knowledge
management, the business organizations are able to drive the organizational strategy (Ritala et
al., 2015). For example, the knowledge management strategy of Australian Local Government
Association can be mentioned. With the help of Local Government Knowledge Management
toolkit, the staffs of the organization use to recognize the opportunities in order to discover and
share knowledge. With the assistance of knowledge management, the business organizations are

4KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
able to implement different kinds of best practices in the companies. The employees of the
companies become able to improve their knowledge regarding the various products and services
of the companies. A positive connection can be seen between innovation and knowledge
management as knowledge management helps the business organizations to implement various
aspects of innovation. Most importantly, it needs to be mentioned that the business organizations
become able to get necessary competitive advantage with the effective management of
knowledge (Durst & Runar Edvardsson, 2012). For another example, ARK Group Australia can
be considered. In this organization, the expert panel of the company uses the discussion of
various strategies, case studies and others in order to share knowledge in the organizations. In
this way, the company uses to manage the organizational knowledge. Based on the above
discussion, it can be said that with the help of knowledge management, both the business
organization and organizational people can become largely beneficial.
Another major aspect of the business organizations is the use of e-Commerce. E-
commerce refers to the process of online transactions of the companies (Laudon, K. C., &
Traver, 2013). In this regard, it needs to be mentioned that there are six kinds of categories of e-
commerce; they are Business-to-Business (B2B), Business-to-Consumer (B2C), Consumer-to-
Consumer (C2C), Consumer-to-Business (C2B), Business-to-Administration (B2A) and
Consumer-to-Administration (C2A). In case of B2B, online business transactions take place
between the companies (Chiu et al., 2014). In case of B2C, the online business transactions take
place between the businesses and final consumers. In C2C, online transactions take place
between consumers. It needs to be mentioned that with the help of e-commerce, business
organizations can avail some major benefits. They are discussed below:

5KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
There are some major benefits of the use of e-commerce in the business organizations.
First, with the assistance of e-commerce facility, the business organizations can conduct the
processes of buying and selling in a quick basis, as online transactions do not take much time to
be processed (Sila & Dobni, 2012). This is also convenient for the buyers as they can search and
buy products without losing additional time. Second, a major advantage of e-commerce is that
the business organizations can carry on the process of buying and selling on 24x7 (Andam,
2014). In this case, the example of Kogan can be considered. Kogan is an Australian homegrown
online retailer. The customers of this company can order various kinds of food products from
online. This company is well known for its e-commerce based business model. As the process of
buying and selling continues for all the time, the business organizations become able to fetch
more amounts of revenues and profit (Chavan, 2013). Third, this is the most important benefit of
e-commerce as it helps to break down all geographical barriers at the time of business operations.
E-commerce can be held responsible for the expansion of businesses as there is not any
geographical barrier. Businesses of one country or state easily operate their business operations
with the companies from another country or state (Mohapatra, 2013). In this process, the
companies do not have to bear high operational costs and at the same time, companies are able to
provide superior quality of services with the help of e-commerce. In the recent years, virtual
companies without any physical presence are being developed with the help of various e-
commerce facilities and this process helps to reduce the operational costs of the companies
(Rule, 2012). From the perspective of the customers, they can easily select and purchase
products without moving around from one place to another (Barnes & Hunt, 2013). At the same
time, customers do not have to bear any switching costs in this process. Thus, from the above

6KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
discussion, it can be seen that there are many benefits of e-commerce for the business
organizations.
From the above discussion, it can be seen that both knowledge management and e-
commerce have their significance in today’s businesses. Companies can improve their business
operations with the help of knowledge management as this process helps to capture and store
knowledge in the companies. On the other hand, with the help of e-commerce facilities,
companies can expand their businesses without any geographical constrain. Both of the aspects
helps to reduce the operational costs of the companies by increasing the efficiency of the
business operations.

7KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
References
Andam, Z. R. (2014). e-Commerce and e-Business.
Argote, L. (2012). Organizational learning: Creating, retaining and transferring knowledge.
Springer Science & Business Media.
Barnes, S., & Hunt, B. (Eds.). (2013). E-commerce and v-business. Routledge.
Chavan, J. (2013). Internet banking-Benefits and challenges in an emerging
economy. International Journal of Research in Business Management, 1(1), 19-26.
Chiu, C. M., Wang, E. T., Fang, Y. H., & Huang, H. Y. (2014). Understanding customers' repeat
purchase intentions in B2C e‐commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and
perceived risk. Information Systems Journal, 24(1), 85-114.
Durst, S., & Runar Edvardsson, I. (2012). Knowledge management in SMEs: a literature
review. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(6), 879-903.
Fuller, S. (2012). Knowledge management foundations. Routledge.
Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford
University Press.
Holsapple, C. (Ed.). (2013). Handbook on knowledge management 1: Knowledge matters (Vol.
1). Springer Science & Business Media.
Holtshouse, D. K. (2013). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science
& Business Media.

8KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE
Laudon, K. C., & Traver, C. G. (2013). E-commerce. Pearson.
Liebowitz, J., & Frank, M. (Eds.). (2016). Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press.
Lin, Y., Ma, S., & Zhou, L. (2012). Manufacturing strategies for time based competitive
advantages. Industrial Management & Data Systems, 112(5), 729-747.
Mohapatra, S. (2013). E-commerce Strategy. In E-Commerce Strategy (pp. 155-171). Springer
US.
Ritala, P., Olander, H., Michailova, S., & Husted, K. (2015). Knowledge sharing, knowledge
leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study. Technovation, 35, 22-
31.
Rule, C. (2012). Quantifying the economic benefits of effective redress: Large e-commerce data
sets and the costbenefit case for investing in dispute resolution. U. Ark. Little Rock L.
Rev., 34, 767-833.
Siemens, G. (2014). Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.
Sila, I., & Dobni, D. (2012). Patterns of B2B e-commerce usage in SMEs. Industrial
Management & Data Systems, 112(8), 1255-1271.
Wiig, K. (2012). People-focused knowledge management. Routledge.
Zhang, X., De Pablos, P. O., & Zhang, Y. (2012). The relationship between incentives, explicit
and tacit knowledge contribution in online engineering education project. International
Journal of Engineering Education, 28(6), 1341.

9KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND E-COMMERCE