Knowledge Management: Technologies, Taxonomy, and US Army Insights

This essay delves into the multifaceted realm of knowledge management, emphasizing its critical role in today's technology-driven, globalized world. It defines knowledge management as the strategic application of knowledge to achieve organizational objectives, encompassing processes of creation, sharing, and utilization. The essay explores knowledge capturing technologies such as mind maps, internet resources, and document management systems, highlighting their function in facilitating employee performance and organizational knowledge acquisition from both internal and external sources. It further examines the concept of taxonomy generation, its role in digitizing knowledge management, and the evolution of automatic taxonomy generation. A significant portion of the essay focuses on the application of knowledge management within the US Army, detailing its evolution, the use of the Centre for Army Lessons Learned, and various technological systems like CAVNET and Battle Command Knowledge System, illustrating how knowledge management enhances military operations. The essay concludes by underscoring the importance of effective knowledge management for achieving organizational goals across various sectors.

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Knowledge Management
The world today is ruled with technology which leads to the globalization of this world. All
these technological techniques that make the world as one compressed zone are due to the
knowledge from the humans that occupy the earth. Thus this knowledge leads to greater and
impressive developments in the earth but it might also be destructive and thus non-beneficial
when exposed to the world. In conjunction, this arouses the topic of discussion, knowledge
management. A reflection on knowledge management is very crucial when dealing with the
impacts brought along by knowledge. What is knowledge management? Knowledge
management refers to putting knowledge into best use in order to achieve organizational
objectives in an organization. It involves processes of creating, sharing, using and managing the
knowledge and information of organizations (Girate, John & JoAnn, 2015). Several large
companies, public institutions and non-profit organizations major their dedication efforts in
internal KM usually as part of their strategy in business, IT or even resource management. We
shall thus take a reflection on some of the three field of knowledge discussion to figure out the
knowledge management reflection. These include; knowledge capturing technologies, taxonomy
generation and knowledge management in US Army. The efforts on knowledge management by
organizational is focused for the beneficial factors of the organization. These include innovation,
improved performance of the organization, competitive advantage by the organization, sharing of
lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization (Gupta, Jatinder;
Sharma & Sushil, 2004).
Knowledge being a major factor in the success of an organizational development, it has
several methods of initiating it. Therefore, this drives us to the knowledge capturing
technologies. The knowledge capturing technologies are the systems for knowledge

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management. This knowledge management systems include: mind maps to capture employees
know-know and creative ideas, internet that avails information about the environment, training
and development to understand employees ‘skills and expert in media to capture customers,
documents management system to capture and share internal numerical information. These
systems are all aimed at facilitating employees' functional role, facilitating employees' project
role and the employees' performance in an organization. Organizational knowledge is the
knowledge gained within the organization and based on the experience. It is majored for the
achievement of the organization's objectives. Organizational knowledge is based on internal and
external sources. The internal sources include capturing and sharing undocumented knowledge
and experience, intellectual prosperity, lessons from failure and successful projects, knowledge
from experience and results of improvement in processes, products and services. The external
sources of knowledge include gathering knowledge from customers, academia, conferences,
external providers and standards (Boisot, 1999). Artificial intelligence is a major boost in data
capturing when capturing knowledge.
Internet is the fastest means of knowledge gathering since it avails information required.
The use of internet applies the artificial intelligence of machines such as computers and mobile
phones. The internet provides information of the environment under research. Internet works in
correspondence with natural human intelligence since it avails only what has been requested of it
by human brains and thus it is considered reliable and effective in relaying information for
capturing knowledge. However, out of these capturing technologies, there are two major
capturing technologies that include a concept map and context based reasoning. Concept
mapping is basically a diagrammatic representation of relationship between concepts with
concept map being a graphical representation with nodes representing concepts and links

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representing relationship between the concepts. Concept maps have an effective method that
organizes and structures the concepts hence representing experts' domain knowledge. To further
improve on the use of concept mapping, a concept mapping software is developed to ease on the
process. This software’s include mind jet concept mapping software, Cmap concept mapping and
cayra mind mapping Concept. The technology of concept mapping is applicable in banking and
insurance industry (Flourie, Schilawa and Cloete, 2004) and in supporting educational setting.
Software’s such as MindGenius is a business mind mapping software that assist in capturing,
visualizing and managing someone's ideas and information. SmartDraw is software that
automates creation of visuals. Integrated KM system is also a technique that helps in
management of any data type or information in a consolidated knowledge centre by both
technical and non-technical users.
These systems factors gathers information from individuals mind either internally within
the organization or externally. And this has been made easy by the development of these
software’s that make it ease in the collector such ideas and information. This software’s are
applicable at personal data analysis level as well as enterprise levels. It is as well extended to the
workplaces to collect the information’s and ideas that are used in buildup of knowledge. Context
based reasoning is also a profound technique in the knowledge capturing. It serves best in
capturing tactical knowledge. In especially involves modeling of human behavioral nature in
tactical and operational situations whereby the utmost importance is the optimal human decision
making (Becerra & Sabherwal, 2010). Context based reasoning thus is important since critical
decision making is a prime factor in an organization especially in the management system. This
helps in solution of various problems and issues succumbing the organization. Therefore, in
extracting knowledge through this means is tactical since it involves extraction of human

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decision making. Organizations are so much interested in capturing of knowledge through all the
possible means so as to reduce the burden of human labor. This captured knowledge is
essentially used in development of machines through the artificial intelligence idea. Therefore,
this gives the machines similar ability as human beings and that is why machines such as cranes,
robots and computers are available. Still there is further invention of such machines that can
operate without human supervision. Therefore leading to much research on the Artificial
Intelligence knowledge by extractions of much more knowledge from human to relate them. This
gives the discussion of future network system operation which as expected, all the human
activities shall be taken over by machines even without control of human beings or rather
supervision.
This knowledge in management is applicable in many fields that have ideally led to growth
of new inventions. This leads us to the topic of taxonomy generation. This is an influence of
knowledge management. What is taxonomy? As per the knowledge management reflection, it
could be as a classification scheme, semantic or a knowledge map. It gives us a detailed and
understandable clear view of our perception and how we talk about the world we are living in.
As a classification scheme, taxonomy is designed to group of things related together and as a
knowledge map it enables immediate grasp of the overall structure of the domain knowledge by
the user. Taxonomy also acts as memory since concepts are stored within the taxonomy and
locked in a place. Taxonomy has led to digitization of the knowledge management in various
ways because the initial knowledge management system was simple. This is through paper filling
system, content management system and shared folder drive structure. The digitization process
of knowledge management system by taxonomy is thus the taxonomy generation. The
digitization therefore gives an ideal type of taxonomy generation that makes management of

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knowledge easy and digitized. This is the automatic taxonomy generation. Automatic taxonomy
enables analysis of topics and sub topics of companies without human analysis involvement, it
has word map that offers text mining and automated categorization tools, enables reviewing of
existing categorized contexts, it also suggests new category. Taxonomy software can be
standalone system whereby it integrated with or send output to content management, portal and
other enterprise management system. It can also be a module of information and retrieval system
allowing various applications and groups to share it. Therefore, taxonomy generation is
generating topics or concepts and their relations from a given corpus. It basically consists of
listing topics and categories from a given corpus (Jo, 2019).
We are living in an information age world. This in turn makes the world a globalized
institution. This information age varies from generation to generation due to modification
whereby new inventions are added to it and in the same case; some deductions are made from it.
These modifications are due to taxonomy of information that occur from age to age as the
scientists and technologists are working with effort to make this world a simple and more simple
place controlled with machines which are improvised with the information. This kind of
information is generated from the humans and used effectively for the benefit of a given
organization that has initiated it. This is therefore knowledge management as the information
extracted from human based sources is improvised and modified from generation to generation
through the system of taxonomy generation with an aim of achieving given goals of an
organization.
Knowledge management is applicable also in the Knowledge management development in
the US Army. This is basically for the aim of achieving some targeted objectives in the army. US
being one of the super power states, it would also use technology in their military department to

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match their superiority name in the army. The US Army lesson learned system has evolved
greatly over several years. It initially begun as After Action Review process but with time
evolved to a model lesson learned system which is Centre for Army Lessons Learned. This
system matured of identifying, collecting, analyzing, transferring and moving lessons learned at
all levels of command. All these are due to knowledge management system that is applied in the
US Army operation. Centre of Army Lesson Learned enabled rapid adaptation initiative and
conducted a focused knowledge sharing and transfer that informs the army and enables
operationally based decision making, Innovation and integration throughout the Army and within
the JIIM environment. Centre of Army Lessons Learned is a multi-media operation that
disseminates these lessons and other materials through variety of print and electronic Medias and
their web site as well. The evolution of US Army through knowledge management brought the
use of the following system in the army for military purposes: The US military online which
gave a directory for internet access in the department of defense ; CAVNET which is a military
forum that is part of SIRNET that allowed fast access to knowledge acquired on the ground in
combat; Battle Command Knowledge System which is a change agent for implementing
knowledge management capabilities in training and operations of the United State Armies. Battle
Command Knowledge System includes various current initiative elements. These elements are;
Knowledge management forums that provide a social network facilitating foundation of
knowledge transfer between the army soldiers and civilians; knowledge management training
that provide training and education necessary for the Battle Command Knowledge Management
to understand and practice the employment of KM-BCKM activities, principles, processes,
techniques and tools; knowledge management doctrine which is a military advice prepared in
advance that provides a common operational platforms where plans are developed and

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successfully executed; multi-repository search engine for conducting federated searching across
the domains; digital storytelling and interactive video development. There is also an inclusion of
umbrella which I a program coordinated by Centre of Army Lessons Learned to fence off a block
of time with army units transitioning into the recent pool of cycle. There is also milSuite which is
a collection of online applications focused on improving methods for secure collaboration for the
US department of defense. All these military applications are based on the technology which is
under knowledge management hence improving the operation in the defense sectors. This clearly
justifies the application of knowledge management system in the military operations to make it
effective hence achieving the operational objectives in the army successfully.
This is a clear indication that knowledge is the core centre of every single activity in the day
to day world. However, this is beneficial through effectiveness in the use of the knowledge and
this is knowledge management. Knowledge management is applicable by organizations to
achieve the organization objectives within the same organization as showed in the various
scenarios discussed. This is a clearer indication that knowledge management if for personal gain.
Knowledge management application is also modified from generation to generation to improve
on the outcome of its applications as evident by taxonomy generation. Therefore, there are still
much invention on the knowledge management and its applications that will see the future
network system change.

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References
Becerra-Fernandez, I. and Sabherwal, R. (2010). Knowledge management system :System and
process.
Boisot, M. (1999). Knowledge assets. New Yorl: Oxford University Press.
Fourie, L. C. H., Schilawa, J. and Cloete, E. (2004). The value of concept maps for knowledge
management in the banking and insurance industry
Girard, John P.; Girard, JoAnn L. (2015). "Defining knowledge management: Toward an applied
compendium"
Gupta, Jatinder; Sharma, Sushil (2004). Creating Knowledge Based Organizations. Boston: Idea
Group Publishing.