In the knowledge economy, knowledge-based capabilities are the key to competitive advantage. At the firm level, this places the enterprise’s people, their knowledge and innovative capacity at the heart of strategic potential, and organisations that excel in attracting, creating, managing and sustaining knowledge capabilities are advantaged. Human resource management (HRM) has over recent years been exhorted to demonstrate its position as a strategic partner to executive management: this promise has been only partially realised.
In this article, we explore the knowledge economy and the management of knowledge from an HRM perspective. Commanding a central position in realising value from knowledge assets is proposed as a strategic role for HRM. Specifically, HRM must respond to the key challenges presented by the knowledge economy. We identify four HRM priorities: becoming expert in identifying and defining strategic knowledge capabilities; developing and managing knowledge workers by leveraging the knowing-learning-doing nexus; building knowledge value as an organisational as well as an individual asset; and minimising enterprise knowledge risk.
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