COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY: THE CASE OF A HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTION IN BANGLADESH

Knowledge management is defined as an integrated, systematic approach to identifying, managing, and sharing all of an enterprise's information assets, including databases, documents, policies, and procedures, as well as previously unarticulated expertise and experience held by individual workers. Mission-critical knowledge management can be identified as a primary objective of any organization. Knowledge management is an important tool for gaining or sustaining competitive advantage. Awareness of value-added knowledge and timely dissipation of knowledge within the organization improves cross-functional communication. Equipped with pertinent knowledge, workers in an organization can make the institution agile, adaptive and efficient. Both explicit and tacit knowledge can be used for the betterment of the organization. Objective of knowledge management is to create institutionalized value. Knowledge management practices aim to draw out tacit knowledge people acquired and spread the cumulative learning throughout the end-user of the organization. Higher education institutions benefit greatly from the knowledge management practices that exist in other types of organizations. For this study, a premier private university in Bangladesh has been chosen as a case study to explore if knowledge management actually creates competitive advantage for the institution and how the institution may use it. Via separate knowledge management infrastructure elements, a link is established between knowledge resources and competitive advantage and the impact of this connection is analyzed.