Knowledge management as a foundation for decision support systems

The state of the world today has demanded better decision making from organizations. It is imperative that these decisions be made based on facts about the current decision and information about past similar decisions. In order to do this, organizations have to capture and share knowledge found within the organization. Much interest has been seen regarding the knowledge management (KM) field. Organizations are beginning to realize that in order to increase their competitiveness, they will need to practice the activities involved in KM. A closer look at the KM classes of activities and the phases of the decision making process will reveal a similar construction. This paper discusses this relationship and indicates how an understanding of this relationship will help to build decision support systems that better fit what is actually needed for decision making.