HRD's Role in Identifying, Measuring, and Managing Knowledge Assets in the Intangible Economy

The problem and the solution. HRD's role in identifying, measuring, and managing knowledge assets in organizations is critical. Knowledge management refers to the ability of an organization to generate data, refine the data into information, and strategically use the information to make decisions. This article reviews relevant literature and demonstrates the role of HRD in identifying, measuring, and managing intangible knowledge assets in organizations. The article argues that in the 21st century, organizations are faced with tremendous challenges including financial meltdown, uncertain economy, cut-throat competition, globalized markets, economic marginalization, privatization and outsourcing of services, mergers, takeovers, rapidly advancing technology, rapid change, and generation of new knowledge. This article defines knowledge assets and examines the various forms of intellectual capital. The relevance of knowledge ratios to identifying, measuring, and managing knowledge assets in organizations is discussed. The success of tomorrow's organizations will lie in their capacity to learn, generate new knowledge, and successfully manage knowledge assets using new tools such as the balanced scorecard and the human resource scorecard. The article concludes by showing that knowledge is a new intangible asset most critical to the survival and thriving of both profit and nonprofit organizations.