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The Alabama National Guard: System Analysis

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Think about a time in your career when you needed a critical piece of information in short order to accomplish a task, but could not easily locate that information. Constant emails keep arriving in your inbox from you supervisor demanding an answer on when you will respond. Critical staffing actions are delayed or even forgotten due to the delay in obtaining necessary information to ensure organizational knowledge is fully incorporated into the decision-making process. These situations are all a result of an organization with knowledge management issues. The primary purpose of a knowledge management system in an organization is to create value within the organization by maximizing use of knowledge (Leidner & Becerra-Fernandez, 2008). …show more content…

The Alabama National Guard utilizes a share drive system as one of the two knowledge management systems. In this system, directorates such as personnel, operations, logistics, strategic planning, information management, and budget all have dedicated hard drive space to store data. Additionally, each individual Alabama National Guard unit has organizational folders on the share drive to store unit data. The second system utilized by the Alabama National Guard is a web-based Microsoft SharePoint system which is part of and integrated into the larger nationwide National Guard SharePoint system. This system, as with the share drive system, is organized along similar departmental and unit lines. Within these two systems resides the sum total of all organizational knowledge management for the Alabama National …show more content…

Knowledge is a resource that increases in value to an organization as it is used (Brajer-Marczak, 2016). It is essential that leaders and organizations throughout the Alabama National Guard have access to all necessary organizational knowledge for a multitude of reasons. Depositories of knowledge in organizations serve numerous functions to include sharing and disseminating information, increasing awareness, and communication of values and best practices (Brajer-Marczak, 2016). The primary reason is for all departments and units in the Alabama National Guard to have access to a central repository of all regulations, historical documents, plans, guidance, and best practices in order to conduct daily operations. Additionally, operations are often conducted away from the office, or in austere environments utilizing mobile broadband and laptop computer. Having access to the organizations data in an organized efficient manner is essential. Finally, a centralized knowledge management system allows organizations to share and collaborate much

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