Developing Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through Knowledge Management

Abstract Today the general business environment is inundated with a plethora of challenges that can spur only those businesses sound strategies have chances of surviving the competition. The higher education landscape is facing fierce competition from some institutions that have introduced duplicate or differentiated educational programmes and courses. Knowledge management KM plays an indispensable role of acting as a precursor to attaining a more comprehensive and sustainable competitive advantage. It is imperative therefore that each and every organisation takes as a necessary step self-reflection and audit areas of its gain and those that require redemption and correction. In the majority of cases this information is evident in the organisations knowledge management repositories. Having this information and being able to harvest actionable information is the greatest challenge faced by the business world. Managers and strategy implementers need to be schooled on how to exploit the massive mountains of data that are already archived and those that are being generated on daily basis. Knowledge is fast becoming a strategic organisational resource that must be tapped and converted into competitive advantage 1. The use of information technology IT and relevant information systems IS has helped organisations generate relevant information that an organisation needs to use to make informed decisions. Knowledge management system KMS be used to produce information that can give some insights about business performance and the organisation can whack into these skills and expertise to bolster its competitive advantage over the external competition. This work advocates for knowledge management to be implemented in an organisation as a guaranteed strategy to survive the dynamic changes currently redefining the turbulent business landscape.