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Knowledge Management, intellectual capital and knowledge sharing are three key concepts
of this research. At some point their relationship is somewhat of a conundrum. The
perspective in this research project is that both intellectual capital and knowledge sharing are
part of the broader term knowledge management. Intellectual capital focuses on such
initiatives by an organisation to explore and use the tacit and explicit knowledge to add value
whereby knowledge sharing can be one initiative under it. In the practical world, some
practitioners regard knowledge management as misnomer and prefer to use knowledge
sharing. However in this research I stress that not only knowledge management deals with
knowledge sharing but it indeed concerns itself with the whole process of creating,
distributing, applying and evaluating the results of the knowledge in question. I suggest that
“management” is not necessarily meaning “control” it may as well mean the skilful handling
or use of something such as resource see section 1.9 for the definition. This is precisely the
best explanation for this research to base its arguments on.
Many ways exist for the discussion of the intellectual capital. This research focuses on how
intellectual capital can bring about the positive results in terms of knowledge sharing. It
oversees the aspects of Human Capital and Structural Capital to suggest better ways to which
knowledge sharing will be improved by the former and the latter resulting in improved
performance.
The relationship between intellectual capital and knowledge sharing is indeed binary.
Intellectual capital may improve knowledge sharing and knowledge sharing may as well
result in the formation of intellectual capital. If through sharing knowledge staff get to know
what they did not know before, their intellectual level is improved and their performance may
improve as well. However, the focus of this research is to see how human capital and
structural capital may lead to better knowledge sharing. It looks at such things as motivation,
incentives related to knowledge sharing, creativity, library values, competences and social
skills as factors pertaining to Human Capital which may help improve knowledge sharing. It
looks at such things as library structure, technological infrastructure and policies to mention
but a few as part of structural capital which if they are managed better improvement in
knowledge sharing may be achieved. In this research I hold that, human capital is the most
valuable component and efforts for enhancing knowledge sharing through intellectual capital
should start with human capital. The workforce‟s ability to share is first enhanced then the
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