Managing Knowledge Wisdom - The Next Step in Knowledge Management for the Ageing Workforce Phenomenon

Ageing workforce is a global phenomenon. By 2016, the number of workers aged 60-65 are expected to double in Australia. An ageing workforce highlights amongst social, economic and fiscal impacts, the greatest challenge to organisations in their ability to retain and use their knowledge for continued competitive advantage and sustainability. Organisations in order to compete in this warfront of being successful, need to understand what is their central knowledge factor(s) that has made them successful in the past, and will continue to be competitive and successful in the future. Organisations will have the challenge of discovering and ensuring that the knowledge of wisdom that was the spell of their success does not exit them, with the slow but sure seismic shift in labour, as the ageing workforce depart. Building a collaborative knowledge system has slowly gained credence in organisations. Organisations are realizing the crucial role of employees in their interaction, skills and engagement and the different "knows" that has denoted a productive workforce and organisational success. The next step for knowledge management perhaps is arguably the economic foresight challenges of the chaotic workforce demographic changes that needs to bring about managing organisational wisdom knowledge in this knowledge-era. Knowledge management needs to provide some comfort for industries and organisations that are facing the ageing workforce crisis. Wisdom can be defined as the "power of judging rightly and following the soundest course of action, based on knowledge, experience, understanding, etc (Webster's New World College Dictionary, 1997, p1533). This insightful description needs to be captured and retained for future transfer and collaborative use. After all, it is the agency of humans who bring their individual subjectivity and passion as knowledge and wisdom and make that contribution towards organisational success. The paper cites examples of organisations from two different industries in Australia which are facing this ageing phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is create interest and discussions amongst knowledge management scholars to not stop at knowledge management and to look at the next step of organisational wisdom and associate it with knowledge management and understand what wisdom is and how it can be managed, if at all.