The role of knowledge management (KM) as a strategic intervention in higher education (HE) in developing countries has not been widely studied. HE plays a central role in national economies by generating knowledge and disseminating it to stakeholders. This chapter describes the role and impact of KM in the decision-making and formulation of strategies of leading universities. It confirms that KM and knowledge economy (KE) add value and competitiveness to institutions. KM practices are needed in the field of academic research. In addition to a university's functions, they support regeneration and participate in international relations and strengthen social cohesion. HEIs are crucial in inspiring economic and social policies. Universities, in general, have conducted critical studies of the current links between KC, KE, and HE, including empirical analyses of its functions. Educational programmes have succeeded in adhering to the continuous innovation and autonomy of HEIs.
Top1 Introduction
Higher education institutions play an essential role in the knowledge economy. As a learning organisation, a higher education institution can broaden people’s knowledge and skills; train the highest level of graduates; enhance innovation and creativity; and effectively contribute to producing knowledge and developing intellectual property rights (Al-Mubaraki and Bussler 2017). Increasing knowledge assets is the seed of higher education and makes a significant contribution to future economic and social development. If a university plays a vital role in the knowledge economy, we can say that knowledge management is taking over academia, posing new challenges for higher education institutions (Correa-Díaz et al., 2019).
According to Eze et al. (2020), higher education institutions have traditionally played two crucial roles in society and the economy: education and research. University education allows younger citizens, to succeed in their careers, and to be prepared for leadership roles in government, non-profit, and for-profit organisations. The power of university education lies in its ability to generate new knowledge, provide information for the education of future generations, and support technological progress. Since the global economy is based on knowledge, ‘third-stream’ activities have increased these traditional roles. They transfer technology to stimulate economic development and help society to prosper, working on communities and companies. Governments have recently given attention to strengthening the flow of knowledge to stimulate the economy as a currency for further development.
According to Barreau et al. (2020), the global knowledge list is the knowledge that enters the standard global gap (global knowledge exchange) and exchanges currency and non-currency. It includes 1) knowledge-intensive tradable products, including intellectual property, business knowledge, and industrial products, and 2) free knowledge products created and replaced based on open sources technologies. Moreover, the production, exchange, and distribution of research, knowledge, and information form a knowledge economy. Knowledge management overlaps with financial economics and industrial economics in many ways. Knowledge economy activities are partly driven by business, and knowledge innovation is now at the core of economic and industry competitiveness. However, pre-industrial economics’ has been engaged with the knowledge economy. (Verwaal, 2017). The economy also has diversified technical dimensions formed by the competition for status essential for research universities. Most importantly, to understand this concept, it is essential to bear in mind the driving forces behind exceptional open-source knowledge. (Dai et al., 2020).
Two different sources of growth drive the economy. The first is economic trade, which uses pre-technological resources, including knowledge (Côté et al., 2020). The second is the creation of free culture – a creative, chaotic, and unpredictable knowledge product that circulates freely in a decentralised manner. Here, the production and dissemination of knowledge products connect the expansion of knowledge and market expansion. According to Ustyuzhanina et al. (2018), Universal network economics as the number of connections increases, and the advantages of network devices are increasing.
On the other hand, the cost of network expansion increases linearly. Every additional cost in the network is constant. As the cost-benefit ratio continues to increase, the speed of network expansion will increase over time until all potential nodes are reached. Therefore, the extraordinary growth momentum of open-source ecology is much faster than population growth (Shaw and Mahoney, 2000).