Nucor Steel

The article, Knowledge Management's Social Dimension: Lessons From Nucor Steel, revealed many ways an organization can build an effective social ecology. The importance in of the social ecology in any organization involves the accumulating and mobilizing of knowledge. This is the essence of knowledge management.

Prior to this article, the only true example I had imagined in order to make a knowledge-based organization was a efficient information technology (IT) system. In reading about Nucor Steel, it has become clear that efficient IT is only one part of an effective social ecology. Some of the other parts are the knowledge acquisition and retention, as well as knowledge identification, outflow, transmission, and inflow. In the case of Nucor Steel, this was best seen in their group-based incentives. These incentives pushed the employees to do exactly what the company wanted: expand, accumulate, and mobilize knowledge to gain a competitive advantage.