KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN INSURANCE COMPANIES

Modern business imposes the need for permanent improvement and enlargement of organizational knowledge, which results in a need to adopt formal mechanisms and tools to facilitate this process and make it efficient. As knowledge plays a decisive role in achieving the business goals in insurance companies, establishing adequate knowledge management can positively affect people, services, procedures and overall organizational functions. This paper shows a global research tendency of the introduction of knowledge management into insurance companies, but also points to the importance and role that insurance companies should dedicate to such knowledge in order to transform further the wealth of data and information they possess into applicable knowledge. The paper presents the basic knowledge management procedures, such as knowledge discovery, capture, storage, share and application that, together with appropriate knowledge management mechanisms and technologies, lead to long-term and systematic business improvements, prevent the loss of organizational knowledge and reduce work time. In these activities, support and active involvement of toplevel management is a prerequisite for success.

Key words: Organizational knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge management procedures, intellectual capital