Navigating Society 5.0: Leveraging knowledge management for sustainable development in a knowledge-intensive world

Organizations in Society 5.0 must hold enhanced knowledge, flexibility, speed, power, and learning capacity to meet the evolving demands of a dynamic environment, more discerning customers, and increasingly intelligent knowledge workers. As I’ve explored in my research¹, evolving knowledge management (KM) plays a key role in shaping a society based on social, economic, and environmental sustainability. To navigate this knowledge-intensive society, organizations must establish a sustainable balance for social good through a system that seamlessly integrates cyberspace and physical space. With the exchange of significant data, information, and insights—drawn from both human and machine knowledge—organizations must recognize knowledge assets as central to sustainable development. By applying strategic KM practices in the context of Society 5.0, organizations can harness their KM capabilities and learning agility to address the unique challenges and goals of this new societal framework.

Governance (the sustainability-related KM key tactics figure above) associated with environmental sustainability involves strategic management of natural resources and technological integration to minimize ecological impacts. Organizations can adopt advanced risk management practices, leveraging technology to identify hazards and control production processes for sustainability. Collaborating on innovations such as alternative energy and green manufacturing further supports long-term environmental goals. The development of natural capital assets allows organizations to better adapt to regional environmental needs, while transforming intangible resources into tangible assets for the benefit of various stakeholders. Through these actions, organizations can foster eco-friendly practices, improve sustainability, and contribute to both local and global environmental well-being.

Environmental sustainability (planet)

Organizations can adopt several strategies to achieve environmental sustainability, such as leveraging technology for risk management by automating the identification of potential hazards, planning and controlling the production of goods to support sustainable development, collaborating on scientific advancements in key business areas (e.g., alternative energy), and generating advanced knowledge and insights into business processes and environments (e.g., green manufacturing). Developing natural capital assets enables better adaptation to territorial requirements, while transforming intangible resources into tangible assets supports the long-term well-being and prosperity of various stakeholder groups in the ecosystem. Additionally, harnessing knowledge of nature can contribute to sustainable living for both residents and visitors.

Social sustainability (people)

Key KM tactics in Society 5.0 related to social sustainability (people) focus on fostering organizational learning by enhancing knowledge acquisition, capturing experience-based insights, and improving digital skills, ICT literacy, and capabilities. This accelerated improvement in human capital quality can be achieved through integrative learning methods (e.g., learning from experience, optimizing daily routines), developing user independence and creativity, and creating a work environment with an open culture that values diverse perspectives and does not penalize delays. Additionally, by harnessing unique human qualities such as creativity and problem-solving, and by generating knowledge that enhances human and intellectual capital, organizations can secure future success by strategically leveraging knowledge assets to meet strategic goals and address digital transformation needs. Information distributed across operational units empowers decision-making and supports effective change management. The KM system that underpins social sustainability can be optimized through advanced human-technology interaction.

Economic sustainability (profit)

For economic sustainability, organizations must manage all aspects of the knowledge-based economy by effectively capturing operational information, integrating knowledge acquisition with data, big data, and information layers, and applying insights from data to drive higher revenue. Organizations leverage relevant knowledge for decision-making, performance measurement, and the creation of differentiated solutions based on data and information, aligned with their characteristics and purpose. By accelerating KM for organizational development, organizations can integrate innovative, flexible, knowledge-driven practices and models, enabling them to deliver unique and valuable products and services that are difficult to replicate. Additionally, by leveraging organizational capabilities such as information management, KM, and responsive decision-making, an organization enhances its ability to swiftly adapt to change and meet demands. Ultimately, knowledge is created through innovation.

Socio-economic sustainability

Socio-economically, organizations should implement advanced KM systems to manage intangible assets such as data, information, knowledge, and insights. By recognizing implicit knowledge as a valuable asset, organizations can combine human and machine knowledge to create organizational value and drive knowledge production. This knowledge can guide the management of new technologies, inform customer-centric product design, improve productivity, and better understand the impact of digitalization on human capital. By leveraging the multidisciplinary nature of KM and adopting a KM approach to innovation, organizations can invest in digital transformation. Ultimately, they should develop skills for the knowledge-based economy, streamline daily operations, enhance communication speed, and gain a competitive advantage.

Eco-efficient sustainability

From an eco-efficiency perspective, organizations should focus on continuous value creation with strong emphasis on developing capabilities to deliver rare and valuable outputs, differentiated products that may be difficult to imitate, or products that are eco-friendly and able to be recycled easily. Organizations should gain an understanding of human capital and quality of life (e.g. smart cities) through KM as a tool to sustain economic growth, to improve supply performance (e.g. smart contracts) and to enable conditions for creation and development of human capital in regions and territories by ensuring access to the Internet and relevant information technologies. In this instance, organizations may consider to delegate tasks for innovation development for economic growth in the territory to the private sector or universities.

Socio-environmental sustainability

For socio-environmental sustainability, organizations should foster new perspectives on sustainable development, such as creating value through win-win ecosystem relationships, accelerating KM for community development, improving citizen digital literacy, and investing in ICT infrastructure and human- and social capital. The application of social intelligence, involving the community in building a smart community, requires technology to enable meaningful knowledge sharing across geographical barriers. KM helps distil core competencies essential for long-term organizational success and facilitates the extraction of implicit and explicit knowledge from all stakeholders, creating collective intelligence by sharing knowledge, data, and skills to address societal issues. Through KM, organizations gain a comprehensive understanding of the ecosystem, which includes interconnected systems (e.g., climate, culture, natural resources, politics, religion), and incorporate technology into urban environments to improve socio-economic conditions and citizens’ lifestyles.

Header image:  Sustainability-related KM key tactics. Source: author supplied, CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

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