Manpower Discipline Based on Knowledge Skills: The Case of a Consulting Company in Iranian Commercial Marine Industry

Abstract

In today’s world, some industries have been shifting to the knowledge based industries. Marine industry as a knowledge-dependent industry in which the knowledge and technology changes have a noticeable pace, is a good example of the knowledge based industries. In knowledge based organization and industries, the knowledge manpower plays the most important role in the organization. In fact, the knowledge workers are the real owner of the organization’s knowledge domains. So, to achieve a sustainable competitive position, organizations in commercial marine industry have to articulate suitable human resources strategies. In this article, a practical approach is defined to evaluate the knowledge capabilities based on which the appropriate strategies for manpower can be made. The case of this article is a consulting company which is working in commercial marine industry area in Iran. As the result of doing this research, this company articulates suitable strategies for its manpower after identification of the knowledge capabilities and domains available in the organization. According to this process, the manpower of the company is divided to 4 categories: workers who should be trained, workers who should be maintained and promoted, workers who should be dismissed, and specialists who should be hired due to knowledge requirements of the organization. The results of this study can highlight the roadmap of manpower strategy definition and application based on employees’ knowledge skills, which can be beneficial for both academics and practitioner in knowledge management and human resource strategic planning areas.