Dynamic and complex circumstances of any organization, especially
educational organizations critically require creative and innovative
knowledge workers. Various skills such as personal knowledge
management (PKM) are necessary to succeed in job and professional
career. PKM is one of the best sources of personal, collective, and
organizational innovations and proper direction of organizational
knowledge system. Most of studies are about organizational knowledge
management and disregard PKM as basic element of organizational
systems. Therefore, this paper tries to introduce PKM concept, approach,
models and skills. After that, it will discuss the role of PKM to achieve
personal and organizational excellence. Personal knowledge management
is a conceptual framework to organize and synthesize personal
information. It helps people to absorb essential knowledge and make aware
of lifelong learning. PKM make a study foundation for personal
knowledge ability progress, and, it finally increases professional skills and
competitive advantage. A survey research method was applied to conduct
the study. A simple random sample of 97 managers in Shiraz University
participated in the study by responding to PKM questionnaire. The validity
of the questionnaire was tested and verified. Results showed that Shiraz
University managers had average level of personal knowledge
management.
