DBA 1735 Knowledge Management

MBA(DISTANCE MODE)

DBA 1735

KNOKNOKNOKNOKNOWLEDGE MANWLEDGE MANWLEDGE MANWLEDGE MANWLEDGE MANAAAAAGEMENTGEMENTGEMENTGEMENTGEMENT

IV SEMESTER

COURSE MATERIAL

Centre for Distance EducationAnna University Chennai

Chennai – 600 025

Author

DrDrDrDrDr. R. SEN. R. SEN. R. SEN. R. SEN. R. SENAPAPAPAPAPAAAAATHITHITHITHITHIProfessor and Head

Department of Management StudiesAdhiparasakthi Engineering College

Melmaruvathur – 603 319

Reviewer

DR.TDR.TDR.TDR.TDR.T.V.V.V.V.V.GEETHA.GEETHA.GEETHA.GEETHA.GEETHAProfessor

Department of Computer Science and EngineeringAnna University Chennai

Chennai – 600 025

DrDrDrDrDr.T.T.T.T.T.V.V.V.V.V.Geetha.Geetha.Geetha.Geetha.GeethaProfessor


Chennai - 600 025

DrDrDrDrDr.H.P.H.P.H.P.H.P.H.Peereereereereeru Mohamedu Mohamedu Mohamedu Mohamedu MohamedProfessor

Department of Management StudiesAnna University Chennai

Chennai - 600 025

DrDrDrDrDr.C.C.C.C.C. Chella. Chella. Chella. Chella. ChellappanppanppanppanppanProfessor


Chennai - 600 025

DrDrDrDrDr.A.K.A.K.A.K.A.K.A.KannanannanannanannanannanProfessor


Chennai - 600 025

Copyrights Reserved(For Private Circulation only)

Editorial Board

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author has drawn inputs from several sources for the preparation of this course material, to meet therequirements of the syllabus. The author gratefully acknowledges the following sources:

1. Knowledge Management-Classic and Contemporary Works, Edited by Daryl Morey, Mark Mayburyand Bhavani Thuraisingham, Universities Press, Hyderabad, Reprint Edition, 2007.

2. Knowledge Management for Competitive Advantage by Harish Chandra Chaudhary, Excel Books, FirstEdition, 2005.

3. Knowledge Management Tools and Techniques, edited by Madanmohan Rao, Butterworth-Heinemann,An imprint of Elsevier, Oxford, UK, 2005.

4. Unleashing the Knowledge Force, by Ganesh Natarajn and Uma Ganesh, Tata McGraw-Hill, First Reprint,New Delhi, 2007.

5. Knowledge Management by Sudhir Warier, Vikas Publishing House Pvt Ltd, Second Reprint Edition,Noida, 2007.

6. Knowledge Management-Design and Implementation Edited by Tapas Mahapatra and Shalini Khandelwal,The ICFAI University Press, Hyderabad, First Edition, 2005.

7. Knowledge Management by Shelda Debowski, John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, First Edition, 2006.

8. Knowledge Management for Business Strategy Edited by N.M.Shanthi, The ICFAI University Press,Hyderabad, First Edition, 2006.

9. The Knowledge Management Toolkit by Amrit Tiwana, Pearson Education, Second Edition, New Delhi,2006.

10. Knowledge Management Edited by Nasreen Taher, The ICFAI University Press, Hyderabad, First Edition,2005.

11. Knowledge Management by Elias M. Awad and Hassan M. Ghaziri, Pearson Education, Delhi, SecondImpression, 2008.

Inspite of at most care taken to prepare the list of references any omission in the list is only accidental andnot purposeful.

Dr. R. SENAPATHIAuthor

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DBA 1735 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

UNIT I INTRODUCTION

Knowledge Economy – Technology and Knowledge Management – Knowledge Management Matrix –Knowledge Management Strategy – Prioritizing knowledge strategies – knowledge as a strategic asset.

UNIT II KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING

Knowledge Attributes – Fundamentals of knowledge formation – Tacit and Explicit knowledge – Knowledgesourcing, abstraction, conversion and diffusion.

UNIT III KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Knowledge Management and organizational learning, architecture – important considerations – collection andcodification of knowledge – Repositories, structure and life cycle – Knowledge Management infrastructure –Knowledge Management applications – Collaborative platforms.

UNIT IV KNOWLEDGE CULTURE IN ORGANISATIONS

Developing and sustaining knowledge culture – Knowledge culture enablers – implementing knowledge cultureenhancement programs – Communities of practice – Developing organizational memory.

UNIT V KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – LOOKING AHEAD

Knowledge Management tools, techniques – Knowledge Management and measurements – Knowledge audit –Knowledge careers – Practical implementation of Knowledge management systems – Case studies.

REFERENCES

1. Key issues in the New Knowledge Management –Joseph M. Firestone and Mark W. McElroy,Butterworth – Hienemann.

2. Knowledge Management – Classic and contemporary works Edited by Daryl Morey & others UniversitiesPress India Private Limited.

3. Knowledge Management, Shelda Debowski, John Wiley & Sons.4. Knowledge Management, Sudhir Warier,Vikas Publishing House Private Limited.5. Knowledge Management System Theory and practice,Edited by Stwart Barnes Thomson Learning.6. Handbook on knowledge management,Edited by CW. Hol Sapple Springer.

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CONTENTS

UNIT I

OVERVIEW OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

1.1. INTRODUCTION 1

1.2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 2

1.3. THE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 2

1.3.1 Definitions of knowledge management 3

1.3.2 Objectives of knowledge management 5

1.3.3 Motivation for knowledge management 6

1.3.4 Knowledge management cycle 8

1.3.5 Domains of knowledge management 9

1.3.6 Uses of knowledge management 11

1.3.7 Nature of knowledge management 12

1.4. DICIPLINES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 13

1.5. EVOLUTIONS OF KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT 14

1.6. SHORT HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT 15

1.7. AREAS FOR RESEARCH IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 16

1.8. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY 19

1.8.1 Background of knowledge management 21

1.8.2 What is knowledge economy? 21

1.8.3 Impact of knowledge in the knowledge economy 22

1.8.4 Characteristics of knowledge economy 23

1.8.5 Key drivers of knowledge economy 23

1.8.6 Growth of IT industry in knowledge economy 25

1.8.7 Implications of knowledge economy 26

1.9. INDIA AS A KNOWLWEDGE ECONOMY 27

1.10. TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 28

1.10.1 Electronic technology for knowledge management 29

1.10.2 Information technology for knowledge management 31

1.10.3 Knowledge management technology 32

1.11. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT MATRIX 37

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1.12. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY 38

1.12.1 The need for knowledge management strategy 38

1.12.2 Development of organizational KM strategy 39

1.13. PRIORITISING KNOWLEDGE STRATEGIES 40

1.14. KNOWLEDGE AS A STRATEGIC ASSET 41

1.14.1. Asset value of knowledge 43

UNIT II

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND PROCESSING

2.1 INTRODUCTION 47

2.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES 47

2.3 PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE 47

2.3.1 Data, Information and knowledge 48

2.3.2. Defining knowledge 51

2.4 KNOWLEDGE ATTRIBUTES 51

2.5 FUNDAMENTALS OF KNOWLEDGE FORMATION 53

2.5.1 Knowledge formation 53

2.5.2 Flows of knowledge 53

2.6 ORGANISATIONAL KNOWLEDGE 54

2.7 TACIT AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE 56

2.7.1 What is tacit knowledge? 56

2.7.2. What is explicit knowledge? 59

2.7.3 Typical application of tacit and explicit knowledge 62

2.7.4 Basic beliefs between tacit and explicit knowledge approaches 62

2.7.5 Comparison of properties of tacit Vs explicit knowledge 62

2.7.6 Advantages and disadvantages of tacit

Vs explicit knowledge approaches 63

2.7.7 Four modes of knowledge conversion 64

2.8 ORGANISATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CREATION 65

2.8.1 Knowledge sourcing 66

2.8.2 Knowledge abstraction 68

2.8.3 Knowledge conversion 69

2.8.4 Knowledge diffusion 69

2.8.5 Knowledge development and refinement 69

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UNIT III

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

3.1 INTRODUCTION 73


3.3 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND

ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING 73

3.4 HE CONCEPT OF ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING 74

3.4.1 Definitions of organizational learning 76

3.4.2 Benefits of organizational learning 77

3.4.3. What is learning organizations? 77

3.4.4 Orientation for effective knowledge dissemination 78

3.4.5 Characteristics of learning organization 81

3.4.6 Characteristics of the traditional Vs learning organization 81

3.4.7 Facilitators of organizational learning 82

3.4.8 The five learning disciplines 82

3.5 ARCHITECTURE FOR ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING 84

3.6. CATURING AND CODIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE 87

3.6.1 Capturing tacit knowledge 88

3.6.2 Other knowledge capture techniques 94

3.7 KNOWLEDGE CODIFICATION 99

3.7.1 Codifying knowledge 100

3.7.2 Codification tools and procedures 100

3.8 KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE 104

3.9 REPOSITORIES 110

3.9.1 Content of knowledge repository 111

3.9.2 Features of knowledge repository 111

3.9.3 The design of knowledge repository 112

3.9.4 The knowledge refinery 113

3.9.5 Repository life cycle 113

3.9.6 Repository structure 114

3.10 KNOWLEDE MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS 114

3.11 COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS 117

3.11.1 Features of platforms 118

3.11.2 Tools for collaborative platform 119

3.11.3 Collaborative knowledge applications 122

3.12 CASE STUDY 123

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UNIT IV

KNOWLEDGE CULTURE IN ORGANISATION

4.1 INTRODUCTION 127


4.3 ORGANISATIONAL CULTURE 129

4.3.1 Knowledge cultures 130

4.3.2 Improving knowledge culture 131

4.4 KNOWLEDGE CULTURE ENABLERS 133

4.5 IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE CULTURE

ENHANCEMENT PROGRAMS 137

4.6. MAINTANING THE KNOWLEDGE CULTURE 139

4.7. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE 141

4.7.1. Defining communities of practice 141

4.7.2. Communities of practice in organizations 142

4.7.3. Importance of communities to organizations 145

4.7.4. Developing and nurturing communities of practice 146

4.8 DEVELOPING ORGANISATIONAL MEMORY 149

UNIT V

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - LOOKING AHEAD

5.1 INTRODUCTION 153

5.2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES 154

5.3. KNOWLEDGE MANGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES 154

5.3.1. Knowledge capture and creation tools 154

5.3.2. Knowledge sharing and dissemination tools 159

5.3.3. Knowledge acquisition and application tools 166

5.3.4. Strategic implications of KM tools 170

5.4. KNOWLEDGE MANAGENMENT AND MEASUREMENT 171

5.5. KNOWLEDGE MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES 179

5.5.1. Intangible asset measurement 179

5.5.2. Intangible asset monitor 181

5.5.3. IC Rating 183

5.5.4. Balanced scorecard 183

5.5.5. Implementation barriers 187

5.6. KNOWLEDGE AUDIT 187

5.6.1. Aims and objectives of knowledge audit 188

5.6.2. Key tasks of K-audit 189

5.6.3. Process mapping 190

5.6.4. Outcomes of knowledge audit 191

5.6.5. Components of knowledge audit 191

5.7. KNOWLEDGE CAREERS 194

5.7.1. Organisational knowledge role classification 195

5.8. CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

MANAGEMENT CAREERS 196

5.8.1 The qualities and attributes of CKO 197

5.8.2 Knowledge management analyst 198

5.8.3 Knowledge architect 198

5.8.4. Knowledge strategist 199

5.8.5. Knowledge manager 200

5.8.6. Research analyst 201

5.8.7. KM consultant 202

5.8.8. Media specialist 202

5.8.9. Senior market intelligence librarian 203

5.8.10 Knowledge engineer 203

5.8.11 KM specialist 204

5.8.12 Intranet developer 204

5.8.13 KM director 205

5.8.14 Director of ontologies 205

5.8.15 Ontologist 206

5.8.16 NLP specialist 207

5.8.17 Knowledge development manager 207

5.9 CASE STUDIES 208

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1 ANNA UNIVERSITY CHENNAI

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

UNIT I

INTRODUCTION1.1 INTRODUCTION

Today’s organizations are fundamentally different as compared to organisations thatexisted two decades ago in terms of their functions, structures and style of management.The new organisations put more premium on understanding, adapting and managing changesand competing on the basis of capturing and utilizing knowledge to better serve customers,improve the operations or to speed up the delivery of their products to markets. Theemergence of these new organizations calls for a new way of management, which is generallyknown as ‘Knowledge Management’ (KM).

To begin any topic, it is useful to have a perspective and background to understandwhat is going on with respect to that topic. Now knowledge management is widely knownand practiced in many large organizations, it might be useful to get an overview on thissubject before we discuss the details of it. Knowledge management is the hottest subjectof the day. The question is: what is this activity called knowledge management, and why itis so important to each and every one of us? Why is it important to adopt this newmethodology of management? How to successfully implement KM in organizations? Thefollowing section offers some emerging perspectives in response to these questions.

This chapter provides an introduction to the study of KM by looking at the overviewof KM with regard to its meaning, usefulness, history, future, limitations, etc, and alsobriefly examines the nature and types of knowledge. The multidisciplinary roots of KM areenumerated, together with their contributions to the discipline. The importance of KMtoday is described together with the emerging roles and responsibilities needed to examineKM implementation. The emergence of economic system with knowledge as its basicingredient is enumerated and the need to develop knowledge management strategies tostay competitive in today’s environment were pointed out and finally the need to prioritizethe knowledge strategy is justified.

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1.2 LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After studying this Unit, you should be able to understand the following:

• The definition, meaning and evolution of knowledge management• Describe how KM helps organizations• Outline the history of KM• Identify the key process of KM• Know the nature, characteristics and key drivers of knowledge economy• Identify and compare the technology components of KM• The impact of KM matrix and its parts• Describe the KM strategy and its need in the context of KM• Analyse knowledge as a strategic asset and its value

1.3 THE CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management, as it is practiced today, is a system of technologies focusedupon the delivery of strategically useful knowledge and expertise, the availability of whichfacilitates effective collaboration and timely decision-making. The strategically literateemployee, armed with the best and most up-to-date knowledge, delivered in a timelymanner, will produce work that results in more satisfied customers, increased success andcorporate value.

Knowledge management, before the term was coined, used to be simply the transferof knowledge from one person to another, the result of which enabled the recipient tobenefit from the collected wisdom of the more experienced members of an organization orgroup. For instance, knowledge transfer happens when the founder of the family businesstrains his sons and daughters to run the business. It also takes place when a young persongoes to college to learn from a renowned professor and when an apprentice welder trainsunder a master welder. Yet, today, companies have learned that there is much more toknowledge transfer than what took place in the past. They have seen their competitorsleap ahead by using technology and sound knowledge transfer principles (newly re-discovered) to create dynamic collaborative environments that deliver knowledgestrategically—when and where it is needed and to the people who need it—at the frontline where the client solution is being invented. This is knowledge management today.

We must not confuse knowledge with information. The two are distinct concepts thatfunction in completely different ways. Information is tangible, hard numbers, facts.Knowledge is intangible, mental awareness, a part of the process of learning, a “habit”burned into the mind. Information represents the working and monitoring of physicalobjects. Knowledge represents mental objects, intellectual units that have a practicalcomponent. Information is independent of context. With knowledge the context affectsthe meaning and value of the knowledge. Information is easily transferable by means ofrecording and recitation. Knowledge requires learning and habituation for effective transfer.

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Information is easily reproducible by means of copying. Knowledge is seldom reproducedin a consistent fashion because it is filtered according to the perspective of each individual,his context and understanding.

Information is not knowledge. That was realized clearly during the Information Agewhen organizations found themselves drowning in huge in-house stores of unusable data.The fundamental difference between knowledge management as it was practiced in thepast and how it has evolved today is that corporations are now using network technologiesto enable employees to find and use knowledge and, in the process, contribute to a moredirect impact on customer satisfaction and corporate value.

Companies that effectively use knowledge break it down into its basic components.Knowing why represents having a basic understanding of the reasons for facts, conditions,job responsibilities, client requirements, etc. Knowing what means knowing the cause ofa problem or condition. Knowing where provides a spatial reference to understanding.Knowing how provides the critical element for problem solving, the knowledge of how toget something done. Knowing when provides a temporal reference and is closely tied totiming and opportunity development.

The major shift brought about by current perspectives on knowledge management isthe shift in the value proposition between employer and employee. Employees have becomemore valuable assets because the knowledge they possess and use on behalf of customersis now recognized as vital to the success of the organization. Yet, if knowledge is an asset,it has to be managed in the same way as financial and physical assets. Estimates indicatethat 70 - 80 percent of what employees know is hidden. Many organizations today don’tknow what they know and who knows it.

KM Viewpoint 1.1

In 1996, teams of leading heart surgeons from five New England medical centers observedone another’s operating room practices and exchanged ideas about their most effectivetechniques in collaborative learning experiments. The result was a 24% drop in their overallmortality rate for coronary bypass surgery. The concept of Knowledge Management provesto be a life-saver here!

1.3.1 Definitions of knowledge management

Knowledge Management refers to the processes and/or tools an organization uses tocollect, analyze, store, and disseminate its intellectual capital. This intellectual capital caninclude training materials, processes, procedures, documents, ideas, skills, experiences,and much more. Besides deployment of appropriate technology and processes by a businessenterprise in order to maintain and retain it’s intellectual capital, an effective knowledgemanagement also refers to making optimum use of experience and understanding of humanresource in an organization as well as of the information artifacts, such as inherent knowledge

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based documents (reports) available internally within the organization, and also, the relatedinformation procured from the external resources. A logical extension of this concept isinto the entire organization, in the form of Enterprise Knowledge Management (EKM).Among the areas of greatest concern for the modern knowledge worker (from CIO downto the Content Manager), is identifying, collecting, securing and maintaining the information(aka knowledge base) of the organization. Without a process to ensure this system’susefulness, there are invariably holes which are only found when a user tries to obtain that(missing) information.

Let us see the other useful definitions of KM to have a still broader outlook of KM.

Arun O. Gupta, Senior Director Business Technology, Pfizer Ltd describes “KM asa practice that addresses the need for information that is required for makingeffective decisions”. If this information is structured, the same can be translated intoknowledge by applying a set of predefined rules. For example, comments on discussionboards can be converted into useful FAQs.

The perception of KM differs from one industry vertical to another. In software servicecompanies, knowledge management can be a highly effective practice as it helps captureknowledge across different skill sets. For instance, information regarding common queriesabout specific technologies (if captured on the Intranet) can help solve common problems.This, in turn, boosts productivity. As Indian software service organisations employ softwareprofessionals in thousands, employee inputs can be extremely useful for organisationalgrowth.

Satish Joshi, Senior VP, Patni Computer Systems Limited says “For us, “KM is a setof processes and tools which give us the ability to leverage and combine thecollective abilities of our knowledge workers.”

Simply put, a KM practice should let an organisation provide relevant information toeach and every user. As Sunil Kapoor, Head IT, Fortis Healthcare says, “KM is nothingbut having customised information tailored to the needs of each user”. As KMpractice provides a structured way of capturing knowledge that exists within theorganisation, it gives an organisation the ability to improve the productivity and knowledgeof its employees by means of knowledge sharing.

“A KM practice that encompasses end-to-end processes owned by a departmentcan go a long way toward boosting productivity,” says M D Agrawal, GM IS RefinerySystems, BPCL.

According to the American Productivity & Quality Center, “KM refers to thestrategies and processes of identifying, capturing, and leveraging knowledge toenhance competitiveness”.

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According to Yogesh Malhota of www.brint.com “KM refers to the critical issues oforganizational adaptation, survival and competence against discontinuousenvironmental change. Essentially it embodies organizational processes that seeksynergistic combination of data and information processing capacity ofinformation technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of humanbeings”.

According to Gartner Group, KM is defined as a discipline that promotes anintegrated approach to identifying, managing and sharing all of an enterprise’sinformation assets. These information assets may include databases, documents,policies and procedures, as well as previously unarticulated expertise andexperience resident in individual workers.

Gartner defines Knowledge management as an integrated and collaborativeapproach to the Creation, Capture, Organization, Access and Use of InformationAssets.

The Knowledge cycle is depicted in the Figure 1.1 below

The various steps involved are described as follows:

• Knowledge is created. This happens in the heads of people.

• Knowledge is captured. It is put on paper in a report, entered into a computersystem of some kind, or simply remembered.

• Knowledge is organized, where it is classified and modified. The classification canbe the addition of keywords which could be indexed. Modification can add context,background or other things that make it easier to reuse later. The test of this step’ssuccess is to determine how easily people in the organization will be able to accessand use the knowledge when they need it.

• “Knowledge is shared and used. When knowledge is shared and used, it’s modifiedby the resources that use it. This takes us back to knowledge creation.

1.3.2 Objectives of knowledge management

The following are the major objectives of KM

1. Create knowledge repositories

a) External knowledge (competitive intelligence, market data, surveys, etc.)

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b) Structured internal knowledge (reports, marketing materials, etc.)

c) Informal internal knowledge (discussion databases of ‘know how’)

2. Improve knowledge access through

a) Technical expert referral

b) Expert networks used for staffing based on individual competencies

c) Turnkey video conferencing to foster easy access to distributed experts.

3. .Enhance the knowledge environment

a) Change organizational norms and values related to knowledge in order toencourage knowledge use and knowledge sharing

b) Customer’s rating of organisation’s expertise

4. Manage knowledge as an asset

a) Attempt to measure the contribution of knowledge to bottom line success

1.3.3 Motivation for Knowledge Management

Internal and external pressures and rapid inflows of information make effectiveoperation of organizations extremely difficult (see Figure 1.2). The Internet and E-Commerce have generated competitors that are on the other side of the world but only amouse click away. Employees are moving from organization to organization at alarmingrates, taking with them important knowledge of company operations that must be relearnedby new employees. The pace of technology, particularly information technology (IT)continues to force management to consider organizational change associated with theimplementations of electronic commerce store-fronts, automated inventory procurementand enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Changes in government legislation andregulatory practices provide a steady flow of new threats and opportunities. Customersare demanding new products and services that are bundled to their preference. Subsequently,companies are being forced to move faster and at new levels of personalized interaction.Filtering through this barrage of information for relevant data or combinations of informationis a formidable undertaking. To address these challenges, organizations must developmanagement methods that accept information as a valued resource, convert informationinto organizational knowledge and generate value-added information from that knowledge.

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Figure 1.2 Internal and external pressures on an organization.

Dealing with these pressures requires methods of managing organization knowledgethat are rarely found in today’s companies and institutions. Figure 1.3 shows the majorentities that act as sources and sinks of information for organizations. Leading companiesare able to filter information in from these entities, build on their organizational knowledgeand synthesise valuable information for return. Fundamental to the success of these methodsis the realization that information technology does not, on its own, equal knowledgemanagement. Since 1998, books such as “The Information Paradox” by John Thorp haveasked serious questions about the role of information systems within organizations, howthey are managed and the methods used to measure their benefit. Managing knowledgewithin an organization involves a composite of people and information technology. We seethe ultimate goal for an organization as communicating information and managing knowledgewith the same efficiency and effectiveness as an individual.

Figure 1.3 Organizational knowledge environments.

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Organization

GlobalOpportunities

Customer Demands

RegulatoryChange

TechnologicalChange

EmployeeTurn-over

Competition

Management ofOrganizational

Knowledge

Gov’t Reg.

CompetitorsCustomersChannels

PartnersSuppliers

Employees

ProductsServices

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1.3.4. Knowledge Management Cycle

For humans the process of transforming data and information into knowledge andthen back into value-added information is a cycle that is natural and on going. The followingfigure depicts this knowledge management cycle as consisting of four fundamental stepsthat involves the storage, processing and communication of information. We begin thediscussion of this cycle as it applies to the individual and move on to discussing the cycle asit applies to small and then large organizations. In each case the methods of storing,processing and communication information are described and followed by a description ofthe progression through the four steps of the knowledge management cycle.

An individual makes his or her way through the world being inundated with data andinformation from the environment. To deal with this, an individual uses personal memoryas well as notes and paper files for storing information. The individual’s brain processes theinformation with possibly the aid of a calculator or a small computer. Communication ofinformation is primarily internal from a knowledge management perspective. As individualswe pride ourselves on our ability to learn from our triumphs and defeats through the effectiveconsolidation of knowledge. As the figure depicts, knowledge consolidated at the end ofone iteration through the knowledge management cycle provides new information that canbe used in yet another iteration.

Small organizations of 2 to 20 persons are able to emulate the knowledge managementcycle of an individual with some degree of success. Information and requests receivedfrom customers, partners, and the government is stored within individual memories, indocuments and in simple database systems. Information processing takes place in individualbrains as well as at productive meetings where the strengths and weakness of the individualsare well understood, accepted and utilized. Various small computer systems and possiblya network server are shared by all. Communication is primarily via ad-hoc meetingsaugmented by telephone, fax and email messages when a person is traveling or at home.

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Environmental data

INFORMATIONStorage

ProcessingCommunication

Knowledge Consolidation

Observationand Analysis

Testing and Application

Theory Generation

ProblemsOpportunities

ApproachMethodsResults

Information

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Knowledge consolidation by each individual is facilitated by a collective effort to ensurethat failure does not recur for the same reasons and that success can be repeated as oftenas possible. Consequently, small organizations are said to be well-oiled, creative and ableto move quickly to meet a changing environment with a high degree of synergy where thevalue derived from a project can often be greater than the sum of the individual efforts.

Larger organizations have a difficult time emulating the knowledge management cycleof an individual. Large companies and institutions receive proposals, queries and otherforms of information from a multitude of customers, channels, partners, government andregulatory bodies. Information is stored in various formats and locations that include policydocuments, filing cabinets, internal process and product databases as well as externalcustomer and distribution databases, microfiche, audio tape and video tape. Portions ofthe information in-flow are processed by individual brains only to be confounded by amultitude of meetings in which the persons assigned to various roles change from quarterto quarter. Various computer systems developed over the last ten years process portionsof information in silos that have a difficult time talking to one another for technical andpolitical reasons. Communication is achieved via a cornucopia of local area network,Internet, mobile devices. Meetings must be scheduled several weeks in advance forexecutives and many events must be cancelled and rescheduled due to conflicts. Knowledgegained at the end of a product cycle is often lost and for this reason failure can recur andsuccess is not repeated as often as possible. Subsequently, large organizations are said tobe lethargic, lacking creativity and slow to react to meet a changing environment. Thechaos that results is largely due to the ineffective management of organizational knowledge.

1.3.5 Domains for Knowledge Management

The diagram (Figure 1.4) is organized in four parts to indicate four technical domainsfor Knowledge Management. And the tools listed in the four technical domains can beused to help institutions share, distribute, capture and create knowledge better.

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Figure 1.4 Technical domains of KM

Knowledge Sharing: Group Collaboration Systems (GCS) foster the creation andsharing of knowledge among people working in groups. Improved group coordinationand collaboration is enabled through e-mail, teleconferencing, data-conferencing,videoconferencing, groupware, and Internet-based applications. Groupware and Intranetsrepresent the most prevalent examples.

Distribute Knowledge: Office Automation Systems (OAS) helps disseminate andcoordinate the flow of information throughout the institutions. An OAS can be anyapplication of information technology that intends to increase the productivity of informationworkers. Common examples include word processing, desktop publishing, imaging,electronic calendars, and desktop databases.

Capture Knowledge: Artificial Intelligence Systems (AIS) provides institutions andadministrators with codified knowledge that can be reused by others in the institution toexpand the knowledge base. Examples include expert systems, neural networks, fuzzylogic, and genetic algorithms.

Create Knowledge: Knowledge Work Systems (KWS) support the activities ofhighly skilled knowledge workers and professionals as they create new knowledge and tryto integrate it into the institutions. KWS have special characteristics that support the uniqueneeds of knowledge workers. Examples of knowledge work applications include computer-aided design (CAD) systems and virtual reality (VR) systems for simulation and modeling.

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1.3.6. Uses of Knowledge Management

The Knowledge Management principles are being used for:

• Reducing cycle times

• Reducing overheads

• Boosting revenues by getting products and services to market faster

• Improving customer service by streamlining response time

• Empowering employees

• Creating innovative and high quality products

• Creating knowledge-sharing platform for the geographically dispersed teams

• Enhancing employee retention rates by recognizing the value ofemployees’knowledge and rewarding them for it

• Fostering innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas

• Streamlining operations and reducing costs by eliminating redundant orunnecessary processes

• Enhancing supply chain management

• Enhancing web publishing

• Managing legal, intellectual property

• Providing project workspace

• Delivering competitive intelligence

• Managing customer relationships

• Providing training, corporate learning

• Capturing and sharing best practices

• Fostering cross-departmental effectiveness

KM Viewpoint 1.2

Pfizer India has embarked on two initiatives that will gradually

evolve into a KM framework. The first one involves capturing

documents and creating a context sensitive repository. The second

initiative focuses on converting unstructured data into structured

data and warehousing the same. Together, these initiatives will

provide Pfizer with key metrics and information that will assist

decision making.

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• Making available increased knowledge content in the development andprovision of products and services

• Achieving shorter new product development cycles

• Facilitating and managing organizational innovation and learning

• Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization

• Increasing network connectivity between employees and external groups withthe objective of improving information flow

• Managing the proliferation of data and information in complex businessenvironments and allowing employees to access appropriate informationsources

• Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such asthe expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals) as individuals retireand new workers are hired

Ultimately making the business more adept at change, with the aim of improvingcompetitiveness and profitability. To facilitate this vision, not only does the business havestructured data available in its strategic applications, it also has network drives and databases,may be an Intranet, the information on individuals’ hard drives, external sources and, mostimportantly, the knowledge, skills and experiences of its employees.

1.3.7 Nature of Knowledge Management

1. Knowledge Management is about people. It is directly linked to what peopleknow, and how what they know can support business and organizational objectives.It draws on human competency, intuition, ideas, and motivations. It is not atechnology-based concept. Although technology can support a KnowledgeManagement effort, it shouldn’t begin there.

2. Knowledge Management is orderly and goal-directed. It is inextricably tiedto the strategic objectives of the organization. It uses only the information that isthe most meaningful, practical, and purposeful.

3. Knowledge Management is ever-changing. There is no such thing as animmutable law in Knowledge Management. Knowledge is constantly tested,updated, revised, and sometimes even”obsoleted”when it is no longer practicable.It is a fluid, ongoing process.

4. Knowledge Management is value-added. It draws upon pooled expertise,relationships, and alliances. Organizations can further the two-way exchange ofideas by bringing in experts from the field to advise or educate managers on recenttrends and developments. Forums, councils, and boards can be instrumental increating common ground and organizational cohesiveness.

5. Knowledge Management is visionary. This vision is expressed in strategicbusiness terms rather than technical terms, and in a manner that generatesenthusiasm, buy-in, and motivates managers to work together toward reachingcommon goals.

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6. Knowledge Management is complementary. It can be integrated with otherorganizational learning initiatives such as Total Quality Management (TQM). It isimportant for knowledge managers to show interim successes along with progressmade on more protracted efforts such as multiyear systems developmentsinfrastructure, or enterprise architecture projects.

1.4 DISCIPLINES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Knowledge management draws upon a vast number of diverse disciplines such as:

• Religion and Philosophy to understand the role and nature of knowledge and thepermission of individuals ‘to think for themselves’

• Psychology to understand the role of knowledge in human behavior. Psychologytoo is concerned about different kinds of knowing as well as about how and whypeople learn, forgets, ignore, act, or fail to act. It looks at natural cognitive processesand raises questions of will and motivation that make it impossible to think ofknowledge in terms of mechanical transfer from donors to recipients.

• Business Theory & Economics to create strategies, determine priorities, evaluateprogress and to understand work, and its organization.

• Cognitive Sciences to understand how best to support knowledge workers’ mentalfunctioning required by their work settings

• Ergonomics to create effective and acceptable work environment

• Information Sciences to build supporting infrastructure and special knowledge-related capabilities

• Knowledge Engineering to elicit and codify knowledge

• Artificial Intelligence to automate routine and assist knowledge-intensive workwith reasoning and other high-level functions

• Management Sciences to optimize operations and integrate KM efforts with otherenterprise efforts

KM Viewpoint 1.3

When BP (now BP Amoco) decided to analyze, using a

knowledge perspective, why they had such differing performance

levels in their deep-water drilling rigs, they found wide differences

in local knowledge and practices, knowledge that was mostly tacit

and undocumented. As a result of their efforts to have this local

knowledge more globally practiced, BP achieved very significant

savings and subsequently achieved legendary status within

knowledge management circles.

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• Social Sciences to provide KM-related motivations, people processes, and culturalenvironments. Sociology has contributed both macro and micro perspectives toknowledge management. The first rigorous attempts to define a postindustrial,knowledge-based society were made by sociologist Daniel Bell and sociologicallyoriented economist Fritz Machlip, among others. Their documentation of thismomentous change—the underlying principles for working with knowledge—crystallized and validated a dawning sense that something quite different washappening globally in the world of work. At the micro level, sociology’s strongresearch interest in the complex structures of internal networks and communitieshas obvious relevance to knowledge management. Knowledge management hasinherited the concern for social facts. Rather than build from theory, it looks atwhat people actually do—the circumstances in which they share knowledge or donot share it; the ways they use, change, or ignore what they learn from others.Those social facts guide (or should guide) the development of knowledgemanagement tools and techniques.

1.5 EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The following table provides a bird’s eye view of the important phases of evolution ofKnowledge Management:

Table 1. Evolution of Knowledge Management

PERIOD AUTHOUR/ORGANISATION

CONTRIBUTION BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF EVOLUTION

1938 H.G.WELLS Coined the word ’World Brain’ which depicts an intellectual organization the sum total of collective knowledge

1960 PETER DRUCKER Coined the term ‘knowledge worker’ 1986 Dr.K.WIIG Coined KM concept at UN

1989 McGRAW & HARRISON-BRIGGS

Described ‘knowledge engineering’ as involving information gathering, domain familiarization, analysis & design efforts and accumulated knowledge must be translated into code, tested and refined

1990 SENGE Focused on the ‘learning organisation’ as one thacan learn from past experiences stored in corporate memory systems

1991 - 1995

NONAKA & TAKEUCHI

Studied how knowledge is produced, used, and diffused within organizations and how much knowledge contributed to the diffusion of innovation

1994 BROWN Described what is ‘Community of Practices’

1996 STEWART Introduced the concept called ‘Intellectual Capital’

1997 KAPLAN & NORTON Concept of Balanced Scorecard 2000 - 2003

ACADEMIA KM courses in Universities with KM texts

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1.6 SHORT HISTORY OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

In past eras, most employees had to fit into their organizational structures by meansof performance standards based upon strictly defined job descriptions. Employment wassecure as long as they performed assigned tasks and minded their own business. Out-of-the-box thinking was not likely and knowledge hoarding was the order of the day.

During the era of business process reengineering, cost accountants saw themost knowledgeable workers as an unnecessary expense, a liability to be eliminated throughdown sizing or early retirement. Many organizations made the strategic mistake of pushingtheir intellectual assets out the door. Knowledge hoarding was then replaced by a cultureof knowledge hiding.

In the past, consultancies practiced knowledge management on the fly. Internationalnetworks of consultants communicated through computer networks by sharing their ownproblem-solving expertise with other consultants whose clients had the same problems.But consultants are in the business of selling their own knowledge and had little inclinationto share it, especially with their colleagues and peers.

During the 1990s chief executives in the consulting trades realized that the foundationof our economy had been shifting from natural resources toward intellectual assets. Theybegan evaluating how knowledge was being used in their organizations. The biggest shockcame with the discovery that 80 percent of corporate knowledge assets were not ownedby the companies. They went home every night with the employees. As a result, questionssuch as how knowledge is acquired, used and delivered became paramount.

These early pioneers knew that their organizations had to adapt quickly. They spenttheir time rethinking what they were doing, how they were doing it and why. They toredown barriers and ancient processes and replaced them with a systematic approach toknowledge sharing based on the fluid dynamics of a networked economy.

As CEOs evaluated their knowledge management dynamics, it became apparent thatthe people who drove their enterprises were those who were creating and accumulatingknowledge. And as time went on, the value of these people and what they knew wasexerting an increasing influence on the success of their organizations. The challenge thenbecame how to create the information, organizational intelligence, business models,communication tools and learning systems around these extremely important people. Thisgoal had to become a central mission, a basic purpose for the existence of these consultingorganizations – if they were to be successful.

The lessons learned by these early adopters of knowledge management indicatedthat though they knew what knowledge was, finding out who has it, reorganizing operationsto nourish and manage it, changing the work culture to support it and building knowledgenetworks around it were the real challenges of the future.

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With the advent of networked resources, new ways to codify, share, store anddeliver knowledge enabled organizations to strategically use critical knowledge more easilyand cheaply. The challenge, however, became how to develop a successful knowledgemanagement model—there were too few examples from which to work. The result was anew knowledge management industry that was born out of the few models that weredeveloped in those early days. Today, a group of leading edge companies like Lotus,Open Text, Documentum and others have developed knowledge management tools thatenable corporations to manage and deliver strategic knowledge. It is no longer necessaryto reinvent the wheel, and since many of the tools available were created for managementconsulting firms, it is possible to select and integrate a full-featured Knowledge ManagementSystem that includes and integrates key components like document management andcollaborative software.

1.7 AREAS FOR RESEARCH IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Based on differences between how individuals and organizations manage knowledge,let us see several important areas of research in knowledge management for organizations,particularly large organizations. The following table presents the major research topics byeach of the four steps of the knowledge management cycle described in the sub section1.3.4.

Table 1.2 Areas of research within each step of theknowledge management cycle.

Observation and Analysis

1. Retrieval and filtering of data/information 2. Enabling access to salient environmental data 3. Sharing organizational goals and objectives

Theory Generation

4. Elimination of “silo” processing and reinvention 5. Fostering knowledge creation through small teams 6. Reduction of bureaucracy and formal meetings

Testing and Application

7. Enabling “start to finish” development and deployment

8. Effective measurement of business processes and knowledge assets

9. Management of changing requirements

Knowledge Consolidation

10. Methods of collective reflection 11. Building trust for the dissemination of knowledge 12. Retaining knowledge when employees leave

NOTES



Retrieval and filtering of data / information. The rate of data and informationin-flow to organizations by way of card-readers, automated telemetry, telephone calls andmost notably the Internet is overwhelming. Most company wrestle every day with effectiveand efficient methods of retrieve data and filtering out the salient information. This is anarea where both people skills and technology require improvement. Studies of the relativestrengths and weaknesses of systematic approaches to information retrieval and filtering inthe workplace would be of benefit. The education of knowledge workers in library scienceresearch skills is needed. Intelligent user interfaces that can learn the profile of a user’sinterest and filter information based on that profile would greatly facilitate Internet searches.Research into advanced methods of Knowledge Query and Manipulation (KQML) willalso facilitate the retrieval of information. Integrated with content management systems andthe Internet, these technologies will provide very powerful observation tools.

Enabling access to salient environmental data. Although there is muchorganizational data that is encoded into electronic form for ease of communications andanalysis, there is other important information that is not. For example, in hospitals much ofthe important information on a patient is recorded with pencil on paper; on the manufacturingfloor, important data is communicated verbally; and information surrounding importantinteractions with customers is rarely communicated beyond the sales staff and theirmanagers. Internet, groupware and portal technologies can be used to assist with theseproblems, however there is a fundament need for cultural change in most organizations thatencourages the capture of salient environmental data. Research is required into methodsof cultivating cultural change.

Sharing organizational goals / objectives. Large organizations suffer greatly froma lack of sharing and caring about organization goals. Clear and repeated communicationof company objectives to all employees provides an environment in which knowledge canbe better managed. Methods of sharing organizational goals and objectives and bringingthem in-line with individual goals are important areas of research.

Elimination of “silo” processing and reinvention. Large organizations havetraditionally developed “silos” of endeavour because departmental and professional barriersmake knowledge management difficult. This leads to competing analysis of environmentaldata and the generation of tactical business strategies that often conflict when they areexecuted. The best organizations are composed of “organic” networked teams whereknowledge is able to flow freely across disciplines and departmental boundaries. Themajor problems that must be addressed are dynamic management methods and careerdevelopment approaches that consider individual and organizational objectives and rewardtrusting relationships at every opportunity.

Fostering knowledge creation through small teams. Work-teams of smallnumbers of people that share common goals are highly innovative environments. Having

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members of an organization move between these groups passing along best-practicemethods is very important, yet often disruptive. Sharing knowledge takes time and cancause short-term delays in group performance. Creating an organizational culture that isreceptive to personnel movement and knowledge exchange is a challenge. Technologiessuch as electronic mail, corporate intranets, portals and collaborative software (such asLotus Notes) can be very helpful in creating and enabling small teams. Research andapplication of new management methods and technologies is needed.

Reduction of bureaucracy and formal meetings. Moving from four levels ofmanagement bureaucracy to delegated authority and responsibility has been one of themost difficult transitions for modern organizations. The traditional hierarchy fosters a climateof presentations, proposals and meetings versus strong analysis and decisive action. Ahealthy knowledge management environment is one in which people wish to share informationfor the common good and not one in which they must share information in order to proceedwith projects or business plans. This having been said, legal and fiscal responsibility requiresa formal chain of command within organizations. Resolving this conflict continues to be animportant area of research in business administration. Technologies such as message passing,groupware and document management systems can facilitate a more efficiently and effectivemovement of “paper-work” within the office and across the globe. Standard protocolsand languages, such as the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), for interoperation betweensystems is an active area of research

Enabling “start to finish” development and deployment. Too often in largeorganizations, design engineers or business strategists are not involved in the testing of thefinal product or the implementation of the tactical operations. This can lead to a false senseof accomplishment on the part of the engineer or strategist and a poor opinion of uppermanagement and technical authority on the part of front-line employees. Methods offeedback between designer and user need to be created that ensure better communicationof success and failure with a minimum investment of both parties’ time. Solutions caninclude people-centered approaches such as education of front line workers, practical jobshadowing by designer engineers and the involvement of designers, testers and front-lineworkers from the start of design to implementation and deployment.

Effective measurement of business processes and knowledge assets. Marketingthrough data mining and customer relationship management is really the first area of businessadministration outside of finance to widely employ rigorous mathematical methods. Thishas many management researchers excited about the use of measures and mathematics inother areas. Further work is needed in measuring the quality and value of business processesand intangible knowledge assets. In particular, methods of measuring success due toknowledge creation and knowledge transfer are needed.

NOTES



Management of changing requirements. The pressures affecting modernorganizations ensure that change will always occur. Tried and proven methods of managingchange within projects and product cycles are needed. Project management research hasturned to engineering methodologies that have established methods of change management.Innovative new methods of managing projects, products and services have also beendeveloped that take iterative, incremental approaches that can more easily incorporatechange (e.g. the Unified Software Development Process used in Software Engineering).

Methods of collective reflection. An organization unlike an individual, rarely takesthe time to reflect on successes and failures. Surprisingly, when an organization does doso, it is often recognized as a hallmark event; a defining moment in the life of the business.Most typically these events take place off-site, in seclusion and happen at best annuallyand often only at points of crisis. Why? There must be better ways to regularly reflect onsuccesses and failures and share in the consolidation of new knowledge.

Building trust for the dissemination of knowledge. Success factors within mostorganizations are closely guarded secrets. From an intellectual property perspective thismakes a great deal of sense. However, secrets between departments, work-units or projectteams within the same organization are counter-productive. Without trust between peoplethere cannot be a productive sharing of information that results in knowledge transfer. Thegeneration of a trusting environment is one that must extend from the top of the organizationto the grass roots. Trust building activities such as team social activities, induction programs,job rotation, milestone celebrations, impromptu lunches and face-to-face communicationsneed to be encouraged.

Retaining knowledge when employees leave. The loss of organizational knowledgewhen an employee leaves is a very serious problem. Methods of retaining knowledge canbe divided into proactive and reactive categories. Proactive methods include personnelrotation programs, master/apprentice schemes and recording information from internalexperts (such as salesmanship techniques). Reactive methods include exit interviews andaftermath peer discussion sessions. Further research is required to find better methods ofretaining organizational knowledge.

1.8. KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

For countries in the vanguard of the world economy, the balance between knowledgeand resources has shifted so far towards the former that knowledge has become perhapsthe most important factor determining the standard of living - more than land, tools andlabour. Today’s most technologically advanced economies are truly knowledge-based.

For the last two hundred years, neo-classical economics has recognised only twofactors of production: labour and capital. Knowledge, productivity, education, andintellectual capital were all regarded as exogenous factors that are, falling outside the system.

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New Growth Theory is based on work by Stanford economist Paul Romer and otherswho have attempted to deal with the causes of long-term growth, something that traditionaleconomic models have had difficulty with. Following from the work of economists such asJoseph Schumpeter, Robert Solow and others, Romer has proposed a change to the neo-classical model by seeing technology (and the knowledge on which it is based) as anintrinsic part of the economic system. Knowledge has become the third factor of productionin leading economies.

Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. Romer’s theorydiffers from neo-classical economic theory in several important ways:

• Knowledge is the basic form of capital. Economic growth is driven by theaccumulation of knowledge.

• While any given technological breakthrough may seem to be random, Romerconsiders that new technological developments, rather than having one-off impact,can create technical platforms for further innovations, and that this technical platformeffect is a key driver of economic growth.

• Technology can raise the return on investment, which explains why developedcountries can sustain growth and why developing economies, even those withunlimited labour and ample capital, cannot attain growth. Traditional economicspredicts that there are diminishing returns on investment. New Growth theoristsargue that the non-rivalry and technical platform effects of new technology canlead to increasing rather than diminishing returns on technological investment.

• Investment can make technology more valuable and vice versa. According to Romer,the virtuous circle that results can raise a country’s growth rate permanently. Thisgoes against traditional economics.

• Romer argues that earning monopoly rents on discoveries is important in providingan incentive for companies to invest in R&D for technological innovation. Traditionaleconomics sees “perfect competition” as the ideal.

Enhancing human capital is critical for GDP growth. But sustained GDP growth doesn’tjust happen. In order to make investments in technology, a country must have sufficienthuman capital. Human capital is the formal education, training and on-the-job learningembodied in the workforce.

Various observers describe today’s global economy as one in transition to a‘knowledge economy’, or an ‘information society’. But the rules and practices thatdetermined success in the industrial economy of the 20th century need rewriting in aninterconnected world where resources such as know-how are more critical than othereconomic resources.

Various management writers have for several years highlighted the role of knowledgeor intellectual capital in business. The value of high-tech companies such as software and

NOTES



biotechnology companies is not in physical assets as measured by accountants, but in theirintangibles such as knowledge and patents. The last few years have a growing recognitionby accounting bodies and international agencies that knowledge is a crucial factor ofproduction.

1.8.1 Background of knowledge economy

We are now living in a knowledge economy where the principal economic resourcebusinesses have to offer their customer is knowledge. The nature of work in an organizationhas changed enormously with the shift from an industrial economy where the focus isproduction of commercial products to a knowledge economy where the main outcomesare service and expertise. The shift to a knowledge economy has increased the complexityof work activities. Employers have recognized the value of identifying and accessing adiversity of expertise and knowledge from different sources to work on common goals.People increasingly work closely with others to accomplish common goals, particularly ifthey are working in service areas or are used as sources of expertise by others. The shift toa knowledge economy has also led to increasing concern for building strong interpersonalrelationships with others. Many employees spend considerable time interacting with others:collaborating with work colleagues, customers or people in other organizations throughface-to-face meetings, online network, emails and many other mechanisms.

1.8.2 What is knowledge economy?

The World Bank Institute offers a formal definition of a knowledge economy as onethat creates, disseminates, and uses knowledge to enhance its growth anddevelopment. The knowledge economy is often taken to mean only high-technologyindustries or information and communication technologies (ICTs). It would be moreappropriate, however, to use the concept more broadly to cover how any economy harnessand uses new and existing knowledge to improve the productivity of agriculture, industry,and services and increase overall welfare.

A knowledge economy uses data as it raw material and transforms it using technology,analysis tools, and human intelligence into knowledge and expertise. Fig. 1.5 illustrates themain phases of this transformation process.

Fig.1.5 Steps in the Knowledge Creation Process

A knowledge-driven economy is one in which the generation and exploitation ofknowledge play the predominant part in the creation of wealth. In the industrial era, wealthwas created by using machines to replace human labour. Many people associate the

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knowledge economy with high-technology industries such as telecommunications andfinancial services.

The term knowledge economy is a relatively new one, commonly used to refer toaspects of the service sector of the economy. This, however, is a restricted view of theterm. To a significant extent, the linkages of the operations in the service sector lie in thehardware part. Thus, chips, integrated circuitry, and technology used in biosciences, forinstance, are important aspects of knowledge economy. The space occupied by theInformation Technology (IT) industry within the content of the term knowledge economy issignificantly large, probably due to its being an early starter. However, a certain extent ofgrayness is associated with the term knowledge economy, primarily because, so far, it hasnot been adequately defined; nor have its boundaries been drawn with clarity.

According to Housel and Bell a knowledge based economy is the one whereknowledge is the main source of wealth, growth and employment, with a strongreliance on information technology.

In knowledge economy citizens would be working in service industries rather than inmanufacturing or agriculture. In knowledge-based economy there is a need to develop anational focus on innovation, research, education and information communicationtechnologies. Further in the knowledge-based economy the shift in focus is from productsto services where the greater recognition of the importance of the knowledge held withinan organisation is responsible.

1.8.3 Impact of knowledge in the knowledge economy

1. Unlike capital and labour, knowledge strives to be a public good (or whateconomists call “non-rivalrous”). Once knowledge is discovered and made public,there is zero marginal cost to sharing it with more users. Secondly, the creator ofknowledge finds it hard to prevent others from using it. Instruments such as tradesecrets protection and patents, copyright, and trademarks provide the creatorwith some protection.

2. The implication of the knowledge economy is that there is no alternative way toprosperity than to make learning and knowledge-creation of prime importance.There are different kinds of knowledge. “Tacit knowledge” is knowledge gainedfrom experience, rather than that instilled by formal education and training. In theknowledge economy tacit knowledge is as important as formal, codified, structuredand explicit knowledge.

3. According to New Growth economics a country’s capacity to take advantage ofthe knowledge economy depends on how quickly it can become a “learningeconomy’. Learning means not only using new technologies to access globalknowledge, it also means using them to communicate with other people aboutinnovation. In the “learning economy” individuals, firms, and countries will be ableto create wealth in proportion to their capacity to learn and share innovation.

NOTES



1.8.4 Characteristics of knowledge economy

The knowledge economy differs from the traditional economy in several key respects:

1. The traditional economy is that of scarcity. The economics of knowledge economyis that of abundance. Knowledge is the resource which unlike other resourceswill not deplete when used. It can be shared and grow through its application.

2. In the knowledge economy the distances will be meaningless and the world willbe considered as a global village where using appropriate technology virtualorganisations, virtual teams and market places are possible in which operationswill be faster than in the traditional economy.

3. In the knowledge economy, it is difficult to apply controls in terms of laws, taxesand barriers in the national level as the businesses become global in nature.

4. In the knowledge economy, the knowledge and information leak may be inevitablewhere the demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.

5. In the knowledge economy the products which are developed based on knowledgewill attract premium price compared to the products with low embeddedknowledge or knowledge intensity.

6. Price and value of knowledge depends heavily on context. The same knowledgecan have different value to different people at different times.

7. Knowledge when locked into systems or processes has higher inherent valuethan when it can ‘walk out of the door’ in people’s heads.

8. Human capitals - competencies - are a key component of value in a knowledge-based company, yet few companies report competency levels in annual reports.In contrast, downsizing is often seen as a positive ‘cost cutting’ measure.

These characteristics, so different from those of the physical economy, require newthinking and approaches by policy makers, senior executives and knowledge workersalike. To do so, though, requires leadership and risk taking, against the prevailing and slowchanging attitudes and practices of existing institutions and business practice.

1.8.5 Key drivers of knowledge economy

(a) The Importance of Intellectual Capital

Intellectual capital is a firm’s source of competitive advantage. To become knowledgedriven, companies must learn how to recognise changes in intellectual capital in the worthof their business and ultimately in their balance sheets. A firm’s intellectual capital -employees’ knowledge, brainpower, know-how, and processes, as well as their ability tocontinuously improve those processes - is a source of competitive advantage. But there isnow considerable evidence that the intangible component of the value of high technologyand service firms far outweighs the tangible values of its physical assets, such as buildingsor equipment. The physical assets of a firm such as Microsoft, for example, are a tinyproportion of its market capitalisation. The difference is its intellectual capital.

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(b) The Importance of ICT

ICT (Information Communication Technology) releases people’s creative potentialand knowledge and are the enablers of change. They do not by themselves createtransformations in society. ICT are best regarded as the facilitators of knowledge creationin innovative societies. The new economics looks at ICT not as drivers of change but astools for releasing the creative potential and knowledge embodied in people.

However, the ICT sector has a powerful multiplier effect in the overall economycompared with manufacturing. A 1995 study of the effect of software producer Microsofton the local economy revealed that each job at Microsoft created 6.7 new jobs inWashington State, whereas a job at Boeing created 3.8 jobs. Wealth-generation is becomingmore closely tied to the capacity to add value using ICT products and services.

(c) The New Economics of Information

The rate of technological change has greatly increased over the past thirty years.Three laws have combined to explain the economics of information. Moore’s Law holdsthat the maximum processing power of a microchip at a given price doubles roughly every18 months. In other words, computers become faster, but the price of a given level ofcomputing power halves. Gilder’s Law - the total bandwidth of communication systemswill triple every 12 months - describes a similar decline in the unit cost of the net. Metcalfe’sLaw holds that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number ofnodes. So, as a network grows, the value of being connected to it grows exponentially,while the cost per user remains the same or even reduces.

While Metcalfe’s Law has been applied to the Internet, it is also true of telephonesystems. Gordon Moore first formulated Moore’s Law in the early 1970s. There can beno doubt that the cycle of technology development and implementation is accelerating andthat we are moving inexorably onward, out of the Industrial Age and into the InformationAge.

(d) Globalisation

ICT open up global markets and foster competition. With the advent of informationand communication technologies, the vision of perfect competition is becoming a reality.Consumers can now find out the prices offered by all vendors for any product. Newmarkets have opened up, and prices have dropped. When businesses can deliver theirproducts down a phone line anywhere in the world, twenty-four hours a day, the advantagegoes to the firm that has the greatest value-addition, the best-known brand, and the lowest“weight’. Software provides the best example: huge added value through computer code,light “weight” so that it can be delivered anywhere at any time.

NOTES



Competition is fostered by the increasing size of the market opened up by thesetechnologies. Products with a high knowledge component generate higher returns and agreater growth potential. Competition and innovation go hand in hand. Products andprocesses can be swiftly imitated and competitive advantage can be swiftly eroded.Knowledge spreads more quickly, but a firm must be able to innovate more quickly thanits competitors in order to compete in the knowledge economy.

(e) Brands are critical.

Brands strengthen consumers’ trust in nations and their products. In a globalmarketplace where consumers are overwhelmed by choice, brand recognition assurestheir trust in both the tangibles and intangibles that a product will deliver. Like intellectualcapital, brand equity can be hard to measure yet it may account for a significant proportionof a company’s value. It is intangible in the sense that it often consists of customers’perceptions of the value they gain from using a product or service rather than any measurablebenefit. A nation’s brand can be as important (or more) as the firm’s, and provide extraleverage for whichever firm’s brand is attached to the actual product – Indian tea, Swisswatches, Scotch whisky, German cars, Japanese appliances, New Zealand butter.

1.8.6 Growth of IT industry in the knowledge economy

IT industry in India has grown, and has had an impact on various segments of theeconomy. In addition to being a sunrise revenue-generating industrial sector, the IT industryhas established linkages with hardware manufacturing industries thereby giving a fillip tothat sector. The IT industry has also made its presence felt on the education sector fromwhere it draws one of its main resources. Further, this industry has helped generateemployment potentialities in the economy. The Business Process Outsourcing units arefurther expected to play a major role in the generation of additional employment. This byno means is a simple contribution. And yet these and other attributes have been emphasisedto the extent that the industry has acquired a larger than life image. It is only a short stepfrom here to attribute this industry with pan-economic relevance. As a proxy for theknowledge economy, this industry is often identified as a solution provider for shortcomingsin the economy, which is quite far-fetched in the current scenario.

The impact of IT is best understood when the differences between industrial andknowledge-intensive ventures are recognised. Industrial growth derives from investmentsin large-scale infrastructure (such as railways, roadways, power grids and dams). Suchinfrastructure supports the growth of physical-asset intensive industries (such as the steeland transportation industries) that create and move physical entities (such as goods, waterand people). These ventures employ numerous workers with limited education and skills,and can uplift large sections of society.

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In contrast, ventures in the knowledge economy usually involve the production ofknowledge-intensive goods (like software), and the large-scale capture, movement andutilisation of information using sophisticated network infrastructure (such as computers,cable, fiber and routers). Beyond the physical labour required for initial construction, buildingand maintaining such infrastructure requires specialised knowledge.

1.8.7 Implications of knowledge economy

The evolving knowledge economy provides critical implications for policy makers oflocal and national government as well as international agencies and institutions concernedwith the growth and development of an economy as well as the businesses concerned withcreating knowledge based organization. Following are some of the important implicationsof knowledge economy.

Implications for policy makers

1. Traditional measures of economic success must be supplemented by new onessuch as encouraging knowledge based industries with incentives and rewards.

2. Economic development policy should focus not on creation of jobs, but rather oninfrastructure for sustainable ‘knowledge enhancement’ that act as an attractionto knowledge-based industries.

3. Development of policies for efficient regulation and taxation for information andknowledge trading at international level as well as looking to future knowledge-based industries rather than traditional industries.

4. Policies to promote collaboration to stimulate market development.

5. Strict policy measures to check information and knowledge frauds and thefts.

6. Wider policy support to knowledge based industries to remove regional imbalances.

7. Recognition and support of local talents to get into knowledge based industriesand to prevent brain drain.

8. Policy support to promote education and training to take the challenges ofknowledge economy and to promote R&D activities.

Implications for business

1. Recognition of the importance of knowledge to the organisational business bottomline.

2. Design and develop new measures of enhancing corporate performance basedon knowledge.

3. Systematically enhance learning and knowledge, through new organisationalstructure and processes that is in tune with the changing global environment.

4. Building a technology infrastructure to enhance knowledge creation and sharing.Example: Hewlett-Packard’s uses an intranet for knowledge sharing throughoutthe company on a global basis.

NOTES



5. To foster organisational wide dissemination of knowledge through effective Internet/ Intranet technologies and business practices.

6. Recognising human contribution to knowledge such research and development,discovery, patents,etc.,

7. Many businesses are now realizing the role of knowledge and are creatingknowledge management programmes and appointing CKOs (Chief KnowledgeOfficers). Such responses should be part of a coordinated effort that:

a) Recognizes the importance of knowledge to their business bottom line.Example: Buckman Laboratories recognizes the value of solving customerproblems by enhancing knowledge flows from their chemical experts directto the customer interface.

b) Develops new measures of corporate performance based on knowledge:

Example: Skandia’s supplements annual reports with intellectual capitalreports using measures from the Skandia Navigator.

c) Encourages the sharing of knowledge through effective Internet settingsand business practices: Example: Steelcase designs ‘smart’ workingenvironments and has developed a culture of knowledge sharing.

1.9 INDIA AS A KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

The various experts’ vision is that India will become a leader in the global knowledgeeconomy by 2010. This will be the result of a highly focused effort to achieve globalthought leadership in a few select fields that offer the highest potential for KnowledgeProcess Outsourcing (KPO). Here are some reasons for the optimism:

1. India enjoys unique advantages in having a large pool of English-speakingprofessionals with degrees in engineering, science or mathematics, who are capableand flexible to learn new skills fast given the right opportunity and reward structure.

2. The Indian Diaspora (diaspora-a dispersion of people originally belonging to onenation) in the United States and the United Kingdom has several among themwho have achieved thought leadership in knowledge intensive fields. They are arich source of domain expertise and can be motivated to help transfer knowledgeand expertise to India and nurture a new generation of India-based thought leaders.

3. The entrepreneurial and energetic business community in India has the capacityto step up to this challenge and is capable of working closely with a supportivegovernment to remove barriers that stand in the way of achieving of this vision.

4. Indians are able and willing to learn the necessary analytic and interpersonal skillsneeded to achieve thought leadership in the knowledge economy. A small minorityof the scientists and engineers, primarily those who graduate from the IITs, IIMsand other elite institutes in India, have figured out on their own how to becomeworld-class knowledge workers and thought leaders.

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5. India also has many of the other key ingredients for making itself as knowledgeeconomy such as macroeconomic stability, a dynamic private sector, institutionsof a free market economy, a well-developed financial sector, broad & diversifiedscience and technology infrastructure, a well-developed ICT sector, and globalprovider of software services.

1.10. TECHNOLOGY AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Effective knowledge management typically requires an appropriate combination oforganisational, social, and managerial along with the deployment of appropriate technology.Technology is a facilitator of knowledge management, a tool to assist individuals and groupsin creation, capturing and distribution of knowledge. IT brings in a new revolution inknowledge management, by acting as a catalyst to the organizations knowledge managementpractices.

Technology advances have greatly contributed for the growth of knowledgemanagement although the field has not yet reached full maturity. The capacity to link themany systems and processes in an electronic system has opened up many differentpossibilities of businesses. Many companies have embraced electronic processing to conducttheir basic work activities through newer technologies such as e-workplace, e-commerce

KM Viewpoint 1.1 National Knowledge Commission India’s growing population of young people will give the country a demographic advantage over many western countries and possibly even China in the decades to come. As a result, India’s Prime Minister has said India must position itself to “leapfrog in the race for social and economic development” through the formulation of knowledge-oriented focus of development. As a result of this initiative, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) was established in June 2005. The main objective of the commission will be to take appropriate actions to give India a knowledge advantage to create, apply and disseminate knowledge. This objective is expected to be implemented through the following strategies:

• Creation of Knowledge: strengthen education systems, promote research and development in a variety of fields, and partner with foreign sources to expand learning.

• Application of Knowledge: target health, agriculture, government and industry sectors to balance traditional knowledge, innovation encouragement and revise governance through technology.

• Dissemination of Knowledge: focus on widespread basic education for all citizens, especially those marginalized groups, create a culture of learning, foster improved literacy, create lifelong opportunities for skill acquirement, improve information and communication technology (ICT) and enhance standards of education through public awareness.

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and e-community. These reflect a shift in orientation from working with papers to the useof an electronic interface to perform organizational activities. Knowledge management hasflourished as the technological systems have increased in robustness, reliability and cost-effectiveness.

Historically, there have been a number of technologies ‘enabling’ or facilitatingknowledge management practices in the organization, including expert systems, knowledgebases, various types of Information Management, intranets, groupware, search and retrievalengines, software help desk tools, document management systems and other IT systemssupporting organizational knowledge flows.

The advent of the Internet brought with it further enabling technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative software, content management systems, corporate‘Yellow pages’ directories, email lists, wikis, blogs, and other technologies. Each enablingtechnology can expand the level of inquiry available to an employee, while providing aplatform to achieve specific goals or actions. The practice of KM will continue to evolvewith the growth of collaboration applications, visual tools and other technologies. Since itsadoption by the mainstream population and business community, the Internet has led to anincrease in creative collaboration, learning and research, e-commerce, and instantinformation.

Knowledge management does have a very strong technology components attachedto it. Knowledge management is strategic management and hence it requires that the topmanagement fully exploit the opportunities given by information technology for businesspurposes.

1.10.1. Electronic technology for transferring knowledge

The availability of the World Wide Web has been instrumental in catalyzing theknowledge management movement. Information technology may, if well resourced andimplemented, provide a comprehensive knowledge base that is speedily accessed,interactive, and of immediate value to the user. However there are also many examples ofsystems that are neither quick, easy-to-use, problem free in operation, or easy to maintain.The Web, for example, frequently creates information overload. The development of toolsthat support knowledge sharing in an appropriate and user-friendly way, particularly inorganization-wide knowledge sharing programs, is not a trivial task.

Most of the technological tools now available tend to help dissemination of know-how, but offer less assistance for knowledge use. Tools that assist in knowledge creationare even less well developed, although collaborative workspaces offer promisingopportunities, by enabling participation, across time and distance, in project design orknowledge-base development, so that those most knowledgeable about developmentproblems — the people living them on a day-to-day basis – can actively contribute to their

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solution. Some of the more user-friendly technologies are the traditional ones — face-to-face discussions, the telephone, electronic mail, and paper-based tools such as flip charts.Among the issues that need to be considered in providing information technology forknowledge sharing programs are:

1. Responsiveness to user needs: continuous efforts must be made to ensure thatthe information technology in use meets the varied and changing needs of users.

2. Content structure: in large systems, classification and cataloguing becomeimportant so that items can be easily found and quickly retrieved.

3. Content quality requirements: standards for admitting new content into thesystem need to be established and met to ensure operational relevance and highvalue.

4. Integration with existing systems: since most knowledge sharing programsaim at embedding knowledge sharing in the work of staff as seamlessly as possible,it is key to integrate knowledge-related technology with preexisting technologychoices.

5. Scalability: solutions that seem to work well in small groups (e.g. HTML websites) may not be appropriate for extrapolation organization-wide or on a globalbasis.

6. Hardware-software compatibility is important to ensure that choices are madethat are compatible with the bandwidth and computing capacity available to users.

7. Synchronization of technology with the capabilities of users is important so as totake full advantage of the potential of the tools, particularly where the technologyskills of users differ widely. Knowledge sharing programs that focus on thesimultaneous improvement of the whole system, both technology tools and humanpractices, are likely to be more successful than programs that focus on one or theother.

One of the major risks in knowledge management programs is the tendency fororganizations to confuse knowledge management with some form of technology, whetherit is Lotus Notes, the World Wide Web, or one of the off-the-shelf technology tools thatare now proliferating. In the process, the essentially ecological concept of knowledgemanagement becomes degraded into a simple information system that can be engineeredwithout affecting the way the work is done. It is not that information systems are bad.Rather, it is important to recognize that knowledge management is a different and betterway of working which affects people, and requires social arrangements like communitiesto enable it to happen on any consistent and sustained basis.

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1.10.2. Information Technology for Knowledge Management

There is an ongoing lively debate about the role that information technology can playfor knowledge management. On the one hand, information technology is used pervasivelyin organizations, and thus qualifies as a natural medium for the flow of knowledge. A recentstudy from the American Productivity and Quality Center shows that organizations embarkingin knowledge management efforts generally rely, for accomplishing their goals, on the settingup of a suitable IT infrastructure. At the other end of the spectrum, leading knowledgemanagement theorists have warned about the attitude that drives management towardsstrong investments in IT, possibly at the expense of investments in human capital.

The danger that this viewpoint sees is that IT-driven knowledge management strategiesmay end up objectifying and calcifying knowledge into static, inert information, thusdisregarding altogether the role of tacit knowledge. Knowledge management strategies ofthis type would bring back the ghost of the infamous, and none too far in time, re-engineeringdays, when the corporate motto was “More IT, less people!”; they conjure grimscenarios of organizations with enough memory to remember everything and not enoughintelligence to do anything with it.

KM Viewpoint 1.4 KA Technology for KM at Rolls-Royce Rolls-Royce plc is one of the world’s leading organisations in the design, development and manufacture of jet engines and also a leading industrial partner in SPEDE. The company identified the relevance of early findings from SPEDE to its own KM programme and embarked upon a bilateral programme with the University of Nottingham to exploit KA techniques for the rapid development of components of the Rolls-Royce Capability Intranet. Rolls-Royce’s Capability Intranet is intended to become the company’s quality system, providing quick and easy access to all the latest information needed by staff in order to complete tasks accurately and reliably including the capture of lessons learned and evolving best practices. The scope of the Capability Intranet spans business processes, manufacturing processes, product definitions, technical skills and training. It includes quality manuals, working practices, information about technologies and capabilities and specific examples of good (and bad) practice based on real case examples. A technology transfer programme was conceived in early 1998 whereby established KA tools and techniques could be applied and evaluated within the context of developing knowledge-rich web sites for the Rolls-Royce Capability Intranet. The programme has involved a series of coached projects, typically comprising two company employees on secondment to a special facility based at the University of Nottingham for a period of twelve weeks. Sixteen groups have passed through the facility over the past year amounting to thirty-eight Rolls-Royce employees. At the moment, a total of twelve Rolls-Royce employees are on the programme, though this is expected to rise significantly over the next year as personnel and facilities are expanded.

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Part of the problem here derives from a linguistic ambiguity: nowadays informationtechnologies are as much about creating direct connections among people through suchapplications as electronic mail, chat-rooms, video-conferencing and other types ofgroupware as they are about storing information in databases and other types of repositories.As for information databases, they can also be fruitfully re-thought, in a knowledgemanagement perspective, as resources for the sharing of best practices and for preservingthe intellectual capital of organizations. Generally speaking, investments in IT seem to beunavoidable in order to scale up knowledge management projects. The best way of applyinginformation technology to knowledge management is probably a combination of two factors:on the one hand, the awareness of the limits of information technology, and of the fact thatany IT deployment will not achieve much, if it is not accompanied by a global culturalchange toward knowledge values; on the other hand, the availability of informationtechnologies that have been expressly designed with knowledge management in view.

1.10.3. Knowledge Management Technologies

The early Knowledge Management technologies were online corporate yellow pages(expertise locators) and document management systems. Combined with the earlydevelopment of collaborative technologies (in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologiesexpanded in the mid 1990s. Subsequently it followed developments in technology in use inInformation Management. In particular the use of semantic technologies for search andretrieval and the development of knowledge management specific tools such as those forcommunities of practice.

More recently social computing tools (such as blogs and wikis) have developed toprovide a more unstructured, self-governing approach to the transfer, capture and creationof knowledge through the development of new forms of community, network or matrix.However, such tools for the most part are still based on text and code, and thus representexplicit knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-usableknowledge and intelligible information and ensuring that their content is transmissible throughdiverse channels, platforms and forums. Let us briefly understand the some of thetechnologies that are currently associated with the field of knowledge management:

Some Key Technologies are as follows:

The impact of each technology varies enormously from situation to situation. Severaltechnologies recur in many knowledge management programs, partly because they aregeneric and pervade many core activities and processes. Let us briefly review some of themain technologies used in KM programs.

(a) Intranet, Internet

The ubiquitous Internet protocols make it easy for users to access “any information,any where, at any time”. Further, browsers and client software can act as front-ends to

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information in many formats and many of the other knowledge tools such as documentmanagement or decision support. Remember too, that the basic functions of email, discussionlists and private newsgroups often have the biggest short term impact.

(b) Groupware - Lotus Notes

What groupware products like Lotus Notes add over and above Intranets are discussiondatabases. Users such as Thomas Miller, a London based manager of insurance mutuals,access their ‘organizational memory’, as well as current news feeds in areas of interest,through one of Lotus’s key features, its multiple ‘views’. When writing new insuranceproposals, existing explicit knowledge can be assembled from the archive, guided by expertsystems front-end, while tacit knowledge is added through discussion databases.

(c) Intelligent Agents

The problem of information overload is becoming acute for many professionals.Intelligent agents can be trained to roam networks to select and alert users of new relevantinformation. Additionally they can be used to filter out less relevant information frominformation feeds. However, in practice it seems that a well run knowledge center, such asthose at Price Waterhouse, the best intelligent agent is still a human being!

A related technology is that of text summarizing, which British Telecom have foundcan summarize large documents, retaining over 90 per cent of the relevant meaning withless than a quarter of the original text.

(d) Mapping Tools

There are an increasing number of tools, such as COPE and IDONS, that helpindividuals and teams develop cognitive maps or ‘shared mental models’. These havebeen used by companies such as Shell to develop future scenarios and resolve conflictingstakeholder requirements. In addition, other mapping tools, such as those found inKnowledge X, can represent conceptual linkages between different source documents.

(e) Document Management

Documents, and especially structured documents, are the form in which much explicitknowledge is shared. With annotation and redlining facilities, they can become active

KM Viewpoint 1.5 Booz Allen & Hamilton’s Knowledge Online is an Intranet that provides a wealth of information (e.g. best practice, industry trends, database of experts) to their consultants world-wide. Through active information management by knowledge editors (subject experts and librarians) the information remains well structured and relevant.

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knowledge repositories, where the latest version and thinking is readily shared amongstproject eams.

(f) Expert systems

Knowledge-based expert systems, or simply expert systems, use human knowledgeto solve problems that normally would require human intelligence. These expert systemsrepresent the expertise knowledge as data or rules within the computer. These rules anddata can be called upon when needed to solve problems. Books and manuals have atremendous amount of knowledge but a human has to read and interpret the knowledgefor it to be used. Conventional computer programs perform tasks using conventionaldecision-making logic — containing little knowledge other than the basic algorithm forsolving that specific problem and the necessary boundary conditions. This programknowledge is often embedded as part of the programming code, so that as the knowledgechanges, the program has to be changed and then rebuilt. Knowledge-based systemscollect the small fragments of human know-how into a knowledge-base which is used toreason through a problem, using the knowledge that is appropriate. A different problem,within the domain of the knowledge-base, can be solved using the same program withoutreprogramming. The ability of these systems to explain the reasoning process throughback-traces and to handle levels of confidence and uncertainty provides an additionalfeature that conventional programming doesn’t handle.

KM Viewpoint 1.6 By using a document management system for the construction of the Thelma North Sea oil platform, AGIP reduced construction time by 9 months and reduced document handling costs by 60 per cent. Suppliers like Dataware are repositioning their products as knowledge management products and are also adding ‘knowledge enriching’ functionality.

KM Viewpoint 1.7 Most expert systems are developed via specialized software tools called shells. These shells come equipped with an inference mechanism (backward chaining, forward chaining, or both), and require knowledge to be entered according to a specified format. They typically come with a number of other features, such as tools for writing hypertext, for constructing friendly user interfaces, for manipulating lists, strings, and objects, and for interfacing with external programs and databases. These shells qualify as languages, although certainly with a narrower range of application than most programming languages.

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(g) Knowledge base

A knowledge base is a centralized repository for information: a public library, and adatabase of related information about a particular subject. In relation to informationtechnology a knowledge base is a machine-readable resource for the dissemination ofinformation, generally online or with the capacity to be put online. An integral componentof knowledge management systems, a knowledge base is used to optimize informationcollection, organization, and retrieval for an organization, or for the general public.

A well-organized knowledge base can save enterprise money by decreasing the amountof employee time spent trying to find information about - among myriad possibilities - taxlaws or company policies and procedures. As a customer relationship management (CRM)tool, a knowledge base can give customers easy access to information that would otherwiserequire contact with an organization’s staff; as a rule, this capacity should make the interactionsimpler for both the customer and the organization. A number of software applications areavailable that allow users to create their own knowledge bases, either separately (theseare usually called knowledge management software) or as part of another application,such as a CRM package.

In general, a knowledge base is not a static collection of information, but a dynamicresource that may itself have the capacity to learn, as part of an artificial intelligence (AI)expert system, for example. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), inthe future the Internet may become a vast and complex global knowledge base known asthe Semantic Web.

(h) Artificial intelligence technology. AI is providing key components in a variety ofKM applications. Closely related domains include informatics, applied informatics,knowledgebase management systems, and qualitative analysis.

(i) Case-based reasoning systems. CBR systems solve new problems by adaptingpreviously successful solutions to similar problems. Meeting customer-support requirementsis just one of the applications.

(j) Competitive intelligence applications. Collecting, analyzing, and communicatingthe best available information about technological trends and developments outside acompany’s walls is the purpose of competitive technical intelligence. It is sometimes referredto as competitive analysis or competitive intelligence.

(k) Corporate portals and knowledge portals. It is concerned with gathering theinformation resources of an organization into a centralized resource. Full-text retrieval andvarious kinds of taxonomies are applied to provide access to the information. Relatedterms: corporate portals, knowledge portals, business intelligence, digital dashboards.

(l) Data mining. Many large companies — for example, pharmaceutical and chemicalcorporations — have major intellectual assets buried in their paper and electronic files.Extracting them isn’t easy. Related terms: knowledge discovery and automatic discovery.

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(m) Groupware and artifact-based collaboration. The term artifact-basedcollaboration is often used to describe products like Lotus Notes, because the collaborativeactivity centers on an artifact — for example, a document authored by many people. Seealso, Computer-supported collaborative work. Groupware also includes computerapplications for organizing meetings and supporting interactions and group decision-makingprocesses-without a substantial shared artifact.

(n) Decision-support systems. Decision-support systems incorporate insights fromcognitive science, management science, computer science, operations research, and systemsengineering both in order to produce computerized artifacts for helping knowledge workersin their performance of cognitive tasks, and to integrate such artifacts within the decision-making processes of modern organisations.”

(o) Content management and document management. Although documentmanagement systems have been with us for many years, many original DM products havebeen recast as content management systems, whose primary function is to manage thedata that goes into corporate Internet and intranet (and extranet) sites.

(p) Customer relationship management. Customer Relationship Management (CRM)strategies have been around since the first bazaar, but products designed to automateCRM efforts are among today’s hottest new computer applications. Companies are rushingto automate and better manage all the ways they deal with customers, including peoplewho might not consider themselves customers yet.

(q) Customer-support technology. Help desk systems and customer-support systemsare designed to reduce the heavy labor costs imposed by demands for information fromusers of increasingly complex products and improve timeliness and quality of support.“Customers” may be internal or external clients.

(r)Performance-support systems and distance-learning technology. Performance-support systems (PSS) and “eLearning” are designed to reduce the skyrocketing costs ofclassroom training in specific skills while addressing the problems caused by the rapidpace of change. By the time a classroom training program is designed, it is usually out ofdate.

(s) Hypertext technology. A more recent development or, perhaps more accurately, areturn to interest in “hypertext” as a method of representing and providing access to criticalorganizational knowledge is reflected in the Topic Map standard (ISO/IEC 13250) and inTim Berners-Lee’s Semantic Web effort. Both are XML-based and are seeking commonground.

(This is not the simple Web hypertext model, but the richer, often proprietary hypertextmodels that preceded the World Wide Web. The HyTime standard on which the TopicMap standard is based grew in part out of a need for creating a common ground amongthe hundreds of unique hypertext systems.)

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(t) Semantic networks. A semantic network is a method of representing knowledgeoften used for critical analysis of literary texts. Similar to hypertext technologies in someways, but with emphasis on typed links among concepts.

1.11 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT MATRIX

Knowledge Matrix helps in identifying different islands of knowledge to create aKnowledge Management database/data warehouse. The author has referred the followingKnowledge Matrix to enable organizations to uncover various sources of knowledge inorder to provide knowledge services to both internal and external customers. Please seenext page for the Knowledge Matrix

Figure 1.6 Knowledge Matrix

External Customers Feedback reports Questionnaires on quality & service Customer profiling Payment history Customer meetings and visits Annual reports & Financial analysis Contact Analysis Customer Newsletter Suppliers Performance history Product catalog Vendor meetings/seminars Annual reports & Financial analysis Internal Employees Knowledge on products/services Technical expertise & Reusable components Best practices from previous projects Learning from previous assignments Vertical industry experience

External Sales and marketing processes Lead-time Information Billing procedures Internal Logistics - Procurement & Inventory Quality processes HR processes Financial processes Lead time information for all the processes Six-sigma processes Project Execution Methodologies Security policies: Network, data and personnel Manufacturing processes

External Customer feedback reports Product successes Product failures Competitive forces Customer meetings Internal Tools information - various tools developed for different purposes Best things and worst things Postmortem reports

External Demographics Legal policies: Customs & Tax information Competitor analysis Road shows/Meetings/Conferences Research Publications Customers care policies Customer promotions Corporate Vision and Culture Articles/quotes on the organization appeared in trade magazines Internal R&D - Research Publications Learning from projects execution Brand equity information Organization structure & Who's who of the organization? Quality: SEI,ISO, PCMM Project Postmortem reports Induction programs Networking with professional organizations Idea generation/sharing session

KM Database

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1.12 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

Organisations are facing ever-increasing challenges, brought on by marketplacepressures or the nature of the workplace. Many organisations are now looking to knowledgemanagement (KM) to address these challenges. Such initiatives are often started with thedevelopment of a knowledge management strategy. Knowledge management strategyis termed as an approach undertaken by an organization to use its information andknowledge resources for building competitive strength and sustainable growth forrealizing that pursuing KM strategy can enable it to dramatically reduce cycle timeand costs, increase sales, and to meet the customer needs. However, KM as businessstrategy will only succeed when certain fundamental requirements are employed. The humanresource elements, information technology and information incorporated into the strategicbusiness processes, must all be tightly incorporated into the management and workingculture of the organization. It is only by this kind of synthesis of the knowledge managementcomponents that creates the organizational ability to exploit the total information andknowledge potentials of the organization.

1.12.1 The Need for KM strategy

There are a number of common situations that are widely recognised as benefitingfrom knowledge management approaches. While they are not the only issues that can betackled with KM techniques, it is useful to explore a number of these situations in order toprovide a context for the development of a KM strategy. Beyond these typical situations,each organisation will have unique issues and problems to be overcome.

(a) Call Centers

Call centers have increasingly become the main ‘public face’ for many organisations.This role is made more challenging by the expectations of customers that they can get theanswers they need within minutes of ringing up. Other challenges confront call centers,including high-pressure, closely-monitored environment, high staff turnover, costly andlengthy training for new staff. In this environment, the need for knowledge management isclear and immediate. Failure to address these issues impacts upon sales, public reputationor legal exposure.

(b) Front-line staff

Beyond the call center, many organisations have a wide range of front-line staff whointeracts with customers or members of the public. They may operate in the field, such assales staff or maintenance crews; or be located at branches or behind front-desks. In largeorganisations, this front-line staffs are often very dispersed geographically, with limitedcommunication channels to head office. Typically, there are also few mechanisms for sharinginformation between staff working in the same business area but different locations. The

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challenge in the front-line environment is to ensure consistency, accuracy and repeatability.KM facilitates this function.

(c) Business managers

The volume of information available to business management has increased greatly.Known as ‘information overload’, the challenge is now to filter out the key informationneeded to support business decisions. The pace of organisational change is also increasing,as are the demands on the ‘people skills’ of management staff. In this environment, there isa need for sound decision making. These decisions are enabled by accurate, complete andrelevant information. Knowledge management can play a key role in supporting theinformation needs of management staff. It can also assist with the mentoring and coachingskills needed by modern managers.

(d) Aging workforce

The public sector is particularly confronted by the impacts of an aging workforce.Increasingly, private sector organisations are also recognising that this issue needs to beaddressed if the continuity of business operations is to be maintained. Long-serving staff

has a depth of knowledge that is relied upon by other staff, particularly in environmentswhere little effort has been put into capturing or managing knowledge at an organisationallevel. In this situation, the loss of these key staff can have a major impact upon the level ofknowledge within the organisation. Knowledge management can assist by putting in placea structured mechanism for capturing or transferring this knowledge when staff retires.

(e) Supporting innovations

Many organisations have now recognised the importance of innovation in ensuringlong-term growth (and even survival). This is particularly true in fast-moving industry sectorssuch as IT, consulting, telecommunications, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Mostorganisations, however, are constructed to ensure consistency, repeatability and efficiencyof current processes and products. Innovation is does not tend to sit comfortably with thistype of focus, and organisations often need to look to unfamiliar techniques to encourageand drive innovation. There has been considerable work in the knowledge managementfield regarding the process of innovation, and how to nurture it in a business environment.

1.12.2 Development of organisational KM strategies

The commonly employed strategy is to design and develop systems and practices toobtain, organize, restructure, warehouse or memorize and distribute knowledge. Thisstrategy enables organizations to dramatically reduce cycle time and costs, increases salesand effectively brings the knowledge of the organization to bear on customer needs. Anapproach, based on this strategy, results in improvement operations or to develop and

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deliver products and services tailored to the market requirements. Building of teams,relationships and networks forms the basis for effective transfer, besides approaches ofencouraging collaborative knowledge transfer.

Many organizations especially those in the service industry adopt a strategy withstrong focus on their customer. This customer-focused knowledge strategy is directedtowards capturing, developing and transferring knowledge and understanding of customers’diverse needs, preferences, and businesses. These efforts bring about a significantimprovement in sales and use the collective knowledge of the organisation to solve customerproblems. This strategy recognizes and facilitates learning from customers and understandtheir needs better and development of effective solutions to take them.

By establishing personal responsibility for knowledge, organizations are recognizingthat individuals must be supported and made accountable for identifying, maintaining, andexpanding their own knowledge as well as renewing and sharing their knowledge assets.Companies are now realizing the value of each knowledgeable and capable employee andrecognize the key fact that the development of their skills lay with employee themselvesand not with the organization. Some firms building incentives into their appraisal systemand offering other motivators to encourage the development of a knowledge-intensiveculture.

Another important strategy revolves around leveraging assets such as patents,technologies, operational and management practices, customer relations, organizationalarrangements, and other structural knowledge assets and concentrates on renewing,organizing, valuing, safekeeping, increasing availability of, and marketing these assets.

The final strategy, innovation and knowledge creation emphasizes the creation of newknowledge through basic and applied research and development. Organisations adoptingthese strategies need to ascend the knowledge spiral and continually discover new andbetter ways of functioning and innovating. They recognize that innovation is central togrowth and that unique knowledge and expertise enhances their competitive value in themarketplace.

1.13 PRIORITIZING KNOWLEDGE STRATEGIES

Effective knowledge management is of vital importance for any enterprise with aquest to ensure viability and survival. Enterprises need to develop a KM strategy whichimpinges on all areas of the organization and requires a corporate approach to make itwork.

Knowledge strategy designs an organisation’s future based on using knowledgeeffectively. Knowledge strategy starts with the notion that an organisation’s business strategyshould guide its planning for knowledge management. Therefore, knowledge strategy

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follows business strategy. The first activity in knowledge strategy is understanding the currentbusiness strategy then progressing that strategy as the basis for organizational analysis.

The knowledge strategy should clearly articulate why the organization should shareits know-how, what the organization will share, with whom the organization will share andhow the organization will share.

A knowledge strategy should start from existing strategies, plans and modus operandiof an organization. It should explicitly identify specific areas of inefficiency – lostopportunities, or costly mistakes – where a good KM practice would improve productivityand minimize risks. It should seek to support people throughout the organization inperforming their daily tasks efficiently and effectively. It should identify how knowledgecan create new opportunities – in innovative customer solutions, in business processes orin new product and services.

A four-phased approach for prioritizing the knowledge strategy and moving projectsforward are as follows:

1. Envisioning business strategy: Identifying and developing a business strategyand linking initial knowledge needs to the strategy. This phase uses strategyworkshops, SWOT analyses and scenario planning sessions to develop the initialstrategy.

2. Knowledge valuation: Analysing the current state of the organization, diagnosingstrategic gaps, evaluating the learning rate and assessing cultural issues. This phasedelivers an organizational assessment and gap analysis.

3. Creating knowledge strategy: This phase analyses impacts and developsstrategies for addressing gaps and redesigning processes. Strategic gaps areprioritized and action plan developed and knowledge resources and practices arealigned to the strategy.

4. Knowledge path building: This phase establishes plans and designs for buildinga knowledge architecture to support full organizational participation. This phasecoordinates plans, people and information resources to integrate the knowledgestrategy into organizations, systems, product lines and business processes.

1.14 KNOWLEDGE AS A STRATEGIC ASSET

Business organizations are coming to view knowledge as their most valuable andstrategic asset, and bringing that knowledge to bear on problems and opportunities as theirmost important capability. They are realizing that to remain competitive they must explicitlymanage their intellectual assets and capabilities. Today, knowledge is considered as themost strategically important asset for every business organizations. Having unique accessto valuable assets in an organisation is one way to create competitive advantage, in somecases either this may not be possible, or competitors may imitate or develop substitutes forthose assets. Companies having superior knowledge, however, are able to coordinate and

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combine their traditional assets and capabilities in new and distinctive ways, providingmore value for their customers than can their competitors. That is, by having superiorintellectual assets, an organization can understand how to exploit and develop their traditionalassets better than competitors, even if some or all of those traditional assets are not unique.Therefore, knowledge can be considered as the most important strategic asset, and theability to acquire, integrate, store, share and apply it has become the most importantcapability for building and sustaining competitive advantage by any organisation. Thebroadest value proposition, then, for engaging in knowledge management is that it canenhance the organization’s fundamental ability to compete.

What is it about knowledge that makes the advantage sustainable? Knowledge,especially context-specific, tacit knowledge embedded in complex organizational routinesand developed from experience, tends to be unique and difficult to imitate. And unlikemany traditional assets, it is not easily purchased in the marketplace in a ready-to-useform. To acquire similar knowledge, competitors have to engage in similar experiences.However, acquiring knowledge through experience takes time, and competitors are limitedin how much they can accelerate their learning merely through greater investment.

Knowledge-based competitive advantage is also sustainable because the more a firmalready knows, the more it can learn. Learning opportunities for an organization that alreadyhas a knowledge advantage may be more valuable than for competitors having similarlearning opportunities but starting off knowing less.

Sustainability may also come from an organization already knowing something thatuniquely complements newly acquired knowledge, providing an opportunity for knowledgesynergy not available to its competitors. New knowledge is integrated with existingknowledge to develop unique insights and create even more valuable knowledge.Organizations should therefore seek areas of learning and experimentation that can potentiallyadd value to their existing knowledge via synergistic combination.

Sustainability of a knowledge advantage, then, comes from knowing more aboutsome things than competitors, combined with the time constraints faced by competitors inacquiring similar knowledge, regardless of how much they invest to catch up. This representswhat economists call increasing returns. Unlike traditional physical goods that areconsumed as they are used, providing decreasing returns over time, knowledge providesincreasing returns as it is used. The more it is used, the more valuable it becomes, creatinga self-reinforcing cycle. If an organization can identify areas where its knowledge leads thecompetition, and if that unique knowledge can be applied profitably in the marketplace, itcan represent a powerful and sustainable competitive advantage.

Organizations should strive to use their learning experiences to build on or complementknowledge positions that provide a current or future competitive advantage. Systematicallymapping, categorizing and benchmarking organizational knowledge not only can help make

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knowledge more accessible throughout an organization, but by using a knowledge map toprioritize and focus its learning experiences, an organization can create greater leverage forits learning efforts. It can combine its learning experiences into a “critical learning mass”around particular strategic areas of knowledge.

While a knowledge advantage may be sustainable, building a defensible competitiveknowledge position internally is a long-term effort requiring foresight and planning as wellas luck.

Longer lead time explains the attraction of strategic alliances and other forms of externalventures as potentially quicker means for gaining access to knowledge. It also explainswhy the strategic threat from technological discontinuity tends to come from firms outsideof or peripheral to an industry. New entrants often enjoy a knowledge base different thanthat of incumbents, and which can be applied to the products and services of the industryunder attack. This has been especially evident in industries where analog products aregiving way to digital equivalents. The strategic challenge is to develop sufficient knowledgeto support a shift to those new technologies and markets before non-traditional competitorsmake significant inroads in those markets, while not abandoning its years of experienceand knowledge about physical imaging that is supporting its core business.

This long learning lead-time or “knowledge friction” highlights the importance ofbenchmarking and evaluating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of anorganization’s current knowledge platform and position, as this knowledge provides theprimary opportunity from which to compete and grow over the near-to-intermediate term.This must, in turn, be balanced against the organization’s long term plans for developing itsknowledge platform.

Knowledge is not static and what is innovative knowledge today will ultimately becomethe core knowledge of tomorrow. Thus defending and growing a competitive positionbased on strategic knowledge asset requires continual learning and knowledge acquisition.The ability of an organization to learn, accumulate knowledge from its experiences, andreapply that knowledge is itself a skill or competence that, beyond the core competenciesdirectly related to delivering its product or service, may provide strategic advantage.

1.14.1 Asset Value of Knowledge

How valuable is knowledge? The value is in the eyes of the beholder - opinions varywidely. However, there are several directions you can approach this from:

Market value: what is specific knowledge assets worth on the open market e.g. ateam of experts, a customer database, and a license for a patent?

Cost: how much does it cost to train a new hire? How many person-days went intodeveloping your intranet content?

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Replacement cost: if you had a disaster (a team leaving, your computer recordsdestroyed), what would it cost today to get back to where you started?

Liability cost: how exposed are you to legal liability e.g. for product traceability, forlong overlooked terms in extant contracts?

Many organizations do not have a handle on the value of their assets. They spend afortune monitoring and accounting for physical assets; yet ignore those assets - that accordingto most surveys - are worth 5-10 time more than the assets recorded on the company’sbalance sheet. Knowledge aware organizations consider human capital as an asset. It isone several components of intellectual capital - others are customer capital, structuralcapital and intellectual property.

Benefits Potential

For most organizations the real value of knowledge management is in the benefits itbrings to the bottom line. These benefits range from increased knowledge workerproductivity, to faster time-to-market for new products, to better customer service. Typicallythe benefits fall into the following categories:

Information and knowledge benefits - retrieving vital information faster, gaining accessto expertise, having all the required information accessible in one pace (e.g. through aportal)

Intermediate benefits - minimizing duplication, sharing knowledge across organizationalboundaries, getting new hire up to speed faster

Organizational benefits - reducing costs, increasing productivity, growing asset valuation,innovation

Customer and stakeholder benefits - better products and services, higher quality, bettervalue.

SUMMARY

Knowledge management, as it is practiced today, is a system of technologies focusedupon the delivery of strategically useful knowledge and expertise, the availability of whichfacilitates effective collaboration and timely decision-making. The major objectives of KMare creating knowledge repositories, improving knowledge access, enhancing the knowledgeenvironment and managing knowledge as an asset. Effective knowledge managementtypically requires an appropriate combination of organisational, social, and managerialalong with the deployment of appropriate technology. Technology is a facilitator of knowledgemanagement, a tool to assist individuals and groups in creation, capturing and distributionof knowledge.

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Technology and knowledge are now the key factors of production. Various observersdescribe today’s global economy as one in transition to a ‘knowledge economy’, or an‘information society’. The knowledge economy usually involve the production ofknowledge-intensive goods (like software), and the large-scale capture, movement andutilisation of information using sophisticated network infrastructure (such as computers,cable, fiber and routers).

The various experts’ vision is that India will become a leader in the global knowledgeeconomy by 2010. This will be the result of a highly focused effort to achieve globalthought leadership in a few select fields that offer the highest potential for KnowledgeProcess Outsourcing (KPO).

Effective knowledge management typically requires an appropriate combination oforganisational, social, and managerial along with the deployment of appropriate technology.Technology is a facilitator of knowledge management, a tool to assist individuals and groupsin creation, capturing and distribution of knowledge.

Knowledge management strategy is termed as an approach undertaken by anorganization to use its information and knowledge resources for building competitive strengthand sustainable growth for realizing that pursuing KM strategy can enable it to dramaticallyreduce cycle time and costs, increase sales, and to meet the customer needs.

Effective knowledge management is of vital importance for any enterprise with aquest to ensure viability and survival. Enterprises need to develop a KM strategy whichimpinges on all areas of the organization and requires a corporate approach to make itwork.

Knowledge strategy designs an organisation’s future based on using knowledgeeffectively. Knowledge strategy starts with the notion that an organisation’s business strategyshould guide its planning for knowledge management. Therefore, knowledge strategyfollows business strategy. The first activity in knowledge strategy is understanding the currentbusiness strategy then progressing that strategy as the basis for organizational analysis.

Business organizations are coming to view knowledge as their most valuable andstrategic asset, and bringing that knowledge to bear on problems and opportunities as theirmost important capability. They are realizing that to remain competitive they must explicitlymanage their intellectual assets and capabilities.

SHORT QUESTIONS

1. Define ‘knowledge management’.2. What is intellectual capital?3. What are the components of knowledge cycle?4. List down the domains of knowledge management.

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5. Define ‘knowledge economy’.6. What is groupware?7. Distinguish between knowledge management and expert system.8. Mention the difference between knowledge portal and corporate portal?9. What is semantic network?10. What do you understand by the word knowledge management matrix?

LONG QUESTIONS

1. List down and explain the various objectives of knowledge management.2. What is the need for KM initiation in today’s context in an organization?3. Explain the KM cycle with an example.4. List out the uses of KM for an organization.5. Trace the history and evolution of knowledge management.6. Compare ‘industrial economy’ with ‘knowledge economy’.7. What are the characteristics of knowledge economy?8. What are the implications of knowledge economy to business and policy makers?9. Analyse the chances of India becoming world’s leading knowledge economy.10. Explain the various key technologies needed for the KM programs?11. Why KM strategy is the need of the hour in today’s competitive environment?12. Explain the four-phased approach for prioritizing the knowledge strategy.13. “Knowledge is considered as the most important strategic assets” Do you agree?

Why?

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UNIT II

KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION ANDPROCESSING

2.1 INTRODUCTION

The ability to manage knowledge is becoming increasingly more crucial in today’sknowledge economy. Knowledge is regarded as valuable commodity that is embedded inproducts, and in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. The acquisition, creation,processing and dissemination of knowledge have become important for competitiveness inan organization. This chapter deals with the various facets of knowledge by elaborating itsmeaning, attributes, formation, types as well as its sources, conversion and diffusion.



• Outline the meaning and forms of knowledge and its attributes• Overview the knowledge formation in an organization• What is organizational knowledge?• Compare the differences between tacit and explicit knowledge• Identify the various sources of knowledge• Describe the different phases of knowledge development

2.3 PERSPECTIVES ON KNOWLEDGE

Unlike capital and labour, knowledge strives to be a public good. Once knowledgeis discovered and made public, there is zero marginal cost to sharing it with others. Secondly,the creator of knowledge finds it hard to prevent others from using it. Instruments such astrade secrets protection and patents, copyright, and trademarks provide the creator withsome protection.

There are different kinds of knowledge that can usefully be distinguished. Know-what, or knowledge about facts, is nowadays diminishing in relevance. Know-why isknowledge about the natural world, society, and the human mind. Know-who refers to theworld of social relations and is knowledge of who knows what and who can do what.

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Knowing key people is sometimes more important to innovation than knowing scientificprinciples. Know-where and know-when are becoming increasingly important in a flexibleand dynamic economy. Know-how refers to skills, the ability to do things on a practicallevel.

The implication of the knowledge economy is that there is no alternative way toprosperity than to make learning and knowledge-creation of prime importance. There aredifferent kinds of knowledge. “Tacit knowledge” is knowledge gained from experience,rather than that instilled by formal education and training. In the knowledge economy tacitknowledge is as important as formal, codified, structured and explicit knowledge.

A country’s capacity to take advantage of the knowledge economy depends on howquickly it can become a “learning economy’. Learning means not only using new technologiesto access global knowledge, it also means using them to communicate with other peopleabout innovation. In the “learning economy” individuals, firms, and countries will be able tocreate wealth in proportion to their capacity to learn and share innovation.

At the level of the organisation learning must be continuous. Organisational learning isthe process by which organisations acquire tacit knowledge and experience. Such knowledgeis unlikely to be available in codified form, so it cannot be acquired by formal educationand training. Instead it requires a continuous cycle of discovery, dissemination, and theemergence of shared understandings. Successful firms are giving priority to the need tobuild a “learning capacity” within the organisation.

2.3.1 Data, Information and Knowledge

Before we understand what knowledge means, let us understand the knowledgehierarchy. In common parlance, it is often referred to as DIKW hierarchy. The four levelsthat we deal with are data, information, knowledge, and wisdom.

Data may be regarded as a commodity, value is added to data when they are processedinto information and in turn information gains further value when it is applied in new contextsbecoming transformed into enterprise specific knowledge. Knowledge is also defined asinformation to which experience, context, interpretation and reflection are added byindividuals so that it becomes a high value form of information. In these circumstancesknowledge can be utilized in novel ways - making predictions, for example – thereafterbeing retained within the organization as organizational knowledge. Contextualizedknowledge is regarded as the outcome, or product, of a learning process, because itbecomes owned as organizational, such knowledge is sticky in the sense that it is bothlocalized and contextualized. And thus it is argued that organizational knowledge issocially constructed because its added value derives from an intra-organizational socialprocess – the process of sharing. Information gains further value when it is used in newcontexts and is transformed into enterprise specific knowledge in the process.

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Figure 1.1 The Continuum of Understanding

One gains knowledge through context (experiences) and understanding.

When one has context, one can weave the various relationships of the experiences.The greater the context, the greater the variety of experiences that one is able to pull from.

The greater one understands the subject matter, the more one is able to weave pastexperiences (context) into new knowledge by absorbing, doing, interacting, and reflecting.

Thus, understanding is a continuum:

Data comes about through research, creation, gathering, and discovery.

Information has context. Data is turned into information by organizing it so that we caneasily draw conclusions. Data is also turned into information by “presenting” it, such asmaking it visual or auditory.

Knowledge has the complexity of experience, which come about by seeing it from differentperspectives. This is why training and education is difficult - one cannot count on oneperson’s knowledge transferring to another. Knowledge is built from scratch by the learnerthrough experience. Information is static, but knowledge is dynamic as it lives within us.

Wisdom is the ultimate level of understanding. As with knowledge, wisdom operates withinus. We can share our experiences that create the building blocks for wisdom, however, itneed to be communicated with even more understanding of the personal contexts of ouraudience than with knowledge sharing.

Often, the distinctions between data, information, knowledge, and wisdom continuumare not very discrete, thus the distinctions between each term often seem more like shadesof gray, rather than black and white.

Data and information deal with the past. They are based on the gathering of facts andadding context. Knowledge deals with the present. It becomes a part of us and enables to

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perform. However, when we gain wisdom, we start dealing with the future as we are nowable to vision and design for what will be, rather than for what is or was.

KM Viewpoint 1.1 An Example This example uses a bank savings account to show how data, information, knowledge, and wisdom relate to principal, interest rate, and interest. Data: The numbers 100 or 5%, completely out of context, are just pieces of data. Interest, principal, and interest rate, out of context, are not much more than data as each has multiple meanings which are context dependent. Information: If I establish a bank savings account as the basis for context, then interest, principal, and interest rate become meaningful in that context with specific interpretations.

• Principal is the amount of money, Rs.100, in the savings account. • Interest rate, 5%, is the factor used by the bank to compute interest on

the principal. Knowledge: If I put Rs.100 in my savings account, and the bank pays 5% interest yearly, then at the end of one year the bank will compute the interest of Rs.5 and add it to my principal and I will have Rs.105 in the bank. This pattern represents knowledge, which, when I understand it, allows me to understand how the pattern will evolve over time and the results it will produce. In understanding the pattern, I know, and what I know is knowledge. If I deposit more money in my account, I will earn more interest, while if I withdraw money from my account, I will earn less interest. Wisdom: Getting wisdom out of this is a bit tricky, and is, in fact, founded in systems principles. The principle is that any action which produces a result which encourages more of the same action produces an emergent characteristic called growth. And, nothing grows forever for sooner or later growth runs into limits. If one studied all the individual components of this pattern, which represents knowledge, they would never discover the emergent characteristic of growth. Only when the pattern connects, interacts, and evolves over time, does the principle exhibit the characteristic of growth. Now, if this knowledge is valid, why doesn't everyone simply become rich by putting money in a savings account and letting it grow? The answer has to do with the fact that the pattern described above is only a small part of a more elaborate pattern which operates over time. People don't get rich because they either don't put money in a savings account in the first place, or when they do, in time, they find things they need or want more than being rich, so they withdraw money. Withdrawing money depletes the principal and subsequently the interest they earn on that principal. Getting into this any deeper is more of a systems thinking exercise than is appropriate to pursue here.

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2.3.2 Defining knowledge

Knowledge is the process of translating information (such as data) and past experienceinto a meaningful set of relationships which are understood and applied by an individual.

Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or disagreement of two ideas - JohnLocke

Locke gave us the first hint of what knowledge is all about. Since that time, othershave tried to refine it. Davenport and Prusak define knowledge as, “a fluid mix of framedexperience, contextual information, values and expert insight that provides aframework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.”Notice that there are two parts to this definition:

• First, there is content: “a fluid mix of framed experience, contextual information,values and expert insight.” This includes a number of things that we have within us,such as experiences, beliefs, values, how we feel, motivation, and information.

• The second part defines the function or purpose of knowledge, “that provides aframework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information.”Notice how this relates back to Locke’s definition — we have within us a framework(one idea) that we use for evaluating new experiences (the second idea).

“Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody — either bybecoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual (or an institution)capable of different or more effective action.” - Peter F. Drucker

2.4. KNOWLEDGE ATTRIBUTES

Knowledge is commonly distinguished from data and information. Data representobservations or facts out of context, and therefore not directly meaningful. Informationresults from placing data within some meaningful context, often in the form of a message.Knowledge is that which we come to believe and value based on the meaningfully organizedaccumulation of information (messages) through experience, communication or inference.Knowledge can be viewed both as a thing to be stored and manipulated and as a processof simultaneously knowing and acting - that is, applying expertise. As a practical matter,organizations need to manage knowledge both as object and process.

Although knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a commodity or an intellectual asset,it possesses some attributes that are radically different from those of other valuablecommodities. These knowledge attributes includes the following:

1. Knowledge exists everywhere. Even in an organization where strong KM practicesdon’t exist, there are islands of knowledge. Knowledge about products, customers,markets, and operational issues, the existence is haphazard or unorganized.

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2. Knowledge is perishable. What knowledge is used today would become outdatedtomorrow. Sustained efforts need to be put to imbibe new information and unlearn oldand outdated knowledge.

3. Knowledge is an asset. The brands, patents, special skills, and customer relations ofan organization are treated as assets. Treating knowledge as a tangible asset allows fora value to be imputed to knowledge repositories. For example companies can publisha set of Intellectual Capital Account annually so that investors and other stakeholderscan value the business for its intellectual worth.

4. Use of knowledge does not consume it.

5. Transfer of knowledge does not result in losing it.

6. Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is scarce.

7. Much of the organization’s knowledge goes out of the organization.

8. Knowledge can be tacit or explicit. Tacit knowledge is subconsciously understoodand applied, difficult to articulate, developed from direct experience and action, andusually shared through highly interactive conversation, story-telling and sharedexperience. Explicit knowledge, in contrast, can be more precisely and formallyarticulated. Therefore, although more abstract, it can be more easily codified,documented, transferred or shared. Explicit knowledge is playing an increasingly largerole in organizations, and it is considered by some to be the most important factor ofproduction in the knowledge economy. Imagine an organization without proceduremanuals, product literature, or computer software.

9. Knowledge may be of several types, each of which may be made explicit. Knowledgeabout something is called declarative knowledge. A shared, explicit understanding ofconcepts, categories, and descriptors lays the foundation for effective communicationand knowledge sharing in organizations. Knowledge of how something occurs or isperformed is called procedural knowledge. Shared explicit procedural knowledgelays a foundation for efficiently coordinated action in organizations. Knowledge whysomething occurs is called causal knowledge. Shared explicit causal knowledge, oftenin the form of organizational stories, enables organizations to coordinate strategy forachieving goals or outcomes.

10. Knowledge also may range from general to specific. General knowledge is broad,often publicly available, and independent of particular events. Specific knowledge, incontrast, is context-specific. General knowledge, its context commonly shared, canbe more easily and meaningfully codified and exchanged, especially among differentknowledge or practice communities. Codifying specific knowledge so as to bemeaningful across an organization requires its context to be described along with thefocal knowledge. This, in turn, requires explicitly defining contextual categories andrelationships that are meaningful across knowledge communities. To see how difficult(and important) this may be, ask people from different parts of your organization todefine a customer, an order, or even your major lines of business, and see how muchthe responses vary.

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11. Knowledge relates to place and context. For example, your father’s knowledgeabout farming is specific to a particular place and a particular time from say 1920 tothe 1990s. Some of what he knows about farming could be adapted to othercircumstances, but most of his knowledge pertains directly to paddy and cattle productionin that particular place. My knowledge and yours also is related intimately to the areaswhere we grew up and where we live.

12. All information is not knowledge, and all knowledge is not valuable. The key is tofind the worthwhile knowledge within a vast sea of information.

2.5 FUNDAMENTALS OF KNOWLEDGE FORMATION

“Knowledge is power”, knowledge management helps us to share, learn and regeneratethe new knowledge. Knowledge is the most important asset and greatest competitiveadvantage of many organizations today. Simultaneously, it can be observed that manyorganizations realize it is highly problematic and complicated to collect, store, retrieve,find, disseminate and reuse knowledge in modern fast changing organization.

Knowledge and information is expressed in commonly accepted idea, informationarguably becomes knowledge. Knowledge is intuitive, hard to communicate and difficultto express in words and chunk of it’s not stored in database but in the minds of people whowork in formation of new knowledge.

It is supported by formal process and structures for its acquisition, sharing andutilization. The role of information, knowledge and digital technologies that manipulatethem, have become the crucial factors in the economy. Hence, in the plan and policies,activities of every organization require familiarity with basics of information and knowledge.

2.5.1 Knowledge Formation

One of the basic problems is understanding the characteristics of “Knowledgeformation”. From ancient times the senses have been thought to have the role of channelsthrough which knowledge arrives in to the organism from the environment. The concept ofthe senses as “Windows to Knowledge” seemed so strong and irrefutable that attempts totreat organism and environment as one system. The traditional concept of the senses astransmitters of knowledge is based explicitly on the idea of two systems (organism andenvironment) between which the transfer of knowledge occurs.

This relationship has been formulated in recent decades with the help of informationtheory. Knowledge formation is based on information transmission carried out throughsignals (Stimuli), in which the information is stored with help of a code.

Knowledge becomes obsolete as soon as it is formed or created. New knowledgehas to be created continuously in order for a company to survive in this competitive businessenvironment. In practical sense, knowledge management is the process of continuouslycreating new knowledge, disseminating it widely through the organization, and embodyingit quickly in new products/services, technologies and systems.

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2.5.2 Flows of knowledge

Knowledge and information have a long tradition in research. Notions of informationbecame prominent in the middle years of the 20th century, more recently, with the adventof powerful information technologies, information processing has lost its role as a keybottleneck in organizations, and instead, the main challenge to organizations is now seen asproducing and processing knowledge. The focus on knowledge is shared by quite a fewrecent approaches, including organizational, resource-based and knowledge-based views.

Knowledge is what has been learned from experience or study. It is a broad conceptthat usually includes insights, interpretations, and information. Knowledge can bedistinguished from information by its inclusion of interpretations, from beliefs by its higherdegree of validity, and from wisdom by its more transient veridical, knowledge consists ofassumptions about problems and their solutions. Notions of knowledge flows vary somewhatin the literature; some authors have seen knowledge flows as transfer of skills and technologybetween organizations. Some even understand knowledge flows as a multistage processthat might involve initiation, implementation, and integration or search and transfer.Knowledge flows as the aggregate volume of know-how and information transmitted perunit of time, including via telephone, e-mail, regular mail, policy revisions, meetings, sharedtechnologies, and reviews of prototypes.

Knowledge is involving three processes viz., first process is encoding—organizationslearn by encoding inferences from experiences in organizational routines that guide behaviour.The second and third processes are the twin processes of exploration and exploitation.Exploration captures “search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility,discovery, innovation”. Exploitation captures “refinement, choice, production, efficiency,selection, implementation, execution”. Codification, exploration, and exploitation describedifferent modes of organizational knowledge production. Codification generates knowledgeencoded in forms that facilitate its transmission to others. Exploration generates new,unsettled knowledge with potentially high but uncertain returns. Exploitation generatesincremental knowledge with moderate but certain and immediate returns. These differencessuggest that the three modes of learning generate knowledge that varies in fluidity andrelevance to others and thereby can stimulate or constrain knowledge flows from originatingunits to other parts of the organization.

2.6 ORGANISATIONAL KNOWLEDGE

What is organizational knowledge?

In the organizational context, knowledge can be looked at as information that is testedagainst the business rules of the organization and found to be valid by knowledgeableindividuals and is therefore elevated to a level of validated information or knowledge.

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Organizational knowledge is the collective sum of human-centered assets, intellectualproperty assets, infrastructure assets, and market assets. It is processed informationembedded in routines and processes that enable action. It is also knowledge captured bythe organization system’s processes, products, rules and culture.

Organizational knowledge consists of five different types of knowledge:

• Knowing which information is needed (Know what);

• Knowing how information must be processed (Know how);

• Knowing why information is needed (Know why);

• Knowing where information can be found to achieve a specific result (Know where);

• Knowing when which information is needed (Know when).

• Individual construct organizational knowledge by sharing the above five types ofknowledge with other employees.

Similarly, individual knowledge in an organization consists of four different types ofknowledge:

• “Know-what” is the basic knowledge that individuals can acquire through extensive

Training;

• “Know-how” is the ability to apply “know-what” knowledge to complex real-world

problems;

• “Know-why” is deep knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships; and

• “Self-motivated creativity” is the highest level of knowledge and it consists of will,motivation and adaptability.

The value of organizational knowledge can increase markedly as an organization helpsits employee develop self-motivated creativity, and leverage this type of knowledgethroughout the organization.

Characteristics of organizational knowledgeKey characteristics of organizational knowledge are as follows:

• Organizational knowledge is knowledge that is shared among organizationalmembers;

• Organizational knowledge, which is created via individual knowledge, is morethan the sum of individual knowledge;

• Complete organizational knowledge is achieved only when individuals keepmodifying their knowledge through interactions with other organizational members;

• Organizational knowledge is distributed;

• Organizational knowledge is created and managed by individuals who actautonomously within a decision domain.

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Thus, from an organizational perspective knowledge can be defined as an entity thatcan be generated, acquired, modified, transferred and applied for the creation of value.

2.7 TACIT AND EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE

In a global economy, it is important to create and sustain an organization as a knowledgecreating company and develop the knowledge management system to manage it. Tacit andexplicit knowledge are the two components of organizational knowledge and let us notethe important differences between what is called tacit and explicit knowledge which appearsto be in widespread use.

2.7.1 What is tacit knowledge?

Tacit knowledge refers to the personal knowledge embedded in individual experienceand involves intangible factors, such as personal beliefs, perspective, and the value system.Tacit knowledge is hard to articulate with formal language (hard, but not impossible). Itcontains subjective insights, intuitions, and hunches. Before tacit knowledge can becommunicated, it must be converted into words, models, or numbers that can be understand.In addition, there are two dimensions to tacit knowledge:

Technical Dimension (procedural): This encompasses the kind of informal andskills often captured in the term know-how. For example, a craftsperson develops awealth of expertise after years of experience. But a craftsperson often has difficultyarticulating the technical or scientific principles of his or her craft. Highly subjective andpersonal insights, intuitions, hunches and inspirations derived from bodily experience fallinto this dimension.

Cognitive Dimension: This consists of beliefs, perceptions, ideals, values, emotionsand mental models so ingrained in us that we take them for granted. Though they cannot bearticulated very easily, this dimension of tacit knowledge shapes the way we perceive theworld around us.

Tacit knowledge is generally described as:

• subconsciously understood or applied• difficult to articulate• developed from direct action and experience• shared through conversation, story-telling etc

Polanyi defines that “tacit knowledge is personal, context-specific and thereforedifficult to articulate”. It may be compared to skill acquisition for example swimming. Itmay be possible to read the ‘how-to’ manual but such manuals do not embody the fullreality of the experience in context. For instance swimming in a pool is very different fromswimming in the sea.

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According to Pan and Scarbrough, “Tacit knowledge is not available as a text. .. .It involves intangible factors embedded in personal beliefs, experiences, and values.”

Nonaka and Takeuchi refer to tacit knowledge “as knowledge that comprisesexperience and work knowledge that resides only with the individual.

Platts and Yeung considers tacit knowledge as “knowledge-in-action” whichpresumes that this is knowledge that has not been articulated as opposed to explicitknowledge that is readily accessible within the organizational domain.

Blumentitt et al contend that information can be captured and stored in digital formwhereas tacit knowledge repositories reside only in intelligent systems that are withinindividuals.

The knowledge management literature recognises the growing importance ofknowledge-based activities as being important for innovation, especially in knowledgeintensive business services and for impact on strategy development and implementation.The literature recognises the potential value of tacit knowledge and the general inability oforganizations to gather an individual’s experiences although there are views emerging onhow attempts at capturing tacit knowledge might be effected.

Whatever the difficulties the argument for finding an effective means of capturing theexperiences and skills of any workforce is compelling and it may be that there will never bemore than guidelines since any successful knowledge management system will be essentiallyunique to the organization in which it is operated. What is essential is that whatever anyorganization takes from the literature an organizational concept of knowledge managementis developed alongside an understanding of how it can be used within that organization togain competitive advantage.

To make wider use of the tacit knowledge of individuals, managers are urged toidentify the knowledge possessed by various individuals in an organization and then toarrange the kinds of interactions between knowledgeable individuals that will help theorganization perform its current tasks, transfer knowledge from one part of the organizationto another, and/or create new knowledge that may be useful to the organization. Let usconsider an example (See Box of KM – Viewpoint) of current practice in each of theseactivities that are typical of the tacit knowledge approach. Most managers of organizationstoday do not know what specific kinds of knowledge the individuals in their organizationknow. As firms become larger, more knowledge intensive, and more globally dispersed,the need for their managers to “know what we know” is becoming acute. Thus, a commoninitiative within the tacit knowledge approach is usually some effort to improve understandingof who knows about what in an organization - an effort that is sometimes described as aneffort to create “know who” forms of knowledge.

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Case examples of tacit knowledge in practice

An example of the tacit knowledge approach to transferring knowledge within a globalorganization is provided by Toyota. When Toyota wants to transfer knowledge of itsproduction system to new employees in a new assembly factory, such as the factory recentlyopened in Valenciennes, France, Toyota typically selects a core group of two to threehundred new employees and sends them for several months training and work on theassembly line in one of Toyota’s existing factories. After several months of studying theproduction system and working alongside experienced Toyota assembly line workers, thenew workers are sent back to the new factory site. These repatriated workers areaccompanied by one or two hundred long-term, highly experienced Toyota workers, whowill then work alongside all the new employees in the new factory to assure that knowledgeof Toyota’s finely tuned production process is fully implanted in the new factory.

Toyota’s use of Quality Circles also provides an example of the tacit knowledgeapproach to creating new knowledge. At the end of each work week, groups of Toyotaproduction workers spend one to two hours analyzing the performance of their part of theproduction system to identify actual or potential problems in quality or productivity. Eachgroup proposes “countermeasures” to correct identified problems, and discusses the resultsof countermeasures taken during the week to address problems identified the week before.Through personal interactions in such Quality Circle group settings, Toyota employeesshare their ideas for improvement, devise steps to test new ideas for improvement, andassess the results of their tests. This knowledge management practice, which is repeatedweekly as an integral part of the Toyota production system, progressively identifies,eliminates, and even prevents errors. As improvements developed by Quality Circles areaccumulated over many years, Toyota’s production system has become one of the highestquality production processes in the world.

KM Viewpoint 1.1 An example of such an effort is the creation within Philips, the global electronics company, of a “yellow pages” listing experts with different kinds of knowledge within Philips’ many business units. Today on the Philips intranet one can type in the key words for a specific knowledge domain - say, for example, knowledge about the design of optical pickup units for CD/DVD players and recorders - and the yellow pages will retrieve a listing of the people within Philips worldwide who have stated that they have such knowledge. Contact information is also provided for each person listed, so that anyone in Philips who wants to know more about that kind of knowledge can get in touch with listed individuals.

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Figure 1.2 Two Types of Knowledge

2.7.2 What is explicit knowledge?

Explicit knowledge refers to the contents that has been captured in some tangibleform and can be articulated into formal language, including grammatical statements (wordsand numbers), mathematical expressions, specifications, manuals, etc. Explicit knowledgecan be readily transmitted to others. Also, it can easily be processed by a computer,transmitted electronically, or stored in databases. An example of explicit knowledge withwhich we are all familiar is the formula for finding the area of a rectangle (i.e., length timeswidth). Other examples of explicit knowledge include documented best practices, theformalized standards by which an insurance claim is adjudicated and the official expectationsfor performance set forth in written work objectives

Explicit knowledge is increasingly being emphasised in both practice and literature, asa management tool to be exploited for the manipulation of organizational knowledge.Groupware, intranets, list servers, knowledge repositories, database management andknowledge action networks allow the sharing of organizational knowledge. Tools such asco-coordinated databases, groupware systems, intranets and internets are seen as theultimate knowledge management systems for initiating and supporting discussion forumsand communities of practice. Managers hope that these tools will retain knowledge withinthe company when employees have left and also that this will encourage learning and theflourishing of communities of interest across functional boundaries.

Working from the premise that important forms of knowledge can be made explicit,the explicit knowledge approach also believes that formal organizational processes can beused to help individuals articulate the knowledge they have to create knowledge assets.The explicit knowledge approach also believes that explicit knowledge assets can then be

ExplicitKnowledge

Tacit Knowledge

ContextualMental ProcessesDifficult to Transfer

TangibleSystematicEase of Transfer

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disseminated within an organization through documents, drawings, standard operatingprocedures, manuals of best practice, and the like. Information systems are usually seen asplaying a central role in facilitating the dissemination of explicit knowledge assets overcompany intranets or between organizations via the internet.

Usually accompanying the views that knowledge can be made explicit and managedexplicitly is the belief that new knowledge can be created through a structured, managed,scientific learning process. Experiments and other forms of structured learning processescan be designed to remedy important knowledge deficiencies or market transactions orstrategic partnering may be used to obtain specific forms of needed knowledge or toimprove an organization’s existing knowledge assets.

The recommendations for knowledge management practice usually proposed byresearchers and consultants working within the explicit knowledge approach focus oninitiating and sustaining organizational processes for generating, articulating, categorizing,and systematically leveraging explicit knowledge assets. Some examples of cases ofknowledge management practice in this mode help to illustrate this approach.

Case examples of explicit knowledge in practice

In the 1990s, Motorola was the global leader in the market for pagers. To maintainthis leadership position, Motorola introduced new generations of pager designs every 12-15 months. Each new pager generation was designed to offer more advanced features andoptions for customization than the preceding generation. Using modular product architecturesto create increasingly configurable product designs, Motorola was able to increase thenumber of customizable product variations it could offer from a few thousand variations inthe late 1980s to more than 120 million variations by the late 1990s.

In addition, a new factory with higher-speed, more flexible assembly lines was designedand built to produce each new generation of pager. To sustain this high rate of product andprocess development, Motorola formed teams of product and factory designers to designeach new generation of pager and factory. At the beginning of their project, each new teamof designers received a manual of design methods and techniques from the team that haddeveloped the previous generation of pager and factory. The new team would then havethree deliverables at the end of their project: (i) an improved and more configurable next-generation pager design, (ii) the design of a more efficient and flexible assembly line for thefactory that would produce the new pager, and (iii) an improved design manual thatincorporated the design knowledge provided to the team in the manual it received - plusthe new and improved design methods that the team had developed to meet the productand production goals for its project. This manual would then be passed on to the nextdesign team given the task of developing the next generation of pager and its factory. In thisway, Motorola sought to make explicit and capture the knowledge developed by its engineersduring each project and to systematically leverage that knowledge in launching the work of

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the next project team. In addition to its tacit knowledge management practice of movingnew employees around to transfer knowledge of its production system, Toyota also followsa highly disciplined explicit knowledge management practice of documenting the tasks thateach team of workers and each individual worker is asked to perform on its assemblylines. These documents provide a detailed description of how each task is to be performed,how long each task should take, the sequence of steps to be followed in performing eachtask, and the steps to be taken by each worker in checking his or her own work. Whenimprovements are suggested by solving problems on the assembly line as they occur or inthe weekly Quality Circle meetings of Toyota’s teams of assembly line workers, thosesuggestions are evaluated by Toyota’s production engineers and then formally incorporatedin revised task description documents. In addition to developing well-defined anddocumented process descriptions for routine, repetitive production tasks, some organizationshave also created explicit knowledge management approaches to supporting more creativetasks like developing new products.

In the Chrysler unit of DaimlerChrysler Corporation, for example, several “platformteams” of 300-600 development engineers have responsibility for creating the nextgeneration platforms (A platform includes a system of standard component types andstandardized interfaces between component types that enable “plugging and playing”different component variations in the platform design to configure different product variations)on which Chrysler’s future automobiles will be based. Each platform team is free to activelyexplore and evaluate alternative design solutions for the many different technical aspects oftheir vehicle platform. However, each platform team is also required to place the designsolution it has selected for each aspect of their vehicle platform in a “Book of Knowledge”on Chrysler’s intranet. This catalog of developed design solutions is then made available toall platform teams to consult in their development processes, so that good design solutionsdeveloped by one platform team can also be located and used by other platform teams.Other firms have taken this explicit knowledge management approach to managingknowledge in product development processes even further.

Fanuc Automation, one of the world’s leading industrial automation firms, developsdesign methodologies that are applied in the design of new kinds of components for theirfactory automation systems. In effect, instead of leaving it up to each engineer in the firm todevise a design solution for each new component needed, GE Fanuc’s engineers worktogether to create detailed design methodologies for each type of component the firmuses. These design methodologies are then encoded in software and computerized so thatthe design of new component variations can be automated. Desired performance parametersfor each new component variation are entered into the automated design program, and GEFanuc’s computer system automatically generates a design solution for the component. Inthis way, GE Fanuc tries to make explicit and capture the design knowledge of its engineersand then to systematically re-use that knowledge by automating most new componentdesign tasks.

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2.7.3. Typical applications of tacit and explicit knowledge

Knowledge databases and repositories (explicit knowledge) - storing informationand documents that can be shared and re-used, for example, client presentations, competitorintelligence, customer data, marketing materials, meeting minutes, policy documents, pricelists, product specifications, project proposals, research reports, training packs;

Knowledge route maps and directories (tacit and explicit knowledge) - pointing topeople, document collections and datasets that can be consulted, for example, ‘yellowpages’/’expert locators’ containing CVs, competency profiles, research interests;

Knowledge networks and discussions (tacit knowledge) - providing opportunities forface-to-face contacts and electronic interaction, for example, establishing chat facilities/’talk rooms’, fostering learning groups and holding ‘best practice’ sessions.

2.7.4. Basic beliefs between tacit and explicit knowledge approaches

Table 1.1 Basic beliefs between tacit and explicit KM approaches

2.7.5 Comparison of properties of Tacit Vs Explicit Knowledge

Table 1.2 Comparison of properties of tacit Vs explicit knowledge

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2.7.6 Advantages and Disadvantages of Tacit versus Explicit Knowledge Approaches

Like most alternative approaches to managing, each of the two knowledge managementapproaches we have discussed has both advantages and disadvantages. Let us now brieflysummarize the main advantages and disadvantages of the two approaches.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Tacit Knowledge ApproachAdvantages

1. Relatively easy and inexpensive to begin.2. Employees may respond well to recognition of the (claimed) knowledge.3. Likely to create interest in further knowledge management processes.4. Important knowledge kept in tacit form may be less likely to “leak” to competitors.

Disadvantages

1. Individuals may not have the knowledge they claim to have.2. Knowledge profiles of individuals need frequent updating.3. Ability to transfer knowledge constrained to moving people, which is costly and

limits the reach and speed of knowledge dissemination within the organization.4. Organization may lose key knowledge if key people leave the organization.

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Explicit Knowledge ApproachAdvantages

1. Articulated knowledge (explicit knowledge assets) may be moved instantaneouslyanytime anywhere by information technologies.

2. Codified knowledge may be proactively disseminated to people who can use specificforms of knowledge.

3. Knowledge that has been made explicit can be discussed, debated, and improved.4. Making knowledge explicit makes it possible to discover knowledge deficiencies

in the organization.

Disadvantages

1. Considerable time and effort may be required to help people articulate theirknowledge.

2. Employment relationship with key knowledge workers may have to be redefinedto motivate knowledge articulation.

3. Expert committees must be formed to evaluate explicit knowledge assets.4. Application of explicit knowledge throughout organization must be assured by

adoption of best practices.

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2.7.7 Four modes of knowledge creation or conversion - Nonaka’s

Knowledge Creation Framework

According to Professor Ikujiro Nonaka, knowledge creation is a spiraling processof interactions between explicit and tacit knowledge. The interactions between the explicitand tacit knowledge lead to the creation of new knowledge. The combination of these twokinds of knowledge makes it possible to conceptualize four modes of conversion patterns.

The four conversion patterns of knowledge are illustrated in Figure 1.2 below:

Figure 1.3 onaka’s SECI Model

• Socialization: from tacit to tacit - Sharing experiences to create tacit knowledge,such as shared mental models and technical skills. This also includes observation,imitation, and practice. However, “experience” is the key, which his why the mere“transfer of information” often makes little sense to the receiver. Takes placebetween people in meetings or in team discussions.

• Internalization: from explicit to tacit - Embodying explicit knowledge into tacitknowledge. Closely related to “learning by doing.” Normally, knowledge isverbalized or diagrammed into documents or oral stories. This implies takingexplicit knowledge (e.g., a report) and deducing new ideas or taking constructiveaction. One significant goal of knowledge management is to create technology tohelp the users to derive tacit knowledge from explicit knowledge.

• Externalization: from tacit to explicit - The quintessential process of articulatingtacit knowledge into explicit concepts through metaphors, analogies, concepts,hypothesis, or models. Note that when we conceptualize an image, we express itsessence mostly in language. Articulation among people through dialog (e.g.,brainstorming).

• Combination, from explicit to explicit - A process of systemizing concepts intoa knowledge system. Individuals exchange and combine knowledge through media,such as documents, meetings, and conversations. Information is reconfigured bysuch means as sorting, combining, and categorizing. Formal education and manytraining programs work this way. This transformation phase can be best supportedby technology. Explicit knowledge can be easily captured and then distributed/transmitted to worldwide audience.

To tacit knowledge

To explicit knowledge

From tacit knowledge

Socialisation Externalization

From explicit knowledge

Internalization Combination

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2.8 ORGANISATIONAL KNOWLEDGE CREATION

Knowledge is an important element in the world of business and the ability to distributeand duplicate knowledge across a range of people is the key to its value in organizations.It can reduce time taken to learn new competencies and insights, and save significant costsin lost opportunities. People develop knowledge as an ongoing process through their work.Knowledge evolves as it is reshaped through encounters with new events, information orother people. It may reside within an individual as personalized knowledge, be accessiblethrough others, or stored as a retrievable artifact. Artifacts derived from knowledge creationare facts, concepts, processes, procedures, and principles. These, in turn, are used to helpcreate knowledge in others and are valuable mechanisms for sharing the outcome ofknowledge creation.

Organizational knowledge relies on collective and individual contributions. It evolvesas others review, use and learn from the original knowledge sources. Organizations areincreasingly regarding knowledge creation and innovation as core business, as more peoplespend most of their work time creating and innovating. In projects, meetings and think-tanks, their individual knowledge becomes a part of a collective activity that seeks to builda bank of knowledge for use by the organization. Figure 1.4 illustrates the five stages oforganizational knowledge development: knowledge sourcing, knowledge abstraction,knowledge conversion, knowledge diffusion, and knowledge development and refinement.The process of knowledge development is dynamic and responsive, drawing cues andfeedback from a range of sources throughout the stages. This feedback may influencesubsequent knowledge construction as it provides further cues and information which areconsidered and evaluated. Let us see the detailed account of the phases of knowledgecreation.

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Figure 1.4 Phases of organizational knowledge creation

2.8.1 Knowledge sourcing

The identification of knowledge gap between what is known and what needs to beknown is often the stimulus for the knowledge creation process. In response to theidentification of a knowledge gap, the organization commonly reviews existing sources ofguidance held by individuals or other organizational resources. This process of drawingtogether as many informed knowledge sources as possible is called knowledge sourcing.Sources to be tapped might include specialized and prior knowledge held by individualswithin the organization, expert guidance from people such as consultants, organizationalrecord or the firm’s intranet. Learning from previous experience is a significant source ofguidance, particularly where the problem under investigation has significant resourcingimplications.

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Knowledge sourcing is an important stage of knowledge creation. The richness andaccessibility of the available and known sources greatly influence the outcomes. For example,if an organization wanted to introduce a new customer promotional scheme, it might seekthe appropriate sources of guidance from the following:

• Customer feedback• Marketing expert’s opinion• Previous promo schemes data and their success and failures• Available secondary data• ]Lessons from competitors similar schemes• Contributions from employees concerned with such schemes

Sources of organizational knowledge

Following are the few sources of knowledge which are crucial for any organizationgain strategic competence.

Customer knowledge

In virtually every survey, customer knowledge tops the list as an organization’s mostvital knowledge. Yet most organizations do not know as much about their customers asthey think they do, nor do they integrate their various sources of customer knowledge thatthe organization already has. Appropriate feedback system may be created to get thisvaluable source of knowledge.

Knowledge in process

Normally in an organization an ad hoc activity gradually evolves into a process, thatin many cases is automated and hence knowledge is embedded in a procedure or computerprogram. Generally, the generic high-level activities involve gathering and processing ofinformation which is communicated with other people. This is a vital meta-knowledge thatcan help an organization to be more effective.

Knowledge in people

It is said that 90% organizational knowledge is in its people who is valuable and whenit is shared, it becomes even more valuable to the organization as a whole. An importantpart of KM is therefore about creating an environment and culture in which this knowledgeis facilitated to be accumulated and people are encouraged to share their knowledge witheach other.

Organizational memory

Many organizations do not know what they already know. Knowledge gained is notrecorded for use at another time or place. Effective knowledge programs will therefore put

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significant emphasis on capturing knowledge from every day work and from assignments.Decision diaries, reflection time at meetings and After Action Reviews (ARRs) are commonlyadapted tools for this purpose. An ARR, for example, is a technique first developed in theUS Army to capture lessons from battle field engagements, while they are still fresh inpeople’s minds which may be used for future. In this way, an organization can also conductformal post-assignment reviews to derive lessons and put the knowledge gained into anaccessible form for future assignments. Another useful technique is that of ‘knowledgerefining’ with which a series of memos, e-mails or meeting minutes are collected for theirrelevant and reusable content, which is put into an evolving and structured knowledgebase.

Knowledge relationships

This is concerned with depth of personal knowledge arising out of relationship of twopeople who worked together for a long time and know one another’s approach withregard to what to do and what not to do in situations. When firms reorganize, this knowledgeis lost. With the growing need for collaboration with external partners and agencies,organizations need to do more to capture this knowledge and provide forums where theserelationships cab be strengthened.

2.8.2 Knowledge abstraction

After analyzing the sources of knowledge, the general principles and concepts aregenerated to guide the construction of the new knowledge. This process is called knowledgeabstraction. Knowledge abstraction helps to frame the insights gained from knowledgesourcing and to extrapolate new knowledge from the basic guidelines and issues that haveemerged. Where the knowledge seekers are highly expert, they will rely heavily on theirown knowledge, with other sources simply validating or enriching that knowledge. Lessexperienced seekers will rely more heavily on external sources.

Think back to the customer promo schemes mentioned before. The target populationmight be clarified, some approaches ruled out, and some broad principles confirmed. Theabstraction of the various sources reduces the complexity of the factors to be considered,and enables the ideas to be converted into outcomes using a sound framework.

The process of abstraction can take a long time – particularly if the knowledge involvedis politically sensitive, complex or involves working through group consensus (committees).Unfortunately, many organizations do not provide sufficient to reflect and weigh the varioussources before abstraction. Failure to carefully build some clear frameworks to guide theknowledge creation process can lead to faulty reasoning and poor outcomes. Knowledgeworkers need to recognize the importance of reflection and consideration in the knowledgecreation process.

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2.8.3 Knowledge conversion

From abstract foundations, knowledge converts into various forms of useful applicationsthat can be tested and shared with others. Knowledge conversion describes the phaseduring which the various ideas and principles are refined into specific outcomes. Knowledgecan be either codified or embodied. Codified knowledge is knowledge that can be recordedand accessed by others as required. It can be developed into artifacts, such as models,equations and guidelines. Embodied knowledge is the tacit knowledge of individuals. Itcan be shared through stories, metaphors or personal advice as required. Embodiedknowledge is more difficult to access without ongoing engagement with the knowledgecreators.

Codified knowledge relating to the customer marketing scheme might be in the formof a marketing plan and implementation guidelines, whereas the embodied knowledgewould be drawn from the guidelines and insights of the project leaders and experts. Manyorganizations typically rely on both the forms of knowledge conversion when creating newknowledge.

2.8.4 Knowledge diffusion

Knowledge diffusion is the spread of knowledge once it is codified or embodied. Inorganizational settings, diffusion can occur through communication media such asnewsletters, the Intranet, meetings, seminars etc., modeling of new practices, anddemonstrations or coaching in specialized procedures. The success of knowledge diffusiondepends on the level of previous knowledge held by the audience and the effectiveness ofthe channels available to share the knowledge. Diffusion occurs best when the recipientscan understand and integrate the insights into their own mental constructs. Embodiedknowledge, which draws on significant expertise, learning and experience, may be harderto transfer to others.

Using the same example, the promotion of new promotional scheme might bedisseminated in various ways via the Intranet, published guidelines and presentations relatingto the scheme, and so on. The main goal is to share the knowledge with those who willmost benefit. A forum of all employees in an organization, for example, is of little value tothose who are not directly involved in the new scheme.

2.8.5 Knowledge development and refinement

Knowledge is regularly reshaped and further tested through additional experienceand feedback. This revolutionary process of knowledge development and refinement isone of the key features of knowledge management, ensuring the knowledge remains currentand useful. However, this also place more challenges on organizations that seek to captureand hold knowledge for use by others; such organizations need to ensure that the createdknowledge is constantly reviewed and updated to reflect any new understanding that has

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been acquired. Consider the promotional scheme again. A pilot study of the scheme mayreveal some significant issues relating to the created process. The pilot study thus generatesnew knowledge to be converted and diffused.

SUMMARY

Knowledge is regarded as valuable commodity that is embedded in products, and inthe tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. The acquisition, creation, processing anddissemination of knowledge have become important for competitiveness in an organization.

There are different kinds of knowledge that can usefully be distinguished. Know-what, or knowledge about facts, is nowadays diminishing in relevance. Know-why isknowledge about the natural world, society, and the human mind. Know-who refers to theworld of social relations and is knowledge of who knows what and who can do what.Knowing key people is sometimes more important to innovation than knowing scientificprinciples. Know-where and know-when are becoming increasingly important in a flexibleand dynamic economy. Know-how refers to skills, the ability to do things on a practicallevel.

Organizational knowledge is the collective sum of human-centered assets, intellectualproperty assets, infrastructure assets, and market assets. It is processed informationembedded in routines and processes that enable action. It is also knowledge captured bythe organization system’s processes, products, rules and culture.

Tacit and explicit knowledge are the two components of organizational knowledge.Tacit knowledge refers to the personal knowledge embedded in individual experience andinvolves intangible factors, such as personal beliefs, perspective, and the value system.Explicit knowledge refers to the contents that has been captured in some tangible form andcan be articulated into formal language, including grammatical statements (words andnumbers), mathematical expressions, specifications, manuals, etc. Knowledge creation isa spiraling process of interactions between explicit and tacit knowledge.

Knowledge is an important element in the world of business and the ability to distributeand duplicate knowledge across a range of people is the key to its value in organizations.There is a need to understand the different phases of organizational knowledge creationand to recognize that each phase is influenced by the access to sources of guidance, andthe encouragement to disseminate knowledge to others

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SHORT QUESTIONS

1. Define knowledge.2. Illustrate by example the possible relationship between knowledge and data.3. What is meant by organizational knowledge?4. What is tacit knowledge?5. What is explicit knowledge?6. Compare the properties of tacit ant explicit knowledge.7. What are the sources for knowledge?

LONG QUESTIONS

1. What are the differences between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge? Givean example of each.

2. List down the various attributes of knowledge and support each with an example.3. Describe how knowledge is formed in an organization?4. Enumerate different application areas of tacit and explicit knowledge.5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of tacit ant explicit knowledge?6. Explain Nonaka’s knowledge creation framework.7. Write a detailed account on knowledge abstraction, conversion and diffusion.

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UNIT III

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

3.1 INTRODUCTION

Today’s business environment witnesses decline in many of the well establishedorganization, diminishing competitive power in the global economy coupled with and theneed for organizational renewal and transformation forced many organization to feel theimportance of organizational learning. Many senior managers are also convinced ofimportance in improving organizational learning. Knowledge management must enableorganizational learning, not just by giving it direction, but also by permitting, encouragingand facilitating it. Through organizational learning knowledge management can be madeinto a day-to-day reality in the organization.



• Define organizational learning and skillets required for individuals• Describe the characteristics of learning organization• Outline the five learning disciplines• Construct an architecture for organizational learning• How to capture and codify knowledge• Analyse how tacit knowledge is captured• How knowledge repositories functions• Know the KM application domains• Define collaborative platforms and outline its features

3.3 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING

Companies that build competitive advantage through effective information andknowledge management must continually refresh and update their intellectual capital. Thisis the process of organizational learning. Learning is primarily a process of acquiring,assimilating and internalizing inputs for effective and varied uses when required. Learning isthe acquisition of useful new knowledge, ideas, skills and/or behaviour patterns. Learning

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can be from one’s own experience, from each other, and from customers, suppliers andbusiness patterns.

Applying the concept of learning to organizations, organizational learning can bedescribed as the collective learning of the organization. While it does involve learning ofindividual employees, it is more than just the sum of learning of its individual members.Organizational learning is the process by which the organization acquires, retains and usesinformation and ideas for its development and for strengthening its self-learning and self-renewing capacity.

Organizational learning thus has the crucial and continuing responsibility for capitalizingon knowledge as the source and base of a leading competitive edge. Organizational learningas the means of acquiring and generating knowledge and skills (i.e., operational knowledge),hence, becomes a key internal driver of the externally focused enterprise strategy. Hence,each organization must build capabilities for managing knowledge and strengthening learning.It is the connection between knowledge and learning which establishes organizational focusand strategy.

3.4 THE CONCEPT OF ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING

The term organizational learning refers to continuous improvement of existingapproaches and processes and adaptation to change, leading to new goals and/orapproaches. Learning needs have to be embedded in the way the organization works. Theterm embedded means that learning:

• Is a regular part of the daily work?• Is practiced at personal, work unit, and organizational levels• Results in solving problems at source• Is focused on sharing knowledge throughout the organization• Is driven by opportunities to affect significant c change and do better

Organizational learning is the capacity or processes within an organization to maintainor improve performance based on experience. Learning is a systems-level phenomenon,because it stays within the organization even if individuals change. Learning is as much atask as the production and delivery of goods and services. While companies do not usuallyregard learning as function of production, research on successful firms indicates that threelearning-related factors are important for their success:

(a) Well-developed core competencies that serve as launch point for new productsand services,

(b) An attitude that supports continuous improvement in the business’s value-addedchain,

(c) The ability to fundamentally renew or revitalize business function based on need.

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(d) These factors identify some of the qualities of an effective learning organizationthat diligently pursues a constantly enhances knowledge base. This knowledgeallows for the development of competencies and lead to incremental ortransformational change. In these instances, there is assimilation and utilization ofknowledge and some kind of integrated learning system to support such “actionablelearning”. Indeed, an organization’s ability to survive and grow is based onadvantages that stem from core competencies that represent collective learning.These can be generalized as follows:

Knowledge acquisition. This stage deals with the development or creation of skills,insights and relationships.

Knowledge sharing. This stage involves the dissemination of the learning throughout theorganization.

Knowledge utilization. This stage provides the integration of learning so that it is broadlyavailable and can be generalized to new situations.

Sources for learning include learning at the individual level of an employee, employeeideas, research and development (R&D), customer input, best practice sharing andbenchmarking.

Learning at individual level

Learning at the individual level can be conceptualized as the process of obtaining andretaining skills and information with relevant aptitude that leads to changes and improvementsin action and decision making. The process of organizational learning is, however, less wellunderstood than individual learning. All learning can be characterised as occurring atthe individual level. The focus of an organization should be on improving the learning, skillsand hence competitive advantage of individuals. However, to ensure their effectiveness,individuals have to be able to fully integrate with and be able to maximise the benefits oflearning at the organizational level. In this way, the effective organization ensures that anindividual’s actions and learning are both supported by, and providing support to, theorganization as a whole. Acting together, the individuals that make up the organization areable to learn, work and compete better than they could on their own.

Skill sets needed by individuals for organizational learning

1. Ability to understand the culture of the organization2. Ability to let go of old myths3. Ability to notice new patterns- language as an indicator

• Multitasking• Miniaturization• Short-term memory overload• Low level depression and increasingly angry culture• Changes of speed

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4. Ability to develop a clear perspective/ open perspective• Ability to relax• Sense of humor - ability to laugh• Knowing your hishhtory• Insulate hot buttons and fears• Ability to scan for information• Pretend you are an anthropologist and examine what leaders reward, evaluate,

and control; what they are paying attention to; and what are they measuring5. Ability to generate energy with coaching and building self-esteem; ability to bring

energy into a room.6. Ability to learn forever7. Ability to own your own career8. Ability to create “safe” environment for others9. Ability to see what’s coming and what’s leaving so you can make choices faster;

faster response time

3.4.1 Definitions for organizational learning

(a) “Organizational Learning occurs when the mental models, schemes orcognitive maps that guide behaviour are modified through recognition of achange in information concerning an organization’s environment”.

(b) “Organizational Learning occurs through shared insights, knowledge andmental models”.

(c) “Organizational learning occurring when individuals, acting from their ownimages and maps, detect a mismatch of outcomes to expectation whichconfirms or disconfirms organization theory-in-use”

(d) “The transformation process that translates individual learning intoorganizational domain is termed organizational learning”.

It is a process by which individuals share their insights, knowledge and ideas todevelop a common understanding. Through this process of learning, organizations enrichtheir knowledge base, which helps them in knowledge generation and in the long run toface external challenges. An innovative or a product organization would strive to be alearning organization ‘skilled at creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and modifyingits behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights’.

Organizational learning is the development of new knowledge and insights that havethe potential to influence behavior. Organizational learning occurs when members of anorganization share associations, cognitive systems, and memories. Learning by organizationsrelies on the people and groups to serve as agents for the transfer of knowledge. Overtime, what is learned is built into the structure, culture, and memory of the organization.Lessons (i.e., knowledge) remain within the organization even though individuals may change.The phrases organizational learning and learning organizations are used interchangeably.

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3.4.2 Benefits of organizational learning

Organizational learning can result in:

1. Enhancing value to customers through new and improved products and services;

2. Developing new business opportunities;

3. Reducing errors, defects, waste, and related costs;

4. Improving responsiveness and cycle time performance;

5. Increasing productivity and effectiveness in the use of all resources throughout theOrganization; and

6. Enhancing the organization’s performance in fulfilling its public responsibilities andservice as a good citizen

3.4.3 What is a ‘learning organization’?

A learning organization is an organization which has in place systems, mechanismsand processes that are used to continually enhance its capabilities and those who workwith it or for it, to achieve sustainable objectives - for them and the communities in whichthey participate. Learning – both individual and organizational – is the process by whichknowledge assets are increased over time. Every organization learns. But, to be successful,managers must seek to align both individual and collective learning with the strategic intentof the firm. This means that as executive design their business strategies, they need todetermine what, specifically – and when – their firms need to learn, and create mechanismto do so.

For example, if an insurance firm is trying to make inroads into the investmentmanagement business, its executives will have to make sure that their firm learns the newbusiness while continuing to advance its knowledge of the insurance business. A knowledgemanagement strategy, therefore, may include hiring new talent, designing new projects,implementing job rotations, and altering organizational structures to facilitate the flow ofthe new knowledge between existing and new business.

Key characteristics of learning organization

1. Team work and team learning.2. Systemic thinking and mental models.3. Free vertical and horizontal flow of information.4. Education and training of the whole workforce.5. Learning reward system for employees.6. Continuous improvement of work.7. Flexibility of employees and company strategies.8. Decentralized hierarchies and participative management.9. Constant experimentation.10. Supportive corporate cultures.

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3.4.4 Orientation for effective knowledge dissemination

Organizational learning does not always occur in the linear fashions implied by typicallearning models. Learning may take place in planned or informal ways. Moreover, knowledgeand skill acquisition takes place in the sharing and utilization stages. It is not something thatoccurs simply by organizing an ‘acquisition effort’. The following are some of the commonlyemployed orientation by organizations in their quest for effective knowledge dissemination.

(a) Knowledge sources

Organization needs to carefully assess their source of knowledge, i.e. they need tofinalise the extent whether new knowledge is to be developed internally or seek inspirationin external ideas. This distinction is seen as the difference between innovation and adaptationor imitation. Both of these approaches have great merit as opposing styles rather than asnormative or negative behaviors.

(b) Learning at the individual level

Learning at the individual level can be conceptualized as the process of obtaining andretaining skills and information with relevant aptitude that leads to changes and improvementsin action and decision making. The process of organizational learning is, however, less wellunderstood than individual learning. All learning can be characterised as occurring at theindividual level. The focus of an organization should be on improving the learning, skills andhence competitive advantage of individuals. However, to ensure their effectiveness,individuals have to be able to fully integrate with and be able to maximise the benefits oflearning at the organizational level. In this way, the effective organization ensures that anindividual’s actions and learning are both supported by, and providing support to, theorganization as a whole. This is described as the “creation of shared understandings”.Acting together, the individuals that make up the organization are able to learn, work andcompete better than they could on their own.

(c) Focus on products and processes

Organizations need to decide whether they would prefer to accumulate knowledgeabout product and service outcomes or about the basic processes underlying variousproducts.

(d) Documentation

Knowledge is viewed in personal terms as something an individual possesses byvirtue of education or experience. This kind of knowledge is lost when a longtime employeeleave an organization; processes and insights evaporate because they were not shared ormade a part of collective memory. On the other hand, knowledge is defined in moreobjective, social terms, as being a consensually supported result of information processing.This calls for the development of organizational memory or a publicly documented body ofknowledge.

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(e) Knowledge dissemination

An organization need to establish an atmosphere in which learning evolves or in whicha more structured, controlled approach induces learning. In the more structured approach,the company decides that valuable insights or methods should be shared and used byothers across the organization. It uses written communication and formal education methodsor certifies learning through writing the procedure down. In the more informal approach,learning is spread through encounters between role models and gatekeepers whocompellingly reinforce learning. In another approach, learning occurs when members of anoccupational group or work team share their experiences in ongoing dialogue.

(f) Organizational learning

Organizational learning needs to encounter on methods and tools, to improve what isalready being done or on testing the assumptions underling what is being done. Organizationalperformance problems are more likely due to a lack of awareness or inability to articulateand check underlying assumptions than to a function of poor efficiency. Generally, theselearning capabilities reinforce each other.

(g) Value-chaining

Organization need to build an index of their core competencies and learning investmentsthat need to be valued and supported. Learning investments include allocation of personneland money to develop knowledge and skill over time, including training and education,pilot projects, developmental assignments, available resources, and so on. If a particularorganization is heavily focused on heavy engineering, it would have a natural bias in favorof substantial learning investments in related areas. The value chain can be classified intotwo categories: internally directed activities of a ‘design and make’ nature, and those moreexternally focused of a ‘sell and deliver’ nature. The former include R&D, engineering, andmanufacturing. The latter are sales, distribution, and service activities.

(h) Skill development

An organization need to develop both individual and group skills. In this way, anorganization can assess how it is doing and improve either one of those skills. It can alsodevelop better ways of integrating individual learning programs with team needs by takinga harder look at the value of group development.

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KM Viewpoint 1.1 EIU Study Survey: The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) in co-operation with IBM ConsultingGroup had conducted an intensive study of emerging Organizational Learning (OL) andKnowledge Management (KM) practices around the globe. Responses were receivedfrom 345 companies in 26 countries (1999). Typical OL activities undertaken are:

• behavioral changes to improve teamwork; • changing individual and corporate behaviour, • facilitating ongoing, team based and collaborative management , • leading individual or team training activities, • assembly of multi-disciplinary teams to solve business problems.

Learning Organizations are considered masters of managing change for financial gainsOL, in its broadest sense, refers to a variety of practices and values that enable a companyto explore continually new directions and anticipate or even lead change in the markeplace and society at large. Benefits 1. Learning enhances a company’s speed, innovative-ness and adaptability

Technological change, shorter product life cycle, market shifts and global competitionaffect some industries more than others, but all companies need to synthesizinformation and generate knowledge faster. Learning addresses a company’s desire tobetter anticipate and adapt to changing market conditions, reach the market with morinnovative products faster than competitors and maximize responsiveness tocustomers needs. Learning organizations are effective not only at creating and/oacquiring new knowledge; buy also in applying that knowledge to continuallyimprove their tasks and activities.

2. Learning builds shareholder value for the long term. Managerial accounting systemthat currently guide investment and strategy offer little insight into the value thahuman know-how, creativity and experience add to products and services. Skandiand other companies now report intangible assets in their balance sheet. Theyrecognize that learning is the key contributor to value addition, in the long run.

Enabling factors 1. Formal business procedures must be balanced with the freedom to create

Business organizations discourage people from learning all the time. Every timsomeone tells you to do something a certain way because that is the standard waythey are telling you not to learn. This type of over-prescription underminelearning. A Company’s official chain of command and formal businesprocedures must co-exist with informal personal networks. Best leadership createa balance in the organization between reaping and sowing; production on onhand and building capacity, competence and personal relations on the other.

2. Every company has a different approach. There is no roadmap to becoming learning organization.

3. Culture is the key. A spirit of openness and enthusiasm for continues learningoccurs, when leaders actively and continuously promote that values.4. Individual

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3.4.5 Characteristics of learning organization

• They provide continuous learning opportunities.• They use learning to reach their goals.• They link individual performance with organizational performance.• They foster inquiry and dialogue, making it safe for people to share openly.• They embrace creative tension as a source of energy and renewal.• They are continuously aware of and interact with their environment.

3.4.6 Characteristics of the Traditional organization Vs Learning organization

Element Characteristics of a learning Organization Organization Structure Flat hierarchy, decentralized, Dynamic networks Availability of information Systems in place to make information freely

available Trust culture High level of trust, Self mastery practiced Communication Decentralized communication processes Innovation Innovation and risk taking encouraged Managers style Facilitator, Coaching style Learning systems Continual learning and double loop learning

Element Traditional Organization

Learning Organization

Shared Values Efficiency Effectiveness

Excellence Organizational Renewal

Management Style Control Facilitator Coach

Strategy/Action Plan Top down approach Road map

Everyone is consulted Learning map

Structure Hierarchy Flat structure Dynamic networks

Staff Characteristics People who know (experts) Knowledge is power

People who learn Mistakes tolerated as parof learning

Distinctive Staff Skills

Adaptive learning Generative learning

Measurement System Financial measures Both financial and nonfinancial measures

Teams Working groups Departmental boundaries

Cross functional teams

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3.4.7 Facilitators for organizational learning

The following are some of the key facilitators for organizational learning:

1. The presence of strong marketing research functions for effective environmentalscanning.

2. Measures to ensure that feedback regarding organizational functions and processesare adequate.

3. Development of metrics to gauge the effectiveness of organizational learningsystems.

4. Process of encouraging pilot testing and experimentation.5. Availability of core subject matter, experts to provide leadership to learning activities.6. Free flow of information within the organization.7. Continuous learning within the organization.8. Continuous process and system improvement and re-engineering.9. Proper management support.

3.4.8 The five learning disciplines of Peter Senge

In his book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge (1990) defined a learning organizationas “… a place where people continually expand their capacity to create results theytruly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, wherecollective aspiration is set free and where people are continually learning how tolearn”. Peter Senge, in particular, posits the radically humanist idea that organizationsshould become places where people can begin to realize their highest aspirations. He talksof developing worker commitment not compliance; of building shared visions, not imposinga mission statement from above; of effectively reconciling individual and organizationalobjectives. Senge described the core of a learning organization’s work as based upon fivelearning disciplines, which represented lifelong programs of both personal and organizationallearning and practice. These include:

(1) Personal Mastery — Personal mastery is what Peter Senge describes as one of thecore disciplines needed to build a learning organization. Personal mastery applies to individuallearning, and Senge says that organizations cannot learn until their members begin to learn.Personal Mastery has two components. First, one must define what one is trying to achieve(a goal). Second, one must have a true measure of how close one is to the goal. Individualswho practice personal mastery experience other changes in their thinking. They learn touse both reason and intuition to create. They become systems thinkers who see theinterconnectedness of everything around them and, as a result, they feel more connectedto the whole. It is exactly this type of individual that one needs at every level of anorganization for the organization to learn. Traditional managers have always thought thatthey had to have all the answers for their organization. The managers of the learningorganization know that their staff has the answers. The job of the manager in the learningorganization is to be the teacher or coach who helps unleash the creative energy in eachindividual. Organizations learn through the synergy of the individual learners.

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(2) Mental Models — a mental model is one’s way of looking at the world. It involveseach individual reflecting upon, continually clarifying, and improving his or her internalpictures of the world, and seeing how they shape personal actions and decisions. It is aframework for the cognitive processes of our mind. In other words, it determines how wethink and act. A simple example of a mental model comes from an exercise described inThe Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. Learning only comes from seeing the world the way itreally is.

(3) Shared Vision — what does it mean to have a shared vision? A shared vision beginswith the individual, and an individual vision is something that one person holds as a truth. Itmeans individuals building a sense of commitment within particular workgroups, developingshared images of common and desirable futures, and the principles and guiding practicesto support the journey to such futures.

The shared vision of an organization must be built of the individual visions of its members.What this means for the leader in the Learning Organization is that the organizational visionmust not be created by the leader, rather, the vision must be created through interactionwith the individuals in the organization. Only by compromising between the individual visionsand the development of these visions in a common direction can the shared vision becreated. The leader’s role in creating a shared vision is to share an own vision with theemployees. This should not be done to force that vision on others, but rather to encourageothers to share their vision too. Based on these visions, the organization’s vision shouldevolve.

It would be naive to expect that the organization can change overnight from having avision that is communicated from the top to an organization where the vision evolves fromthe visions of all the people in the organization. The organization will have to go throughmajor change for this to happen, and this is where OD can play a role. In the developmentof a learning organization, the OD-consultant would use the same tools as before, just ona much broader scale.

(4) Team Learning — this involves relevant thinking skills that enable groups of peopleto develop intelligence and an ability that is greater than the sum of individual members’talents. It is a discipline that starts with “dialogue,” the capacity of members of a team tosuspend assumptions and enter into a genuine “thinking together.” Team learning is vitalbecause teams, not individuals, are the fundamental learning unit in modern organizations.

(5) Systems thinking — this involves a way of thinking about, and a language for describingand understanding forces and interrelationships that shape the behavior of systems. It is aparadigm premised upon the primacy of the whole —the antithesis of the traditional evolutionof the concept of learning in western cultures. This discipline helps managers and employeesalike to see how to change systems more effectively, and to act more in tune with the largerprocesses of the natural and economic world.

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Once we embrace the idea that systems thinking can improve individual learning byinducing people to focus on the whole system, and by providing individuals with skills andtools to enable them to derive observable patterns of behavior from the systems they seeat work, the next step is to justify why systems thinking is even more important toorganizations of people. Here, the discipline of systems thinking is most clearly interrelatedwith the other disciplines, especially with mental models, shared vision, and team learning.

3.5 RCHITECTURE FOR ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING

Learning Organisation is an organisation that purposefully takes steps to createarchitecture to enhance and maximize the potential for explorative and exploitativeorganizational learning to take place.

Team-Based Structure - Teams are the best way of mixing energy with experience andfor any organisation teams are good sources of attaining targets effectively and efficiently.Team based structures support continuous learning and pooling of experience and sharingknowledge. Looking at these benefits, a team-based structure is necessary for anyorganization aiming to become a learning organisation.

Empowered Employees - Employee empowerment will make sure that employee takefull responsibility for their actions and they work in an open environment this will alsofacilitate growth of employees and encourage innovation as well as instills the ability tothink out of the box. Empowered employees will take more initiative & they will try to

solve the problem where and when it will arise; this makes organizational climate moreconducive to learning.

Open Information - Information should be provided to everyone. Transparency indecision-making must be maintained. Open information builds trust and confidence ofemployees in the management and reduces the employee-management conflict. It alsoleads to pooling & sharing of experience and mutual learning. Even information consideredobsolete or rudimentary may turn out to be of importance and may result into organizationalgrowth.

The Linkages Team based structure, empowered employees and open information allcoexist and they are linked with each other as essentials. The team structure will facilitatesharing of common resources and objectives. Overall performance of the team or groupwill depend upon total of performances of each individual as well as team will make acoordinated effort to attain its targets or to perform effectively and efficiently. No organizationcan empower its employees with out sharing information with them so to empoweremployees the organization has to share information with employees and this connectsopen information with empowered employees. Employees who have information and whoalso posses the power to act and decide will definitely try their level best to improve theperformance of the organization also they will be open towards learning & information

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sharing. Over and above these elements, the most important ingredient for a learningorganization is Knowledge Management- being able to capitalize on the knowledgemembers of the organization. The knowledge or enriched experience that might not bewritten down or codified in formal documents. As employees do their jobs, they gainknowledge about the tasks they perform and learn the best ways to get certain things doneand solve specific problems. Through knowledge management, this information can beshared and used by other employees working in the same organization. Certainly, thepeople performing a certain job are likely to learn the most about it. Knowledge managementseeks to share this learning and knowledge throughout an organization.

Middle-Down-Up Management

An integrative architectural framework that unites the concepts of learningorganization and knowledge management is presented for the readers to get ameaningful view. The model, depicted in Figure 3.1, is based on Senge’s five“disciplines” of learning organizations:

1. Systems Thinking. A conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools thathas been developed over the past fifty years, to make the full patterns clearer, andto help us see how to change them effectively.

2. Personal Mastery. The discipline of continually clarifying and deepening ourpersonal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeingreality objectively.

3. Mental Models. Deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even picturesor images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.

4. Building Shared Vision. The practice of shared vision involves the skills ofunearthing shared “pictures of the future” that foster genuine commitment andenrollment rather than compliance.

5. Team Learning. The discipline of team learning starts with “dialogue,” the capacityof members of a team to suspend assumptions and enter into a genuine “thinkingtogether”.

Figure 3.1 Middle-Down-Up Management.

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Learning occurs at three levels: individual (personal mastery), group (team learning),and organizational (building shared vision). Mental models underlie all learning. They caneither impede it by going unnoticed or accelerate it by being reflected, surfaced andexamined. On the other, learning may change mental models. The fifth discipline, SystemsThinking, integrates the other four by enhancing each of them.

Adapting the middle-up-down management process of Nonaka and Takeuchi, let uspropose middle-down-up approach. In this framework, middle managers play an importantrole by working as a “bridge” between the broad visions of the top management and theconcrete realities of business that front-line employees confront. They figure out the strategicintentions of the top management and translate them into a conceptual frameworkcomprehensible to their subordinates. By signaling their own priorities, assumptions, andways of thinking and acting, leaders manifest espoused values. These conscious and explicitlyarticulated values, however, are not necessarily internalized by the organization but remainto be questioned, debated, and challenged in dialogue, until the team has a shared perceptionof the success based on these values, and the value goes through a process of cognitivetransformation into a belief and, ultimately, and assumption. In this leadership process, theimages and maps of the conceptual framework are then incorporated into organizationaltheory-in-use, and explicit knowledge is internalized into tacit knowledge.

When people share common mental models congruent with the shared vision, theycan be empowered: they will know how to operate in various business settings as long asthe overall business reality remains invariant. On the contrary, “to empower people in anunaligned organization can be counterproductive”. Shared vision emerges from the personalvisions of individuals in the management process, in which the mental models are manifestedon the surface of the organizational culture, and the tacit knowledge is externalized intoexplicit knowledge.

Revisiting this model, Figure 3.2 depicts how the levels of enterprise architecturecorrespond to the model.

Figure 3.2 Organizational Learning and Enterprise Architecture

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On the strategic level, business activity is monitored (BAM) through the managementprocess, exposing organizational theory-in-use, or actual behavior, in the form of real-timemanagement dashboards facilitating strategic decision-making. The shared vision of theorganization is built as a steering process of external adaptation and internal integration.The output of this process is the new and revised models describing the business processeson the highest level. Simulation capabilities are also employed as the means of optimizingthe processes.

The tactical level is about coordination and associated with team learning. Thestrategic intent of the top management is translated to unique end-to-end core businessprocesses. These processes can be configured by composing underlying context-independent services and coordinating the interplay of executable processes. Choreographyis the prevalent means to describe relatively static collaborative processes; new conceptsare emerging to address more dynamic collaborations. This is where the team learningoccurs: the coordination of the collaborative effort requires a significant amount of dialoguebetween the process participants. Team learning also has an effect on tacit knowledgewithin the organization through the leadership process.

The operational level embraces the operational and information model of theorganization in the form of services. The services are context-independent, idempotentfaculties optimized to perform their predefined function. Typically, orchestration describesthe sequence and conditions in which the service accesses underlying resources,binding them to its execution context. Thus this level corresponds to personal mastery: thepurpose of orchestration is to optimize resource utilization and streamline service efficiencyagainst some performance measure defined by the management process.

The model reflects the reality as perceived by the organization. It is the vast repositoryof “sources of truth” dispersed in enterprise information systems and databases, theknowledge of the organization. Thereby, it can be equated to mental models in the Middle-Down-Up model.

3.6 CAPTURING AND CODIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge capture is a process by which the expert’s thoughts and experiences arecaptured. In a broader view, knowledge capture may also include capturing knowledgefrom other sources such as books, technical manuscripts, and drawings. Knowledge hasto be captured and codified in such a way that it can become a part of the existing knowledgebase of the organization. Knowledge capture is a demanding mental process in which aknowledge developer collaborates with the expert to convert expertise into a codedprogram. Three important steps are involved:

1. Using an appropriate tool to elicit information from the expert

2. Interpreting the information and inferring the expert’s underlying knowledge andreasoning process

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3. Using the interpretation to build the rules that represent the expert’s thoughtprocesses or solutions.

We need to capture both types of knowledge – explicit and tacit. Tacit knowledgemanagement is the process of capturing the experience and expertise of the individual in anorganization and making it available to anyone who needs it. The capture of explicitknowledge is the systematic approach of capturing, organizing, and refining information ina way that makes information easy to find, and facilitates learning and problem solving.

The approach used to capture, describe, and subsequently code knowledge dependson the type of knowledge: explicit knowledge is already well described, but we may needto abstract and summarize this content. Tacit knowledge, on the other hand, may requiremuch more significant up-front analysis and organization before it can be suitably describedand represented. A wide variety of techniques may be used to capture and codify knowledgewhich is described here.

3.6.1 Capturing tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge capture requires free access to a cooperative and articulate expert.In most cases, the knowledge developer does not have the luxury of deciding on theexpert. However, the developer must be able to identify real expertise and how well aparticular expert’s know-how suits the project.

(a) Expert Evaluation

There are several indicators of expertise:

• Indicators of expertise

o The expert commands genuine respect.

o The expert is found to be consulted by people in the organization, when someproblem arises.

o The expert possesses self confidence and he/she has a realistic view of the limitations.

o The expert avoids irrelevant information, uses facts and figures.

o The expert is able to explain properly and he/she can customize his/her presentationaccording to the level of the audience.

o The expert exhibits his/her depth of the detailed knowledge and his/her quality ofexplanation is exceptional.

o The expert is not arrogant regarding his/her personal information.

• Experts qualifications

o The expert should know when to follow hunches, and when to make exceptions.

o The expert should be able to see the big picture.

o The expert should posse’s good communication skills.

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o The expert should be able to tolerate stress.

o The expert should be able to think creatively.

o The expert should be able to exhibit self-confidence in his/her thought and actions.

o The expert should maintain credibility.

o The expert should operate within a schema-driven/structured orientation.

o The expert should use chunked knowledge.

o The expert should be able to generate enthusiasm as well as motivation.

o The expert should share his/her expertise willingly and without hesitation.

o The expert should emulate an ideal teacher’s habits.

Experts levels of expertise

Highly expert persons.Moderately expert problem solvers.New experts.

Capturing single versus multiple experts’ tacit knowledge:

To ensure the reliability and quality of the KM system, a prime consideration is whetherto tap one expert or a panel of experts and this decision is based on several factor such asthe complexity of the problem, the criticality of the project to the organization, the types ofexpert available, and the funds allocated for building the KM system. Each alternative hasadvantages and limitations.

Advantages of working with a single expert:

• Ideal for building a simple KM system with only few rules.

• Ideal when the problem lies within a restricted domain.

• The single expert can facilitate the logistics aspects of coordination arrangementsfor knowledge capture.

• Problem related/personal conflicts are easier to resolve.

• The single expert tends to share more confidentiality.

Disadvantages of working with a single expert:

• Often, the experts’ knowledge is found to be not easy to capture.• The single expert usually provides a single line of reasoning.• They are more likely to change meeting schedules.• The knowledge is often found to be dispersed.

Advantages of working with multiple (team) experts:

• Complex problem domains are usually benefited.

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• Stimulates interaction.

• Listening to a multitude of views allows the developer to consider alternative waysof representing knowledge.

• Formal meetings are sometimes better environment for generating thoughtfulcontributions.

Disadvantages of working with multiple (team) experts:

• Disagreements can frequently occur.• Coordinating meeting schedules are more complicated.• Harder to retain confidentiality.• Overlapping mental processes of multiple experts can result in a process loss.• Often requires more than one knowledge developer.

(b) Developing Relationship with Experts

Creating the right impression: The knowledge developer must learn to use psychology,common sense, and technical as well as marketing skills to attract the experts respect andattention.

Understanding of the expert’s style of expression:

Experts are usually found to use one of the following styles of expression:

Procedure type: These types of experts are found to be logical, verbal and alwaysprocedural.

Storyteller type: These types of experts are found to be focused on the content ofthe domain at the expense of the solution.

Godfather type: These types of experts are found to be compulsive to take over.

Salesperson type: These types of experts are found to spend most of the time dancingaround the topic, explaining why his/her solution is the best.

Preparation for the session:

• Before making the first appointment, the knowledge developer must acquire someknowledge about the problem and the expert.

• Initial sessions can be most challenging/critical.

• The knowledge developer must build the trust.

• The knowledge developer must be familiar with project terminology d he/she mustreview the existing documents.

• The knowledge developer should be able to make a quick rapport with the expert.

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Deciding the location for the session:

• Protocol calls for the expert to decide the location.

• The expert is usually more comfortable in having his/her necessary tools andinformation available close to him/her.

• The meeting place should be quiet and free of interruptions.

Approaching multiple experts:

• Individual approach: The knowledge developer holds sessions with one expertat a time.

• Approach using primary and secondary experts:

o The knowledge developer hold sessions with the senior expert early in theknowledge capture program for the clarification of the plan.

o For a detailed probing, he/she may ask for other experts’ knowledge.

• Small groups approach:

o Experts gather together in one place, discuss the problem domain, andusually provide a pool of information.

o Experts’ responses are monitored, and the functionality of each expert istested against the expertise of the others.

o This approach requires experience in assessing tapped knowledge, as wellas cognition skills.

o The knowledge developer must deal with the issue of power and its effecton expert’s opinion.

(c) Fuzzy Reasoning & Quality of Knowledge Capture

• Sometimes, the information gathered from the experts via interviewing is not preciseand it involves fuzziness and uncertainty.

• The fuzziness may increase the difficulty of translating the expert’s notions intoapplicable rules.

Analogies/Uncertainties:

• In the course of explaining events, experts can use analogies (comparing a problemwith a similar problem which has been encountered in possibly different settings,months or years ago).

• An expert’s knowledge or expertise represents the ability to gather uncertaininformation as input and to use a plausible line of reasoning to clarify the fuzzydetails.

• Belief, an aspect of uncertainty, tends to describe the level of credibility.

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• People may use different kinds of words in order to express belief.

• These words are often paired with qualifiers such as highly, extremely.

Understanding experience:

• Knowledge developers can benefit from their understanding/knowledge of cognitivepsychology.

• When a question is asked, then an expert operates on certain stored informationthrough deductive, inductive, or other kinds of problem-solving methods.

• The resulting answer is often found to be the culmination of the processing ofstored information.

• The right question usually evokes the memory of experiences that produced goodand appropriate solutions in the past.

Sometimes, how quickly an expert responds to a question depends on the clarity ofcontent, whether the content has been recently used, and how well the expert has understoodthe question.

Problem with the language:

How well the expert can represent internal processes can vary with their command ofthe language they are using and the knowledge developer’s interviewing skills.

The language may be unclear in the following number of ways:

• Comparative words (e.g., better, faster) are sometimes left hanging.• Specific words or components may be left out of an explanation.• Absolute words and phrases may be used loosely.• Some words always seem to have a built-in ambiguity.

(d) Interviewing as a Tacit Knowledge Capture Tool

Advantages of using interviewing as a tacit knowledge capture tool:

• It is a flexible tool.• It is excellent for evaluating the validity of information.• It is very effective in case of eliciting information regarding complex matters.• Often people enjoy being interviewed.

Interviews can range from the highly unstructured type to highly structured type.

• The unstructured types are difficult to conduct, and they are used in the case whenthe knowledge developer really needs to explore an issue.

• The structured types are found to be goal-oriented, and they are used in the casewhen the knowledge developer needs specific information.

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• Structured questions can be of the following types:

o Multiple-choice questions.

o Dichotomous questions.

o Ranking scale questions.

• In semi structured types, the knowledge developer asks predefined questions, but

he/she allows the expert some freedom in expressing his/her answer.

Guidelines for successful interviewing:

• Setting the stage and establishing rapport.• Phrasing questions.• Listening closely/avoiding arguments.• Evaluating the session outcomes.

Reliability of the information gathered from experts:

Some uncontrolled sources of error that can reduce the information’s reliability:

• Expert’s perceptual slant.• The failure in expert’s part to exactly remember what has happened.• Fear of unknown in the part of expert.• Problems with communication.• Role bias.

o Errors in part of the knowledge developer: validity problems are often caused by theinterviewer effect (something about the knowledge developer colours the responseof the expert). Some of the effects can be as follows

• Gender effect

• Age effect

• Race effect

o Problems encountered during interviewing• Response bias.• Inconsistency.• Problem with communication.• Hostile attitude.• Standardizing the questions.• Setting the length of the interview.

o Process of ending the interview:• The end of the session should be carefully planned.

• One procedure calls for the knowledge developer to halt the questioning a few minutes before the scheduled ending time, and to summarize the key points of the session.

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• This allows the expert to comment a schedule a future session.

• Many verbal/nonverbal cues can be used for ending the interview.

o Issues: Many issues may arise during the interview, and to be prepared for the mostimportant ones, the knowledge developer can consider the following questions:

• How would it be possible to elicit knowledge from the experts who can not say what they mean or can not mean what they say?

• How to set up the problem domain.

• How to deal with uncertain reasoning processes.

• How to deal with the situation of difficult relationships with expert(s).

• How to deal with the situation when the expert does not like the knowledge developer for some reason.

(e) Rapid Prototyping in interviews:

• Rapid prototyping is an approach to building KM systems, in which knowledge isadded with each knowledge capture session.

• This is an iterative approach which allows the expert to verify the rules as they arebuilt during the session.

• This approach can open up communication through its demonstration of the KMsystem.

• Due to the process of instant feedback and modification, it reduces the risk offailure.

• It allows the knowledge developer to learn each time a change is incorporated inthe prototype.

• This approach is highly interactive.

• The prototype can create user expectations which in turn can become obstacles tofurther development effort.

3.6.2 Other knowledge capture techniques

Like any other professional, the knowledge developer must be well versed in the useof specialized knowledge capture tools. Each tool has a unique purpose, depending onwhether the capture process revolves around a single expert or multiple experts. Let usexamine other tools used in knowledge capture.

(a) On-Site Observation (Action Protocol)

• It is a process which involves observing, recording, and interpreting the expert’sproblem-solving process while it takes place.

• The knowledge developer does more listening than talking; avoids giving adviceand usually does not pass his/her own judgment on what is being observed, even

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if it seems incorrect; and most of all, does not argue with the expert while theexpert is performing the task.

• Compared to the process of interviewing, on-site observation brings the knowledgedeveloper closer to the actual steps, techniques, and procedures used by the expert.

• One disadvantage is that sometimes some experts to not like the idea of beingobserved.

• The reaction of other people (in the observation setting) can also be a problemcausing distraction.

• Another disadvantage is the accuracy/completeness of the captured knowledge.

(b) Brainstorming

• It is an unstructured approach towards generating ideas about creative solution ofa problem which involves multiple experts in a session.

• In this case, questions can be raised for clarification, but no evaluations are doneat the spot.

• Similarities (that emerge through opinions) are usually grouped together logicallyand evaluated by asking some questions like:

o What benefits are to be gained if a particular idea is followed?o What specific problems that idea can possibly solve.o What new problems can arise through this?

The general procedure for conducting a brainstorming session:

o Introducing the session.o Presenting the problem to the experts.o Prompting the experts to generate ideas.o Looking for signs of possible convergence.

• If the experts are unable to agree on a specific solution, they knowledge

developer may call for a vote/consensus.

Electronic Brainstorming

• Is a computer-aided approach for dealing with multiple experts?

• It usually begins with a pre-session plan which identifies objectives andstructures the agenda, which is then presented to the experts for approval.

• During the session, each expert sits on a PC and gets themselves engaged in apredefined approach towards resolving an issue, and then generates ideas.

• This allows experts to present their opinions through their PC’s without havingto wait for their turn.

• Usually the comments/suggestions are displayed electronically on a large screenwithout identifying the source.

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• This approach protects the introvert experts and prevents tagging commentsto individuals.

• The benefit includes improved communication, effective discussion regardingsensitive issues, and closes the meeting with concise recommendations fornecessary action.

• This eventually leads to convergence of ideas and helps to set final specifications.

• The result is usually the joint ownership of the solution.

Figure 3.3 The process of brainstorming

(c) Protocol Analysis (Think-Aloud Method)

• In this case, protocols (scenarios) are collected by asking experts to solve thespecific problem and verbalize their decision process by stating directly whatthey think.

• Knowledge developers do not interrupt in the interim.

• The elicited information is structured later when the knowledge developeranalyzes the protocol.

• Here the term scenario refers to a detailed and somehow complex sequenceof events or more precisely, an episode.

• A scenario can involve individuals and objects.

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• A scenario provides a concrete vision of how some specific human activity

can be supported by information technology.

(d) Consensus Decision Making

• Consensus decision making usually follows brainstorming.

• It is effective if and only if each expert has been provided with equal and adequateopportunity to present their views.

• In order to arrive at a consensus, the knowledge developer conducting the exercisetries to rally the experts towards one or two alternatives.

• The knowledge developer follows a procedure designed to ensure fairness andstandardization.

• This method is democratic in nature.

• This method can be sometimes tedious and can take hours.

(e) Repertory Grid

• This is a tool used for knowledge capture.

• The domain expert classifies and categorizes a problem domain using his/her ownmodel.

• The grid is used for capturing and evaluating the expert’s model.

• Two experts (in the same problem domain) may produce distinct sets of personaland subjective results.

• The grid is a scale (or a bipolar construct) on which elements can be placed withingradations.

• The knowledge developer usually elicits the constructs and then asks the domainexpert to provide a set of examples called elements.

• Each element is rated according to the constructs which have been provided.

(f) Nominal Group Technique (NGT)

• This provides an interface between consensus and brainstorming.

• Here the panel of experts becomes a Nominal Group whose meetings arestructured in order to effectively pool individual judgment.

• Idea writing is a structured group approach used for developing ideas as well asexploring their meaning and the net result is usually a written report.

• NGT is an idea writing technique.

(g) Delphi Method

• It is a survey of experts where a series of questionnaires are used to pool theexperts’ responses for solving a specific problem.

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• Each expert’s contributions are shared with the rest of the experts by using theresults from each questionnaire to construct the next questionnaire.

Concept Mapping

• It is a network of concepts consisting of nodes and links.

• A node represents a concept, and a link represents the relationship betweenconcepts.

• Concept mapping is designed to transform new concepts/propositions into theexisting cognitive structures related to knowledge capture.

• It is a structured conceptualization.

• It is an effective way for a group to function without losing their individuality.

• Concept mapping can be done for several reasons:o To design complex structures.o To generate ideas.o To communicate ideas.o To diagnose misunderstanding.

• Six-step procedure for using a concept map as a tool:o Preparation.o Idea generation.o Statement structuring.o Representation.o Interpretationo Utilization.

• Similar to concept mapping, a semantic net is a collection of nodes linked togetherto form a net.

o A knowledge developer can graphically represent descriptive/declarativeknowledge through a net.

o Each idea of interest is usually represented by a node linked by lines (calledarcs) which shows relationships between nodes.

o Fundamentally it is a network of concepts and relationships.

(i) Blackboarding

• In this case, the experts work together to solve a specific problem using theblackboard as their workspace.

• Each expert gets equal opportunity to contribute to the solution via the blackboard.

• It is assumed that all participants are experts, but they might have acquired theirindividual expertise in situations different from those of the other experts in thegroup.

• The process of blackboarding continues till the solution has been reached.

NOTES



• Characteristics of blackboard system:

1. Diverse approaches to problem-solving.

2. Common language for interaction.

3. Efficient storage of information

4. Flexible representation of information.

5. Iterative approach to problem-solving.

6. Organized participation.

7. Components of blackboard system:

8. The Knowledge Source (KS): Each KS is an independent expert observing thestatus of the blackboard and trying to contribute a higher level partial solutionbased on the knowledge it has and how well such knowledge applies to the currentblackboard state.

9. The Blackboard : It is a global memory structure, a database, or a repository thatcan store all partial solutions and other necessary data that are presently in variousstages of completion.

10. A Control Mechanism: It coordinates the pattern and flow of the problem solution.

11. The inference engine and the knowledge base are part of the blackboard system.

3.7 KNOWLEDGE CODIFICATION

After knowledge is captured, it is organized and codified in a manner amenable fortransfer and effective use. Knowledge codification is organizing and representing knowledgebefore it is accessed by authorized personnel. The organizing part is usually in the form ofa decision tree, a decision table, a frame, etc; Codification must be in a form and a structurethat will build the knowledge base which must make it accessible, explicit, and easy toaccess. From a knowledge management perspective, codification means converting tacitknowledge to explicit knowledge in a usable form for the organizational members. Froman information system view, codification is converting undocumented to documentedinformation. Regardless of view, codification is making corporate-specific knowledge (tacitand explicit) visible, accessible, and usable for value-added decision making.

The knowledge developer should note the following points before initiating knowledgecodification:

12. Recorded knowledge is often difficult to access (because it is either fragmented orpoorly organized).

13. Diffusion of new knowledge is too slow.

14. Knowledge is nor shared, but hoarded (this can involve political implications).

15. Often knowledge is not found in the proper form.

16. Often knowledge is not available at the correct time when it is needed.

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17. Often knowledge is not present in the proper location where it should be present.

18. Often the knowledge is found to be incomplete.

3.7.1 Codifying Knowledge

• An organization must focus on the following before codification:

o What organizational goals will the codified knowledge serve?

o What knowledge exists in the organization that can address these goals?

o How useful is the existing knowledge for codification?

o How would someone codify knowledge?

• Codifying tacit knowledge (in its entirety) in a knowledge base or repositoryis often difficult because it is usually developed and internalized in the minds ofthe human

3.7.2 Codification Tools and Procedures

(a) Knowledge Maps

• Knowledge maps originated from the belief that people act on things that theyunderstand and accept.

• It indicates that self-determined change is sustainable.

• Knowledge map is a visual representation of knowledge.

• They can represent explicit/tacit, formal/informal, documented / undocumented,internal / external knowledge.

• It is not a knowledge repository.

• It is a sort of directory that points towards people, documents, and repositories.

• It may identify strengths to exploit and missing knowledge gaps to fill.

• Knowledge Mapping is very useful when it is required to visualize and explorecomplex systems.

• Examples of complex systems are ecosystems, the internet, telecommunicationssystems, and customer-supplier chains in the stock market.

• Knowledge Mapping is a multi-step process.

• Key can be extracted from database or literature and placed in tabular form aslists of facts.

• These tabled relationships can then be connected in networks to form the requiredknowledge maps.

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Figure 3.4 Knowledge Map

A popular knowledge map used in human resources is a skills planner in whichemployees are matched to jobs. Steps to build the map:

• A structure of the knowledge requirements should be developed.

• Knowledge required of specific jobs must be defined.

• You should rate employee performance by knowledge competency.

• You should link the knowledge map to some training program for careerdevelopment and job advancement

(b Decision Table

• It is another technique used for knowledge codification.• It consists of some conditions, rules, and actions.

A phonecard company sends out monthly invoices to permanent customers and givesthem discount if payments are made within two weeks. Their discounting policy is asfollows:

‘If the amount of the order of phonecards is greater than Rs.35, subtract 5% ofthe order; if the amount is greater than or equal to Rs.20 and less than or equal toRs.35, subtract a 4% discount; if the amount is less than Rs.20, do not apply anydiscount.”

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We shall develop a decision table for their discounting decisions, where the conditionalternatives are ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.

Figure 3.5 Decision Table

(c) Decision Tree

• It is also a knowledge codification technique.• A decision tree is usually a hierarchically arranged semantic network.

A decision tree for the phonecard company discounting policy (as discussed above)is shown next.

Figure 3.6 Decision Tree

RULES RULES RULES RULES CONDITIONS AND ACTIONS

1 2 3 4

Paid within 2 weeks Y Y Y N Order > Rs.35 Y N N - Rs.20<= Order <= Rs.35 N Y N - Order < Rs.20 N N Y - 5% discount X 4% discount X No discount X X

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(d) Frames

• A frame is a codification scheme used for organizing knowledge through previousexperience.

• It deals with a combination of declarative and operational knowledge.

• Key elements of frames:

o Slot: A specific object being described/an attribute of an entity.

o Facet: The value of an object/slot.

(e) Production Rules

• They are conditional statements specifying an action to be taken in case a certaincondition is true.

• They codify knowledge in the form of premise-action pairs.

• Syntax: IF (premise) THEN (action)

• Example: IF income is ‘standard’ and payment history is ‘good’, THEN ‘approvehome loan’.

• In case of knowledge-based systems, rules are based on heuristics or experimentalreasoning.

• Rules can incorporate certain levels of uncertainty.

• A certainty factor is synonymous with a confidence level, which is a subjectivequantification of an expert’s judgment.

• The premise is a Boolean expression that should evaluate to be true for the rule tobe applied.

• The action part of the rule is separated from the premise by the keyword THEN.

• The action clause consists of a statement or a series of statements separated byAND’s or comma’s and is executed if the premise is true.

• In case of knowledge-based systems, planning involves:

• Breaking the entire system into manageable modules.

• Considering partial solutions and liking them through rules and procedures to arriveat a final solution.

• Deciding on the programming language(s).

• Deciding on the software package(s).

• Testing and validating the system.

• Developing the user interface.

• Promoting clarity, flexibility; making rules clear.

• Reducing unnecessary risk.

• Role of inferencing:

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• Inferencing implies the process of deriving a conclusion based on statements thatonly imply that conclusion.

• An inference engine is a program that manages the inferencing strategies.

• Reasoning is the process of applying knowledge to arrive at the conclusion.

o Reasoning depends on premise as well as on general knowledge.

o People usually draw informative conclusions.

(f Case-Based Reasoning

• It is reasoning from relevant past cases in a way similar to human’s use of pastexperiences to arrive at conclusions.

• Case-based reasoning is a technique that records and documents cases and thensearches the appropriate cases to determine their usefulness in solving new casespresented to the expert.

• The aim is to bring up the most similar historical case that matches the presentcase.

• Adding new cases and reclassifying the case library usually expands knowledge.

• A case library may require considerable database storage as well as an efficientretrieval system.

(g) Knowledge-Based Agents

• An intelligent agent is a program code which is capable of performing autonomousaction in a timely fashion.

• They can exhibit goal directed behaviour by taking initiative.

• they can be programmed to interact with other agents or humans by using someagent communication language.

• In terms of knowledge-based systems, an agent can be programmed to learn fromthe user behaviour and deduce future behaviour for assisting the user.

3.8 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT INFRASTRUCTURE OR ARCHITECTURE

Knowledge management infrastructure is a prerequisite to knowledge sharing which

is viewed as a combination of people, technology and content. KM infrastructure is completewith a dedicated team, a fully functional technical infrastructure and, most importantly,increasing awareness of the criticality of knowledge sharing amongst all employees. Thesecomponents are inseparable and interdependent as shown in Figure 3.7. People withknowledge provide content, relying on technology to transfer and share knowledge. Thiscombination provides the efficiency and performance to managing the knowledge core ofthe organization.

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Figure 3.7 Knowledge Management, a conceptual view

The People Core

• By people, here we mean knowledge workers, managers, customers, and suppliers.

• As the first step in knowledge architecture, our goal is to evaluate the existinginformation/ documents which are used by people, the applications needed bythem, the people they usually contact for solutions, the associates they collaboratewith, the official emails they send/receive, and the database(s) they usually access.

• All the above stated resources help to create an employee profile, which can laterbe used as the basis for designing a knowledge management system.

• The idea behind assessing the people core is to do a proper job in case of assigningjob content to the right person and to make sure that the flow of information thatonce was obstructed by departments now flows to right people at right time.

• In order to expedite knowledge sharing, a knowledge network has to be designedin such a way as to assign people authority and responsibility for specific kinds ofknowledge content, which means:

Identifying knowledge centers

After determining the knowledge that people need, the next step is to find out wherethe required knowledge resides, and the way to capture it successfully. Here, the termknowledge center means areas in the organization where knowledge is available forcapturing. These centers supports to identify expert(s) or expert teams in each center whocan collaborate in the necessary knowledge capture process.

Activating knowledge content satellites

This step breaks down each knowledge center into some more manageable levels,satellites, or areas.

PEOPLE TECHNOLOGY

CONTENT

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Assigning experts for each knowledge center

o After the final framework has been decided, one manager should be assigned foreach knowledge satellite that will ensure integrity of information content, access,and update.

o Ownership is a crucial factor in case of knowledge capture, knowledge transfer,and knowledge implementation.

o In a typical organization, departments usually tend to be territorial.

o Often, fight can occur over the budget or over the control of sensitive processes(this includes the kind of knowledge a department owns).

o These reasons justify the process of assigning department ownership to knowledgecontent and knowledge process.

o Adjacent / interdependent departments should be cooperative and ready to shareknowledge.

The Technical Core

• The objective of the technical core is to enhance communication as well as ensureeffective knowledge sharing.

• Technology provides a lot of opportunities for managing tacit knowledge in thearea of communication.

• Communication networks create links between necessary databases.

• Here the term technical core is meant to refer to the totality of the required hardware,software, and the specialized human resources.

• Expected attributes of technology under the technical core: Accuracy, speed,reliability, security, and integrity.

• Since an organization can be thought of as a knowledge network, the goal ofknowledge economy is to push employees towards greater efficiency/ productivityby making best possible use of the knowledge they posses.

• A knowledge core usually becomes a network of technologies designed to workon top of the organization’s existing network.

User Interface Layer

• Usually a web browser represents the interface between the user and the KMsystem.

• It is the top layer in the KM system architecture.

• The way the text, graphics, tables etc are displayed on the screen tends to simplifythe technology for the user.

• The user interface layer should provide a way for the proper flow of tacit andexplicit knowledge.

NOTES



• The necessary knowledge transfer between people and technology involvescapturing tacit knowledge from experts, storing it in knowledge base, and makingit available to people for solving complex problems.

• Features to be considered in case of user interface design:

o Consistency

o Relevancy

o Visual clarity

o Usability

o Ease of Navigation

Figure 3.8 The Transfer of Knowledge

Authorized Access Layer

• This layer maintains security as well as ensures authorized access to the knowledgecaptured and stored in the organization’s repositories.

• The knowledge is usually captured by using internet, intranet of extranet.

• An organization’s intranet represents the internal network of communicationsystems.

• Extranet is a type of intranet with extensions allowing specified people (customers,suppliers, etc.) to access some organizational information.

• Issues related to the access layer: access privileges, backups.

• The access layer is mostly focused on security, use of protocols (like passwords),and software tools like firewalls.

• Firewalls can protect against:

o E-mails that can cause problems.

o Unauthorized access from the outside world.

o Undesirable material (movies, images, music etc).

o Unauthorized sensitive information leaving the organization.

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• Firewalls can not protect against:

o Attacks not going through the firewall.

o Viruses on floppy disks.

o Weak security policies.

Collaborative Intelligence and Filtering Layer

• This layer provides customized views based on stored knowledge.

• Authorized users can find information (through a search mechanism) tailored totheir needs.

• Intelligent agents (active objects which can perceive, reason, and act in a situationto help problem solving) are found to be extremely useful in some situations.

• In case of client/server computing, there happens to be frequent and directinteraction between the client and the server.

• In case of mobile agent computing, the interaction happens between the agent andthe server.

• A mobile agent roams around the internet across multiple servers looking for thecorrect information. Some benefits can be found in the areas of:

o Fault tolerance.

o Reduced overall network load.

o Heterogeneous operation.

• Key components of this layer:

o The registration directory that develops tailored information based on user profile.

o Membership in specific services, such as sales promotion, news service etc.

o The search facility such as a search engine.

• In terms of the prerequisites for this layer, the following criteria can be considered:

o Security.

o Portability.

o Flexibility

o Scalability

o Ease of use.

o Integration.

NOTES



Knowledge-Enabling Application Layer (Value-Added Layer)

• This creates a competitive edge.

• Most of the applications help users to do their jobs in better ways.

• They include knowledge bases, discussion databases, decision support etc.

Transport Layer

• This is the most technical layer.

• It ensures to make the organization a network of relationships where electronictransfer of knowledge can be considered as routine.

• This layer associates with LAN (Local Area Network), WAN (Wide AreaNetwork), intranets, extranets, and internet.

• In this layer we consider multimedia, URL’s, connectivity speeds/bandwidths,search tools, and consider managing of network traffic.

Middleware Layer

• This layer makes it possible to connect between old and new data formats.• It contains a range of programs to do this job.

• Repositories Layer

• It is the bottom layer of the KM architecture which represents the physical layer inwhich repositories are installed.

• These may include legacy applications, intelligent data warehouses, operationaldatabases etc.

o After establishing the repositories, they are linked to form an integrated repository.

o An integrated repository brings together all the knowledge available from the repositories.

o The main advantage of an integrated knowledge repository is that the user does not care in which repository the knowledge resides. A conceptual model for an enterprise-wide integrated knowledge management system is shown in Figure 3.9.

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Figure 3.9 Integrated Knowledge Management System

3.9 REPOSITORIES

A Knowledge Repository is a computerized system that systematically andcontinuously captures, organizes, categorizes and analyses an organization’s knowledgeassets. The repository can be searched and data can be quickly retrieved. It is a collaborativesystem where people can query and browse both structured and unstructured informationin order to retrieve and preserve organizational knowledge assets and facilitate collaborativeworking. The focus of such systems tends to be on storing unstructured, but nonethelessstill explicit, forms of knowledge such as unwritten local rules and procedures. The aim isto be able to retrieve data in a context sensitive way rather than just through the use ofsimple keyword-based retrieval.

The way core knowledge is shared with other members of the knowledge communityis an important issue for organizations. The knowledge repositories act as the link betweenusers and core knowledge, operating as a single point of entry to help people to findrelevant information from many different organizational sources. A repository’s broadfunctions are to codify explicit knowledge in a logical manner and to direct the user toenabling sources (including people, organizational units or groups, web sites, policies andother avenues) which may guide and inform the knowledge seeker. The repository alsoacts as the vehicle for contributing new knowledge, and for requesting personalized serviceswhich keep the user updated on repository additions. In effect, a highly effective knowledgerepository should serve as a single point of contact for all knowledge needs.

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3.9.1 Content of knowledge repository

That there are four layers of organizational knowledge which needs to be sharedthrough repository:

1. factual (terminology, specific details and elements);

2. conceptual (theories, models, principles and generalizations);

3. procedural (skills, algorithms, techniques and methods) and

4. meta-cognitive (knowledge about knowledge, i.e. learning, thinking, problemsolving).

These forms of knowledge can be presented in a number of ways to facilitate effectiveaccess with different needs. For example, users might seek guidance on the following:

• content, such as topics, projects or reports:

• methodologies, such as research approaches, templates and data presentation

• longitudinal developments to build an historical perspective.

They will have many different needs to be supported through the repository. A majorchallenge is the anticipation of those needs so that a successful outcome is generally possible.Each repository will be presented in a different way and with different content and features,as it supports a specific knowledge community. The users’ expectations and priorities,knowledge activities and core business priorities should all be reflected in the features ofthe repository.

3.9.2 Features of knowledge repository

Knowledge repositories offer a range of options for users to explore, with the mainmenu offering access to identified knowledge sources in the organization and beyond. Therepository may include the following:

• links to organizational and external sources• search services to help users find required objects or sources• reference materials and services• discussion topics• frequently asked questions (FAQs)• case studies• real-life examples• a site where solution may be shared• a help services to support users who are unfamiliar with the system• a contribution channel to allow easy linkage of new materials• a direct link to keywords which may help find sources• an explanation of system scope and usage• information on the main knowledge support officers

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A repository is unlikely to include all these features. Its design needs to reflect userneeds and the knowledge that is most important to core business. An effective repositoryensures users can draw from an appropriate array of options which support their mostimportant knowledge activities. It cannot be all things to all workers. The selectivity of thecontent management system is its strength. Repositories need to be carefully developed toprovide this selective but detailed guidance on what is known in the organization, and bywhom.

3.9.3 The design of a knowledge repository

The design of a knowledge repository reflects the two basic components of knowledgeas an object: structure and content. Knowledge structures provide the context forinterpreting accumulated content. If the repository is conceived as a “knowledge platform”,then many different views of the content may be derived from a particular repositorystructure. A high degree of viewing flexibility enables users to alter and combine viewsdynamically and interactively and to more easily apply the knowledge to new contexts andcircumstances. At this point, knowledge-as-object becomes knowledge-as-process.

The basic structural element is the knowledge unit, a formally defined, atomic packetof knowledge content that can be labeled, indexed, stored, retrieved and manipulated.The format, size and content of knowledge units may vary depending on the type of explicitknowledge being stored and the context of their use. The repository structure also includesthe schemes for linking and cross-referencing knowledge units. These links may representconceptual associations, ordered sequences, causality or other relationships depending onthe type of knowledge being stored.

To reflect the full range of explicit organizational knowledge, repositories should striveto record significant and meaningful concepts, categories, and definitions, (declarativeknowledge), processes, actions and sequences of events (procedural knowledge), rationalefor actions or conclusions (causal knowledge), circumstances and intentions under whichthe knowledge was developed and is to be applied (specific contextual knowledge), andthe linkages among them. The repository should be indexed according to those conceptsand categories, providing access paths that are meaningful to the organization. It shouldaccommodate changes or additions to that knowledge (e.g., by linking annotations) assubsequent authors and creators adapt the knowledge for use in additional contexts.

A knowledge platform may actually consist of several repositories, each with a structureappropriate to a particular type of knowledge or content. These repositories may be logicallylinked to form a composite or “virtual” repository, the content of each providing contextfor interpreting the content of the others. (Refer Figure 1.1) For example, product literature,best sales practices, and competitor intelligence for a particular market might be storedseparately but viewed as though contained in one repository.

NOTES



Figure 1.10 Composite Designs

3.9.4 The Knowledge Refinery

The refinery represents the process for creating and distributing the knowledgecontained in the repository. This process includes five stages:

• Acquisition. Information and knowledge is either created within the organizationor can be acquired from many different internal and external sources.

• Refining. Captured knowledge, before being added to the repository, is subjectedto value-adding processes (refining) such as cleansing, labeling, indexing, sorting,abstracting, standardizing, integrating, and re-categorizing.

• Storage and Retrieval. This stage bridges upstream repository creation todownstream knowledge distribution.

• Distribution. This stage represents the mechanisms used to make repositorycontent accessible.

• Presentation. The value of knowledge is pervasively influenced by the context ofits use. Capabilities should be provided for flexibly arranging, selecting, andintegrating the knowledge content.

3.9.5 Repository lifecycle

Knowledge repositories have a lifecycle that must be managed. Once created, theytend to grow, reaching a point where they begin to collapse under their own weight, requiringmajor reorganization. Their rejuvenation requires deleting obsolete content, archiving lessactive but potentially useful content, and reorganizing what is left. Content or topic areasmay become fragmented or redundant. Reorganizing requires eliminating those redundancies,

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combining similar contributions, generalizing content for easier reapplication, andrestructuring categories as needed. Successful knowledge management organizationsproactively manage and reorganize their repositories as an ongoing activity rather thanwaiting for decline to set in before acting.

3.9.6 Repository structure

For knowledge repositories to be meaningful, their structure must reflect the structureof shared mental models or contextual knowledge tacitly held by the organization. In mostorganizations, those structures are neither well-defined nor widely shared. Yet theirexplication is essential for effectively managing explicitly encoded organizational knowledge.This requires defining what is meant by a knowledge-unit and how that collection ofknowledge units should be meaningfully indexed and categorized for ease of access, retrieval,exchange and integration. Creating “semantic consensus” even within common practicecommunities is often a difficult task, let alone across an entire organization. Different lexiconsnaturally emerge from different parts of an organization. Standards are in many ways counterto the culture of many organizations. However, the ability to integrate and share knowledgedepends on some broadly meaningful scheme for its structure.

Integration of knowledge across different contexts opens an organization to newinsights. A practice community’s exposure to how its knowledge can be applied in othercontexts increases the scope and value of that knowledge. Often the variety of experienceswithin a local community of practice is not great enough to fully understand somephenomenon. By being able to combine experiences across communities, the variation ofexperience is enlarged, as is the ability to learn from those experiences. For example, animaging firm had created a standard means to capture and share sales techniques amongits market segments. By sharing knowledge of how customers in different market segmentsmade use of a particular product, salespeople in each territory were exposed to patterns,insights and selling opportunities they might not have perceived on their own.

3.10 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT APPLICATIONS

Based on the knowledge management architecture, knowledge processing can besegmented into two broad classes: integrative and interactive (Refer Figure 1.11), eachaddressing different knowledge management objectives. Together, these approaches providea broad set of knowledge processing capabilities. They support well-structured repositoriesfor managing explicit knowledge while enabling interaction to integrate tacit knowledge.

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Figure 1.11 Segments of knowledge processing

Integrative Applications

Integrative applications exhibit a sequential flow of explicit knowledge into and out ofthe repository. Producers and consumers interact with the repository rather than with eachother directly. The repository becomes the primary medium for knowledge exchange,providing a place for members of a knowledge community to contribute their knowledgeand views. The primary focus tends to be on the repository and the explicit knowledge itcontains, rather than on the contributors, users, or the tacit knowledge they may hold.

Integrative applications vary in the extent to which knowledge producers andconsumers come from the same knowledge community. At one extreme, lies electronicpublishing, wherein the consumers (readers) neither directly engage in the same work norbelong to the same practice community as the producers (authors). Once published, thecontent tends to be stable, and those few updates that may be required are expected tooriginate with authors. The consumer accepts the content as it is, and active feedback ormodification by the user is not anticipated (although provisions could be made for that tooccur). For example, the organization may produce a periodic newsletter, or the humanresources department may publish its policies or a directory of employee skills andexperience.

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At the other extreme, the producers and consumers are members of the same practicecommunity or organizational unit. While still exhibiting a sequential flow, the repositoryprovides a means to integrate and build on their collective knowledge. We can label theseas integrated knowledge-bases. A best-practices database is the most commonapplication. Practices are collected, integrated and shared among people confronting similarproblems.

Regarding the organizational roles for managing integrative applications, acquisitionrequires knowledge creators, finders, and collectors. Capturing verbal knowledge requiresinterviewers and transcribers. Documenting observed experiences requires organizationalreporters. Surfacing and interpreting deeply held cultural and social knowledge may requirecorporate anthropologists. Refining requires analysts, interpreters, abstractors, classifiers,editors, and integrators. A librarian or “knowledge curator” must manage the repository.Others must take responsibility for access, distribution and presentation. Finally, organizationsmay need people to train users to critically interpret, evaluate and adapt knowledge to newcontexts.

Interactive Applications

Interactive applications are focused primarily on supporting interaction among peopleholding tacit knowledge. In contrast to integrative applications, the repository is a by-product of interaction and collaboration rather than the primary focus of the application.Its content is dynamic and emergent.

Interactive applications vary by the level of expertise between producers andconsumers and the degree of structure imposed on their interaction. Where formal trainingor knowledge transfer is the objective, the interaction tends to be primarily betweeninstructor and student, or expert and novice, and structured around a discrete problem,assignment or lesson plan. We can refer these applications as distributed learning.

In contrast, interaction among those performing common practices or tasks tends tobe more ad hoc or emergent. We may broadly refer to these applications as forums. Theymay take the form of a knowledge brokerage - an electronic discussion space wherepeople may either search for knowledge (e.g., “Does anyone know…”) or advertise theirexpertise. The most interactive forums support ongoing, collaborative discussions. Theproducers and consumers comprise the same group of people, continually responding toand building on each individual’s additions to the discussion. The flow continually loopsback from presentation to acquisition. With the appropriate structuring and indexing of thecontent, a knowledge repository can emerge. A standard categorization scheme for indexingcontributions provides the ability to reapply that knowledge across the enterprise.

Interactive applications play a major role in supporting integrative applications. Forexample, a forum can be linked to an electronic publishing application for editors to discuss

NOTES



the quality of the contributions, or to offer a place for readers to react to and discuss thepublication. Best practice databases typically require some degree of forum interaction, sothat those attempting to adopt a practice have an opportunity to discuss its reapplicationwith its creators.

Regarding the organizational roles for managing interactive applications, acquisitionrequires recruiters and facilitators to encourage and manage participation in interactiveforums so that those with the appropriate expertise are contributing. The refining, structuring,and indexing of the content often is done by the communicators themselves, using guidelinesand categories built into the application, supplemented by a conference moderator. Assuringthe quality of the knowledge may require quality assurance personnel such as subjectmatter experts and reputation brokers. Managing a conference repository over its lifecycleusually falls to a conference moderator. Others may be required to work with users to helpthem become comfortable and skilled with accessing and using the application.

Composite Applications

Complex knowledge management problems typically require multiple repositoriessegmented by a degree of interactivity, volatility of content, or the structure of the knowledgeitself. Each repository may have a different set of processes and roles by which its contentis created, refined and stored. Long-cycle knowledge may have a more formal review andapproved process, while best practices may receive a more expedited editing, and discussiondatabases for rapid exchange may have no review process other than after-the-factmonitoring by a forum moderator. Further, use of knowledge repositories typically causesknowledge creation and use to become separated in time and space. Therefore, theknowledge must be continually evaluated to ensure that it applies to present context andcircumstances. Repositories and their underlying management processes may, therefore,need to be segmented based on the volatility of their context as well as content. Forexample, the storage structures and processes for managing product knowledge in rapidlychanging markets may differ significantly from managing that knowledge in stable markets.Segmenting these repositories and identifying any significant differences in their refineryprocesses is crucial for successful application, as is their integration to provide seamlessaccess to their knowledge.

3.11 COLLABORATIVE PLATFORMS

Collaborative platform is a tool that supports team members or other tools that shareinformation and contribute to knowledge management system. The collaborative platform,along with the communications network services and hardware, provides the pipeline toenable the flow of explicated knowledge, its context, and the medium for conversations.Besides this, the collaborative platform provides a surrogate channel for defining, storing,moving, and linking digital objects, such as conversation threads that correspond toknowledge units. The collaboration platform enables the content of the KM system with a

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high degree of flexibility so that it is rendered meaningful, useful, and applicable across themany possible contexts of use. More importantly, the collaborative platform empowersthe users. The user can either search for content - the pull approach to content delivery –or subscribe to content, that is, have content pushed to him or her.

3.11.1 Different features of platforms

(a) Collaborative filtering

Collaborative filtering or deduction, gathers knowledge on general user traits, andmodels this into a profile. A profile is compared to other profiles by detecting similaritiesand opposites. It then makes predictions upon these comparisons. Sharing of knowledgethrough peer recommendations is widely used mechanism distributing information.Collaborative filtering can be built into a KM system by deploying one of two possiblemechanisms:

1. Active filtering: Users manually define filters and pointers to interesting contentand share across their work group.

2. Automated filtering: Statistical algorithms make recommendations based oncorrelations between the user’s personal preferences and content ratings. Contentratings can be generated either automatically (such as those produced by measuringthe average time all readers spent on reading the item) or by manually assigning anaverage rating (aggregated across multiple readers).

(b Community-centered collaborative filtering

Automated collaborative filtering might seem to be reasonable approach, but it willnot provide the expected benefits or gain a sufficiently high level of commitment from itsusers if it ignores the community that it is built for. Separation of automated filtering frompersonal relationships limits its usefulness to a greater degree than one might expect. Thenetwork of existing social relationship between employees can be a valuable basis forimproving the collaborative filtering process. Although anonymity of contributors is essential,anonymous reviews tend to carry less weight than do signed ones. This is especially true incollaborative communities where people know colleagues by name and reputation.Reputation, trust, and reciprocity come into the picture of collaborative process enhancerswhen contributions are signed.

(c) Meta knowledge

Meta knowledge implies knowing what you know and it is knowledge aboutknowledge. Knowledge inventories, knowledge maps and expertise directories are examplesof meta-knowledge. When a request for information is sent to a computer-based repositoryor database, the system has no way of determining whether the information is known orpresent in its memory. For example, if a traditional database is confronted with a request

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for information on two customers, only one of which exists in the database, the system willhave to search exhaustively through all records before it can determine whether a recordon the missing customer exist in the database. In the same vein, when a company is facedwith an incoming glut of information, confusion often surrounds the determination of thepresence or absence of that information. In other words, there is little that the companycan do to figure out whether that information represents something truly new or unknown.Creation of meta knowledge is often extremely context dependent and requires the use ofpattern recognition or analogical reasoning. Being able to extract meta knowledge fromknowledge is a necessary characteristic of an effective KM system.

(d) Accommodating multiple degrees of context

The use of IT tools is necessary for effective sharing of knowledge through KMsystem when an organization shares an interpretive context. Most companies build oncross-functional teams – people with differing backgrounds, areas of expertise, organizationalaffiliations, and culture to solve problems, make decisions, and develop new products andservices. In work groups where context is not well shared, knowledge tends to be primarilytacit in nature. Therefore, the significance of rich communications channels and a highdegree of interactivity cannot be overemphasized. If loose social bonding exists betweenpotential users of the system, ensure that rich communications (video conferencing, voice,multimedia support, and informal channels) are built in to the KM system as an integratedfeature, not as a separate add-on component.

(e) Technology choices

When choosing a technology or a vendor, it is vital to consider whether that technologyor that vendor will be there throughout the life of the system. It is also necessary to ensurethat vendor’s technology is a market leader and ancillary products and services remainavailable. Can the technology deliver consistency that the application requires and it providethe quality is also important considerations?

3.11.2 Tools for collaborative platform

Knowledge sharing is an important component for any business to move ahead. Thebenefits of knowledge management are tremendous if it is used as a catalyst for collaborativeefforts. Collaborative tools play an important role in knowledge sharing. They help tofoster relations between two business partners and provide access to all the relevantinformation that is shared on an ongoing basis. Companies are developing these collaborativetools to foster information sharing among employees. Let us analyse some of the commonlyavailable tools and technologies used as collaborative platform.

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(a) Intranets

It is certainly true that knowledge management is not a technology issue, effort muststill be spent in providing a suitable environment to facilitate knowledge capture and sharing.For most organizations, this role is most easily taken on by the corporate intranet, theexisting information resource that is available to most staff. Many intranets are valuabletools to support knowledge. Well-planned intranets make ideal platforms for knowledgemanagement initiatives as employees use the intranet as a learning, collaborative platform ifthey have the confidence that it will consistently provide them with authoritative, validatedand qualified knowledge in return. The organizational intranet can be optimized to supportcollaborative platform if changes are made to the existing content, publishing processes,and the information architecture of the intranet.

(b) Portals

A portal is a system of integrated applications, usually implemented through a webbrowser that offers a single gateway into a universe of information about a specific subjectarea. An organizational portal serves as an ideal tool that lets a member of an organizationto select what information the member wishes to receive, distribute selected information toselected people, organize information and collaborate with others on how informationshould be organized. They are also capable of handling information from structured as wellas unstructured data sources and include collaborative functions, which help put informationinto action and thus directly contribute to a KM framework within an enterprise.

(c) Other collaborative tools

Collaborative tools (groupware) are computer-based tools that help people worktogether and share information. They allow for virtual on-line meetings and data sharing.Some examples of collaborative tools include:

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Collaborative tools are great for bringing geographically dispersed teams together forvirtual meetings. A benefit for process redesign teams is that they can now interact moreeasily with process experts in other locations. This can bring more information to the coreteam faster and can elicit important inputs that may have been missed just because it wasinconvenient or expensive to transport the person to the session physically. Additionally,collaborative tools allow better change management by permitting the team to continuouslycommunicate with the organization at large.

3.11.3 Collaborative knowledge applications

(a) Collaborative technologies or tools such as instant messaging and video conferencingare being integrated into KM systems to provide seamless access to all types of informationnecessary for companies, and even departments within a company, to work together.When companies start using knowledge management as a catalyst for collaborative efforts—ranging from sharing the plans for a new product or an invoice that needs sorting out—thepotential benefits are huge.

For example, a buyer at a retail firm might be able to get an e-mail alert that a vendorhas a concern about a particular purchase order. Together, the retailer and the vendor canview the document simultaneously—online, in real time—to work out the necessary changes.Once the purchase order has been adjusted, both parties can notify the appropriate peoplewithin their companies to view the updated purchase order and make the necessaryscheduling changes. That notification can happen via e-mail, pager, cell phone or instantmessaging, and in many cases the alerts can be triggered automatically. The KM systemacts as both a communication hub and data repository.

If a further discussion between the retailer and the supplier is necessary, a videoconference might be arranged. That video could be stored on a secure Web site to bereferred to later if necessary. Essentially, the parties involved in a project can set up a“virtual office” on the Web that provides access to all relevant information that is shared onan ongoing basis. Knowledge management needs to be built around transactions andCollaboration features of a knowledge management system help companies work together.

(b) Sales forecasts can also be one of the most critical applications for collaborative-based knowledge management systems.

(c) Companies are also integrating KM with their enterprise resource planning (ERP)systems, which are corporate wide systems used for tracking things such as inventory,financial data and even human resource information.

(d) Collaborative KM also has the potential for greater sharing of information duringthe design of a new product. A cell phone maker, for example, can have dozens oreven hundreds of component suppliers and work very closely with the top 10maybe and get them involved in the new phone design, share documents anddrawings and specifications to be sure they’ll be able to deliver. This can reducetime to market, and you can hopefully deal with quality issues upfront.

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(e) The benefit of a Web-based collaborative KM system is that it does not requireany specialized software to enable business partners to view documents and otherfiles online; one can access information from a laptop while on move. These systemsare now accessible through a standard Internet browser.

3.12 CASE STUDY

TCS sees synergy in Gen X tools

A team of engineers at India’s largest IT services provider firm. Tata ConsultancyServices (TCS) was working on a project for an important client. While it was co-coordinating work from three geographical units - Europe, South America and India - itwas finding it difficult to collaborate through telephone or other voice means as there werelanguage and pronunciation hurdles. It was then that a project manager suggested the useof a central instant messaging (IM) system. Not only could the team coordinate better butit could do so faster and with conviction.

This is simply an instance of how the knowledge management (KM) system at TCShas undergone a sea of change over the last 20 years. It now uses tools that are popularamong Generation ‘X’ such as IM, blogging, and jam sessions.

TCS, for instance, uses a single system for IM worldwide. That’s not all, it usesmultiple universal access technology, private IP telephony (where an employee can dial aseven-digit number and speak to anyone anywhere in the world), and video conferencing.“The latest technology was set up two years ago. We have been upgrading regularly. TCS’knowledge management initiative has always kept pace with the latest technology availableat the time. The current KM portal using the latest technology encourages sharing, andacts as a store-house of corporate knowledge,” says Anant Krishnan, Vice President andChief Technology Officer, TCS. Many of the collaboration tools are yet to be integratedinto the KM portal.

Currently at TCS, the KM portal - build using Microsoft’s Sharepoint - uses 8-9channels of communication to get the 100,000 plus employees involved. Other than thesechannels, the company also uses the ‘Just Ask’ system (embedded into the KM),collaboration tools, Blog platform and Idea Storm.

The Idea Storm is a once-a-year event wherein 2-3 topics are posed by the corporateteam on which ideas are invited by everyone.

IM is clearly the most popular method with almost 1,000 online meets happening onthe system everyday across the globe. Followed by Just Ask System, which could be asimple question and answer interaction to a detail discussion.

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However, it is blogging that has caught on quite rapidly. Almost 40,000-50,000 TCSstaff blog on the official intranet, including Krishnan.

“I use my blog as a means to gathering inputs on some problem I might face or onspecific platform,” he says.

For instance, within this is a system called TIP. It is an anytime open portal for productinnovation and potential new ideas. “I get about 25,000 solutions a year on any given issueright from how TCS should innovate its buses to product innovation. Of this 15-20 arereasonable good product and services idea,” adds Krishnan.

TCS has also initiated a feature called My Site. The system, embedded into the KMportal, allows each associate to have a personal page like facebook or orkut. Now, 8,000-10,000 employees are using this.

Krishnan opines that the immediate advantage of the KM portal is to get solutions topractical problems. “In the 80s KM were deployed with an ability to get tactical teams towork on programmes, today most interaction we see are on short run immediate practicalsolutions,” says Krishnan.

Going ahead the IT behemoth will continue to invest in adopting social networkingtools. It will add many more feature in its blogging systems, create Wiki’s among othertools. Krishnan believes as the company becomes larger and as the usage in business willmultiply because of the sheer access this allows.

Question: Critically analyse the case in the light of collaborative concepts and list theTata’s collaborative initiatives.

SUMMARY

Companies that build competitive advantage through effective information andknowledge management must continually refresh and update their intellectual capital. Thisis the process of organizational learning. Applying the concept of learning to organizations,organizational learning can be described as the collective learning of the organization. LearningOrganization is an organization that purposefully takes steps to create architecture to enhanceand maximize the potential for explorative and exploitative organizational learning to takeplace.

Knowledge has to be captured and codified in such a way that it can become a partof the existing knowledge base of the organization. Knowledge capture is a demandingmental process in which a knowledge developer collaborates with the expert to convertexpertise into a coded program. After knowledge is captured, it is organized and codifiedin a manner amenable for transfer and effective use. Knowledge codification is organizingand representing knowledge before it is accessed by authorized personnel.

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Knowledge management infrastructure is a prerequisite to knowledge sharing whichis viewed as a combination of people, technology and content.

A Knowledge Repository is a computerized system that systematically andcontinuously captures, organizes, categorizes and analyses an organization’s knowledgeassets. The repository can be searched and data can be quickly retrieved. It is a collaborativesystem where people can query and browse both structured and unstructured informationin order to retrieve and preserve organizational knowledge assets and facilitate collaborativeworking.

Collaborative platform is a tool that supports team members or other tools that shareinformation and contribute to knowledge management system. The collaborative platform,along with the communications network services and hardware, provides the pipeline toenable the flow of explicated knowledge, its context, and the medium for conversations.

SHORT QUESTIONS

1. Define organizational learning.

2. Distinguish between organizational learning and learning organization.

3. What are the characteristics of learning organizations?

4. Compare learning organization with traditional organization.

5. Explain knowledge codification in your own words.

6. Distinguish between decision table and decision tree.

7. How knowledge codifications differ from knowledge creation?

8. What is a knowledge map?

9. How does knowledge map differ from decision tree?

10. How would you identify expertise?

11. What is the interviewer effect?

12. Define brainstorming and how it differs from e-brainstorming?

13. What is protocol analysis?

14. What are the distinctive features of on-site observation?

15. Distinguish between protocol analysis and Delphi method.

16. Give the differences between blackboarding and electronic brainstorming?

17. What is concept mapping?

18. What is a knowledge repository? What are its contents?

19. What is knowledge refining?

20. Distinguish between intranet and extranet.

21. What is a portal?

22. What is bulletin board?

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LONG QUESTIONS

1. Describe in detail the individual’s role and contributions in organizational learning?

2. What is the commonly employed orientation by organizations for effectivedissemination of knowledge?

3. Explain the five learning disciplines propounded by Peter Senge.

4. In your own words, define tacit knowledge capture. What makes it unique?

5. Working with multiple experts has definite benefits and limitations. Cite an examplein which the use of multiple experts is a must. Explain your choice.

6. Use an example of your own to illustrate the conditions under which you would bewilling to build a KM system based on single expert. Justify your decision?

7. Review briefly some of the problems encountered during an interview?

8. In what way is rapid prototyping related to interviewing? Be specific in your answer.

9. How is brainstorming conducted? Provide an example.

10. In what way does consensus decision making follow brainstorming?

11. Summarize the pros and cons of decision tables versus decision trees. Under whatconditions would you use one tool over the other?

12. In your own words, explain knowledge codification. How does it differ fromknowledge creation?

13. Present justification for knowledge codification.

14. Define the procedure to design a knowledge repository.

15. Write a detailed note on KM applications.

16. Define collaborative platform? What are its tools for information sharing?

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UNIT IV

KNOWLEDGE CULTURE IN ORGANISATION4.1 INTRODUCTION

The introduction of any new management system into an organization requires a changein culture. For example, the introduction of a customer-relationship management (CRM)system will demand culture change in terms of the way staffs interact with clients. But if anychange to a new management system is to deliver value in the long term, then there needsto be a way of sustaining the culture – of making sure that behaviours stay changed, theprocesses are carried out and that people do what they are supposed to do. Introductionof KM in an organization is also not an exception to this and several researches suggestsafter review of KM critical success factors identified for its implementation that manyfactors have been important in implementation of a successful KM program. These factorsinclude culture, infrastructure, technology and measures. A common element in many KMresearch frameworks and models is organizational culture. Refer the following figure4.1.

Figure 4.1

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Source: Based on the American Productivity and Quality Center’s

Model for Knowledge Management

When firms invest numerous resources in their knowledge management infrastructureand do not see the returns later, managers begin to panic. When there are no signs ofproblems with the applications being used in the department, managers must examine theentire department. To be accurate, managers must assess the knowledge-sharing culturewithin their company.

A knowledge sharing culture is an environment where individuals are willingto disseminate information regardless of the size of the organization or company.In order to do so, individuals must adhere to the norms, values, attitudes and beliefsestablished by the organization. When these aspects of the knowledge sharing are breached,information will not reach the intended audience and will thus cause a knowledge-transferbottleneck.

Definition of culture

Culture is defined as, a) a pattern of basic assumptions, b) invented, discovered,or developed by a given group, c) as it learns to cope with its problems of externaladaptation and internal integration, d) that has worked well enough to be consideredvalid and, therefore e) is to be taught to new members as the f) correct way toperceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems. Culture also” is [composed] ofthe values, competencies, and beliefs of a group of people that strongly influencewhether and how organizational strategies are implemented.”

Without the benefit of a culture that recognizes, encourages, and rewards KM activities,consistent performance of KM activities will not occur. Interaction and collaboration amongemployees is important when attempting to transmit tacit knowledge between individualsor convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, thereby transforming it from theindividual to the organizational level. Culture is important because it shapes assumptionsabout what knowledge is worth exchanging; it defines relationships between individual andorganizational knowledge; it creates the context for social interaction that determines howknowledge will be shared in particular situations; and it shapes the processes by whichnew knowledge is created, legitimated, and distributed in organizations. Lack of technologydoes not prevent KM activity – it just means that KM activity must be accomplished indifferent ways. For example, employee suggestion programs are often developed usingtraditional methods (i.e., methods not involving information technology). Most organizationshave sufficient technology to assist them in creating, sharing and documenting knowledge.Sophisticated software applications and other technology may help but are certainly not arequirement. Organized processes are more important. These processes require that theorganizational culture value, encourage, and reward KM behavior. Thus a knowledge

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culture is required where each individual recognizes and accepts knowledge sharing as adesirable behaviour.

4.2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES


• What is organizational culture?

• The relation between organizational culture and the business context and howdoes culture contribute to organizational innovation and success

• Appreciate the contribution of organizational culture to the management of change

• Discuss the key organizational culture enablers and the chief obstacles to effectiveknowledge sharing and KM

• How to implement knowledge culture enhancement program

• Describe the key components of a community of practice

• Define the major roles and responsibilities in a community of practice

• How CoP is developed and nurtured?

• How to develop organizational memory?

4.3. ORGANISATIONAL CULTURES

Organizational culture describes the collective perceptions, beliefs and values ofemployees in the workplace. Individuals learn their organizational culture from the day onehe or she joins the organization and these learned experiences help them to interpret thework environment so that they can conform and operate effectively in that setting. Theyalso interpret the work culture from a number of visible or implicit cues. The behavioralpatterns that are encouraged, discouraged or allowed in an organization also reinforce acertain set of values. Each of these layers contributes to the socialization of new staff andthe ongoing reinforcement of existing values, behaviours and priorities. Thus, culture isinfluenced at a number of levels, from the rules and values adopted by individuals to thealliances formed within the organization and hence it is rare for an organization to have asingle uniform culture. Stories, interactions, anecdotes and shared reminiscences allcontribute to the building of culture.

Several factors have been identified as key influences on organizational culture,including the nature of team work, the climate and related morale, information flows acrosscommunity, level of individual involvement in organizational processes, type and quality ofsupervision provided, and the quality of workplace interactions. Leadership can be aparticularly powerful influence. A strong leader can enunciate, model and encourage differentvalues through public displays, process re-engineering, strategic direction or ongoingencouragement.

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Culture may act as different ways in an organization which are as follows:

(1) It act as a controlling mechanism which provides community members with acollective knowledge of the social expectations,

(2) Culture can act as a ‘compass’, providing direction and guidance on the socialvalues which underlie the organization,

(3) Culture may also operate as ‘social glue’, seeking to achieve harmony, consensusand cohesion among the disparate members of the community, and

(4) It also seeks to ensure both stability and predictable values which are sustainedover a long period.

Introduction of KM initiatives leads to a range of responses in the form of workpatterns and values. Knowledge cultures are particularly susceptible to cultural influences,given the strong reliance on sharing.

4.3.1. Knowledge cultures

Knowledge-intensive communities, which rely on service, knowledge and sharing ofexpertise, need to be concerned with the underlying values which are communicated andadopted by employees. Knowledge communities are characterized as open, communicativecultures which encourage sharing, tolerance, collaboration and trust. Following are someof the implicit values found necessary in collaborative knowledge cultures:

(1) Regular communication across levels and organizational units,

(2) Colleagues invitation for sharing and learning,

(3) Working together is seen as a core activity,

(4) Learning is incorporated into the work community and practice,

(5) New ideas are welcomed and explored,

(6) Innovative ideas and solutions are developed through combined efforts,

(7) Openness, honesty and concern for others is encouraged,

(8) Employees are kept informed of events, issues and innovations, and

(9) Knowledge sharing is actively encouraged by supervision and leadership.

Principles of knowledge culture

Knowledge management is a value-driven process relying on shared knowledge,collaboration and trust, requiring an integrated approach to changing employee attitudes,gaining employee acceptance and sustaining knowledge sharing in the workplace. Theorganizational asset is in the minds of each individual and hence organizations need todemonstrate through word and action that they value what employees know. Knowledgeflows should be encouraged since employees may operate from a basis of self-interest ifthe culture does not reinforce the knowledge values. Organizations should not attend moreclosely to the knowledge system than to the culture since KM relies on people who shareand use knowledge to perform their work roles. The various organizational processes and

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systems also need to be aligned so that the knowledge philosophy is reflected in thestructures, practices, performance outcomes and rewards. Thus the knowledge philosophyneeds to be embedded in the organizational culture and be evident in various ways toensure its acceptance and adoption by every employee.

4.3.2. Improving knowledge culture

In order to improve a knowledge-sharing culture, a structured plan should be followed.Here are a few elements of a plan that should be taken into consideration by managers ifthey need to re-design their culture:

• Stress the need to share

• Promote trust

• Beware of information overload

• Have the correct tools

• Change the sharers

• Report small problems

• Build a solid relationship with your vendor

(a) Stress the need to share

Although this aspect may seem elementary, it is often overlooked. From the momentan individual is brought into a knowledge management unit, he or she should know theimportance of sharing the right information with the right people. With sharing being a normfor companies that depend on information to make sound business decisions, knowledgeworkers must be prepared to disseminate relevant data on an ad hoc basis. To do so, theymust:

• Know how knowledge sharing has helped the company in the past through the useof case studies and best practices report

• Be trained on the tool used to share information within the company

• Be provided with “a cause-and-effect analysis” of disseminating information whenit is needed

• Be rewarded when information is shared

Individuals who are unable to see the need to share within the company may not bethe most appropriate persons to work in the unit.

(b) Promote trust

One of the most crucial elements behind a solid knowledge-sharing culture is trust. Ifthere is a lack of trust within the company among personnel, knowledge will be hoarded.Information that is in the hands of a few individuals can be dangerous. When only a selected

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few have access to knowledge, they become powerful individuals in the company and caninfluence decisions that are made by top management.

To avoid this situation, managers must promote an environment where knowledgeworkers can trust their colleagues regarding what they have discovered and analyzed. Thefollowing strategies can be implemented to provide a safe and trusting department whereinformation will not be hidden and used for someone’s own purposes.

• Select the right individuals. The department should not be made of individuals withtheir own respective goals. Instead, it should be made of individuals who can forma team to get tasks done. Team members who have been together for a longduration seem to build relationships based upon trust.

• Assess the environment. Managers must discover why there is a lack of trustamong colleagues. Finding out the root causes will lead to removing the barriers totrust. Obtaining the input from the personnel working in the unit can accomplishthis goal.

• Participate in team building exercises. Personnel should be removed from theworking environment and be taken to a retreat to be involved in a series of team-building exercises. The exercises should mimic the processes that knowledgeworkers will carry out on a regular basis.

(c) Beware of information overload

Information overload can hinder a knowledge-sharing culture. With the enormousamount of data flowing into a company and the limited amount of time that knowledgeworkers have per day, there is a limit to how much an individual can disseminate. Beingconstantly bombarded with information can cause individuals to share the bare minimum,while leaving the rest of the data in emails and databases. As a result, vital information willbe held back from the individuals who need easy access to it.

If information overload is threatening the culture, the following tips can be used tohelp improve the process of sharing information in a company.

• Begin to filter information on the basis of keywords

• Conduct more focus searches on the Web and databases

• Readjust the approach used to gather information internally

• Have a solid criteria to judge what is relevant to the department

(d) Have the correct tools

In order to have individuals contribute to a culture that promotes knowledge sharing,they must be given the right tools to deliver data within the company. By listening to theneeds of the knowledge workers, managers should be able to evaluate what is needed totransform their department into an efficient unit that transfers data within a few clicks of amouse.

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To ensure that the individuals who will be sharing information throughout the companyutilize the right tools, managers should consider:

• Investigating which of the present tools in the company are being used to shareinformation

• Discovering how the present tools can be used more efficiently to make informationaccessible

• Continuing to obtain the best possible tools to assist individuals in their work ofproviding data to key decision makers

• Finding the tools that will be the right fit with its users for the long term

• Training personnel to use the applications to execute sharing tasks efficiently

• Once the tools are obtained and utilized by the intended users, managers mustconstantly evaluate the performance of the applications and make the necessarymodifications to ensure that the department is not encountering any difficultiesdistributing information.

(e) Change the sharers

If the situation should arise that individual(s) in the department are hindering the flowof data in the company, managers have the power to replace the individual(s). Withsubstantiated claims, personnel can be repositioned within the department to ensure thatthe skilled individuals who are motivated to share are in the right place. Changing thesharers will breathe new life into the knowledge management unit and hopefully bring newideas to the table.

Making the necessary changes in personnel is a very delicate issue to tackle. Not wantingto be unfair when removing individuals from their present job, managers have to considerissues such as:

• Are the individuals unhappy with their current tasks within the department?

• Are the individuals skilled enough to remain a part of the team?

• What contributions have the individuals made over the past 6 to 12 months?

• Can the company afford to make the necessary changes?

4.4. KNOWLEDGE CULTURE ENABLERS

When building an effective knowledge culture, organizations need to have a range ofstrategies to ensure the values inherent in knowledge management are enacted (i.e. followedin practice) by each employee. A range of influences and people help with knowledgeculture development, as they keep people informed of new initiatives, maintain theirconnection with organizational values and priorities, and encourage ongoing acceptance ofimportant values. Hence knowledge culture enablers are those influences that contributeto the creation of an effective and positive knowledge community.

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Knowledge culture enablers operate over several levels of the organization. Inparticular, they help align the core values, organizational structures, systems and processes,and individual behaviours to build a positive and effective knowledge culture. Figure 4.2provides a more detailed overview of those elements which may contribute to effectiveknowledge cultures. Each element is discussed below.

In reviewing these enablers, it is important to recognize their strong interactions. Thefour levels all contribute in an integrated manner to the creation of an effective knowledgeculture.

Figure 4.2 Knowledge Culture Enablers

KNOWLEDGE CULTURE

Core values.

Knowledge communities rely on the collaboration and goodwill of their individualmembers to stimulate and enhance the knowledge context. As figure 4.2 shows, manycore values may influence the knowledge culture. Core values are those values which arebelieved to be essential to the organization’s growth and achievement of its goal. In thecase of a knowledge community, these might include collaborative orientation, opencommunication, innovation, flexibility, a learning orientation and a willingness to trust. Thedesired core values in the knowledge community need to be identified, encouraged andmonitored.

Knowledge based cultures need to nurture innovative and creative thinkers.Employees need to be encouraged to think outside their normal routine and to identifydifferent ways of looking at issue. An effective knowledge culture encourages innovation,from the initial creative idea to the experimentation and sharing of insights with others.

CORE

VALUES

STRUCTURAL

SUPPORT

ENACTED VALUES

INTERACTION

WITH COLLEAGUES

Collaboration Communication Interaction Innovation Adaptation Learning orientation Trust Knowledge is valued Knowledge is shared

Organizational structure Transparent decision making Information access Problem solving Communication channels HRM

Models Leaders Opportunities to collaborate Encouragement to collaborate

Quality of interaction Focus of interaction Mentorship Team behaviour Co-worker interaction

NOTES



Further, it needs to encourage employees to look beyond immediate needs when sharingand exploring knowledge potentials.

Knowledge communities need to encourage flexible and adaptable behaviour.Organization routines and processes need to be flexible, seeking sound outcomes througha number of different mechanisms. Flexibility encourages people to seek opportunities toexperiment and work towards creative alternatives. Knowledge workers need to beresponsible for identifying the best ways of achieving the desired goals, with several workerspossibly operating differently to achieve the same outcomes.

A strong learning orientation is also desirable in knowledge cultures. Manyorganizations focus on outcomes, aiming to gain financially from each activity. A singleminded focus on outcomes can be detrimental to knowledge management as it forcesemployees to get quick and measurable results. A learning orientation, on the other hand,emphasizes learning through experimentation, ongoing improvement, testing and evaluationto support the long term goals of the organization. Innovative communities rely heavily onlearning orientation as they encourage creativity, experimentation and considered risk taking.Organizations need to ensure that they provide plenty of opportunities for learning in theworkplace, and accept the diversity of outcomes which maybe generated. Employees willneed to be consistently encouraged to work towards the development of their knowledgeprocesses and to see that their contributions are valued.

Knowledge cultures must consistently affirm the value placed on knowledge workers.For example, knowledge workers need opportunities to attend conferences, collaboratewith others, gestate ideas, communicate and work across organizational boundaries. Theongoing recognition of the valued knowledge of employees is another way of recognizingthe human capital in the organization. A simple example is the public acknowledgement ofthose who contribute to a project, or a celebratory function at the success of an innovation.This also affirms the importance of individual knowledge workers and reinforces the messagethat the organization is a learning culture.

Knowledge intensive organizations need to encourage a strong communal focus toenhance collaboration and sharing across organizational boundaries and groupings. Thecommunal nature of the organization communicates much about the underlying culture ofthe workplace. If the organization encourages isolationism, where people communicateonly with those in their own section, there is less opportunity for cross fertilization of ideasand sharing of different perspectives. Communal interactions can lead to more opportunitiesto build stronger networks and sharing.

Structural support

As noted earlier, people interpret messages from their work environment to identifythe behaviours and values which should be adopted. Structural support describes the

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organizational structure, systems and processes which the organization sponsors throughresource allocation and public affirmation. Structural supports, which may includetechnological systems, human resource process and other forms of work related infra-structure, may operate as either barriers to or facilitators of knowledge cultures. For example,a structural arrangement that reinforces knowledge chains will limit the capacity tocollaborate, as bottlenecks will occur. Enterprises that encourage knowledge hubs andnetwork through structural arrangements and/or technological support will foster a strongercollaborative culture. Figure 4.2 lists a number of structural supports which help buildknowledge cultures.

Organizational transparency stimulates the knowledge culture by keeping employeesinformed of new and important initiatives which they may apply or contribute to. Open andaccountable decision making, collaborative problem solving and planning, and wide sharingand accessibility of information contribute to the underlying culture. Openness breedscollaboration, as it increases the level of trust and the willingness to share. Allied to thisopenness is the need to encourage problem solving and exploration. In fact, some companiesencourage the seeking of problems and their resolution through group deliberation andcollaboration. This also affirms the importance and value placed on the knowledgecontributions of individuals.

To interact effectively, knowledge workers also require efficient and effectivecommunication mechanisms that encourage and enable sharing across the knowledgecommunity. These communication channels may be electronic (such as e-mail or the website) or based on interpersonal, group or written communication. Communication channelsstrongly affect the capacity to share and to influence organizational commitment.Organizational communication channels need to encourage openness and network building,particularly in reducing structural boundaries which may operate.

A further structural influence relates to the ways individual employees are managed.

Human resources management systems are major cultural influences- they help withemployee socialization, performance management, and reward and recognition. The levelof control and coordination of staff activities also influences the culture. If staff is firmlydirected into particular areas of activity, they may have less desire or capacity to experimentor socialize with areas beyond their stipulated roles. Thus, the human resources practicesand systems are most important in directing the employee’s focus and priorities.

Enacted values

The organization culture is strongly influenced by the values which are reflected inactual practice, called enacted values. The real values demonstrated in everyday activitiesare strong evidence of the real culture which operates, and will be heeded either consciouslyor subconsciously by each member.

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Cues and messages about the knowledge culture can be generated from many differentsources, particularly from those who provide models of behaviour or hold leadershippositions. Their public support of and demonstrated commitment to the values offer strongmessages to others. Thus, the more people see the core values in practice, the greater thelikelihood they will adopt and practice them

Interaction with colleagues

A further way of building the knowledge culture is through interaction with colleagues.As noted earlier, individuals are strongly influenced by people with whom they regularlyinteract. The quality and focus of that interaction play a major role in determining thestrength of the knowledge culture in the smaller community. There are many aspects tointeraction with colleagues. The communication processes which operate across the groupcan be significant in facilitating a particular culture. Mentorship, team behaviours, co-workersinteraction and the presence of communities of practice all play a part in developing theculture.

4.5. IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE CULTURE ENHANCEMENT PROGRAMS

The introduction of a knowledge culture program can be exiting and challenging, aspeople seek to gain a good understanding of what is intended, why it needs to be done,and how it will better support the organization’s need. Every member of the program teamneeds to be aware of the intended processes, and their own roles, advocacy and leadershipare important elements of knowledge culture intervention, as people are asked to reviewtheir existing values, work process and strategies. The program implementation processneeds to operate from a number of broad principles.

Communicating the program intentions and progress

Communication is imperative. It keeps people informed and provides opportunitiesto share and discuss shifts, there are opportunities to overcome concerns and fears, discussthe feasibility of the strategies to be implemented, and develop further involvement andcontribution. Every member of the organization will ultimately be affected by knowledgeculture change programs, as they will affect values, processes and structural support.Regular communication reduces uncertainty and increases understanding and learning.

Employees also need access to communication channels where they may offer feedbackon the cultural and systematic changes. Many developmental processes are sabotaged byinnuendo and gossip before they are even in the public domain. Effective change processesensure that accurate information is available at all times. A program web site can be auseful way of ensuring good dissemination of the purpose, strategy and desired outcomesof the program. As the program evolves, the web site can also garner feedback on pilotgroup experiences and other contributor insights, which may help to allay concerns.

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Communication may also be in the form of open forums, public messages from the chiefsponsor of the project, and focus group meetings in which the shifting knowledge focusand its implications may be discussed. These communication channels need to be maintainedover the course of the program, so that members of the organization’s community can seekfurther affirmation and advice as the process continues.

To achieve acceptance of and commitment to the planned intervention, the knowledgeorganization needs to effectively communicate the intended intervention, prepare membersfor the likely impact of any changes, publicize any time frames or activities, and promotethe communication mechanisms available for both information and feedback.

Pilot testing

Cultural change programs rarely run smoothly as they seek to influence and persuadeorganizational members to adopt different values, attitudes and patterns of behaviours.Some changes may be enthusiastically embraced, but others may be bitterly opposed. Thepromotion of new values and processes without careful testing of the strategy can be highrisk. Pilot tests of the planned changes can help identify possible problems. They also buildexpertise within the community which may be accessed in the second stage of theimplementation. Further, they enable the development of case studies and real expertswho can share their insights with others who follow. They also allow close support andanalysis of the various processes by the program team. The time taken to undertake pilotstudies is well rewarded in terms of success and the removal of problems. If need to be, afurther pilot study might be done before large scale implementation. Participants in theseinitial test sites need to be both recognized and valued for the contribution they make.

Accommodating difference within the knowledge culture

Knowledge intensive communities encourage adaptive behaviours. It is important formembers to make sense of the changes, as they test any proposed work or valueenhancements and then, following their affirmation of the worth of the proposed changes,commit to trialing new behaviours or ideas. Thus, in keeping with the knowledge cultureprecepts, members of the knowledge community need to be encouraged to test any newstrategies and communicate their insights and approaches that may be adopted.

Adaptation can lead to some very different outcomes from those initially planned bythe program managers and sponsors. Contributors may seek to shift the focus of theproposed cultural change, and to integrate their own existing preferences. When interventionsare planned, they need to be open to renegotiation and adaptation as further insights aregained.

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Supporting planned cultural interventions

Employees and other knowledge users need to be well supported during culturalintervention. Knowledge champions are particularly important. Members with significantroles may need to be provided with time release so they can give their full support to theinitiative. Their positive outlook, knowledge of the full intervention plan, and response todifficulties will facilitate the smooth running of the program. A help desk can also be ofgreat value during the initial implementation of key changes, as it gives users an easy accesspoint for registering difficulties, ideas, suggestions and ongoing concerns.

As the initiative takes root, users can be encouraged to share their ideas and insightswith others, through mentoring or by communal sharing through a range of disseminationchannels. Communal learning is an important element of the building of knowledge cultures-it creates positive attitudes to the desired organizational approaches to knowledgemanagement. Various networking options might be encouraged; including bulletin boards,list-servs, and support of frequently asked questions or frequently identified problems.Coping with issues as they arise is very important, as it assures users that their needs andexperiences are of great concern. The prompt resolution of problems also ensures thatnegativity does not become a prevailing attitude.

4.6. MAINTAINING THE KNOWLEDGE CULTURE

Each individual contributes to the organization’s prevailing knowledge culture. Events,messages and enacted values are reinterpreted constantly to ensure there is agreementbetween personal beliefs, professional behaviours and desired consequences. Knowledgecommunities rely on their members to maintain a culture of respectful interchange andcollaboration. However, slippage can occur if the organization does not actively sustain theknowledge culture which has been established.

A range of strategies can help maintain the knowledge culture. The socialization ofnew members, using both knowledge workers and official knowledge leaders is an importantstrategy, as it affirms the culture of the workplace immediately, and clarifies the valueswhich should be evident in the new employee’s work practices. The development of rewardand performance management systems which integrate knowledge values expectationsare key aspects of ongoing support for the knowledge culture. The development andmentoring of new leaders and ongoing professional development of knowledge relatedcompetencies also send strong messages regarding the importance of these contributors.Similarly, the integration and constant improvement of existing knowledge systems andservices (such as the knowledge help desk) can be of significant value in encouragingpositive responses to the knowledge culture. Recognition of key knowledge workers,celebration of major knowledge advancements and strategies, and ongoing sharing ofexperiences in enhancing knowledge management all serve to reinforce the strong knowledgeculture. An organizational developer who strives to maintain the knowledge culture throughout

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the community can be of great value. Larger organizations regard this role as an importantfull time commitment. The appointment of a coordinator of this culture can be one of thestrongest affirmations of the importance of the knowledge culture.

Supporting leader’s maintenance of the knowledge culture

An important element of sustaining community is to ensure the leaders are wellsupported and nurtured. Knowledge champions play a significant role in sustaining positiveand informed approaches to knowledge sharing across the knowledge community. Theirleadership strategies also need to be supported as they seek to influence and guide theknowledge culture. Their role can be a demanding and consuming process, and thesechampions may not have extensive skills in leading guiding cultural change. Support maytherefore operate in a number of ways. Certainly, briefing sessions at the start of initiativesare highly beneficial, as they offer guidance on the issues to be disseminated, and help buildleadership networks. Opportunities to get together and share learning and concerns withother knowledge leaders can facilitate creative problem solving and maintain motivation.The support for leaders is an important element of the knowledge development strategy,since it ensures that there are strong and knowledgeable champions with a soundunderstanding of the strategic needs of the organization.

Maintaining the cultural wellbeing of communities of practice

Communities of practices (CoPs) benefit from organizational development supportto help sustain their cultural wellbeing. Many start with a flourish, but gradually lose theirimpetus. Organizations which encourage CoPs have a responsibility to support themaintenance and ongoing development of groups identified as strategically important. Supportmay be in the form of guidance on how to develop and sustain a positive constructive CoP,or may more directly support particular groups with additional resourcing and expertise.There are some simple approaches to ensure a healthy, respectful and viable CoP.

• Clearly define the purpose or domain of the CoP so that the members have a goodunderstanding of the focus, likely scope of activities and expectations of eachcontributor.

• Facilitate the identification of potential members to encourage the connection ofthose with common interests, talents or expertise to contribute to the group.

• Support key members with recognition in terms of workload, administrative ortechnological support, leadership development opportunities, or some initial seedfunding to develop the group.

• Support the group’s identification and development of its individual and groupcapabilities and identity. This support might consist of a designated meeting area,ongoing team development activities, or simply a chance to remove the groupfrom the normal work routine. The stronger the organizational support, the greaterthe willingness of the group members to commit to such networks.

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• Provide opportunities to interact across CoPs. This wider interaction can greatlyhelp the various groups identify common interests, potential members and likelyareas of collaboration.

• Consider appointing a broker to act as a facilitator and group support agent. Brokerscan help with the complex processes of translating, coordinating and suitablyintegrating the different perspectives of the various members. This can be particularlyhelpful when the participants find it hard to contribute the extra effort to maintainthe CoP connection and focus. It can also reduce conflicts of interest.

Knowledge cultures affect the way knowledge management operates in a particularorganization. Better understanding of the ways cultures can be influenced enhances thebuilding and sustaining of knowledge cultures. Greater recognition of the interactive natureof values and structural support has been particularly helpful in enhancing culture.

4.7. COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

We now recognize knowledge as a key source of competitive advantage in the businessworld, but we still have little understanding of how to create and leverage it in practice.Traditional knowledge management approaches attempt to capture existing knowledgewithin formal systems, such as databases. Yet systematically addressing the kind of dynamic“knowing” that makes a difference in practice requires the participation of people who arefully engaged in the process of creating, refining, communicating, and using knowledge.

We frequently say that people are an organization’s most important resource. Yet weseldom understand this truism in terms of the communities through which individuals developand share the capacity to create and use knowledge. Even when people work for largeorganizations, they learn through their participation in more specific communities made upof people with whom they interact on a regular basis. These “communities of practice”are mostly informal and distinct from organizational units. However, they are a company’smost versatile and dynamic knowledge resource and form the basis of an organization’sability to know and learn.

4.7.1. Defining Communities of Practice

a. Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of people in organizations that formto share what they know, to learn from one another regarding some aspects oftheir work and to provide a social context for that work.

b. Communities of practice are groups of people with common interest who meet toshare their insights in order to develop better solutions to problems or challenges.

Although the term “Community of Practice” is new, CoPs are not. Such groups havebeen around ever since people in organizations realized they could benefit from sharingtheir knowledge, insights, and experiences with others who have similar interests or goals.

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One of the best-known examples of a CoP was formed by the copy machine repairtechnicians at Xerox Corporation. Through networking and sharing their experiences,particularly the problems they encountered and the solutions they devised, a core group ofthese technicians proved extremely effective in improving the efficiency and effectivenessof efforts to diagnose and repair Xerox customers’ copy machines. The impact on customersatisfaction and the business value to Xerox was invaluable. Yet, for the most part, this wasa voluntary, informal gathering and sharing of expertise, not a “corporate program” (however,once the company realized the value of the knowledge being created by this CoP, stepswere taken to support and enhance the efforts of the group).

Members of a community are informally bound by what they do together–fromengaging in lunchtime discussions to solving difficult problems–and by what they havelearned through their mutual engagement in these activities. A community of practice is thusdifferent from a community of interest or a geographical community, neither of which impliesa shared practice. A community of practice defines itself along three dimensions:

• What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiatedby its members

• How it functions - mutual engagement that bind members together into a socialentity

• What capability it has produced – the shared repertoire of communal resources(routines, sensibilities, artifacts, vocabulary, styles, etc.) that members havedeveloped over time.

Communities of practice also move through various stages of development characterizedby different levels of interaction among the members and different kinds of activities.

Communities of practice develop around things that matter to people. As a result,their practices reflect the members’ own understanding of what is important. Obviously,outside constraints or directives can influence this understanding, but even then, membersdevelop practices that are their own response to these external influences. Even when acommunity’s actions conform to an external mandate, it is the community–not the mandate–that produces the practice. In this sense, communities of practice are fundamentally self-organizing systems. CoP groups function through discussion lists, web-site forums or otherforms of virtual networking.

4.7.2. Communities of Practice in Organizations

Communities of practice exist in any organization. Because membership is based onparticipation rather than on official status, these communities are not bound by organizationalaffiliations; they can span institutional structures and hierarchies. They can be found:

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• Within businesses: Communities of practice arise as people address recurringsets of problems together. So claims processors within an office form communitiesof practice to deal with the constant flow of information they need to process. Byparticipating in such a communal memory, they can do the job without having toremember everything themselves.

• Across business units: Important knowledge is often distributed in different businessunits. People who work in cross-functional teams thus form communities of practiceto keep in touch with their peers in various parts of the company and maintain theirexpertise. When communities of practice cut across business units, they can developstrategic perspectives that transcend the fragmentation of product lines. For instance,a community of practice may propose a plan for equipment purchase that no onebusiness unit could have come up with on its own.

• Across company boundaries: In some cases, communities of practice becomeuseful by crossing organizational boundaries. For instance, in fast-moving industries,engineers who work for suppliers and buyers may form a community of practiceto keep up with constant technological changes.

• Communities of practice are not a new kind of organizational unit; rather, they area different cut on the organization’s structure–one that emphasizes the learningthat people have done together rather than the unit they report to, the project theyare working on, or the people they know. Communities of practice differ fromother kinds of groups found in organizations in the way they define their enterprise,exist over time, and set their boundaries:

• A community of practice is different from a business or functional unit in that itdefines itself in the doing, as members develop among themselves their ownunderstanding of what their practice is about. This living process results in a muchricher definition than a mere institutional charter. As a consequence, the boundariesof a community of practice are more flexible than those of an organizational unit.The membership involves whoever participates in and contributes to the practice.People can participate in different ways and to different degrees. This permeable

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periphery creates many opportunities for learning, as outsiders and newcomerslearn the practice in concrete terms, and core members gain new insights fromcontacts with less-engaged participants.

• A community of practice is different from a team in that the shared learning andinterest of its members are what keep it together. It is defined by knowledge ratherthan by task, and exists because participation has value to its members. A communityof practice’s life cycle is determined by the value it provides to its members, not byan institutional schedule. It does not appear the minute a project is started anddoes not disappear with the end of a task. It takes a while to come into being andmay live long after a project is completed or an official team has disbanded.

• A community of practice is different from a network in the sense that it is “about”something; it is not just a set of relationships. It has an identity as a community, andthus shapes the identities of its members. A community of practice exists becauseit produces a shared practice as members engage in a collective process of learning.

People belong to communities of practice at the same time as they belong to otherorganizational structures. In their business units, they shape the organization. In their teams,they take care of projects. In their networks, they form relationships. And in theircommunities of practice, they develop the knowledge that lets them do these other tasks.This informal fabric of communities and shared practices makes the official organizationeffective and, indeed, possible.

Communities of practice have different relationships with the official organization.The table “Relationships to Official Organization” shows different degrees of institutionalinvolvement, but it does not imply that some relations are better or more advanced thanothers. Rather, these distinctions are useful because they draw attention to the differentissues that can arise based on the kind of interaction between the community of practiceand the organization as a whole.

Relationships to Official Organization

Relationship Definition Challenges typical of the

relationship

Unrecognized Invisible to the organization and sometimes even to members themselves

Lack of reflexivity, awareness of value and of limitation

Bootlegged Only visible informally to a circle of people in the know

Getting resources, having an impact, keeping hidden

Legitimized Officially sanctioned as a valuable entity

Scrutiny, over-management, new demands

Strategic Widely recognized as central to the organization's success

Short-term pressures, blindness of success, smugness, elitism, exclusion

Transformative Capable of redefining its environment and the direction of the organization

Relating to the rest of the organization, acceptance, managing boundaries

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4.7.3. Importance of Communities to Organizations

Communities of practice are important to the functioning of any organization, but theybecome crucial to those that recognize knowledge as a key asset. From this perspective,an effective organization comprises a constellation of interconnected communities ofpractice, each dealing with specific aspects of the company’s competency–from thepeculiarities of a long-standing client, to manufacturing safety, to esoteric technical inventions.Knowledge is created, shared, organized, revised, and passed on within and among thesecommunities. In a deep sense, it is by these communities that knowledge is “owned” inpractice.

Communities of practice fulfill a number of functions with respect to the creation, accumulation,and diffusion of knowledge in an organization:

a) They are nodes for the exchange and interpretation of information. Becausemembers have a shared understanding, they know what is relevant to communicateand how to present information in useful ways. As a consequence, a community ofpractice that spreads throughout an organization is an ideal channel for movinginformation, such as best practices, tips, or feedback, across organizationalboundaries.

b) They can retain knowledge in “living” ways, unlike a database or a manual. Evenwhen they routines certain tasks and processes, they can do so in a manner thatresponds to local circumstances and thus is useful to practitioners. Communities ofpractice preserve the tacit aspects of knowledge that formal systems cannot capture.For this reason, they are ideal for initiating newcomers into a practice.

c) They can steward competencies to keep the organization at the cutting edge.Members of these groups discuss novel ideas, work together on problems, andkeep up with developments inside and outside a firm. When a community commitsto being on the forefront of a field, members distribute responsibility for keepingup with or pushing new developments. This collaborative inquiry makes membershipvaluable, because people invest their professional identities in being part of adynamic, forward-looking community.

d) They provide homes for identities. They are not as temporary as teams, andunlike business units, they are organized around what matters to their members.Identity is important because, in a sea of information, it helps us sort out what wepay attention to, what we participate in, and what we stay away from. Having asense of identity is a crucial aspect of learning in organizations. Consider the annualcomputer drop at a semiconductor company that designs both analog and digitalcircuits. The computer drop became a ritual by which the analog community assertedits identity. Once a year, their hero would climb the highest building on the company’scampus and drop a computer, to the great satisfaction of his peers in the analoggang. The corporate world is full of these displays of identity, which manifestthemselves in the jargon people use, the clothes they wear, and the remarks theymake. If companies want to benefit from people’s creativity, they must supportcommunities as a way to help them develop their identities.

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Communities of practice structure an organization’s learning potential in two ways:through the knowledge they develop at their core and through interactions at theirboundaries. Like any asset, these communities can become liabilities if their own expertisebecomes insular. It is therefore important to pay as much attention to the boundaries ofcommunities of practice as to their core, and to make sure that there is enough activity atthese boundaries to renew learning. For while the core is the center of expertise, radicallynew insights often arise at the boundary between communities. Communities of practicetruly become organizational assets when their core and their boundaries are active incomplementary ways.

To develop the capacity to create and retain knowledge, organizations must understandthe processes by which these learning communities evolve and interact. We need to buildorganizational and technological infrastructures that do not dismiss or impede these processes,but rather recognize, support, and leverage them.

4.7.4. Developing and nurturing Communities of Practice

Just because communities of practice arise naturally does not mean that organizationscan’t do anything to influence their development. Most communities of practice exist whetheror not the organization recognizes them. Many are best left alone–some might actuallywither under the institutional spotlight. And some may actually need to be carefully seededand nurtured. But a good number will benefit from some attention, as long as this attentiondoes not smother their self-organizing drive.

Whether these communities arise spontaneously or come together through seedingand nurturing, their development ultimately depends on internal leadership. Certainly, inorder to legitimize the community as a place for sharing and creating knowledge, recognizedexperts need to be involved in some way, even if they don’t do much of the work. Butinternal leadership is more diverse and distributed. It can take many forms:

a) The inspirational leadership provided by thought leaders and recognized experts

b) The day-to-day leadership provided by those who organize activities

c) The classificatory leadership provided by those who collect and organizeinformation in order to document practices

d) The interpersonal leadership provided by those who weave the community’ssocial fabric

e) The boundary leadership provided by those who connect the community to othercommunities

f) The institutional leadership provided by those who maintain links with otherorganizational constituencies, in particular the official hierarchy

g) The cutting-edge leadership provided by those who shepherd “out-of-the-box”initiatives.

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These roles may be formal or informal, and may be concentrated in a core group ormore widely distributed. But in all cases, leadership must have intrinsic legitimacy in thecommunity. To be effective, therefore, managers and others must work with communitiesof practice from the inside rather than merely attempt to design them or manipulate themfrom the outside. Nurturing communities of practice in organizations includes:

1) Legitimizing participation. Organizations can support communities of practiceby recognizing the work of sustaining them; by giving members the time to participatein activities; and by creating an environment in which the value communities bringis acknowledged. To this end, it is important to have an institutional discourse thatincludes this less-recognized dimension of organizational life. Merely introducingthe term “communities of practice” into an organization’s vocabulary can have apositive effect by giving people an opportunity to talk about how their participationin these groups contributes to the organization as a whole.

2) Negotiating their strategic context. In what Richard McDermott calls “double-knit organizations,” people work in teams for projects but belong to longer-livedcommunities of practice for maintaining their expertise. The value of team-basedprojects that deliver tangible products is easily recognized, but it is also easy tooverlook the potential cost of their short-term focus. The learning that communitiesof practice share is just as critical, but its longer-term value is more subtle toappreciate. Organizations must therefore develop a clear sense of how knowledgeis linked to business strategies and use this understanding to help communities ofpractice articulate their strategic value. This involves a process of negotiation thatgoes both ways. It includes understanding what knowledge–and therefore whatpractices–a given strategy requires. Conversely, it also includes paying attention towhat emergent communities of practice indicate with regard to potential strategicdirections.

3) Being attuned to real practices. To be successful, organizations must leverageexisting practices. For instance, when the customer service function of a largecorporation decided to combine service, sales, and repairs under the same 800number, researchers from the Institute for Research on Learning discovered thatpeople were already learning from each other on the job while answering phonecalls. They then instituted a learning strategy for combining the three functions thattook advantage of this existing practice. By leveraging what they were alreadydoing, workers achieved competency in the three areas much faster than theywould have through traditional training. More generally, the knowledge thatcompanies need is usually already present in some form, and the best place to startis to foster the formation of communities of practice that leverage the potential thatalready exists.

4) Fine-tuning the organization. Many elements in an organizational environmentcan foster or inhibit communities of practice, including management interest, rewardsystems, work processes, corporate culture, and company policies. These factorsrarely determine whether people form communities of practice, but they can facilitateor hinder participation. For example, issues of compensation and recognition oftencome up. Because communities of practice must be self-organizing to learn effectively

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and because participation must be intrinsically self-sustaining, it is tricky to usereward systems as a way to manipulate behavior or micro-manage the community.But organizations shouldn’t ignore the issue of reward and recognition altogether;rather, they need to adapt reward systems to support participation in learningcommunities, for instance, by including community activities and leadership inperformance review discussions. Managers also need to make sure that existingcompensation systems do not inadvertently penalize the work involved in buildingcommunities.

5) Providing support. Communities of practice are mostly self-sufficient, but theycan benefit from some resources, such as outside experts, travel, meeting facilities,and communications technology. A companywide team assigned to nurturecommunity development can help address these needs. This team typically

• provides guidance and resources when needed

• helps communities connect their agenda to business strategies

• encourages them to move forward with their agenda and remain focused on the cutting edge

• makes sure they include all the right people

• helps them create links to other communities

Such a team can also help identify and eliminate barriers to participation in the structureor culture of the overall organization; for instance, conflicts between short-term demandson people’s time and the need to participate in learning communities. In addition, just theexistence of such a team sends the message that the organization values the work andinitiative of communities of practice.

KM Viewpoint 4.1 Different members of an organization can take actions in their own domains to support communities of practice and maximize the benefits they can provide:

• Line managers must make sure that people are able to participate in the right communities of practice so they sustain the expertise they need to contribute to projects.

• Knowledge managers must go beyond creating informational repositories that take knowledge to be a "thing," toward supporting the whole social and technical ecology in which knowledge is retained and created.

• Training departments must move the focus from training initiatives that extract knowledge out of practice to learning initiatives that leverage the learning potential inherent in practice.

• Strategists must find ways to create two-way connections between communities of practice and organizational strategies.

• Change managers must help build new practices and communities to bring about changes that will make a constructive difference.

• Accountants must learn to recognize the capital generated when communities of practice increase an organization's learning potential.

• Facilities managers must understand the ways in which their designs support or hinder the development of communities of practice.

• Work process designers must devise process improvement systems that thrive on, rather than substitute for, engaged communities of practice.

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4.8. DEVELOPING ORGANISATIONAL MEMORY‘

Organizational or corporate memories record the accumulated knowledge about theservices and the products of an organization, with the purpose of supporting the continuousenhancement of knowledge-intensive work practices and of alleviating the risk of “corporateamnesia” due to experts taking away their knowledge when they leave.

It is possible to build a corporate memory in a totally unstructured way: by maintainingall documents and recording all practices of an organization. This approach seemsinexpensive; it involves, however, amassing a lot of irrelevant information that will need tobe filtered later on. The opposite approach involves an intensive initial knowledge engineeringeffort leading to the construction of corporate knowledge bases and expert systems.Buckingham Shum proposes a middle way, which can be particularly viable for organizationsof knowledge workers: the recording of relevant team activities through the use of hypertextual representations linking the different steps of the activities, highlighting the differentoptions considered at each step and associating actions and decisions with role andcompetencies of the people involved. Such hyper textual representations are created andnegotiated ex vivo by knowledge workers, rather than reconstructed post mortem byknowledge engineers; they record process knowledge related to knowledge-intensiveproblem-solving and decision-making activities. The negotiation aspect is very relevant,because explicit knowledge comes often dressed with a deceitful appearance of “objectivity”which in reality hides a specific point of view. Acknowledging the existence of this point ofview and allowing for its negotiation is an important step towards getting organizationsknowing themselves and making workers fully empowered. In this way, the negotiatedpoint of view will effectively reflect the commitments of all involved stakeholders, and notjust of single groups and individuals holding ̀ `power’’ roles and positions in the organization.

We can also describe instead a full-fledged knowledge engineering approach suitablefor building corporate memories from the product knowledge of large manufacturingorganizations such as automotive industries. Starting from the collections of documentsabout the products of these organizations (product specifications, instruction manuals, troubleshooting guides etc.), they show how to extract the explicit knowledge that is in there andintegrate it with further explicit knowledge obtained by externalizing the tacit knowledgerelated to the context of use of the documents. The knowledge thus acquired is representedin the form of conceptual graphs that relate the different parts of the products, associateparts with properties and connect single actions for operating the products into complexplans corresponding to full operating instructions. They show then how the initial investmentneeded for building this type of knowledge bases pays off in a number of ways: by providingcapabilities for automatic multilingual document generation, by providing a knowledge spaceof existing product knowledge to support the fast design of new products, by providing alanguage-independent semantic representation of product knowledge that could be usedto enforce enterprise coherence for companies operating in multilingual and multiculturalenvironments.

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The software engineering requirements for supporting this type of corporate memories,needed for the strong integration of corporate memories with existing IT infrastructures,with particular regard to existing capabilities for database management, documentmanagement and business process support. A corporate memory architecture that meetsthese requirements is necessary and the paradigm shift of corporate memories from artificialintelligence to a more general framework for IT integration is the need of the hour.

SUMMARY

Organizational culture describes the collective perceptions, beliefs and values ofemployees in the workplace. Culture penetrates to the essence of an organization. Individualslearn their organizational culture from the day one he or she joins the organization andthese learned experiences help them to interpret the work environment so that they canconform and operate effectively in that setting.

Culture is important because it shapes assumptions about what knowledge is worthexchanging; it defines relationships between individual and organizational knowledge; itcreates the context for social interaction that determines how knowledge will be shared inparticular situations; and it shapes the processes by which new knowledge is created,legitimated, and distributed in organizations.

When building an effective knowledge culture, organizations need to have a range ofstrategies to ensure the values inherent in knowledge management are enacted (i.e. followedin practice) by each employee. Knowledge culture enablers are those influences thatcontribute to the creation of an effective and positive knowledge community.

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of people in organizations that form toshare what they know, to learn from one another regarding some aspects of their work andto provide a social context for that work. Communities of practice structure an organization’slearning potential in two ways: through the knowledge they develop at their core andthrough interactions at their boundaries.

Organizational or corporate memories record the accumulated knowledge about the servicesand the products of an organization, with the purpose of supporting the continuousenhancement of knowledge-intensive work practices.

SHORT QUESTIONS

1. What do you mean by knowledge sharing culture?2. Define organizational culture.3. Define community of practice.4. Write a note on organizational memory.

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LONG QUESTIONS

1. What is the culture of an organization? Why is it important to understand?2. What are some of the key enablers and major obstacles to effective knowledge

sharing that can be attributed to the overall organizational culture?3. What are the various knowledge culture enablers? Explain.4. How to cultivate knowledge culture in organizations?5. Choose three organizational culture elements and consider how these might be

different in a manufacturing community and knowledge community?6. The chapter describes a number of knowledge culture features. Choose any four

of these and outline how their absence might affect the knowledge community?7. ‘Knowledge culture interventions should be centrally driven’. Discuss this statement.8. Why do knowledge cultures need to be maintained? Whose responsibility is it?9. How do you develop and nurture a CoP in an organization?

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UNIT V

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – LOOKINGAHEAD

5.1. INTRODUCTION

Many dimensions are involved in describing knowledge management tools. Thefollowing are some of the KM technologies as tools that

• Enhances and enable knowledge generation, codification, and transfer.• Generate knowledge to make knowledge available for others.• Transfer knowledge to decrease problems with time and space when• communicating in an organization.

KM technologies are classified according to the following scheme:

1. Communication2. Collaboration3. Content creation4. Content management5. Adaptation6. E-learning7. Personal tools8. Artificial intelligence9. Networking

The knowledge capture and creation does not make extensive use of technologiesbut a wide range of KM technologies may be used to support knowledge sharing anddissemination as well as knowledge acquisition and application. Many tools and techniquesare borrowed from other disciplines, and others are specific to KM. All of them need to bemixed and matched in the appropriate manner in order to address all the needs of the KMdiscipline, and the choice of tools to be included in the KM toolkit must be consistent withthe organization’s overall business strategy.

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5.2. LEARNING OBJECTIVES


• Describe the key communication technologies that can be used to supportknowledge sharing within an organization.

• Illustrate the major advantages and drawbacks of synchronous versus asynchronousKM technologies.

• Define data mining and explore its applications.

• Compare and contrast different types of intelligent agents and show how they canbe used to personalize KM technologies.

• Define the difference between push and pull KM technologies.

• Characterize the major groupware tools and explain how they would beimplemented within an organization.

• Understand the major components of a knowledge repository and explain howorganizations make optimal use of one.

• Examines the different stages of KM implementations and metrics for evaluatingan initiative’s progress. Introduces a “KM measurement bell curve” and offersexplanation of organizations’ ongoing assessment techniques.

• Discuss the purpose of a knowledge audit and how to conduct a KM audit.

• Identify the various career opportunities emerges in the field of KM and qualitiesand attributes required for knowledge career.

• Analyse selected case studies in KM field.

5.3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Knowledge management tools are the ‘face and place’ as well as the ‘nuts and bolts’of knowledge in the 21st century workspace which make data into knowledge. Knowledgemanagement implementation requires a wide range of diverse tools that are responsible inthe KM cycle. Technology is used to facilitate primarily communication, collaboration, andcontent management for better knowledge capture, sharing, dissemination and application.KM-enabling tools and techniques are also play a useful facilitating role in learningorganizations, especially in dealing with the information overload that is plaguing mostorganizations that have launched an intranet, enterprise resource planning (ERP) or businessintelligence system. Major categories of KM tools are presented here.

5.3.1. Knowledge capture and creation tools

(a) Content Creation Tools

It is predicted that content management systems (CMS) will become a “commodity”in the future. Many content management system projects fail owing to lack of goodimplementation standards and a lack of an understanding of usability issues. Technology-

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only approaches will continue to generate unsuccessful projects. CMS should be handledin a strategic way. These failures provide a valuable source of learning. The move towardsopen standards would greatly assist the evolution of CMS, which is likely to proceed withthe use of XML-based protocols for communicating with and between content managementsystems. Additional standards are needed for storing, structuring, and managing content.Eventually, content, documents, records, and knowledge management will converge, whichwill be of greatest benefit to organizations. As yet, there is no merged platform toaccommodate such a convergence.

Authoring tools, the most commonly used content creation tools, and range from thegeneral (e.g. word processing) to the more specialized (e.g. web page design software).Annotation technologies enable short comments to be attached to specific sections of textdocument, often by a number of different authors (e.g. by making use of the track changesfeature in Word). This allows a “running commentary” to be built up and preserved.Annotations may be public (visible to all who access and read the document) or private(visible to the author only).

(b) Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery

The data mining and knowledge discovery processes automatically extract predictiveinformation from large databases based on statistical analysis (typically, cluster analysis).Using a combination of machine learning, statistical analysis, modeling techniques, anddatabase technology, data mining detects hidden patterns and subtle relationships in dataand infers rules that allow the prediction of future results. Raw data is analyzed in order tooffer a model that attempts to explain the observed patterns. This model can then be usedto predict future occurrences and to forecast expected outcomes.

A large number of inputs are required, usually over a significant period of time, and thetypes of model produced range from “easy” to “almost impossible” to understand. Examplesof easy-to-understand models are decision trees. Regression analyses are moderately easyto understand, and neural networks remain black boxes. The major drawback of theblack box models is that it becomes very difficult to hypothesize about casual relationships.

Variables may be correlated, but this relationship may not have any meaning orusefulness. For example, a major bank found a correlation between the state an applicantlived in and a higher percentage of defaults on loans given out. This finding should not bethe basis for a policy that would automatically reject any applicants from their state. Realitychecks are always needed with statistics before any conclusions can be drawn.

Typical applications of data mining and knowledge discovery systems include marketsegmentation, customer profiling, fraud detection, evaluation of retail promotions, creditrisk analysis, and market basket analysis. However, there are usually a few gems to be

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mined with data mining applications. These are often unexpected correlations that uponfurther study yield some useful (and often actionable) insights into what is occurring.

Data mining tools that are currently in use include:

• Statistical analysis tools (e.g. SAS).

• Data mining suites (e.g. enterprise Miner).

• Consulting/outsourcing tools such as EDS, IBM, and Epsilon. (Note that theseare models, not just software).

• Data visualization software that coherently presents a large amount of informationin a small space. They make use of human information processing capabilities-your eyes- to detect patterns, for example, in a virtual reality or simulationenvironment where you can “walk around the data points”.

It is also possible to apply this technique and use these tools to mine content otherthan data-namely, text mining and thematic analysis and web mining-to look at what content,how often, for how long (e.g. number of hits), which is very helpful in content management.Similarly, skill mining or expertise profiling can be used to detect patterns in online curriculumvitae of organizational members. Expertise location systems can be automatically createdbased on the content that has been mined. Commercial software systems can also be usedto mine e-mail data in order to determine who is answering what types of queries orthemes. Organizational experts and expertise can be detected by looking at the patterns ofquestions and answers contained within the e-mails. The same caveat applies to all ofthese data mining applications: a human being is always needed in the loop in order tocarry out “reality checks” (i.e. to verify and validate that the patterns do indeed exist andthat they have been interpreted in a useful and valuable manner.)

(c) Blogs

A blog is a slang name for a web log. For the uninitiated, a web log is a popular andfairly personal content form on the Internet. A person’s web log is much like an open diary.It chronicles what a person wants to share with the world on an almost daily basis. A blogis a frequently updated, publicly accessible journal. Although the “blogosphere” started offas a medium for mostly personal musings, it has evolved into a tool that offers some of themost insightful information on the web. Furthermore, blogs are becoming much morecommon, as businesses, politicians, policy makers, and even libraries and library associationshave begun to blog as a way of communicating with their patrons and constituents.

everal librarians publish blogs that offer a wealth of information about social softwareand its uses. SNTReport.com focuses on the social software industry and how socialsoftware tools are being used to help people collaborate. Blogs not only offers a new wayto communicate with customers, but they have internal uses as well. For example, largeorganizations can use a well formed blog to exchange ideas and information about web

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development projects, training initiatives, or research issues. These questions and answerscan be cross-indexed and archived, which helps build a knowledge network among theparticipating members. Most importantly, the price of setting up a well formed, secure blogand leverage it into a knowledge and content management tool is a pittance when comparedto the cost of other, proprietary solutions.

At present, the majority of blogs are published exclusively in text. The next generationof blogs, however, will implement audio and video elements, bringing a sophisticatedmultimedia blend to the medium.

Blogs are collections of articles or stories arranged in reverse chronology and aregenerally updated more frequently than regular web pages. Just like any other informationon the net, there is no guarantee of authority, accuracy, or lack of bias. In fact, personalblogs are frequently biased and can be good sources of opinion and information from the“man on the street”. Because blogs can be updated on the fly, they frequently have accessto unfiltered information faster from war zones and sites of natural disasters than themainstream media outlets. Blogs are also good sources of unfiltered information on eitherfaulty or very useful products.

In the beginning, blogs appeared in search results alongside regular web pages. Sinceblogs are technologically any different from other web pages (that is, they are HTML,XML, java script, etc. - it is their format, not their coding that is different). Spiders andbots (or web crawlers, knowledge robots) automatically search for information online andcollect posts (i.e. messages that are submitted to a computerized messaging system) thesame way as they collect other online information. Search engines that place greater valueon sites that are recently and frequently updated and are highly linked tend to rank blogposts very highly. Because the barrier to publication is so low in blogs, arguably muchlower than that for standard web pages, these high rankings were introducing a lot of noiseinto online searches. The odds are that if you have searched on a controversial topic in thepast year you have run across several archived blog posts. Recently, most major searchengines have altered their algorithms to push blogs down in the search results. Engines thatonly return two results from any one site use this feature to limit the impact of blogs on thesearch results.

Blog searching breaks down into atleast two categories: (1) information from withinblogs/across blogs or (2) addresses of feeds from blogs so that you may subscribe in youraggregator (i.e. a piece of software or a remotely hosted service that periodically reads aset of news sources, such as blogs, identifies what is new, and displays them on singlepage). Feeds and blogs are two different concepts, but they are closely linked becausemost blogs have feeds and many feeds are generated by blogs. Just as in other web searchtools, there are search engines and directories. At this time, blog search engines are wheregeneral search engines were before the Google Age: there are many competing smallerproducts, but no product dominates the scene.

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(d) Content management tools

Content management refers to the management of valuable content throughout theuseful lifespan of the content. Content lifespan will typically begin with content creation,handle multiple changes and updates, merging, summarization, and other repackaging, andwill typically end with archiving. Metadata (information about the content) is used to bettermanage content throughout its useful lifespan. Metadata includes such information as source/author, keywords to describe content, date created, date changed, quality, best purposes,annotations by those who have made use of it, and an expiry or “best before” date whereapplicable. It is also useful to include attributes such as storage medium, location andwhether or not it exists in a number of alternative forms (e.g. different languages). XML isincreasing being used to tag knowledge content, and taxonomies serve to better organizeand classify content for easier future retrieval and use.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) gives you the ability to structure and addrelevance to chunks of information (that is why many CM solutions use XML), and intheory to exchange data more easily between applications (e.g. with your suppliers,customers, and partners). However, you may all use the same words (tags), but if each ofyou defines and applies them differently, then we remain in the land of Babel. Commonagreed schemas are essential. Keep tags with developments on the schemas and metadatastandards in your field.

Taxonomies are hierarchical information trees for classifying information, analogousto the library subject catalog. They can help overcome differences of language usage indifferent part of an organization and even clarify the use of different languages. Traditionally,taxonomy development is manually intensive in that it is created and maintained by people.The growing problem of information overload means that taxonomies are receiving significantattention. But how do you cope with the evolution of terms whose meanings seem tochange from one year to the next? Automatic (or semiautomatic) classification of informationobjects uses software such as natural language analyzers, text summarizers, and othertechnology to understand some of the meaning- the concepts- behind blocks of text, andto tag and index it appropriately to aid subsequent retrieval. Automated classifiers findpatterns in textual content, produce categories, and classify the content using these categories.

Personal capital is a term coined to explain a divergence from the traditional notionof capital, which is an asset “owned” by an organization. In fact, the future of KM will blurthe boundaries between the individual, the group or community, and the organization. KMwill become a pervasive part of how we conduct our everyday business lives. PersonalizedKM (PKM) will gain increasing importance given the ever-increasing momentum ofinformation overload with which we must deal. In other words, some of the key principles,best practices, and business processes of KM that have to date been focused at theorganizational level will filter down to be used by individuals managing their own personalcapital.

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PKM and traditional knowledge management differ depending on whether anorganizational or personal perspective is adopted. Tools for personal informationmanagement are impressive and, if you think about e-mail and portals, are already widelyused. Newer tools such as blogs, news aggregators and instant messaging, represent anew toolset for PKM.

Personal portals- which were once known as “enterprise” portals- are now focusedn needs of the individual- all a person’s information and application needs harmoniouslybrought together into a preferred arrangement on the desktop. This is mass customizationin front of your eyes. Again, the aims are laudable, but reality and theory are often milesapart. PKM brings many of the key principles of KM to bear on the personal productivityand specific work requirements of a given knowledge worker. Definitions of PKM revolvearound a set of core issues: managing and supporting personal knowledge and informationso that it is accessible, meaningful, and valuable to the individual; maintaining networks,contacts, and communities; making life easier and more enjoyable; and exploiting personalcapital (Higgison, 2004). On an information management level, PKM involves filtering andmaking sense of information and organization paper and digital archives-mails, andbookmark collections.

5.3.2. Knowledge sharing and dissemination tools

Although there is a distinction between communication technologies (such as telephoneand e-mail) and collaboration technologies (such as workflow management), it is verydifficult to draw a line between the two. Communication and collaboration are invariablyintertwined, and it is quite difficult to establish where one ends and the other begins. Bothtypes of tools have been grouped under the category of groupware or collaboration tools.Although all organizational members will make use of communication and collaboration,including project teams and work units, communities of practice will be particularly activein making use of many, if not all, of the communication and collaboration technologiesdescribed in this section.

(a) Groupware and Collaboration Tools

Groupware represents a class of software that helps groups of colleagues (workgroups)attached to a communication network (e.g. Local Area Networks [LANs]) to organizetheir activities. Typically, groupware supports the following operations:

• Scheduling meetings and allocating resources• E-mail• Password protection for documents• Telephone utilities• Electronic newsletters• File distribution

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The most commonly used communication technologies include the telephone, fax,videoconferencing, teleconferencing, chat rooms, instant messaging, phone text messaging(SMS), internet telephone (voice over IP or VOIP), e-mail, and discussion forums.Communication is said to be dyadic when it occurs between two individuals (e.g. a telephonecall). Teleconferencing, on the other hand, may have more than two participants interactingwith one another real time. Videoconferencing introduces a multimedia component to thecommunication channel as participants can not only hear (audio) but also see the otherparticipants (audiovisual). Desktop videoconferencing is similar but does not require adedicated videoconferencing facility. Simple and inexpensive digital video cameras can beused to transmit images. The visual component is especially useful when demonstrationsare presented to all participants.

Chat rooms are text-based but synchronous. Participants communicative with oneanother in real time via a web server that provides the interaction facility. Instant messagingis also real-time communication, but in this case participants sign on to the instant messagingsystem and they can immediately see who else is online or “live” at that same time. Messagesare exchanged through text boxes. The SMS (Short Messaging System) allows text messagesto be sent via a cellular phone rather than through the internet.

E-mail continues to be one of the most frequently used communication channels inorganizations. Although e-mail messaging is dyadic, it can also be used in a more broadcastmode (e.g. group mailings) as well as in an asynchronous group discussion mode (byforwarding previous discussion threads).

Communication technologies are almost always integrated with some form ofcollaboration, whether it be planning for collaboration or organizing collaborative work.Collaboration technologies are often referred to as groupware or as workgroup productivitysoftware. It is technology designed to facilitate the work of groups. This technology maybe used to communicate, cooperate, coordinate, solve problems, compete, or negotiate.Although traditional technologies like the telephone qualify as groupware, the term is ordinarilyused to refer to a specific class of technologies relying on modern computer networks,such as e-mail, newsgroup, videophones, or chat.

Groupware technologies are typically categorized along two primary dimensions

1. Whether users of the groupware are working together at the same time (“real-time” or “synchronous” groupware) or different times (“asynchronous” groupware).

2. Whether users are working together in the same place (“colocated” or “face-to-face”) or in different places (“non-colocated” or “distance”).

Following are the different categories of taxonomy of groupware:

1. Electronic mail and messaging2. Group calendaring and scheduling

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3. Electronic meeting systems4. Desktop video, real-time synchronous conferencing5. Non-real-time asynchronous conferencing6. Group document handling7. Workflow8. Workgroup utilities and development tools9. Groupware services10. Groupware and KM frameworks11. Groupware applications12. collaborative Internet-based applications and products

E-mail is by far the most common groupware application (besides, of course, thetraditional telephone). Although the basic technology is designed to pass simple messagesbetween two people, even relatively basic e-mail systems today typically include interestingfeatures for forwarding messages, filing messages, creating mailing groups, and attachingfiles with a message. Other features that have been explored include automatic sorting andprocessing of messages, automatic routing, and structures communication (messagesrequiring certain information).

Newsgroup and mailing lists are similar in spirit to e-mail systems except that theyare intended for messages among large groups of people instead of one-to-onecommunication. In practice, the main difference between newsgroups and mailing lists isthat newsgroup shows messages to users only when they are explicitly requested (an “on-demand” service), while mailing lists deliver messages as they become available (an“interrupt-driven” interface).

Workflow systems allow documents to be routed through organizations by means ofa relatively fixed process. A simple example of a workflow application is an expense reportin an organization: an employee enters an expense report and submits it, a copy is archivedand then routed to the employee’s manager for approval, the manager receives the document,electronically approves it, and sends it on, and the expense is registered to the group’saccount and forwarded to the accounting department for payment. Workflow systemsmay provide features such as routing, development of forms, and support for differingroles and privileges.

Hypertext is a system for linking text documents to each other, with the web being anobvious example. Whenever multiple people author and link documents, the systembecomes group work, constantly evolving and responding to other’s work. Some hypertextsystems include capabilities for seeing who else has visited a certain page or link, or at leastseeing how often a link has been followed, thus giving users a basic awareness of whatother people are doing in the system. Page counters on the web are a crude approximationof this function. Another common multi-user feature in hypertext (that is not found on the

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web) is allowing any user to create links from any page, so that others can be informedwhen there are relevant links not known to the original author.

Group calendars allow scheduling, project management, and coordination amongmany people and may provide support for scheduling equipment as well. Typical featuredetect when schedules conflict or find meeting times that will work for everyone. Groupcalendars also help to locate people. Typical concerns are privacy (users may feel thatcertain activities are not public matters) and completeness and accuracy (users may feelthat the benefits of the calendar do not justify the time it takes to enter schedule information).

Collaborative writing systems may provide both real-time and non-real-timesupport. Word processors may provide asynchronous support by showing authorship andby allowing users to track changes and make annotations to documents. Authorscollaborating on a document may also be given tools to help plan and coordinate theauthoring process, such as methods for locking parts of the document or linking separatelyauthored documents. Synchronous support allows authors to see each other’s changes asthey make them, and usually needs to provide an additional communication channel to theauthors as they work (via videophones or chat systems).

Synchronous or real-time groupware is exemplified by shared workplaces, tele- orvideoconferencing, and chat systems. For example, shared whiteboards allow two or morepeople to view and draw on a shared drawing surface even from different locations. Thissystem can be used, for instance, during a phone call, where each person can jot downnotes (e.g. a name, phone number, or map), or people can work collaboratively on a visualproblem. Most shared whiteboards are designed for informal conversation, but they mayalso serve structured communications or more sophisticated drawing tasks, such ascollaborative graphic design, publishing, or engineering applications. Shared whiteboardscan indicate where each person is drawing or pointing by showing telepointers, which arecolor-coded or labeled to identify each person.

Video communications systems allow two-way or multiway calling with live video,providing essentially a telephone system with an additional visual component. Cost andcompatibility issues limited the early use of video systems to scheduled videoconferencingmeeting rooms. Video is advantageous when visual information is being discussed, butmay not provide substantial benefit in most cases where conventional audio telephones areadequate. In addition to supporting conversations, video may also be used in less directcollaborative situations, such as by providing a view of activities at a remote location.

Chat systems permit many people to write messages in real time in a public space.As each person submits a message, it appears at the bottom of a scrolling screen. Chatgroups are usually formed by listing chat rooms by name, location, number of people,topic of discussion, and so on.

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Many systems allow for rooms with controlled access or with moderators to lead thediscussion, but most of the topics of interest to researchers involve issues related tounmoderated real-time communication, including anonymity, following the stream ofconversation, scalability with number of users, and abusive users.

Although chat-like systems are possible using nontext media, the text version of chat hasthe rather interesting aspect of having a direct transcript of the conversation, which notonly has long term value, but also allows for backward reference during conversation,making it easier for people to drop into a conversation and still pick up on the ongoingdiscussion.

(b) Wikis

Wikis are web-based software that supports concepts such as open editing, whichallows multiple users to create and edit content on a website. A wiki site grows and changesat the will of the participants. People can add and edit pages at will, using a Word-likescreen, without knowing any programming or HTML commands. More specifically, a wikiis composed of web pages where people input information and then create hyperlinks toanother page or new pages for more details about a particular topic. Anyone can edit anypage and add, delete, or correct information. A search field at the bottom of the page letsyou enter a key word for the information you want to find. Today, two types of wikis exist:public wikis and corporate wikis. Public wikis are developed first and are freewheelingforums with few controls. In the last year or two, corporations have been harnessing thepower of wikis to provide interactive forums for tracking projects and communicating withemployees over their in-house intranets.

An example of wiki is wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written, literally, by thousandsof people around the world. Wikis exist for thousands of topics, and if one does not existfor your favorite subject, you can start one on it and add it to the list. Wikis support newtypes of communications by combining internet applications and websites with human voices.

A public wiki survives thanks to the initiative, honesty, and integrity of its users. Sitescan be vandalized, derogatory remarks- called “flames”- can be posted, and misinformationcan be published. However, a vandalized site can be restored, a flame can be erased, andinformation can be corrected by anyone who knows better. The community polices itself.Corporate wikis differ from public wikis in that they are more secure and have many morenavigation, usage, and help features. Corporate wikis are used for project managementand company communications as well as discussion sites and knowledge databases. Forexample, a wiki can be established for a particular project, with the project team givenaccess to update the status of tasks and add related documents and spreadsheets. Itscentral location makes it easy to keep everyone informed and up to date regardless of theirhome office, location or time zone. A wiki is more reliable than continually e-mailing updatesback and forth to the team members, it is faster than e-mail since updates are available

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instantly, and it is more efficient than e-mail since each team member does not have tomaintain his or her own copies. Managers like wikis because they allow them to see whatprogress the team is making or what issues it is facing without getting involved or raisingconcern (e.g. a new way of project management reporting).

For security reasons, corporations usually buy wiki software rather than lease spaceon the internet, and they set up the wiki behind the company’s firewall as a part of theintranet or as an extranet if customers or vendors are allowed access. Also, corporationslook for wiki software that has authorization and password safeguards, “rollback” versionsso that information can be restored to its former state, and easy uploads capabilities fordocuments and images. Some wikis notify users when new information is added; this is anespecially nice feature for corporate projects where fast responses are required.

(c) Networking technologies

Networking technologies consist of intranets (intraorganizational networks), extranets(interorganzational networks), knowledge repositories, knowledge portals, and web-basedshared work places. Knowledge repositories can be defined as an online computer basedstorehouse of expertise, knowledge, experiences, and documentation about a particulardomain of expertise. In creating a knowledge repository, knowledge is collected,summarized, and integrated across sources. Such repositories are sometimes referred toas experiences bases or corporate memories. The repository can either be filled withknowledge through passive collection – where some people in the organization are scanningcommunication processes to detect knowledge.

There are three types of knowledge repositories:

1. External knowledge repositories (such as competitive intelligence)

2. Structured internal knowledge repositories (such as research report and product-oriented market material).

3. Informal internal knowledge repositories (such as “lesson learned”).

A knowledge repository differs from a data warehouse and an information repositoryprimarily in the nature of the content that is stored. Knowledge content will typically consistof contextual, subjective, and fairly pragmatic content. Content in knowledge repositoriestends to be unstructured. Knowledge repositories also tend to be more dynamic thanother types of architectures because the knowledge content is continually updated andsplintered into varying perspectives to serve a wide variety of different users. To this end,repositories typically end up being a series of linked mini-portals distributed across anorganization.

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Most repositories contain the following elements:

1. Declaration knowledge (e.g. concepts, categories, definitions, assumptions-knowledge of what)

2. Procedural knowledge (e.g. processes, events, activities, actions, manuals-knowledge of how or know-how)

3. Casual knowledge (e.g. rationale for decisions, for rejected decisions-knowledgeof why)

4. Context (e.g. circumstances of decisions, informal knowledge, what is and what isnot done, accepted, etc. - knowledge of care-why.)

The knowledge repository is the one-stop-shop for all organizational users providingaccess to all historical, current, and projected valuable knowledge content. All users shouldbe able to connect to and annotate content, connect to others who have come into contactwith the content, as well as contribute content of their own. The interface to the repositoriesshould be user-friendly, seamless, and transparent.

Personalization in the form of personalized news services through push technologies,in the form of mini-portals for each community of practice, and so forth will help maintainthe repository in a manageable state. To this end, use of a term such as knowledgewarehouse should be strongly discouraged. The knowledge repository should instead bevisualized as a lens that is placed on top of the organization’s data and information stores.The access and application of the content of a repository should be as directly linked toprofessional practice and concrete actions as possible.

The knowledge repository typically involves content management software tools suchas a Lotus Notes platform and will be run as an intranet within the organization, withappropriate privacy and security measures in place.

Knowledge portals provide access to diverse enterprise content, communities,expertise, and internal and external services and information. Portals are a means of sortingand disseminating organizational knowledge such as business processes, policies,procedures, documents, and other codified knowledge. They typically feature searchingcapabilities through content as well as through pull technologies (intelligent agents) mayexist. Communities can be accessed via the portal for communication and collaborationpurposes. There may be a number of services that users can subscribe to as well as web-based learning modules on selected topics and professional practices. The critical contentwill have the best practices and lessons learned that have been accumulated over the yearsand to which many organizational members have added value.

The purpose of a portal is to aggregate content from a variety of sources into a one-stop-shop for relevant content. Portals enable the organizations to access internal andexternal knowledge that can be consolidated, analyzed, and used as inputs to decision

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making. Ideally, portals will take into account the different needs of the users and thedifferent sorts of knowledge work they carry out in order to provide the best fit with bothcontent and the format in which the content is presented (the portal interface). Knowledgeportals link people, processes, and valuable knowledge content and provide theorganizational glue or common thread that serves to support knowledge workers. Firstgeneration portals were essentially a means of broadcasting information to all organizationalmembers. Today, they have evolved into sophisticated shared workplaces where knowledgeworkers cannot only contribute content and share content but also acquire and applyvaluable organizational knowledge. Knowledge portals support knowledge creation, sharing,and use by allowing a high level of bidirectional interaction with users.

Portals serve to promote knowledge creation by providing a common virtual spacewhere knowledge workers can contribute their knowledge to organizational memory. Portalspromote knowledge sharing by providing links to other organizational members throughexpertise location systems. Communities of practice will typically have a dedicated spacefor their members on the organizational portal and their own membership location systemincluded in the virtual workspace. The portal organizes valuable knowledge content usingtaxonomies or classification schemes to store both structured and unstructured contents.Finally, portals support knowledge acquisition and application by providing access to theaccumulated knowledge, know-how, experience, and expertise of all those who haveworked within that organization.

5.3.3 Knowledge acquisition and application tools

A number of technologies play an important role in how successful knowledge workersare in acquiring (i.e. understanding) and applying (i.e. making use of) knowledge contentthat is made available to them by the organization. E-learning systems provide support forlearning, comprehension, and better understanding of the new knowledge to be acquired.Tools such as electronic performance support systems (EPSS), expert systems, and decisionsupport systems (DSS) help knowledge workers to better apply knowledge on the job.Adaptive technologies can be used to personalize knowledge content push or pull.Recommender systems can detect similarities or affinities between different types of usersand make recommendations of additional content that others like them have found to beuseful to acquire and apply. Knowledge maps and other visualization tools can help tobetter acquire and apply valuable knowledge, and a number of tools derived from artificialintelligence can at least partially automate processes such as text summarization, contentclassification and content selection.

E-learning applications started out as a computer based learning (CBT) and webbased training (WBT) applications. The common feature is the online learning environmentprovided for learners. Courses can now be delivered via the web or the company intranet.The particular knowledge and know-how to be acquired can be scoped and delivered in

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a timely fashion in order to support knowledge acquisition. E-learning technologies alsogreatly increase the range of knowledge dissemination because knowledge that has beencaptured and coded or packaged as e-learning can be easily made available to allorganizational members, regardless of any time or distance constrains.

Decision support systems are designed to facilitate groups in decision making. Theyprovide tools for brainstorming, critiquing ideas, putting weights and probabilities on eventsand alternatives, and voting. Such systems enable presumably more rational and even-handed decisions. Primarily designed to facilitate meetings, they encourage equalparticipation by, for instance, providing anonymity or enforcing turn-taking.

Visualization technologies and knowledge mapping are good ways of synthesizinglarge amount of complex content in order to make it easier for knowledge workers toacquire and apply knowledge.

Artificial intelligence (AI) research addressed the challenges of capturing, representing,and applying knowledge long before the term knowledge management entered popularusage. AI developed automated reasoning systems that would make use of explicitknowledge representations in order to provide expert level advice, troubleshooting, andother forms of support to knowledge workers. Expert systems are decision support systemsthat do not execute an a priori program but instead deduce or infer a conclusion based onthe inputs provided. Natural language processing also grew out of AI research. Linguistictechnologies resulted in automating the parsing (breaking into subsections) and analysis oftext. Common applications today are voice interfaces or natural language queries that canbe typed in to search databases. Similar AI technologies can also be applied to analyzeand summarize text or automatically classify content. Many of the automated reasoningcapabilities studied in AI research are encapsulated in autonomous pieces of softwarecode, called intelligent agents or software robots (“softbots”). These agents act as proxiesfor knowledge workers and can be tasked with information searching, retrieving, andfiltering functions.

(a) Intelligent Filtering Tools

Intelligent Agents can generally be defined as software programs that assist theiruser and act on his or her behalf: a computer program that helps you in newsgathering, actsautonomously and on its own initiative, have intelligence and can learn, improving itsperformance in executing its tasks. These agents are autonomous computer programs,where their environment dynamically affects their behavior and strategy for problem solving.They help users deal with information. Most agents are internet based- that is, softwareprograms inhabiting the Net and performing their functions there.

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The following features define a true Intelligent Agent:

1. Autonomy: the ability to do most of their tasks without any direct assistance froman outside source, which includes human and other agents, while controlling theirown actions and states.

2. Social ability: the ability to interact with, when they deem appropriate, othersoftware agents and humans.

3. Responsiveness: the ability to respond in a timely fashion to perceived changes inthe environment, including changes in the physical world, other agents, or the internet.

4. Personalizability: the ability to adapt to its user’s needs, by learning from how theuser reacts to the agent’s performance.

5. Proactivity: the ability of an agent to take initiatives by itself, autonomously (out ofa specific instrument by its users) and spontaneously, often on a periodical basis,which makes the agent a very helpful and time saving tool.

6. Adaptivity: the capacity to change and improve according to the experiencesaccumulated. This has to do with memory and learning: an agent learns from itsuser and progressively improves in performing its tasks. The most experimentalbots even develop their “own” personalities and make decisions based on pastexperiences.

7. Cooperation: the interactivity between agent and user, which is fundamentallydifferent from the one way working of ordinary software.

Many knowledge management applications make use of intelligent agents. This rangeincludes personalized information management (such as filtering e-mail), electronic commerce(such as locating information for purchasing and buying), and management of complexcommercial and industrial processes (such as scheduling appointments and air traffic control).These tasks/applications can generally be grouped into five categories:

1. Watcher agents: look for specific information.

2. Learning agents: tailor to an individual’s preferences by learning from the user’spast behavior.

3. Shopping agents: compare “the best price for an item”.

4. Information retrieval agents: help the user to “search for information in an intelligentfashion”.

5. Helper agents: perform tasks autonomously without human interaction.

In the age of computers, information, whether useful or useless, is readily available onthe internet. So much data is available that we often claim to be “overloaded withinformation”. Having too much data can cause as much trouble as having no data, as wemust sift through so much information to get what we need. Let us categorize this informationoverload problem into two divisions:

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1. Information filtering: we must go through an enormous amount of information tofind the small portion that is relevant to us.

2. Information gathering: there is not enough information available to us, and wehave to search long and hard to find what we need.

Information filtering is a particularly important function in KM because users need away of filtering this data into a more manageable situation. Knowledge workers needinformation in a timely manner as it can greatly affect their success. Tasks that are redundantor routine need to be minimized by some individuals who can otherwise spend their timemore productively.

Some companies receive so much e-mail that they have to employ clerical workers tosift through the flood of e-mail, answering basic queries and forwarding others to specializedworkers. Others use intelligent filtering software such as GrapeVine for Lotus, which readsa preestablished “knowledge chart” to determine who should receive what mail. Intelligentagent services can supplement but not replace the value of edited information. As informationbecomes more available, it becomes more and more crucial to have strong editors filterthat information. There is so much content out there that the tools that filter content aregoing to be as important as the content itself.

An end user, required to constantly direct the management process, contributes toinformation overload. But having agents to perform tasks as such searching and filteringcan ultimately reduce the information overload to a degree. An electronic mail filteringagent called Maxims, which is a type of learning agent. The program “learns to prioritize,delete, forward, sort, and archive mail messages on behalf of a user”. The program monitorsthe user’s actions and treats these actions as a lesson on what to do. Depending uponthreshold limits that are constantly updated, Maxims will guess what the user will do. Uponsurpassing a degree of certainty, it will start to suggest action for the user to take.

News agents are designed to create custom newspapers from a huge number of webnewspapers throughout the world. The trend in this field is toward autonomous, personalized,adaptive, and very smart agents that surf the Net, newsgroups, databases, and so on anddeliver selected information to their users. “Push” technology is strictly connected to newsbots developments, consisting basically in the delivery of information on the web that appearsto be initiated by the information server rather than by the client.

Information overload is a world wide problem today, but Intelligent Agents help reducethis problem. Using them to filter the oncoming “traffic” of the “information highway” canhelp reduce cost, effort and time. Yet the development of Intelligent Agents is still in itsinfancy. As it gains in popularity and use, we can expect to see more sophisticated andbetter developed Intelligent Agents.

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Information studies research has examined information seeking behavior for over fivedecades now and can serve as an excellent theoretical basis for the study of the Internet asan information source and Intelligent Agents as mediators in this digital environment using acase study to explore how knowledge workers made use of internet based informationsystems, found that information studies theory provides an appropriate framework forexamining internet based information seeking behaviours. The knowledge workers use theweb to find information external to their organizations as part of their daily work life. Atypology of different complementary modes of using the web as an information source wasidentified and described.

(b) Adaptive technologies

Adaptive technologies are used to better target content to a specific knowledge workeror to a specific group of knowledge workers who share common work needs.

Customization refers to the knowledge workers “manually” changing their knowledgeenvironment- for example, selecting user preferences to change the desktop interface,specifying certain requirements in content to be provided to them (language, format), orsubscribing to certain news or listserv services.

Personalization, on the other hand, refers to the automatic changing of content andinterfaces based on the observed and analyzed behaviors of the intended end user. Forexample, many MS office applications offer the option of dynamically reordering pop-down menu based on frequency of usage (the ones used most often will be displayed ontop). One way of automatically personalizing knowledge acquisition makes use ofrecommender systems. Recommendations regarding content that is likely to be considereduseful and relevant by a given knowledge worker may be based on a user profile of thatknowledge worker (e.g. with themes checked off), or the recommendation may be basedon affinity groups. Affinity groups make use of similarity analysis of users in order to developgroups of individuals who appear to share the same interests. Amazon, for example, usesaffinity groups when, after ordering a book online, visitors to the site are provided withinformation on related books that others who have bought the same book have alsopurchased.

Communities of practice are affinity groups to some extent, and personalizationtechnologies are often used to target or push certain types of content that are of interest toa given community. Community profiles ca be established just as individual profiles andcan be used in the same moment in order to better adapt content and interfaces to thecommunity members.

5.3.4. Strategic implications of KM tools and techniques

Tools and techniques are a means and not an end in themselves. First, the businessobjectives must be clearly identified, and then a consensus must be reached on priority

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application areas to be addressed. For example, an initial KM application will typically besome form of content management system on an internally managed intranet site. This is agood building block for subsequent application such as yellow pages or expertise findersand groupware tools to enable newly connected knowledge workers to continue to worktogether.

A number of the techniques presented here address the phenomenon of emergencethat can help discover existing valuable knowledge, experts, communities of practice, andother valuable intellectual asses that exist within an organization. Once this is done, theintellectual assets can be better assessed, leveraged, and employed. The KM tools andtechniques have an important enabling role in ensuring the success of KM applications.

5.4. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND MEASUREMENTS

“Measurement is the assignment of numerals to things according to any determinative,non-degenerate, rule”. Determinative means the constant assignment of numerals givenconstant conditions. Non-degenerate means allowing for the possibility of assignment ofdifferent numerals under varying conditions. In knowledge management measurement, weare trying to select and/or formulate those concepts useful in measuring and influencingknowledge management performance.

Measuring knowledge management (KM) is not simple. Determining KM’spervasiveness and impact is analogous to measuring the contribution of marketing, employeedevelopment, or any other management or organizational competency. It is nonetheless anecessity if KM is to last and have significant impact in an organization. American Productivityand Quality Council (APQC) focused on how some of the most advanced early KMadopters implement a knowledge management initiative, mobilize resources, create a businesscase, and measure and evolve their KM programs. This has helped to identify measurementapproaches and specific measures in use, and how impact measures and is impacted bythe evolution of KM.

The need for measurement of KM follows a bell curve pattern through the life cycleof a business life cycle. In the earliest stages of knowledge management implementation,formal measurement rarely takes place, nor is it required. As KM becomes more structuredand widespread and companies move into stages two, three, and four, the need formeasurement steadily increases. As KM becomes institutionalized—a way of doingbusiness—the importance of KM-specific measures diminishes, and the need to measurethe effectiveness of knowledge-intensive business processes replaces them.

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Figure 5.1 Knowledge Measurement

Stage 1 – Enter and Advocate Stage

The fire to manage knowledge starts with the spark of inspiration. There has to be anew source of energy or interest to cause KM to appear in the option set for the organization.Someone must become inspired with the vision of what it would be like if the organizationcould effectively support human knowledge capture, transfer, and use. Energized by his orher vision, this champion begins to search for opportunities to share the vision with othersand to find opportunities to demonstrate the value of KM to the organization. The centraltask for the champion at this stage is to create a vision that inspires others to join in theexploration of how managing knowledge might contribute value to the enterprise and itspeople.

Measures Appropriate for Stage 1

The value of embarking on the KM journey needs to be understood by members ofmanagement—more in theory at this stage than in quantitative numbers. The most effectiveway of convincing them may be to find the greatest areas of “K-spots” within yourorganization. Find redundant efforts, discover areas where knowledge is lost, and findpoints of frustration in your employee base. It is important to expose the need for knowledgemanagement at this stage.

Interviewing key stakeholders helps uncover KM needs and exposes areas of losttime, effort, and therefore money. Making comparisons with similar industries that havesuccessfully implemented KM also can convince skeptics. If the competitor has gainedrecognition for its KM efforts and has seen its productivity jump and operating costsplummet, then the organization implementing KM likely found a good candidate to use asproof of KM’s power.

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Stage 1 is the time for advocating the potential of KM to the stakeholders and after thatmore concrete measures will be necessary.

Stage 2 – Explore and Experiment Stage

During the second stage of KM implementation, a practical definition of knowledgemanagement is formulated within an organization and consideration of its applicability ismade. The movement can start from several isolated, grassroots knowledge-enablingactivities and develop into a cross-corporate vision and strategy. The development ofseveral successful knowledge-enabling practices and pilots can be the catalyst to drawpositive senior management attention. Further, it allows organizational sponsors to realizeand consequently support the formation of a cross-functional team that can bring alignment.

At this point in the process, negotiations for some corporate funding can add additionalresources to the scarce and limited funds from the local teams. Toward the end of thisstage, the pilots’ focus begins to center on specific knowledge management ideas andprinciples in order to demonstrate concepts and capabilities.


The emergence of a need for measurement in Stage 2 is felt as interest about KMescalates in several parts of the organization. These measures can appear in three maincategories: anecdotal (war stories, success stories, etc.), quantitative (growth), andqualitative (mainly extrapolation from anecdotal). It is appropriate to begin this section byidentifying what should not be measured in Stage 2. Since most management initiatives aredriven by financial results, the instinct is to identify quantifiable financial measurements suchas productivity increases, increased sales, reduced overhead, etc.

Knowledge management will generate these financial measurements and others, butnot in the early stages. Measurement of financial returns or results should not be undertakenat this point except as byproducts of other concurrent efforts. Simply stated, if theorganization is measuring for financial returns when your organization is at this particularjuncture, then it is measuring the wrong thing.

Focus should be on meaningful measures that concentrate on exploring the variousopportunities in the organization for implementing knowledge management practices,developing the organization’s knowledge management strategies, measuring the progresstoward organizational awareness, and experimenting with different knowledge managementconcepts and concentrate on developing and selling the concept and then measure againstthe plan.

Examples of Stage 2 Measures

Simple measures are critical at this stage. Examples of potential measurements include:

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Measure for Progress: Measure the progress you make in developing and growingsponsorship and support from top management.

(a) Measure the Gap

As part of your early work in Stages 1 and 2, you should have completed an assessmentor knowledge map of your organization to determine what practices you currently have inplace and what you are missing. As part of this assessment, you should attempt to identifywhat, if any, measurements are currently being used. You will at some point need to determinethe value of that measurement and whether it can be used going forward. The existingmeasurement can, at a minimum, provide you with a benchmark for future measurements.

(b) Measure Against a Benchmark

Benchmarking with other organizations can be a persuasive tool and can lead toexecutive sponsorship. Since most successful KM initiatives are grassroots or organizational(department/division) and not corporate (top-down) in origin, measurement within thevarious division/department is crucial.

(c) Measure Your Cultural Readiness

It is important at this stage to build the foundation to develop a knowledge-sharingculture. Critical practices that foster employee information exchange, teamwork,collaboration, and trust development can be built upon through crediting the contributors.Teams that operate in this manner, their norms, practices and insights needs to be observedand incorporated into other teams. Document stories to encourage role model behavior.

Stage 3 – Implementation Stage

This stage signals the formal implementation of a knowledge management initiative.The goal of Stage 3 is to provide evidence of knowledge management’s business value byconducting pilots and capturing lessons learned that can be transferred and used to helpthe organization better implement KM on a larger and expanding scale. The frameworkfor communities of practice begins to be formalized at this stage, and funding and supportare derived from a mix of central resources as well as the donation of time, people, andmoney from within organizations that are enthusiastic about enabling knowledge sharing.


There is a convergence at Stage 3 of the three main categories of measurement thatexist in the early stages of KM implementation: anecdotal, quantitative, and qualitative.The degree of rigor and refinement becomes more defined and focused on business strategyin Stage 3. The key here is to begin to ensure that direct business value is perceived by theorganization as a result of the knowledge-enabling projects. It is important to establish a

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mechanism to capture the hard and soft lessons learned in the knowledge managementpilots, as these will be the building blocks for the later KM stages.

Having a predefined taxonomy on the classification of lessons learned can be helpfulin developing conclusions and identifying areas desirable for replication throughout anorganization. In addition, during the acceleration of knowledge management scale-up,establishing measures for the various components of a knowledge management initiative isbeneficial. These measures include process dimensions, culture dimensions, contentdimensions, information technology dimensions, and people dimensions.

Examples of Stage 3 Measures

a. Measure the Business Value: Both the hard and soft business value derived fromeach pilot should be documented. Then beginning should be made to mapmeasurements of specific business goals, such as improved clock speed. Thisdoes not necessarily need to be rigorous at this point. Extrapolation of anecdotalmeasurements into more solid quantifiable measurements occurs. Can the pilotresults be duplicated in other parts of the organization? Time saved equals directlabor cost, which is easy to figure. Effort needs to be put into determining theancillary costs associated with time savings. Some potential areas are resourceredistribution; support staff cost reductions, and improved time to market.

b. Measure the Retention of Knowledge: Measure the amount of informationcontributed to the knowledge base over time against retrieval and reuse. Quantifiablemeasurements are not enough; they must be balanced with qualitative data to ensurean accurate, full picture. Unlike in previous stages, the number of hits to a Web siteis not good enough. Specific measures and issues to be considered may includethe following:

• Time spent per hit. This can reveal if individuals entering the site are actually reviewingits content (indicates quick review and rejection vs. what would constitute anindividual actually digesting some content). This would have to be correlated withthe number of individuals using it for an extended period of time and repeat users.

• Are the IP addresses those of repeat users? The intent for this measurement is totrack repeat customers. Repeat customers indicate two things—either specificinformation is of repeated use to them or they find value in the additional informationcontinually added to the application.

• How often is a site visited?

• What percentage of total hits represents repeat users? Value can be measured byrepeat business.

• What is the threshold for indicating a repeat user is a steady customer? Someonemay sample a site several times but will stop visiting if they fail to get the resultsthey seek.

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c Measure the Cultural Impact: In Stage 3, the issues surrounding the potential formeasuring the cultural side of knowledge management need to be addressed.Considerable effort needs to be placed on determining:

• the types of measurements• the potential value of the measurements• the cost for measuring vs. the value of measuring• processes

In selecting measures, consideration should be given to if and how the cultural side ofKM can be measured in Stage 3.

(i) Anecdotal stories. As stated earlier, stories can form the basis for extrapolationof quantitative data. This is not necessarily the only or best means of using anecdotalmeasurements, but considering the intrinsic value of the anecdote can be important.

(ii) Performance review. Another means of measuring cultural impact is through theperformance review process. Individuals can be rated by their peers (360-degreefeedback) on three major knowledge-sharing points listed below. This can beimplemented in Stage 3 because there are formal (if only pilot) applications inplace. As part of these applications feedback on the usefulness of the knowledgeprovided is essential.

1. Do they share their knowledge in an open and constructive way?

2. Do others find their knowledge of value and use it? What results are gained fromit?

3. Do they use others’ knowledge and apply it to improve operations? This can bemeasured somewhat by traditional business measurement tools.

(iii)Public and private recognition and rewards for individuals and teams: Thoughan organisation advocates team building and sharing of knowledge, incentives forindividual contributions are still required. A reward or recognition system properlyimplemented can provide quantitative measurements.

(iv)Measure the Effectiveness of Sharing Communities: Document the effectivenessof communities of practices (CoPs). Based on the findings, determine essentialelements that contribute to coherent and effective CoP. Draw correlations againstCoPs that have not been as successful. Extract lessons learned and best practicesfrom these correlations and use them to build new CoPs and improve existingones.

(v) Measure the Ownership of Capture and Compilation: What are the costsinvolved in capturing information in a usable manor? This includes not only thecapturing but also the indexing. If the information is not retrievable it is of littlevalue. Quantifiable measurement of the time required to capture the information ina usable manner is applicable. This can be critical in evaluating the impact of a pilotproject. Is the cost of the capture process too high in comparison to the value ofthe captured information or knowledge?

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Consider storytelling as an example. Here are some of the factors to be considered.

• Creating the storytelling environment (either electronic production or live storytelling)

• If live, what is the time commitment of participants (storyteller and audience)?

• If electronic, what are the production costs?

• Are the storage and distribution costs insignificant?

• How much responsibility is there on the individual to capture his information in ausable manor? This includes not only the capturing but also the indexing. If theinformation is not retrievable, it is of little value.

• Does the measurement of capture and compilation warrant effort?

(vi)Measure Project Management Effectiveness and Intended Results: Successfulpilots will contribute to building organizational support and future funding. To ensurethat projects are managed effectively, it is beneficial to track the projects. Was aformal methodology employed? Was a time line established and progress tracked?Were project objectives and expectations clearly stated and measured? Measurethe performance of the pilots themselves against the intended results or hypothesis.Measurements can be quantitative, qualitative, or anecdotal. Measuring cost inyour pilots can provide critical information for determining program direction andstrategy. If properly set up, measurements can enable a KM team to rethink itspriorities in an efficient and timely manner, allowing for shifting resources tostrengthen the potential for success. Can the capturing of lessons learned fromyour pilots be used for measurements? The obvious answer is yes. An organizationcan quantify these in two basic ways: number submitted and number referenced.

• A qualitative measurement can be reached through a feedback measurement systemsuch as Eureka’s thumbs-up or -down method of capturing the value of a tip to auser. Other measurements can be made using the number of times a lesson wasused or through a feedback system allowing the capture of users’ comments.

Stage 4 – Expand and Support Phase

When an organization reaches Stage 4, KM has proved valuable enough to be officiallyexpanded to become part of the organization’s funded activities. Demand for KM supportby other parts of the organization tends to be high, providing additional evidence of itsvalue. Pilot results are an added benefit. High visibility and the authority to expand are amixed blessing; the added visibility of costs and resources devoted to KM will requiremore formal business evaluation and ROI justification and unless unforeseen factors derailthe efforts, KM is on its way to being considered a strategic and necessary competency.


Since organizations at Stage 4 are undertaking multiple projects in diverse areas ofthe business, it becomes necessary to evaluate the fitness of the knowledge areas in relationto the whole organization. Evaluating a knowledge area project might require examining

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many areas of fitness that, in aggregate, help the organization determine whether the projectsin its KM portfolio are of high impact and beneficial to the success of the company. Projectcriteria may include:

• Proficiency. Has a process become world-class because of KM, or has it madeonly mediocre improvement?

• Diffusion. Has KM been properly executed? Is the project and knowledgemanaged well? Is it well understood?

• Codification. Because codifying knowledge is expensive, should the organizationlimit that? Is that limitation visible and understood?

• Openness for combination/innovation. Is the knowledge described in jargonthat no one understands? Is the knowledge base open to other disciplines? Doesthe project generate questions to the organization to help it grow?

Justification measures can be difficult when the organization is trying to decide whetherto adopt KM as part of the ongoing corporate strategy. The question of measurementmust often be restated at this stage. The organization has to not only measure how knowledgearea projects perform but also evaluate how it feels the business key indicators are linkedto the knowledge areas. This can be easier if the business owner decides what needs to beimproved through a project before embarking on it. When the improvements occur, he orshe can communicate the causal linkages between where the business started and where itended up because of the concentration on creating a viable knowledge project.

At this stage, it is important to tap into the values of the organization and determinewhether a culture shift is occurring. Personal performance reviews can be a useful avenueto determine whether managers support knowledge sharing and give employees a chanceto show their ability to share. Then questions can be asked of employees to determinewhether management really does support knowledge sharing. Targeted questions such as“How do you support creation and innovation?” can also help determine employee mind-set.

Although most corporate KM programs have been well-established and “proven” byStage 4, it is still important to show that KM is working and will work going forward. Toestimate ROI, add the costs of a community (including labor, meetings, and facilities) andthen define how much effort is spent on KM by knowledge management experts. Thendecide how much effort has been saved by sharing solutions in the community. Anotherway to approach ROI estimation might be by looking at sub communities and their generationof solutions in terms of community projects. If a group needs a solution and embarks on aknowledge-creation effort, determine how much has been saved in time to market,competitive positioning, etc.

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Stage 5 – Institutionalizing Knowledge Management

In some ways, Stage 5 is the continuation of Stage 4 to its logical conclusion of fullenterprise-wide deployment. However, Stage 5 differs from Stage 4 in three fundamentalways:

• It does not happen unless KM is embedded in the business model.

• The organization structure must be realigned.

• Evidence of knowledge management competency becomes part of the formalperformance evaluation.

Sharing and using knowledge become part of the organization’s “way of doingbusiness” as well as an expected management competency. In the relatively young arena ofKM, only a few organizations have reached this stage. As in Stage 4, Stage 5 measuresare not used to prove value. They are used to check progress and monitor the continuedevolution of the culture. KM can no longer be called an initiative or project at this stage,but becomes the backbone on which the organizational business processes are built on.

5.5. KNOWLEDGE MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES

This section outlines a non-financial measurement system for intangible assets.

5.5.1. Intangible asset measurement

It is widely accepted that intangible (knowledge or intellectual) assets are the majordrivers of corporate value and growth in most economic sectors, but the measurement ofthese assets has eluded so far managers, accountants, and financial analysts valuinginvestment projects.

The value of knowledge or the intellectual capital of any organization and the efficiencyand performance of the associated KM systems cannot be measured by the conventionaltools and techniques in existence. There is no difference between monetary measures andother measures though monetary measurement is objective and guided by definitions andstandards. As of today, there exists no system that uses money as a measurement tool.

Most organizations measure some of their intangible assets and they use non-monetarymeasures for particularly measuring operational efficiency. Manufacturing companiesmeasure “output per hour” as a basis. Hospital and hotel measure bed utilization, schoolmeasure student’s performance in terms of marks, employee satisfaction and retention asa measure of competence by most business organizations.

How are The Intangibles Metrics Computed?

Why measure intangible assets? Evaluating profitability and performance of businessenterprise, by say, return on investment, assets or equity (ROA, ROE) is seriously flawedsince the value of the firm’s major asset— intangible capital—is missing from the

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denominator of these indicators. Measures of price relatives (e.g., price-to-book ratio)are similarly misleading, absent the value of intangible assets from accounting book values.Valuations for the purpose of mergers and acquisitions are incomplete without an estimateof intellectual capital. Resource allocation decisions within corporations require values ofintangible capital. These and other uses create the need for valuing intangible assets, inpractically all economic sectors.

Intangible (knowledge) assets, such as new discoveries (drugs, software products,etc.), brands or unique organizational designs (e.g., Internet-based supply chains) are byand large not traded in organized markets, and the property rights over these assets arenot fully secured by the company, except for intellectual properties, such as patents andtrademarks. The risk of these assets (e.g., drugs or software programs under developmentnot making it to the market) is generally higher than that of physical assets.1 Accordingly,many, particularly accountants and corporate executives, are reluctant to recognize intangibleor intellectual capital as assets in financial reports, on par with physical and financial assets.While such attitude concerning balance sheets may be understandable, it does not satisfythe need to seek information about and value of intangible assets.

Some have attempted to gauge the value of intangible assets from the difference betweenthe company’s capital market value and its book value (the balance sheet value of netphysical and financial assets). This approach is unsatisfactory because it is based on twoflawed assumptions: (a) that there is no mispricing in capital markets, and (b) that balancesheet historical values of assets reflect their current values.

The market-minus-book approach to valuing intangibles is also unsatisfactory becauseit is circulatory. One searches for measures of intangibles value in order to provide newinformation to managers and investors. What is the use of a measure (market-minus-book) that is derived from what investors already know (market and book values)? Thereis obviously a need for a different approach to estimating the value of intangible assets.Some of the approaches are as follows:

Direct Intellectual Capital methods (DIC). Estimate the rupee-value of intangibleassets by identifying its various components. Once these components are identified, theycan be directly evaluated, either individually or as an aggregated coefficient.

Market Capitalization Methods (MCM). Calculate the difference between a company’smarket capitalization and its stockholders’ equity as the value of its intellectual capital orintangible assets.

Return on Assets methods (ROA). Average pre-tax earnings of a company for aperiod of time are divided by the average tangible assets of the company. The result is acompany ROA that is then compared with its industry average. The difference is multipliedby the company’s average tangible assets to calculate an average annual earning from the

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Intangibles. Dividing the above-average earnings by the company’s average cost of capitalor an interest rate, one can derive an estimate of the value of its intangible assets or intellectualcapital.

Scorecard Methods (SC). The various components of intangible assets or intellectualcapital are identified and indicators and indices are generated and reported in scorecardsor as graphs. SC methods are similar to DIS methods, expect that no estimate is made ofthe rupee-value of the Intangible assets. A composite index may or may not be produced.

5.5.2. Intangible assets monitor

Intangible asset monitor is a method for measuring intangible assets and a presentationformat that displays a number of relevant indicators for measuring intangible assets in asimple manner. The choice of indicators depends on the company strategy. The format isparticularly relevant for knowledge organizations. The intangible assets monitor appearssimilar to balanced score card, however, there are significant differences between the two.The intangible assets monitor can be integrated in the MIS. The most important areas tocover are growth/renewal, efficiency, and stability. The purpose is to get a broad picture:so one or two indicators in each category could be designed. Normally, organizations areinterested in indicators that indicate change, i.e. growth, and renewal as well as efficiencyand stability measures.

Efficiency and effectiveness

Although often used as synonyms, efficiency and effectiveness measure different things.Efficiency measures utilisation, i.e. how well an organization is using its capacity, regardlessof what it produces. A criterion of efficiency, often used by consultancy firms is billabletime; time billed to clients, as a proportion of time available. This measures how much timeconsultants are paid for. It is a simple and good indicator of short term profitability becauseit measures capacity usage, but it says nothing about what the consultants accomplish inthat time.

The needs of the various parties concerned may, of course, differ; shareholders areinterested in dividends; customers are interested in service levels, and quality. Firms should,therefore, employ different efficiency measures, for different audiences. ROI (return oninvested capital) is a criterion of efficiency popular in financial circles. It measures profitgenerated by the capital invested in a company, or a project and is thus a very importantindicator of efficiency, to both creditors and the owners of the invested capital. Forshareholders, the most important figure is what they earn after tax, in the form dividends onthe capital they have put into the company; the return after tax on their own equity, oftenshortened ROE.

The management must also track the return on the firm’s total capital, and on particularinvestment projects, so that they can control their allocation of capital. Unfortunately, thistechnique cannot be applied to intangible assets, so various income statements, and non-monetary measurements, must be used instead to calculate efficiency.

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Effectiveness measures how well an organization is satisfying the need of those itserves. It is more difficult to measure also because one must often go outside one’s ownorganization. Measuring customer satisfaction for instance, an important indicator of anorganization’s effectiveness relies on customer polls. Therefore effectiveness is seldommeasured. Even if it is not practically possible to measure effectiveness, it is never-the-lessvaluable to think in effectiveness terms. What gives the most revealing picture ofperformance? To focus on the costs of people or on the revenues they bring in? Cost focusis efficiency oriented, revenue focus is effectiveness oriented.

Intangible Assets

External Structure

Indicators Internal Structure Indicators

Competence Indicators

Indicators of Growth Organic Growth.

Indicators of Growth Investment in IT

Investments in Internal Structure

Indicators of Growth Competence Index

Number of Years in the Profession.

Level of Education. Competence Turnover.

Indicators of Renewal/Innovation

Image Enhancing Customers Sales to new customers


Organization Enhancing Customers.

Proportion of new products/services

New processes implemented


Competence-Enhancing Customers.

Training and Education Costs.

Diversity

Indicators of Efficiency/Utilization

Profitability per Customer. Sales per Customer.

Win/Loss Index.


Proportion of Support Staff


Proportion of Professionals. Leverage Effect.

Value Added per Employee. Value Added per

Professional. Profit per Employee.

Profit per Professional.

Indicators of Risk/Stability Satisfied Customers Index.

Proportion of Big Customers.

Age Structure. Devoted Customers Ratio.

Frequency of Repeat Orders.

Indicators of Risk/Stability Values/Attitudes Index Age of the organization. Support Staff Turnover.

Rookie Ratio. Seniority.

Indicators of Risk/Stability Professionals Turnover.

Relative Pay. Seniority

Figure 5.2 Intangible Assets Monitor

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5.5.3. IC Rating

IC rating can be said to constitute value creating factors not shown in traditionalbalance sheets, but which are of critical importance to a company’s long-term profitability.IC Rating is a way of measuring intellectual capital from a new perspective and with a newapproach focus on the assets that in fact decide the ability of knowledge based companiesto create value for its interest groups.

An IC Rating provides management with a foundation for optimizing thecompetitiveness of the organization by functioning as:

• A foundation of a modern business control system with clear and measurable goalsfor maximizing future profitability. This analysis can be repeated in order to measurethe goal achieved.

• A basis for improvement and change activities which can be used on bothmanagement and operational levels. The area of improvement can be identifiedafter which decisions about changes can be made.

• A structured image of value creating assets that can be used in market communication(investor relations, annual reports) as well as within the organization where the toolcreates a new basis and a new language for internal aspects important to businessactivity.

5.5.4. Balanced Scorecard

Balanced Scorecard (BSC) is a management system devised by Robert Kaplan ofHarvard Business School and David Norton which uses a ranch of “leading and lagging”indicators for evaluating the progress of a business towards fulfillment of its strategic goals.A company’s performance is measured by indicators covering four major focus perspectives:(1) financial perspective; (2) customer perspective; (3) internal process perspective; and(4) learning perspective. The indicators are based on the strategic objectives of the firm.

The BSC is a proven approach to strategic management that imbeds the long-termstrategy into the management system through the mechanism of measurement. The BSCtranslates vision and strategy into a tool that effectively communicates strategic intent andmotivates and tracks performance against the established goals. A vision describes theultimate goal and a strategy is a shared understanding about how that goal is to be reached.The BSC provides a medium to translate the vision into a clear set of objectives. Theseobjectives are then further translated into a system of performance measurement thateffectively communicates a powerful, forward-looking, strategic focus to the entireorganization.

In contrast to traditional, financially based measurement systems, the BSC glues anorganization’s focus on future success by setting objectives and measuring performancefrom four distinctive perspectives. The learning perspective directs attention to the basis of

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all future success – the organization’s people and infrastructure. Adequate investments inthese areas are critical to long term success. The development of a true learning organizationsupports success in the next BSC perspective, the internal process perspective. The internalprocess perspective focuses attention on the performance of the key internal processeswhich drive the business. Improvement in internal processes now is a key lead indicator offinancial success in the future. However, in order to translate superior processes into financialsuccess, companies first please their customers. The customer perspective considers thebusiness through the eyes of a customer, so that the organization retains a careful focus oncustomer needs and satisfaction. Finally, the financial perspective measures the ultimateresults that the business provides to its shareholders. Together, these four perspectivesprovide a balanced view of the present and future performance of the business.

Business intelligence and Internet technology are the foundations of BSC systems. BIsystems take ground-level data – such as delivery time, sales figures, length of customerservice calls, etc. – and translate into a company-wide BSC summery which keep track ofthe successful and unsuccessful goals of the organization. Internet technology makes thesystem accessible to anyone in the business from anywhere.

Organizational implementation

A company initiates a BSC system by setting strategic goals in each of the fourquadrants described below:

• Customer satisfaction• Internal business processes• Learning• Financials

It then assigns metrics that can be measured to determine whether the business ismeeting its goals. The grades are based on metrics that put measurable value on factorsusually considered too vague to quantify. The loaded BI system can extract that data fromexisting systems, process it, determine whether the company is meeting customer satisfactiongoals, and issue a grade on the corporate scorecard. In the ultimate BSC environment,there are different scorecards for everyone in the business, and for the business itself,universally accessible via the organizational intranet on the Internet. This makes the BSC apotent system for communicating strategic goals. Executives can view a scorecard on theirdesktops that displays business’s strategic goals. If they require information about a goal,they can drill down and obtain more minute details. Much of the detail comes from individualemployees, who enter data and notes about what is happing on the front lines intopersonalized scorecards. These scorecards also tell them hoe their performance matchestheir goals.

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Measurement

Measurement is a critical component of any management system. Most managersrecognize its vital role in communication, incepting and tracking the achievement of anorganization’s strategy. Despite this recognition, most organizations do not operate with ameasurement system that adequately fills all these roles, because they consist of manyfinancial indicators. Today’s measurement systems focus organizations on past performanceand encourage a short-term view of strategy, failing to provide the long-term strategicmanagement capabilities that today’s organizations need. The BSC has been quickly acceptedby the business world; it is easy to see the value of a focused set of performancemeasurements. A good BSC should convey the details of the organization’s strategy. Thefollowing three criteria help to determine if the performance measures are in tune with theorganizations strategy.

1. Cause and Effect Relationships: Every measure selected for a BSC should bepart of a chain of cause and effect relationships that represent the strategy.

2. Performance Drivers: Measures common to most companies within an industryare known as “lag indicators”. Examples include market share or customerretention. The drivers of performance (known as “lead indicators”) tend to beunique because they reflect what is different about the strategy. A good BSCshould have a mix of lead and lag indicators.

3. Financial Linkage: Most organizations are preoccupied with goals such as quality,customer satisfaction and innovation. While these goals are frequently strategic,they also must translate into measures that are ultimately linked to financial indicators.

Organizational BSC design

There are two essential ingredients to the successful design of a balance scorecard.

1. An architect who has a framework, philosophy, and a methodology for designingand developing the new management system.

2. A client who will be totally engaged and assume ultimate ownership of the project,understanding that the person must live with the results long after the architectwithdraws.

The client is the executive team of the business organization. The BSC and themanagement system which will be built around it are, ultimately, the responsibility of theexecutive team. Without their active sponsorship and participation, a BSC project shouldnot be attempted, because it is bound to fail.

Methodology: The approach should include the capture and translation to measurementof an organizational strategy across a wide variety of strategic and operational situations.The following approach can be employed in designing a BSC measurement system.

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Measurement architecture: An organization must develop a distinct businessstrategy. A business strategy and a BSC that describes it are not random. The architectureof a BSC has several dimensions which must be incorporated into Scorecard design. Agood design process will recognize these dimensions and provide a framework to guidethe architect and the executive team in their thinking about the strategy. There are frameworksthat describe that describe the strategy and represent the foundation on which a complexdesign is based. Whether operating a growing, mature, or maturing business, executiveteams use this framework to anchor their financial objectives. Similar frameworks for thecustomer and the learning perspectives give both the architect and the clients a commonground from which to consider the setting of strategic objectives.

Development of strategic objectives: In general, the management groups in wellmanaged organizations lack a shared understanding about the overall strategy of theorganization and the relative roles of different groups within the organization keeps theteam agreeing on priorities. The second step of the development process is designed tobuild consensus among the members of the executive team around the long-term strategicpriorities of the organization. To achieve this goal, each executive team member is interviewedindividually to capture his or her implicit and explicit strategies for the business. The personalvisions are then synthesized into feedback that is reviewed at an executive workshop.During this session, the executive team learns about where there is and is not a consensusabout their strategy and discusses unresolved issues. Ultimately, a coherent group visionfor the organization emerges in the form of 10 top priority objectives.

Design measures: With the prioritized strategic objectives agreed upon by theexecutive team, the next step is the selection of measures to track the achievement of theseobjectives. Sub-team working sessions focus on the development of measures for a subsetof the objectives, finalizing the working of objectives and searching for measures appropriatefor tracking each objective. At the end of this step, the sub-teams synthesize theirrecommendations into a united “strategic story” in consonance with the strategic objectivesand measures; thereby concluding the design of the BSC measurement system.

Implementation plan: For a BSC measurement system to create value, it must beintegrated into the management system of the organization. The final step of the processentails three primary tasks:

1. Identifying the current practices in various management processes2. Evaluating opportunities for integrating the BSC into the management process3. Developing an implementation plan

This step typically reviews the client’s approach to data reporting and review,management meetings and decision-making, strategic learning, strategic communication,personal objective setting, planning and budgeting.

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Performance measurement: A performance measurement system enables theorganization to ensure its tracking along an appropriate path as it moves from its currentstate to a future state. The vision and mission statements are the foundation of an effectiveperformance measurement system. With the direction and a reason for existing in place,quantitative objectives can be defined to determine progress towards the vision. Severalmeasurement concepts should be considered as the measurement system is designed: thebalanced control panel, linking the vision to individual and group activities, and the PDSAcycle as a control system. The BSC tightly integrates the key business measures into a fewmanageable metrics, so that management has the necessary data to quickly assess thehealth of the organization along several fronts. It is characterized by a control panel similarto that found in automobiles or airplanes. Managers leading the organization use the gaugeson the control panel to assess and modify action over time. The BSC has four basicmeasurement areas:

1. Customer connectivity2. Internal process efficiency and effectiveness3. Individual and group innovation and learning4. Financials.

The BSC provides a holistic view of the short and long-term health of the organization,by having metrics established in each of the basic elements with financial performancebeing the ultimate lagging indicator.

5.5.5. Implementation Barriers

Even with the best known tools and techniques for installing a measurement system,many attempts fail. Here are the some of the barriers to implementation of measurementsystems.

1. Lack of leadership at the top2. Abandoning the effort of measurement when initial problem in execution is felt3. Resistance from individuals from the fear of specific and measurable objectives to

achieve4. Fear of cultural change in organization owing to the measurement system5. Non-availability of data and its integrity while measurement6. Unnecessary variation to the measurement system due to varying formats between

operation and between review periods7. Standardization itself would be a factor contributing to resistance among employees.

5.6. KNOWLEDGE AUDIT

The knowledge audit (K-Audit) is a systematic and scientific examination andevaluation of the explicit and tacit knowledge resources in the company. The K-Auditinvestigates and analyses the current knowledge-environment and culminates, in a diagnostic

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and prognostic report on the current corporate ‘knowledge health’. The report providesevidence as to whether corporate knowledge value potential is being maximized. In thisrespect the K-Audit measures the risk and opportunities faced by the organization withrespect to corporate knowledge.

Knowledge audit is a systematic examination and evaluation of organizationalknowledge health, which examines organization’s knowledge needs, existing knowledgeassets/resources, knowledge flows, future knowledge needs, knowledge gap analysis aswell as the behavior of people in sharing and creating knowledge. In one way, a knowledgeaudit can reveal an organization’s knowledge strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threatsand risks. A knowledge audit should also include an examination of organization’s strategy,leadership, collaborative, learning culture, technology infrastructure in its various knowledgeprocesses.

In order to transform an organization into a learning organization and ensure an effectiveknowledge management strategy, a knowledge audit should be conducted, which willprovide a current state of knowledge capability of the organization and a direction ofwhere and how to improve that capability in order to be competitive in this fast changingknowledge era.

The first stage in adopting a knowledge strategy is performing an audit of existingdata, information and knowledge contained within the organization.

This section will cover four main areas of the knowledge audit:

The aims and objectives of the audit.

The key tasks involved.Process mapping.The audit outcomes.

5.6.1. Aims and objectives

There are three broad aims of a knowledge audit:

• Leveraging the organisation’s knowledge.• Creating new knowledge or promoting innovation.• Increasing collaboration and hence enhancing the skill level of employees.

The objectives of a knowledge audit are:

1. Study and develop a deeper understanding of existing communities (groups thatshare resources, provide support and show reciprocity) content (forms andcombinations of words, images and pictures) and conversations (exchanges ofsentiments, observations, opinions, or ideas).

2. Identify opportunities to add value to current communities, content andconversations.

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3. Develop a knowledge management strategy that delivers on the identifiedopportunities.

4. K-audit helps an organization to clearly identify what knowledge is needed tosupport overall organizational goals and individual and team activities.

5. It gives tangible evidence of the extent to which knowledge is being effectivelymanaged and indicates where improvements are needed.

6. It explains how knowledge moves around in, and is used by, that organization.

7. It provides a map of what knowledge exists in the organization and where it exists,revealing both gaps and duplication.

8. It provides an inventory of knowledge assets, allowing them to become morevisible and therefore more measurable and accountable.

9. It provides vital information for the development of effective knowledgemanagement programmes and initiatives that are directly relevant to theorganization’s specific knowledge needs and current situation.

10. It helps in leveraging customer knowledge.

Most commonly, knowledge audits result in the following outcomes:

• Development of a knowledge repository;• Forming and nurturing communities of practice.

However, there are many others to explore.

5.6.2. Key tasks

It is possible to separate a knowledge audit into seven key tasks:

Create a data, information and knowledge systems database: This involvescreating an inter-relational database with tables for:

• each section of the organization;

• data, information and knowledge repositories

• types of communication, such as, face-to-face, analogue and digital systems.

1) Identify areas of organizational quick gain: This can be used as a way ofdemonstrating to key players that you are committed to high levels of achievementin the short as well as the medium and long-term.

2) Perform process mapping: It is important to ‘map’ key processes as well as keyplayers within the organization. There are a number of software tools that can beused for such mapping including MS Project and MS Visio. It is possible to takemapping a stage further by using XML image maps to illustrate processes overIntranets, Internets and extranets.

3) Organise focus groups: The composition of such groups needs to be balancedbetween differing levels of seniority, front/back office and differing locations. Focus

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groups are an important means of keeping on track. Well-balanced focus groupscan be used again over time.

4) Design and pilot knowledge needs survey: The importance of a pilot project isthat it sets an achievable object in the foreseeable future, say, six to twelve months.Senior managers are often very keen on pilots as, if they fail to work, resourcesused are limited and lessons learnt can be recorded quickly.

5) Organise feedback session: This is particularly important where you have a projectsteering group for the audit. This steering group, through its involvement with thestrategy, will feel empowered and capable of enthusing and empowering others.An effective steering group should consist of:

• Chair: An operational Director

• Representatives: One from each Section

• Quality Minutes: Rotate between members

• Regular Meetings: Monthly and ad hoc

• Email List: Discussion List for core, active and peripheral members

• Intranet Presence: Tracking progress

• Monitoring and Evaluation Procedures: Internal consultant

6. Draft strategy: This should demonstrate key findings, be well analyzed and thedata should be arrayed in an accessible format.

5.6.3. Process mapping

Process mapping is a simple exercise. It helps an organisation to know where to startmaking improvements that will have the biggest impact. A good definition of a processdescribes it as a series of connected steps or actions to achieve an outcome. A process hasthe following characteristics:

1. A starting and end point.2. A purpose or aim for the outcome.3. Rules governing the standard or quality of inputs throughout the process.4. It is usually linked to other processes.5. It can be simple and short, or complex and long.

Process mapping is one of the most powerful ways for multi-disciplinary teams tounderstand the real problems from the individual’s perspective, and to identify opportunitiesfor improvement.

A map will give you:

1. A key starting-point to any improvement project, large or small.

2. The opportunity to bring together multi-disciplinary teams from primary, secondary,and tertiary organizational levels to create a culture of ownership, responsibilityand accountability

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3. An overview of the complete process – helping staff to understand, often for thefirst time, how complicated the systems can be.

4. An aid to help plan effectively where to test ideas for improvements that are likelyto have the most impact on the project aims

5. Brilliant ideas – especially from staff who don’t normally have the opportunity tocontribute to service organization, but who really know how things work

6. An event that is interactive, that gets people involved and talking

7. An end product – the map – which is easy to understand and highly visual rocessmapping is also easy, creative and fun.

5.6.4. Outcomes of knowledge audit

The outcome of a knowledge audit tends to be marked by the production of adocument. This document should be made available in both hard and soft copy. It shouldbe accessible both as a dynamic Intranet site and interactive CD ROM.

5.6.5. Components of a Knowledge Audit

A Knowledge audit can have the following components (not necessarily need to be inorder):

A. Knowledge need analysisB. Knowledge inventory analysisC. Knowledge Flow analysisD. Knowledge mapping

Figure 5.3. K-Audit Components

A. Knowledge Needs Analysis (K-Needs Analysis)

The major goal of this task is to identify precisely what knowledge the organization,its people and team possess currently and what knowledge they would require in the futurein order to meet their objectives and goals. Knowledge need analysis can help anyorganization to develop its future strategy. Amrit Tiwana suggested the following figure toexplain the Knowledge-Strategy Link.

K-Needs

Analysis

K-Inventory

Analysis

K-Flows

Analysis

K-Mapping

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Figure 5.4. Strategic K Gap analysis

The K-need analysis can also measure the staff skills and competency enhancement-needs and opportunities for training and development, corporate knowledge culture-practicessuch as knowledge sharing attitude, collaboration, team spirit, rewards and recognitions &staff relationship with their superiors, peers and subordinates.

B. Knowledge Inventory Analysis (K-Inventory Analysis)

Knowledge inventory is a knowledge stock taking to identify and locate knowledgeassets and resources throughout the entire organization. This process involves counting,indexing, and categorizing of corporate tacit and explicit knowledge.

Knowledge inventory analysis comprises of 2 entities: Physical (Explicit) Knowledgeinventory and Corporate Experts (sources of tacit knowledge) inventory.

(a) Physical (Explicit) Knowledge inventory of an organization:

• Numbers, types and categories of documents, databases, libraries, intranet websites,links and subscriptions to external resources

• Knowledge locations in the organization, and in its various systems

• The organization and access of the knowledge (how knowledge resources areorganized and how easy is it for people to find and access them)

• Purpose, relevance and quality of knowledge (why do these resources exist, andhow relevant and appropriate they are for that purpose, are they of good quality -up to date, reliable, evidence based, making sense, relevance to the organization)

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• Usage of the knowledge (are they actually being used by whom, when, what forand how often)

• (b) Corporate Experts (sources of tacit knowledge) inventory:

• Staff directory and their academic and professional qualifications, skill & corecompetency levels and experience

• Training and learning opportunities

• Future potentials-leadership potential

The K-inventory analysis may involve a series of surveys and interviews in order toget relevant answers to the above questions on both tacit and explicit knowledge that anorganization may hold and have.

By making comparison between knowledge inventory and the earlier analysis ofknowledge needs, an organization will be able to identify gaps in their organization’sknowledge as well as areas of unnecessary duplication.

(C) Knowledge Flows Analysis (K-Flows Analysis)

Knowledge flow analysis look at knowledge resources move around the organization,from where it is to where it is needed. In other words, it is to determine how people in anorganization find the knowledge they need, and how do they share the knowledge theyhave. The knowledge flow analysis looks at people, processes and systems:

• Analysis of people: examine their attitude towards, habits and behaviors concerning,and skills in knowledge sharing, use and dissemination.

• Analysis of process: examine how people go about their daily work activities andhow knowledge seeking, sharing, use and dissemination form parts of those activities,existence of policies and practices concerning flow, sharing and usage of informationand knowledge, for example, are there any existing policies such as on informationhandling, management of records, web publishing etc? Or are there other policiesthat exist that may directly or indirectly affect or relate to knowledge management,which may act as enablers or barriers to a good knowledge practice?

• Analysis of system: examine technical infrastructure: for example, informationtechnology systems, portals, content management, accessibility and ease of use,and current level of usage. To what extend those existing systems facilitateknowledge sharing and flow, and help to connect people within the organization.

An analysis of knowledge flows will allow an organization to further identify gaps intheir organization’s knowledge and areas of duplication; it will also highlight examples ofgood practice that can be built on, as well as blockages and barriers to knowledge flowsand effective use. It will show where an organization needs to focus attention in theirknowledge management initiatives in order to get knowledge moving from where it is towhere it is needed.

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(D) Knowledge Mapping (K-Mapping)

The knowledge map is a navigation aid to explicit (codified) information and tacitknowledge, showing the importance and the relationships between knowledge stores anddynamics. The knowledge map, an outcome of synthesis, portrays the sources, flows,constraints and sinks (losses or stopping points) of knowledge within an organization.There are two main approaches to knowledge mapping:

1. Mapping knowledge assets and resources- the map shows what knowledge existsin the organization and where it can be found (holders of the knowledge-knowledgecreator, collector, connector, users and knowledge critics, and data repositories)

2. Mapping knowledge flows- the map shows how knowledge moves around theorganization from where it is to where it is needed.

Deliverables of a knowledge audit

Common approaches and tools that can be applied to conduct a knowledge auditare: Site observation, questionnaire-based surveys, face to face Interviews, focus groupdiscussion, forums. A knowledge audit could be divided into four parts: background study,data collection, data analysis and data evaluation. So the deliverables of a knowledgeaudit could be: A list of knowledge items (K-needs & current K-assets) in the form ofspreadsheets

a) A knowledge network map which shows the flow of knowledge itemsb) A social network map that reveals the interaction among staff on knowledge sharing

These deliverables will help an organization in identifying the gap between “what is” atpresent and “what should be” in the future from a KM perspective.

5.7. KNOWLEDGE CAREERS

The revolution in the field of knowledge is gradually leading to the establishment of aknowledge society, a knowledge economy, and knowledge organizations with knowledgeworkers, in the process giving a strong momentum to the all-pervasive concept of‘Knowledge Management’. As the KM field expands, organizations increasingly rely on‘knowledge workers’ to generate, classify, manage, and distribute tacit and explicitknowledge. Knowledge career offers extensive opportunities in the filed of KM and weare seeing the emergence of specialist knowledge professionals. Variety of new titles andjob responsibilities appearing in a variety of functions - knowledge engineer, knowledgeeditor, knowledge analyst, knowledge navigator, knowledge gatekeeper, knowledgebrokers, knowledge handyman, knowledge asset manager, knowledge steward or shepherdetc. And these do not include the facilitation and coaching roles nor the functional job titleswhich are assuming the leadership role in many companies.

NOTES



Knowledge careers is therefore a highly confidential, executive level recruitingcompetence for organizations interested in formalizing knowledge strategy and operationscapabilities. Organizations are relying on people with specific training in information andknowledge systems coupled with a strong functional expertise to occupy the variouspositions being thrown up. This section presents the various career opportunities that existin the organizations employing KM initiatives.

5.7.1. Organizational knowledge role classification

As organizations become more knowledge-based, new knowledge roles are emergingand the roles of existing knowledge workers are changing. All roles require more knowledgecreation (creativity) and knowledge-sharing. Successful knowledge-based companiesdepend upon how successful individual knowledge workers create and apply new ideasproductively and efficiently (i.e., how they innovate). This requires new roles, new skillsand new ways of developing organization capabilities that continuously improve, such asthrough organizational learning.

Let us present first a classification system that divides knowledge professionals intoeight categories based on skills required. This classification help potential candidates todetermine what positions are appropriate for their skills and also aware of the tremendousamount of potential and opportunities available in the field of KM.

Knowledge and Innovation Professionals

Individuals have strong background in shaping and formulating knowledge-basedprograms. Many have developed best practices for global Fortune 1000 Companies.Most are highly skilled in a variety of disciplines including business process improvement,innovation, performance measurement & modeling, case history, facilitation, strategicintegration and developing best practices. Chief Knowledge Officers are part of this groupas are consultants.

Knowledge Management Professionals

Knowledge Management Professionals have expertise in implementation. They ensurea company gains from management of knowledge. They are involved in all phases ofInnovation (Knowledge creation, knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, knowledgeconversion, knowledge commercialization. Career background may be in any functions,e.g. Finance, Human Resources, Quality, IT, R&D, Manufacturing, Sales, Service).

Knowledge Catalogers, Researchers and media Specialists

These are contributors whose skills are web site, internet and intranet developers,librarians, catalogue specialists, content developers, communicators, software designersand developers, middle managers and others who create the knowledge networks andlinks.

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Knowledge and Competitive Intelligence Professionals

Emphasis focuses on competitive intelligence. Heavy research, the ability to createand develop solid positions, on line research savvy mixed with the ability to cogently andconcisely present ideas in a clear and concise format are well developed skills. Writing andpresentation skills are strong.

Knowledge and Strategic Integration Professionals

Composed of top strategists, thinkers, planners, marketers, and individuals with seniormanagement experience. These folks make planning and strategy the engine for businessimprovement and growth.

Knowledge Academicians, Theorists and Visionaries

This group focuses primarily on discussion within an academic setting and developingand testing models and applications. Visionaries are thought leaders who are frequentlywell in front of the practice. These individuals make outstanding speakers and can stimulateyour organizations thinking.

Knowledge facilitators, trainers and Corporate Educators

These individuals focus on learning and education in a corporate setting. Many havecreated outstanding models and programs for linking external and internal audiences,designing and developing curriculums, implementing distance learning and creating custom-tailored courses for executives and senior managers.

Knowledge and Expert Systems Professionals

One facet of knowledge and knowledge management is expert systems and how toinstitutionalize corporate knowledge. Individuals in this area include Systems specialists,Technologists, Chief Information Officers, Technology Transfer Specialists, Expert SystemsEngineers, Project managers and others who primarily focus on information technology.

5.8. CLASSIFICATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CAREERS

The following section presents the classification of career opportunities in the field ofknowledge management as well as the various requirements of specific positions in KMenabled organizations. The specific responsibilities are highlighted. Some of the careeropportunities are as follows:

Managerial positions(a) Chief Learning Officers (CLO)(b) Chief Knowledge Officers (CKO)(c) Knowledge Managers(d) Knowledge Initiative Managers

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(e) Knowledge Management Experts(f) Knowledge Transfer Experts(g) Knowledge Engineers(h) Knowledge Strategist

Technical positions

(a) Knowledge Analyst(b) Knowledge Mapping Specialists(c) Knowledge Content Creators(d) Knowledge-Base Architects and Administrators

Non-Management Positions

(a) Librarians(b) Cybrarians(c) Information Brokers

5.8.1. The qualities & attributes of CKO

The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) needs to broadly possess two major attributes- leading and managing qualities. He needs to be an entrepreneur and a strategist who canunderstand the implications of using KM to transform organizations. At the same time heneeds to be a consultant to listen to other people’s ideas, incorporate them and nurturethem if they fit the knowledge vision.

As for managing qualities, he needs to be techno-savvy. The CKO has to understandwhich technologies can contribute to capturing, storing, exploring, and in particular sharingof knowledge. His second competence lies more in the management of tacit knowledge.His role here is more of creating a social environment that stimulates and encouragesknowledge creation and exchange.

The desired qualifications for a CKO are a post graduation in Human ResourceManagement though it is not mandatory. A graduate study in Humanities-sociology,psychology, economics, history or political science is very helpful and essential.

The qualities required by the CKO are multidisciplinary in nature. In this respect theCKO’s role is perhaps deeper than the CEO’s and is often broader than the CIO’s (ChiefInformation Officer) can or has the time to be. The CKO’s primary focus is on the intangibleassets as against the CFO’s (Chief Financial Officer) focus on tangible assets. To rise tothe level of CKO one needs to have considerable ability in all fields of functionaries (asmentioned below) and have the additional qualifications of people management and groupdynamics.

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5.8.2. Knowledge Management Analyst

The job of a knowledge management analyst is to understand the proper collection,storage and presentation or dissemination of research or intellectual capital that is createdwith a research facility, hospital or other type of care facility. Without the use of knowledgemanagement analyst the facility may inadvertently lose money, funding, or access to otherresearch options because of poor management of the information.

A knowledge management analyst must be able to understand what is the best possiblemarket for the information or research, as well as make recommendations to the governingbodies of the research facility as to what is the most opportune way to present the data. Inaddition the knowledge management analyst works closely with the research grant writersand other individuals involve in preparing data collections and assessments for publicationand dissemination.

The knowledge management analyst may also work to develop relationships withother research facilities and enhance the ability to share information through networking orother group processes. A high level of communication, ability to work with others as wellas understanding the various data collection processes is essential.

The knowledge management analyst may work onsite at the research facility or maywork off-site with link up through the internet. Usually the knowledge management analystwill have regular contact with the facility even if they work primarily from another location.

Most knowledge management analyst’s positions require Bachelor level training inbusiness administration, mathematics, statistics, bioinformatics or other related field. Inaddition experience in working with data collection programs such as Oracle, is stronglyfavored.

A knowledge management analyst must have several years in the research field withmost having an average of 10 years experience. Strong ethical understanding as well as acomprehensive knowledge of regulations, laws and protocols regarding informationdissemination is critical for a knowledge management analyst.

5.8.3. Knowledge Architect

Position description

A Knowledge Architect is a SME with additional responsibilities including the structuralof organizational knowledge-bases and maintaining the even flow of the current developmentprocess. This position also liases with the product and development managers to helpdetermine the direction of the product.

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Primary duties

• Ensure the proper coverage of a domain area by, for example, locating and includingFAQs and common problems.

• Maintain an even flow of symptoms to be further analyzed through research, includinganalyzing and processing licensed content.

• Ensure a logical and user-friendly structure for knowledge-base to allow easy-to-find solutions.

• Ensure the quality of the structure by performing structural level quality assurancetasks.

• Maintain broad knowledge of all the related domain areas.

• Assist in product planning by working with product and development managers,as well as customers and in-house SMEs.

Secondary duties

• Maintain an in-depth understanding of the various knowledge-base platforms.

• Assist in packaging and releasing each edition of the content product, includingrequesting and attaching module icons, helping with release notes, etc.

Required skills

• Broad knowledge of all domains areas for the designated product, if applicable,and in-depth knowledge of designated domain areas.

• Ability to plan multiple projects.

• Ability to analyze and translate user requirements.

• In-depth knowledge of the platforms with which the content product is integrated.

Job levels

• Level 1: 1-3 years of experience using the above skills; Expert in a minimum of 2domain areas

• Level 2: 3-5 years of experience; 3-5 domain areas

• Level 3: more than 5 years of experience; More than 5 domain areas

5.8.4. Knowledge Strategist


The knowledge strategist functions as a consultant in all phases of the KM consultingpractice. This involves working with clients to design and develop processes/applications/systems that improve the client organization’s ability to leverage information and expertise.

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Primary duties

Responsibilities include conducting on-line assessments of client’s requirements needs,synthesizing, summarizing and generating recommendations, developing presentationmaterial, generating client proposals, as well as assisting in selling organizational services.This position also includes, assisting clients in implementing KM systems, creating a businessenvironment that is conducive to knowledge sharing, and increasing the speed andproductivity of key business processes within the organization.

Required skills

• A minimum of 3-5 years of experience delivering on-site business consulting servicesto Major Corporation and implementing successful business solutions.

• Ability to work well in all levels in an organization.

• Exceptional relationship building track record.

• Demonstrated ability to manage projects.

• Understand/capacities to sell consulting services and have a successful track recordof selling ideas to clients and co-workers.

• Broad understanding of IT systems and leading edge software, including web-based technologies.

• Formal management qualifications desired.

5.8.5. Knowledge Manager

As the primary leader of the Knowledge Management team, the Knowledge Manager(aka KM) is primarily responsible for managing the organization’s knowledge assets.Depending on the depth and breadth of a particular organization, this team member maybe part of a small, focused group, within the IT department of a relatively small company,or, in a large corporation, the KM may wear one of many hats common to more lateralorganizations.

Among the responsibilities of the Knowledge Manager is to manage the creation anddelivery of IT (and/or business) knowledge, and, to support the utilization of this accumulatedinformation by both the internal and external end-user communities. This may include anyor all of the following duties and capabilities:

a. Understanding the end-user’s information needs,

b. Coordinating who is responsible for each knowledge asset,

c. Where appropriate, communicating knowledge requirements to service providers,

d. Planning and managing the delivery of knowledge projects, communicating theavailability of knowledge to the end-user community,

e. Monitoring the use of the knowledge assets and measuring the business value ofthe knowledge to the end-user community.

NOTES




The primary broad objective of this role is to define and manage the organizationalKMS.

Primary duties

• To define the requirements for KM at divisional/departmental level withinorganizations.

• Define and implement the KM tools required to support these needs.

• Define operational requirements for managing KM tools.

• To ensure proper operation of the KM tools.

Required skills

• Extensive experience (5 years +) in software systems development, and operations,preferably within the telecommunications or IT industry.

• Previous experience in KM tools deployment and operations.

• Proven capability to work in an international multi-cultural multilingual environment.

• Capability to manage relationship with users, integrators, and suppliers in adistributed environment.

5.8.6. Research Analyst/Manager


Under the direction of the category manager, the research analyst is responsible forresearching and cataloging specific industry, functional, or topic areas on the internet witha business focus.

Primary duties

The research analyst is responsible for developing the controlled vocabulary for theirarea, as well as contributing to other standards of organization and control. Cataloging willinclude assigning subject headings as well as writing abstracts and reviews. The researchanalyst can progress to the level of a category expert by understanding all of the businessresources available on the internet within their area of responsibility.

Required skills

• MLIS, MLS, or equivalent with minimum of two years professional experiencewithin a specific industry or industries, or other college graduate with researchexperience and minimum three years experience within a specific industry orindustries.

• Sound knowledge of information resources within a specific industry (more thanone industry preferable) and most possess knowledge of business informationneeds.

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• Excellent analytical, organizational, and communication skills.

• Thorough knowledge of the internet and its available resources is a must, as wellas a comfortable level of technical knowledge.

• Educational background in business is a plus.

5.8.7. Knowledge Management Consultant


Partner with clients to help create the environment, the KM process and organization,the technology infrastructure, and the KM applications.

Primary duties

The incumbent would be primarily responsible for the architecture, design, and creationof new infrastructure or the improvement and enhancement of existing infrastructure. Inaddition the individual would also be responsible for the development of systems toimplement specific business processes using tools and technologies of KM. The role alsoinvolves assisting in managing the knowledge sharing strategies and organizational processesboth internal and external.

Required skills

• Minimum 2 years of KM or electronic performance support experience in planning,implementing, and supporting KM initiatives and strategies.

• Qualifications should include strong planning, design, relationship, communication,project management, and management of technical teams.

• Must have a strong user-focus and a passion for solving business problems usingtechnological solutions.

• Experience in KM tools and software selections.

• Bachelors Degree (preferably in Information Systems, Computer Science, orEngineering)

• Strong desire to work in the management consulting industry.

5.8.8. Media Specialist


General, business, and specialty publications indicate that the demand for speciallibrarians or knowledge catalogers is increasing qualitatively and quantitatively. Companiesare hiring these skilled professionals to perform conventional information functions as wellas branch into other areas like information architecture for web sites.

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5.8.9. Senior Market Intelligence Librarian


This position would be responsible for providing human and database infrastructuresupport to employees and members to facilitate effective access to marketplace informationfor development of business intelligence and product innovation. This will includemanagement of proprietary and syndicated research and innovation results.

Primary duties

The primary responsibilities include strategic marketing and market research librarymanagement which includes report cataloging, database administration, and on-line research.This is an addition to the responsibilities for the administration of organizational repositoriesincluding managing the idea submissions, database administration, employee web-siteadministration, and participant communication.

Required skills

• College degree or equivalent.• Degree in business, market research or library science specialization preferred.• Candidates must have strong project management and organizational skills.• Excellent communication skills.• Experience in database administration and web site development.

5.8.10. Ontologist/Knowledge Engineer


This position calls for a proven track record developing timely and usable solutions tocomplex problems with experience in building ontologies and knowledge representationsystems besides the following:

• Software development experience.• One + years experience in building ontologies for commercial use• Experience in e-commerce systems.• Effective oral and written communication.

Primary duties

• Assist in the development and implementation of schema for classification acrossmultiple domains.

• Assist in development of automatic classification methods.• Work with SME’s in multiple industries.• Work with domain experts internal to the company.• Undertake ontology maintenance procedures.

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Required skills

• Two +years experience as an ontologist.• Knowledge of computational classification methodologies.• Ability to lead and work with a team.• Work under tight deadlines.• Possess knowledge base of industry-specific tools available.• Applicable area of expertise.• Able to interface and deal with a wide variety of people.• Goal driven.• Graduate degree or equivalent experience: linguistics, computer science, AI,

knowledge representation, lexical semantics.

5.8.11. Knowledge Management Specialist


Manage organizational employee development and/or KM programs

Primary duties

Provide leadership to develop agency-wide coalitions; serve as a subject matter expertin the formulation and implementation of career development, competency models, and/orknowledge management systems; analyze performance gaps, research state-of-artinterventions, create measurement evaluation criteria to build a dynamic, fast-paced, learningorganization.

5.8.12. Intranet Developer/Knowledge Management Content Developer


Capability to collect, store, retrieve, disseminate, and archive critical businessinformation.

Primary duties

The above mentioned capability must be implemented on intranet/extranet to providesecured global access on a 24- hour basis. The responsibility would include the definition,implementation, and support of several intranet/extranet based applications and relatedprocedures. This position will also be responsible for documenting and maintaining all offormal business procedures of the organization including those related with projectmanagement, business development, and business planning.

Required skills

• Two to five years of experience in internet site content management.

• One to two years experience in defining and implementing business operationprocedures.

NOTES



• End user and/or IS staff experience with internet based applications.

• Experience with defining, implementing, and maintaining operational procedures.

• Engineering degree preferred.

5.8.13. Knowledge Management Director


Independently responsible for capturing, consolidating, organizing, and architectingall of the knowledge required for the organizational functioning.

Primary duties

Responsibilities include the definition, shaping and of the organizational knowledgemanagement solutions. The candidate would oversee current and future team efforts aroundbuilding and enhancing web-based KM solutions. This includes managing completedevelopment life cycle of the KMS from design to deployment, and managing the projectteam consisting of program managers, developers, and testing staff.

Required skills

• Demonstrate understanding of current and emerging technologies from anarchitectural standpoint with the ability to rapidly learn new technologies andexperience with server-based products.

• Strong understanding of all facets of the intranet/internet infrastructures, informationmanagement concepts, network services, multimedia over the internet, and securityis necessary.

• Experience in designing and implementing intranet applications and websitespreferably on enterprise-scale internet/intranet sites is highly desirable

• Experience using software development methodologies, processes, and metrics.

• Strong knowledge of web authoring, HTML, W3C standards and definitions, andinternet development.

• Opportunities for specialists in knowledge representation and categorization schemacontinue to expand as e-commerce applications grow. Short position descriptionsare listed below.

5.8.14 Z. Director of Ontologies

Responsibilities/qualities• Develop and implement schema for classifying and describing items across multiple

domains.• Develop automatic classification methods.• Work with SME’s in multiple industries.• Work with domain experts inside the company.

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• Managing a team of ontologies.• Leverage ontology “maintenance” procedures.• Create a team environment in ontology group with a “get it dome” attitude.• Progressive thinking.• Possess knowledge base of industry-specific tools available.• Goal driven.

Desired

• A proven track record developing timely and usable solutions to complex problems.• Two years experience building ontologies for commercial use.• Ability to lead a team and a company to implement and improve schema.• Experience in building ontologies and knowledge representation systems.

Required

• Ph.D or Masters in linguistics or equivalent experience.• Two years experience as an ontologist.• Knowledge of computational classification methodologies.• Ability to lead and work with a team.

5.8.15. Ontologist (biological domain)

Responsibilities

Build ontologies in a team of knowledge representation experts. Gather, analyze, andcategorize biological knowledge from diverse sources. Work with SME’s to accuratelypresent knowledge.

Required competencies

• Experience in building ontologies, or in electronic publishing mark-up languages,or related categorizing specialties.

• Experience in a similar role in a business enterprise.

Desired competencies

• Knowledge of biological issues and vocabulary.• Experience in genetic and protein-related research.• Data modeling experience in biotechnology.

Required educational background

• Degree in a field related to biology or medicine.

Desired educational background

• Ph.D in biology with research in computational data modeling.

NOTES



5.8.16. Natural Language Processing Specialist (medical/biomedical)

Responsibilities

• Knowledge extraction from medical/biomedical text corpus in support of knowledgerepresentation product.

Required educational background

• MS in computer science or computational linguistics.

5.8.17. Knowledge Development Manager


The primary responsibility is to assist in managing the organizational knowledge reusestrategies.

Primary duties

• Implementing processes to locate existing knowledge/content from selected areaswithin the organization and extending it into educational opportunities for customers.This content may be in the form of survey data, white papers, research publications,conference proceedings, etc.The resulting educational programming would becreated in partnership with the original content developers and maybe deliveredvia seminars, publications, CD ROMS, web-based, satellite networks, streamingmedia or two-way interactive video.

• In addition, this position will be responsible for the process related to theorganizational identification and communication, the topics of current interest tocustomers as well as stimulating the creation of new knowledge directed towardsthese topics

Personal competencies

• Excellent networking skills in order to develop and maintain highly effective internaland external relationship.

• Ability to quickly grasp new concepts.

• High level of initiative and creativity.

• Crisp, precise written communication and well-developed presentation skills.

• Adept with all types of educational technologies

• Strong project management skills.

Managerial

• Develop methods, techniques, policy and evaluation criteria for obtaining results.• Drive change and gain acceptance of others in sensitive situations.• Work on complex, undefined problems.

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Knowledge and experience

• 5-7 years instructional design with proven abilities in needs assessment, creatingeducational programming and documentation.

5.9. CASE STUDIES

Case I - TATA Steel

Tata Steel has been recognized as the overall (1st place) 2006 Indian Most AdmiredKnowledge Enterprises (MAKE) Winner compared to its 6th position far the last year(2005). Tata Steel’s 2006 Indian MAKE rankings in the 8 knowledge performancedimensions which are the basis of the MAKE framework are:

• creating an enterprise knowledge-driven culture (1st place)• developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership (2nd place)• delivering knowledge-based products/solutions (3rd place)• maximizing enterprise intellectual capital (3rd place)• creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing (1st place)• creating a learning organization (1st place)• delivering value based on customer knowledge (1st place)• transforming organizational knowledge into shareholder value (2nd place)

According to Rory Chase, managing director of Teleos, “India is emerging as a dynamiccenter of innovative knowledge management. The annual Indian MAKE study serves as abenchmark to recognize those Indian companies which are leaders in effectively transformingenterprise knowledge into wealth-creating ideas, products and solutions. These companiesare building portfolios of intellectual capital and intangible assets which will enable them toout-perform their competitors - both in India and abroad - in years to come.”

This is the first time that the Tata Group has been named a Global MAKE Winner. Asper the summary report available Tata Group was rated high in two of the followingknowledge dimensions

• Developing knowledge workers through senior management leadership (8th place)

• Creating an environment for collaborative knowledge sharing (13th place)

• According to Mr. Rory Chase, MD, Teleos, Tata Steel and Tata ConsultancyServices received a similar number of nominations from the 2006 Global MAKEexpert panel. Most of Tata Steel’s nominations (approx. 90%) were from 2006Global MAKE expert panel members located in Asia.

• Tata Steel received particularly high scores in the following knowledge performancedimensions:

• Creating a learning organization• Delivering value based on customer knowledge• Areas where Tata Steel can improve are:

NOTES



• Maximizing enterprise intellectual capital• Transforming enterprise knowledge into shareholder value

The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) selected Tata Steel as one ofthe Best Practice Partners in the area of “Leveraging Knowledge across the Value Chain”.The other organizations selected as best-practice partners are Buckman Labs, Raytheon,Caterpillar, and the US Air Force Material Command. All the Best Practice Organizationshas been recognized on January 24-25, 2006 at Houston at the Knowledge TransferSession.

The message received from APQC is as follows:-

“Congratulations on being selected as a best-practice partner in APQC’s LeveragingKnowledge across the Value Chain consortium benchmarking study! The study sponsorsare impressed with the work Tata Steel is doing and are eager to learn from your organizationas we continue through this study. The other organizations selected best-practice partnersare Buckman Labs, Raytheon, Caterpillar, and the US Air Force Material Command.”

APQC is involved in conducting consortium benchmarking study on various businessprocesses. They have a structured methodology for identifying and selecting “Best PracticePartner” for a particular consortium benchmarking study. In the process they have identifiedTata Steel as one of the potential best practice partners and after one and a half hour ofteleconferencing APQC prepared a case study for Tata Steel which was then discussedwith the sponsors of the benchmarking study. After going through the case study of eachpotential partner, sponsors select the best practice partner.

All selected Best Practice Partners share their practices with sponsors and with eachother through a virtual site visit and the cycle finishes with one and a half day KnowledgeTransfer Session (KTS) in which Best Practice Partners present their case study to all theparticipating organizations and APQC recognizes them at the end of KTS.

TATA STEEL Launches ‘Knowledge Manthan’ - The KM programme, whichso far was primarily focused on officers and a few supervisors who were computer savvy,was brought within the reach of other employees working at the shop floor through a newinitiative named Aspire Knowledge Manthan.(Churning of Knowledge). This new initiativewas launched by Dy. Managing Director (Steel), Dr T Mukherjee on 2nd March, 2004.This is an initiative to capture and share the tacit knowledge directly from the grass-rootlevel. Knowledge Manthan is conducted every month on certain selected topics (e.g. Motor,Leveling and alignment, Lubrication, Water Treatment, etc.) in which supervisors from allcorners of the plant including the sister concerns of Tata Steel participate. They discussand share their knowledge on a common topic through various methods like Story-telling’method or through case studies to generate initial interest in the group. In order to facilitatethe discussion, all these Manthan sessions are chaired by one ‘Champion’ and an ‘Expert

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Question: Write a detailed account of KM initiates at Tata?

Case II - Cognizant

Most Indian firms aren’t exactly global leaders in the use of technology. IT penetrationis taking off in Indian firms today, and there are some trendsetters, but these are few andfar between. Take the hot field of Knowledge Management. Even the most IT-enabledIndian firms—with comprehensive electronic-KM infrastructure and systems such asintranets, HR guidelines and performance-linked incentives for KM practitioners—arecontent to let their CIOs or CEOs double up as Chief Knowledge Officers (CKOs).

However, Cognizant is a trendsetter here and is perhaps one of the very few softwarecompanies in the country that has a senior position titled as the CKO, exclusively forknowledge management.

R Ramkumar, who’s the CKO at Cognizant, explains why an organisation needs aCKO in the first place. “Look at the sheer enormity of requirements of a KM system. Youneed to spearhead all knowledge efforts; make knowledge visible by ensuring smoothrunning of knowledge practices and leverage knowledge by ensuring that generated/transferred knowledge delivers for the organisation in the form of inputs for innovation,decision-making, etc. So if KM is to be practiced in its truest sense, the organizationcertainly requires an individual focusing entirely on these efforts.” He adds however thatjust a CKO alone does not help—there has to be a committed team to support the initiativein order for KM to become a success.

Ramkumar also explains the evolution of the CKO role in companies. “The CKOemerged in the early 1990s. In the initial days of KM practices CKOs routed bits ofinformation through different pipes to the right people, then they built better networks:company-wide e-mail networks and corporate intranets, and, further down the lineredesigned work and communications processes to promote collaboration.”

The other C

From the way KM is being shaped at Cognizant, it becomes clear that it is not justabout creating a culture conducive for knowledge creation, but more importantly, it is alsoabout generating business.

“Yes, our KM department has a revenue target too,” says Ramkumar. Having acquiredsubstantial knowledge about KM in practice in the last four years since we embarked onthe KM initiatives, developing KM systems itself has now become a new line of business.”

ChannelOne

Channel One is the knowledge management portal developed by Cognizant. Postingson best practices, proposals, estimations and methodologies are created, managed anddistributed online via this portal.

NOTES



The company has around 60 knowledge harvesters, including eight knowledge auditors,whose role is to encourage everyone in the organisation to participate in digitizing corporatememory and knowledge management initiatives.

“Earlier, people used to send bulk mail to all employees, whenever they wanted toknow some crucial information but had no clue with whom it resided. But now, they canfind everything at ChannelOne, which also has a feature called: ‘What I didn’t find,’ thatenables users to inform the KM team about their knowledge requirements which are notavailable in the portal,” Ramkumar explains.

Communities of Practice (CoP)

Another important facet of KM at Cognizant is the communities of practice. Ramkumarhas this anecdote to share whenever he is asked to explain the power of CoP. “In thepunch-card days, Indian Railways sourced out some of the processing operations that itsexisting staff could not handle in their eight-hour work shifts. At one point, the managementdecided to provide extra monetary benefits for its staff, who could work extra time tofinish those additional processing operations. The staffs were motivated by the monetaryincentives but they were not happy about working long hours. So they started exploring allways to share their experiences and knowledge together in creative and free-flowing waysthat fostered new approaches for completing the additional work well within office hours.Finally, they were able to process all the additional processing work well within the eighthours. This is a classic example of ‘communities of practice (CoP)’ in practice.”

He points out that CoPs have been instrumental in driving the World Bank’s KMstrategy; At Chrysler, senior managers and engineers formed ‘tech-clubs’ comprising expertsfrom different car platforms, which helped the company cut R&D costs by almost 50percent. They now maintain an Engineering Book of Knowledge that captures variations inbest practices.

“The effects of community activities are often delayed. But CoPs do pay off. Forinstance communities at Shell saved $2- 5 million for the company and contributed torevenues by more than $13 million in a single year,” Ramkumar says. At Cognizant too,CoPs are making a difference to the company.

The returns

“KM is not about building a smarter intranet. Intranets are only part of the KMinitiative in an organization. It is also not about a one-time investment. KM is, in factexpensive and has a long gestation period. For these reasons, it is crucial to build metricsof the results of KM systems and continually monitor the return on the investment (RoI)made with the infrastructure.” However, Ramkumar acknowledges that there is a lack ofcomprehensive standards for measuring the impact of KM. “In a sense the metric is thelimitation,” he feels and adds, “It is akin to one trying to compute the RoI of a telephone.”

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“Metrics data should be collectable without undue burden since it’s not the measuresthemselves that matter but the decisions that will be based on them. Measures that areexpensive and cumbersome to collect will detract from the measurement program’sperceived value. The best measures would therefore be the ones that would be the naturaloutcome of people’s work,” he explains.

Ramkumar further adds that it would be wrong to focus on the metrics that justemphasise hard (financial) results while totally ignoring the soft ones. Hard results are oftendependent on soft employee attitudes and behaviour, and it would be wrong to ignorethese. The other limitation is that outcomes can often be based on other reasons. Hence, itmay not be possible to attribute a higher project win-rate, for instance, to KM, because itmight also be the by-product of other factors such as competition, a skilled sales person,etc.

The thinking at Cognizant is that it may be better to carefully select a set of 15-20metrics to act as a barometer in order to focus on and measure the past, present and futurevalue of investments in KM simultaneously.

Question: What are the knowledge sharing practices at Cognizant? Explain briefly theKM measurement system in Cognizant?

Case III - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS)

The informal, closely-knit communities of practices (CoPs) have existed at TataConsultancy Services (TCS) since the eighties, when its team size was just around athousand. However, with the phenomenal growth in size (now, 25,000 plus), expansioninto new domains and markets, this geographically dispersed software firm uses onlineplatforms to facilitate the formation of more CoPs on new technology domains andmanagerial practices.

Considerable care had gone even into the architecture of TCS’ own developmentcenters located across the country to encourage employee “conversations”—the lifeline oflively communities (of practices). “Welcome to our Sholinganallur development centre,”invites the chief financial officer S Mahalingam, to show how the building allows employeesto talk to each other. “This centre consists of modules, each dedicated to one particulartechnology or a client or an industry practice. These structures lead to garden terraces,where employees gather during their break for animated, informal conversations. Thoseconversations could be personal, about their colleges or native places, but they providethe necessary bonding for the communities that are technology centric,” he says, adding,that when they converse with their colleagues, they often get solutions for problems theywere vexed with.

NOTES



Organizational memory

To continue to facilitate the conversations across a growing and diversified team spreadacross different time zones and locations has been something Mahalingam and his colleaguesare trying to do—with the help of IT. His understanding is that vibrant communities—therepositories of organizational memory—enhance organizational capabilities. When capturingorganizational memory becomes a necessity, the communities become inevitable.Mahalingam explains, “In traditional set-ups, organizational memory resided in humanmemory. It could even be about customers of one particular geographic location. Theknowledge was passed from one person to another within the organization through sometype of mentoring processes.” Now the mentoring process takes place online throughmailing lists, Web postings, etc. TCS has built a Web-based electronic knowledgemanagement (EKM) portal—Ultimatix. Supported by this Web portal and several Intranetsub- portals are 26-odd divisions of CoPs—one each for 10 major industry practices, 10service practices and six corporate functions.

Mahalingam explains the two important knowledge types in an organization that CoPsand IT tools can help capture and disseminate. “There is knowledge pertaining tooperational—that is on how to deal with a particular type of project or how to do businesswith a particular customer. Or knowledge about a business domain, like healthcare, telecom,etc. Or it could even be about how to do business itself. And the knowledge that has to dowith the people and their project expertise. For instance, our US team could have delivereda project to a client based in the same country. In the event of the same client moving toSingapore, there needs to be a way to transfer the knowledge of our development team inthe US, which had already learned a good deal about this customer, to the Singaporeteam.”

The beginnings

“The phrase communities of practices might have been coined some five years back,but there have been CoPs in the past as well. We simply did not have the software toolsthen and that is the only difference,” says Mahalingam. The earliest “group” in TCS wasbased on the migration of technologies headed by Professor Kesav Nori. Then teamswere formed for mainframe, UNIX and databases.

K Ananth Krishnan, certified quality auditor (CQA), architecture and technologyconsultant, who was heading the mainframe group, recollects the group practices in theinitial days: “Typically such groups were built around one or two experts in that particularfield. Then there were only about a thousand employees in TCS and the physical separationalso was manageable. We almost instantly came to know what were the opportunities andsolutions for the problems in the small setup.”

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The groups kicked off formal documentation practices with the members writing downthe best practices. Says Krishnan, “In the mid-eighties, we started documenting the problemsand solutions. For mainframe, we had over 1,500-odd case studies. We had this knowledgebase to fall back on. Similarly for quality area, we had around 40 reviewed case studydocuments way back in 1993. In the late nineties, the community practices had beenformalised.”

About EKM

EKM was the next big thing to happen to the community infrastructure, where theactivities can take place with a wider user base. The precursor to Ulitimatix was the intranetsystem built after 1997. The intranet is still accessible only to the employees in India.

“We concentrated on process change management and technology changemanagement areas. Also we started creating Process Asset Libraries (PALs), which havetechnology, and process-related information, case studies, etc, for project leaders,” informsKrishnan, adding, “We have over 5,000 project leaders in TCS who have experience inthe range of five to ten years. Not all of them have equal expertise in all project aspects.So, we formed the Software Engineering Group and made available the PAL copies to alldevelopment centres through the intranet.”

Then came Ultimax, which made the knowledge globally available. The PAL libraryand knowledge bases, which were hosted on the intranet, became a part of Ultimatix. Itpresently has sub-portals for quality management system, software productivityimprovement, training materials, tools information, among others. The company has EKMadministrators for each practice and subject group with defined responsibilities. They editthe documents and approve it for publishing.

Krishnan explains how the “relationship-based” exchanges, so typical of small groups,could still be maintained in the networked era. “The groups are still there. With technologywe made them communicate with rocket power. Still in each community—at sub-levels—we have members in the range of 10 or 20 and not more than that. They typically work ona single site. For instance, our telecom group is based at Hyderabad and most members ofthis community are located there.”

Measuring the success

Measuring the return on investment and the success of CoP is not entirely possible.However, the level of participation of the members could indicate the vibrancy and activenessof a particular CoP. Krishnan informs, “Between January 2003 and June 2003, CoPmembers had exchanged around 10,000 document transactions (uploads and downloads)pertaining to the industry practices and 21,000, service practices via Ultimatix. The telecomCoPs alone had 6,000 transactions. This excludes the intranet-based community activities.”

NOTES



Though active community participation is not included in an employees’ appraisalprocess, it does count indirectly. According to Krishnan, the more expensive part of buildingthe EKM and CoPs is not the hardware or software, but the investment the companymakes on the employee-experts themselves. “Again the experts are not here to participatein the community and share knowledge by writing documents or taking training classesalone. These are only a part of their routine tasks. They are the innovators of the company,”he points out.

Diversified groups

Mahalingam emphasis that the sole objective of knowledge creation is knowledgedissemination, especially to diversified functional groups. In his opinion though EKM andCoPs are evolved confining to the people who create solutions, the knowledge they createshould be extended to the staff of other functional areas as well. “From the strategic pointof view, you have to extrapolate all sorts of data to do business. The marketing team withaccess to seemingly technical, project related data can actually understand, for instance,whether China is an emerging market in a particular segment.” Though the CoPs exist forhuman resource, marketing and other functional areas, TCS, which is emerging as an ITconsulting service firm, rather than just a software development company, can expect tohave more CoPs on management practices in the future.

The future

The challenge before the company is to make collaboration more cost effective. “Wewant to bring the cost incurred on travel, telephone and physical meetings down. Thecompany has already minimized the cost of the first point communication by establishingmailing lists for the members. Now the cost of the first touch is almost nothing thanks to theWeb. However, cost is involved in the second level of in-depth, comprehensive collaborationamong the members of the CoPs, involving phone, travel, etc,” says Krishnan. He pointsout, “We do video conferencing but a lot has to be simplified. It should not be like walkinginto a room to use a video conferencing facility. It should be simple at the desktop level andnot in one designated area. People should be able to do this with relative ease.”

To facilitate interaction among members working in other offices, TCS will be rollingout new systems that would make it far easier for more comprehensive collaborationsamong employees working in geographically dispersed areas.

Question: What are the causes of success of CoP practices at TCS?

Case IV - Unilever

Unilever is one of the largest consumer goods companies, with corporate centres inLondon and Rotterdam, and annual sales of around $48bn. It produces and markets awide range of foods, home and personal-care products, under well known brands likeLipton, Ragu, Flora, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter, Breyers, Omo, All, Calvin Klein

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Cosmetics, Elisabeth Arden and Dove. A truly global company, Unilever employs almost250,000 people in 100 countries, with sales in over 50 more. About 2.5 per cent of annualturnover is invested in basic research and product innovation, leading to the filing of morethan 400 patent applications each year. At the heart of Unilever’s corporate purpose arethe ambition to be a truly ‘multi-local’, multinational company – understanding and anticipatingthe everyday needs of people everywhere and meeting these needs with branded productsand services.

Having recognized the importance of knowledge as a key differentiator and the sourcefor sustainable competitive advantage, Unilever has made significant investments in ITover the past decades. But the company soon realized that this was only part of the solutionand that it was becoming more important that the investments the firm was making inknowledge contributed to top-line growth and profitability.

Most knowledge in the organization is not explicit, but tacit, residing in the heads of itsemployees. In light of continuous restructuring, it is this tacit knowledge that is most underthreat. Trying to capture or transfer this tacit knowledge is not easy, as it stems frompersonal experience and individuals are not always aware of the value of the knowledgethey hold. Moreover, knowledge is not static. In fact, it is the continuous creation of newknowledge and learning, rather than static knowledge assets, which will produce asustainable advantage.

From knowledge workshops to communities of practice

Taking this learning-organization perspective as a starting point, Unilever has putnumerous knowledge-management initiatives in place across the company. In order tocapture what was known and identify what was not (knowledge gaps), knowledgeworkshops were organized. Key experts and practitioners from around the world discussed,in an interactive and structured way, a specific, strategically relevant knowledge domain.The aim of the workshops was to come to a common understanding about the knowledgestrengths and weaknesses of the company as a whole. Existing good practices were capturedand rolled out to the wider community. At the same time, innovation and R&D programmeswere put in place to address the knowledge gaps that were identified.

From these workshops, communities of practice emerged – groups of experts actingas the custodians of a specific knowledge domain. However, it soon emerged that themost strategically relevant communities were not necessarily the most active ones, primarilybecause the experts that worked in an area that was of high strategic value were also inhigh local demand. To their own frustration, they found it difficult to keep the community ofpractice alive, given their day-to-day pressures.

Networks have been interwoven with Unilever’s organization for many decades, bothon a personal, informal level and on a more structured, organizational level. However, as

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the organization becomes leaner, and bottom-line improvements bear fruit, it has becomeapparent that communities of practice depend on careful management and the appropriateallocation of resources if they are to survive. For this reason, the Knowledge ManagementGroup (KMG) has put in place a more formal framework to help ensure the effective andefficient operation of the firm’s communities of practice.

The Unilever CoP framework

The communities’ framework advocates certain principles within which Unilever CoPsoperate in order to ensure added business value. These principles can be organized intofour pillars: deliverables, people, operations and leverage.

A clear distinction is made within the firm between communities of interest andcommunities of practice. Communities of practice are defined around a knowledge domainthat is core to the company’s strategy. Therefore, clear, ongoing deliverables are identifiedthat contribute to Unilever’s business results. These deliverables can be knowledgedeliverables (such as improved insights, training programmes, good practices and so on)and business deliverables (such as increased speed of implementation of business-improvement projects, roll-out of specific innovations, safety improvements and the like).

The people pillar is about the roles and responsibilities of CoP members. Membersthemselves are key experts, recognized as such both inside and outside the community.They should represent the right mix of background, geographical representation and localversus corporate resource. Equally important is the role of the activist. The activist ensurescontinued strategic alignment in the activities of the community. Typically, the activist positionis a rotating role that all members can eventually fill. The people pillar also addresses thestakeholders and sponsors external to the community, but necessary to validate its existenceand free up resources for the members.

The operations pillar is centered on the way the community functions. It forms thebasis for creating an open and trusting culture in which members feel safe to share andcreate. As part of its launch, each community defines these ground rules itself, including theICT support needed to ensure effective ongoing communication and knowledge sharing.

In order to prevent a community becoming isolated within the organization, theoutcomes generated by the community need to be communicated to the rest of theorganization. Likewise, inputs from the wider network need to be able to flow withoutrestrictions. These challenges are addressed by the leverage pillar. The CoP identifies thebroader network of stakeholders and ensures effective two-way communication ismaintained. Another aspect of this pillar is the effective branding of the community withinthe organization.

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Leveraging community capabilities

The Unilever Knowledge Management Group has designed community guidelinesand training for CoP activists. The training course is aimed at raising awareness of thegeneral benefits offered by communities and building an understanding of CoP terminology.The course offers practical insights about communities of practice and hands-on experiencein tools and techniques in establishing and sustaining a community. Acting as a profit centrewithin Unilever, the KMG also works outside of the company. For instance, and as testimonyto the quality of the way CoPs are set up in Unilever, the KMG has also provided trainingto ABN Amro and other multi-nationals.

In addition, the KMG works closely with activists and champions who are in theprocess of setting up a community of practice. A champion identifies the need for networkingand knowledge development in their part of the business. The next step is then to clarifywhat the objectives are, and whether setting up a CoP is the most effective way of realisingthese objectives.

When this has been clarified, the champion looks to appoint an activist for the CoP.An initial brief is then specified, outlining the broad objectives of the community and therelevant stakeholders. This brief is further refined by the champion and other stakeholders.Potential community participants are suggested and invited to join. A first proposal foroperational procedures and leverage of results is drawn up, the community kick-off meetingis planned, and the agenda and process for the meeting are carefully designed, based on astandardised approach and guidelines.

During the kick-off meeting, which lasts between two and five days, CoP participantsdiscuss the deliverables and potential ways of working within the community.

The constituent elements of the four pillars described above are specified and tailoredto the needs, focus and spirit of each community. Sessions on defining the role of the CoPare interspersed with team-building activities aimed at building trust and relationships betweenthe participants.

The KMG works closely with the activist to prepare them for their role, such thatduring and after the kick-off meeting they are confident in their ability to energise theircommunity and help it to deliver results. However, the KMG also maintains contact withthe activists, and the training material used by the KMG is adapted continuously accordingto the learning’s and needs of the activists and their communities.

Once a CoP has been up and running for some time, a health check allows the companyto assess whether the community is still on track. It could be that, due to changes in theorganizational environment, a CoP needs to shift focus or include new members. A health-check questionnaire and the recommendations that result can help to identify strengths andgaps in the sustainability of a community. For example, after a number of years, one of

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Unilever’s communities is looking to broaden its focus from sharing knowledge and goodpractices to generating new knowledge. Knowledge visioning, one of the KMG’s otherofferings, can help the community to identify which areas of knowledge have the mostpotential value. The company also recognises that, once a CoP is no longer adding value tothe business, it should be allowed to disband. However, it is important in such instances torecognise and celebrate the community’s achievements. A debrief workshop can be auseful tool to ensure that lessons learnt will be captured and transferred.

Communities require substantial levels of investment, and as such should be seen toadd significant value to the business. Therefore, valuation of community activities is embeddedin community processes from the beginning, and is a continuous process that lasts fromconception of a CoP to its closure. Various valuation approaches – ranging from gatheringsuccess stories and quotes of satisfied CoP ‘customers’, to causal tracking and balancedscorecards – are used to help a community of practice to continuously manage (identifyand exploit) the added value of the its activities. Each recommendation a CoP makesrequires appropriate resources and is therefore treated as an investment decision. Thevaluation results provide the basis for the business case underpinning the resultingrecommendations. Two examples of communities of practice that have resulted inquantifiable value to the business are the Agronomy community and the NPI Buyingcommunities (see sidebars).

Seven years and counting

Walking the fine line between the empowered ‘anarchy’ of a purposeful network, andthe structure of a focused and result-oriented business team, the flexibility and speed ofCoPs have resulted in very impressive results for Unilever over the past seven years.Ranging from efficiency improvement, increased innovation and improved risk management,the payback is many times higher than the investments in starting up and operating thecommunities.

Currently there are several dozen CoPs in Unilever that are highly active. Communitiesoriginated in areas such as supply chain, technology and innovation – sectors in which thevalue of knowledge is explicitly recognised, and resources tend to be scarce. More recentlycommunities have also emerged in areas like marketing and consumer insights, whereknowledge is of a more tacit nature. Due to a high turnover and the tacit nature of knowledge,the urgency of sharing and leveraging knowledge in these areas is higher than ever. Assuch, communities of practice are an essential element in Unilever’s organizational culture,and will continue to be as the company strives to satisfy its customers’ needs, now and inthe future.

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Question:

Analyze the case of Unilever with light of principles learnt in Communities of Practice.

Solution:

Lesson learnt

• As CoPs bring together the most highly talented people in their area, it is oftendifficult for them to balance community participation with the demands of their dayjob. As such, it is critical to be clear about the investment needed and the resourceimplications;

• Successful CoPs do not just happen; they need to be carefully designed andsupported, with clear and measurable objectives and roles, and a solid operationalplan;

• Training CoP activists provides them with an understanding of CoP terminologyand a common framework that can be applied across your organization. Traininghelps to impart practical insights about communities, specifically about what makesthem work and how to generate the most business value;

• You get only one chance to launch a community, so a carefully designed kick-offmeeting is essential;

• It is crucial that you maintain a balance between the benefits for participants, theirdepartments and the broader organization;

• Balance longer-term projects with quick wins. A quick win can help in motivatingyour participants (and their stakeholders) in the short run, but longer-term, high-value projects are required for the company to benefit from the step-changeimprovements a community can deliver;

• Avoid single-leader dependency. Stakeholders and champions will change, andthe CoP needs to be able to survive these changes;

• Do not sell communities as a separate, knowledge-based initiative, but as a moreeffective way of achieving tangible business results.

The Agronomy community

Unilever is one of world’s largest processors of tomatoes. With products such asRagu Pasta Sauces, Chicken Tonight, Knorr soups and sauces, and many more, Unilever’stomato-processing plants are spread across the world. Seven years ago the Culinary divisionorganised a knowledge workshop, bringing together experts in the field of tomato productionand processing. Participants came from all over the world. Management, and indeed theexperts involved, felt it was so important to exchange and share knowledge in the area thatthey decided to establish a community. The CoP that was formed remains active today.The following section offers an example of the value that the community has generated.

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The regions where tomatoes are grown and processed for Unilever are located inNorth America, South America, Australia and Europe. Some tomato-growing locationsare situated in dry to very dry areas, and others in regions with more rainfall. In all areas, asufficient water supply is essential for growth. Depending on the local situation, varioustypes of irrigation systems are in use. In Brazil, plenty of water is available, unlike, forexample, in Australia.

In countries where water was scarce, Unilever worked with the local growers todevelop highly sophisticated and efficient drip irrigation systems. Instead of spraying thefields overhead, the water was brought to the plants through a web of tubes, drippingwater, pesticides and herbicides close to the plants. Besides water, pesticide and fungicidesavings, the additional advantages turned out to be higher yields and less chance of disease.However, in areas where water was plentiful, over-irrigation led to moulds and the prevalenceof bacteria.

Information exchange between the experts in the Agronomy CoP, in addition to localtechnical support in Brazil, allowed Unilever to overcome these difficulties, and to theintroduce drip irrigation systems across its tomato-growing network. The relatively highinvestment costs could be quickly paid back owing to the return on investment generatedby significantly higher yields and the lower costs of fighting diseases. The fact that differentexperts from across the world had formed a CoP, developed professional trust and respect,and were fully empowered by the organization, resulted in a rapid and effectiveimplementation, and the realization of considerable business benefits.

The Agronomy CoP meets twice a year, each time in a different country. During eachmeeting, which lasts a couple of days, the CoP invites local growers to discuss cultivationproblems and plans, often locally in the field or in the grower’s own business. Both thelocal growers and the Unilever agriculture managers appreciate this exchange of knowledgeand experience. Both groups make grateful use of the tips and experiences they exchangein order improve the quality of the tomatoes and increase the yield.

The NPI-Buying communities

Within Unilever, Global Supply Management is divided into Production Items (e.g.,raw materials, packaging materials) and Non-Production Items (NPI) (e.g., lease contracts,travel contracts, IT supplies, office supplies and market research). NPI is currently organizedregionally, with regional targets. In the summer of 2002, a workshop was organized whererepresentatives of all regions attended to discuss key issues and to identify must-win battlesfor global NPI. From this workshop, one of the global initiatives that emerged focused oncommunication, knowledge sharing and collaboration. One can easily imagine the enormouspotential of savings that can be reached by aligning and standardizing the global buyingprogramme of a company the size of Unilever.

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To encourage global collaboration and leverage cross-regional opportunities, thecompany decided to establish three global CoPs. Each community was to bring together acore team of NPI professionals to share expertise and good practice. As some activistshad yet to be trained, the project consisted of two steps: first, training the global activistsand potential regional activists-to be; second, launching all three global CoPs in parallelwith each other.

The CoP course was tailored to the specific NPI context and needs, with specificattention on the tools and techniques for a kick-off meeting that would follow straight afterthe course. After the course, the participants of all the CoPs arrived at the venue and thelaunch event began. The NPI CoPs were set up in three key areas: Engineering & Technical,Travel and Marketing.

The CoPs are very active, both internally and in sharing with other communities. TheNPI communities have since contributed to significant cost savings, not least in creating acommon terminology. What’s more, new communities within NPI are emerging and beingintegrated with the global initiative.

SUMMARY

Knowledge management tools and techniques are used to enhance and enableknowledge generation, codification, transfer, generate knowledge to make knowledgeavailable for others and also transfer knowledge to decrease problems with time and spacewhen communicating in an organization.

Content creation and management tools are used to structure and organize knowledgecontent for each retrieval and maintenance.

Groupware and other collaboration tools are essential enablers of knowledge flowand knowledge-sharing activities among personnel.

Data mining and knowledge discovery techniques can be used to identify emergentpatterns that could not have otherwise been detected. Some of these techniques mayprovide valuable insights.

Intelligent filtering agents are a KM technology that can help address the challengesof information overload by selecting relevant content and delivering this in a just-in-timeand just-enough format.

A knowledge repository will often be the most frequently used and most visible aspectof a KM technology. What is important is not so much the container but the content andhow this content will be managed.

Knowledge management technologies help support emergent phenomena involved inthe creation, sharing, and application of valuable knowledge assets.

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Knowledge management measurement is concerned with trying to select and/orformulate those concepts useful in measuring and influencing knowledge managementperformance. Measuring knowledge management (KM) is not simple. Determining KM’spervasiveness and impact is analogous to measuring the contribution of marketing, employeedevelopment, or any other management or organizational competency. It is nonetheless anecessity if KM is to last and have significant impact in an organization. A number of fairlysophisticated KM measurement techniques are available now that can help assess howwell an organization is progressing. These include benchmarking, IC rating and the balancedscorecard method.

KM auditing is often the first step in any KM initiative because it serves to inventorywhat knowledge-intensive resources exist within a company. This provides snapshot ofthe “as is” or current state of the organization with respect to KM and helps in measuringprogress toward organizational culture change and other KM goals.

As KM field expands, organizations increasingly rely on “knowledge workers” togenerate, classify, manage, and distribute tacit and explicit knowledge. The CKO representsthe pinnacle position in a knowledge enabled organization. The unit presented the variousopportunities that exist in various organizations employing KM professionals, classifiedbased on the various organizational knowledge processes with clear picture of qualitiesand attributes required for the K-careers. Some selected case studies were given to knowmore about the KM practices and lesson to be learned from them.

SHORT QUESTIONS

1. Why are intellectual assets difficult to measure?2. Distinguish between content creation tools and content management tools.3. Define data mining.4. What is a chat room?5. Define newsgroup and mailing lists.6. What is the function of filtering tools?7. Define KM measurement.8. What is a tangible asset monitor?9. Compare “efficiency” with “effectiveness”.10. What is meant by balanced scorecard?11. Define ‘knowledge audit’.12. What are the objectives of K-audit?13. What is process mapping?14. What are the responsibilities of a CKO?15. Who is a chief learning officer (CLO)?

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LONG QUESTIONS

1. Discuss the pros and cons of the major technologies used in the knowledge creationand capture phase.

2. Discuss the pros and cons of technologies used in the knowledge-sharing anddissemination phase.

3. Describe the pros and cons of major technologies used in the knowledge acquisitionand application phase.

4. What are the major categories of data mining technologies and what sorts of patternswould this technology detect?

5. Describe an application of blog technology within an organization and its potentialbenefits?

6. Describe some of the ways in which unstructured content may be managed?

7. What are some best practices in the management of the useful lifecycle of knowledgecontent?

8. How would you categorise the different forms of groupware or collaborationtechnologies? How would you adopt a cost benefit approach to such a technologyselection decision?

9. What role can a wiki play in promoting group collaboration? What advantagesdoes a wiki offer when compared to a discussion forum?

10. Describe push and pull technologies that can be used in conjunction with knowledgerepositories. What are some of the artificial intelligence technologies that can playa role in knowledge management?

11. What role do e-learning tools play in KM?

12. How can intelligent agents help knowledge workers find relevant knowledgecontent?

13. Describe the components of K-audit.

14. What are the different classifications of KM career? Explain each one of thembriefly.

15. ‘Measuring knowledge management is not simple’ – Do you agree with thisstatement? If not, what are the approaches needed to measure KM?

16. Give your detailed analysis of balanced scorecard management system.

17. What are the duties and skills required for the positions of (i) K-architect, (ii) K-strategist and (iii) K-engineer?

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APPENDIXKnowledge Management Glossary

After Action Review (AAR). A systematic process to extract the learning from anevent or activity. The process addresses the questions: What should have happened? Whatactually happened? What lessons are there for the future?

Answernet. A service provided by a network of experts who answer questions posedonline.

Artificial Intelligence (AI). A set of computer techniques that make the computerappear to behave with a degree of human intelligence. Rather than the procedural way ofprogramming, it draws on inferences and rules to guide its actions. Expert systems, intelligentagents and natural language search are examples of the use of AI techniques in knowledgemanagement.

BBS. See Balanced Business Scorecard. Now a less common abbreviation thanBSC.

Balanced Scorecard. A performance measurement system that incorporates abalanced set of measures, both financial and non-financial. It adds customer, internalprocesses and innovation and learning indicators to financial ones to provide a more balancedview. Contrast with the more specific intellectual capital measurement methods.

Benchlearning. A structured approach whose focus is on learning from others tocreate distinctive improvements. Developed by Bengt Karlof and colleagues, it overcomesthe often narrow focus of benchmarking on quantitative comparisons, which downplaysthe key role of knowledge transfer.

Benchmarking. A systematic process for comparing the performance of an activityor process across a range of organizations or departments. Identifying gaps in performanceleads to on to benchlearning and learning good practice from high performers.

Benefits Tree. A diagrammatic depiction of cause-effect relationships from knowledgeprocesses to business outcomes. Helpful in making the business case for knowledgemanagement. See also the Benefits Tree tool.

Best Practice. The distillation of accumulated wisdom about the most effective wayto carry out a business activity or process. Since ‘best’ is highly subjective and contextdependent, as well as implying that no further improvements are possible, many peoplenow prefer the term good practice.

BSC. See Balanced Business Scorecard.

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Blog (originally Web log). A string of thoughts of an individual shown in chronologicalsequence on a Web page, often with hyperlinks to sources that have stimulated his or herthinking. A well established KM blog can be seen at David Gurteen’s website, while theAOK website lists a selection of KM blogs. Although often dismissed as a gimmick somepeople see blogging as grass-roots KM, alongside storytelling. Others suggest that itperpetuates knowledge silos and that a Wiki is more appropriate.

Bulletin Board. See Message Board

Case Based Reasoning (CBR). An application of AI techniques, where solutionsto a given problem are sought through a reasoning process that draws analogies withsimilar problems whose solution is already known.

Caves and Commons. Denotes two main types of physical working area: a cave isa private area for concentrated thinking; commons are open areas for socialization andmeeting rooms for team discussions. Design of working space can significantly enhancethe productivity of knowledge workers.

Chat. See Instant Messaging.

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). A senior executive, often at board level withresponsibility for an organization’s knowledge agenda. Unlike other officers, they may notmanage a knowledge ‘function’, although they may directly manage a small knowledgeteam, and hold budget responsibilities.

Classification. A key process in the knowledge sharing cycle. Documents areclassified and indexed according to their core terms and concepts. Increasingly computersystems provide a level of automation of this process, using natural language or statisticalmethods.

CKO. See Chief Knowledge Officer.

CMS. See Content Management System.

Codification. See Knowledge Codification.

CoI. See Community of Interest.

Combination. One of four basic knowledge conversion processes described byNonaka and Takeuchi. Combination is the bringing together of different sources of explicitknowledge, and reconfiguring it into new explicit knowledge. Contrast this withExternalization, Internalization and Socialization.

Community. A community of interest or practice. The focus of a community isusually part of a website that typically provides message boards and other conversationalfacilities (such as discussion lists and instant messaging as well as a library of online

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resources. Some people also refer to communities of purpose or communities ofcommitment.

Community of Interest (CoI). A group of people who share knowledge andexperience around a common interest. Driven more by learning and less on outcomes thana Community of Practice.

Community of Practice (CoP). A group of people who share and develop theirknowledge in pursuit of a common purpose or task, even though they do not necessarilywork in the same department or organization..

Concept Mapping. A visual representation of core concepts showing the relationshipsbetween them. A typical concept map comprises a set of nodes or bubbles (the concepts)with arrowed links between them (the causal relationships). One of the several types ofknowledge mapping.

Content Analysis. Analysis of a body of content (text) into its key concepts. As wellas a method of discerning trends, this technique is used to generate keywords and thesaurusterms to improve subsequent text search and retrieval. The latter result is increasinglyachieved through the use of automated classification systems.

CoP. See Community of Practice.

Content Management System (CMS). A computer system that makes it easier todevelop enterprise portals and websites, by separating the management of content from itspresentation (display). Blocks of content are tagged with metadata and other attributesand held in a content database. Web pages are generated (often ‘on-the-fly’) by accessingcontent from the database and inserting it into the relevant ‘placeholders’ on Web pagetemplates. Since a single block of content may appear on many Web pages, the task ofmaintenance and updating is simplified. Compared to document management systemsthe focus of a CMS is individual content blocks.

CRM. See Customer Relationship Management.

Customer Capital. A measure of the intangible value that accrues through customerrelationships, including size of customer bases, knowledge of customers and their needs,and related intellectual property such as brands. A component of intellectual capital.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM). An approach that gathers anduses knowledge of customers’ buying habits and preferences in order to strengthen theongoing relationship for mutual benefit. Customer knowledge comes out as the mostimportant knowledge to manage in many KM surveys.

Data Mining. A computer technique for extracting meaningful knowledge frommasses of data. Using artificial intelligence methods it identifies unanticipated patterns

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by considering the interaction of many more variables than is achievable by humans. Contrastwith text mining.

Decision Diary. A diary in which decisions are recorded, together with theassumptions and reasoning behind them. They are used to derive lessons and recordknowledge that will help future decision-making.

Digital Rights. The rights and conditions of use for a piece of digital content. Theserights may be part of the product’s wrapper, or may be embedded in the product as partof a watermark to reduce illegal copying.

Discussion List. A mechanism used by to share information and knowledge using asingle email address to communicate to all members of a given list. Typically all messagesgenerated during one day are grouped together and sent as a single email in a ‘digest’.

Desktop Conferencing. Videoconferencing using a desktop PC. A small camera(webcam) is usually mounted on top of the user’s display screen. Evidence suggests thatthis often transfers expertise better than simply using email or documents.

Document Management System. A computer-based system for storing andretrieving documents held in a variety of formats, including scanned images of paperdocuments. Many provide version control and audit trails of changes and usage. Thedistinctions between document management, content management and records managementsystems are increasingly blurring.

EDRMS. Electronic (sometime Enterprise) Document and Records ManagementSystem.

EIP. See Enterprise Information Portal.

Enterprise Information Portal (EIP). Strictly, an entry point (home page) into anorganization’s intranet, although the term now often refers to the intranet itself and itscontent. Users have a personalized starting page that gives them a single point of access toenterprise information, wherever it is held.

Expert System. A common class of AI computer system that applies the logic anddomain knowledge it has acquired from a human ‘expert’. A typical expert system hasthree main parts - a knowledge base (that contains the rules), an inference engine (thatinterprets the situation against the rules) and a human interface.

Explicit Knowledge. Knowledge which is codified and articulated. It appears in theform of documents, procedures and in databases.

Externalization. One of four basic knowledge conversion processes described byNonaka and Takeuchi. It is the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge, articulating thoughtsthrough language or diagrams.

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Expertise Directory. A database of personnel and their skills that allow users tosearch for people with specific skills or relevant project experience. Often referred to as‘Yellow Pages’.

Expertise Profiling. The identification and classification of personal knowledge andskills. This may be done through manual completion of data forms or by computer systemsthat infer people expertise according to what they write in emails and documents. Theoutput of the process may be an expertise directory or a database that is used in automatedquestion and answer systems.

Extensible Markup Language. See XML.

Extranet. A portion of an organization’s intranet that is opened up for externalInternet access on a selective basis e.g. for customers to access specific areas followinginput of a password.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). A list of questions that are most frequentlyasked or are anticipated by website or intranet users, together with their answers. Informationproviders use this technique to minimize the number of recurring queries and calls. Someorganizations use the term AAQs - actually asked questions - since many writers of FAQsanticipate what might be asked or what questions their content answers.

Fuzzy logic. A technique used in artificial intelligence that works on a balance ofprobabilities for rules, rather than precise matching of data or patterns. Examples of its useare found in text retrieval and case based reasoning applications.

Groupware. Computer software tools that support collaborative working. LotusNotes was the archetypal groupware software, but many groupware facilities are nowprovided on the Internet e.g. bulletin boards, discussion forums, instant messaging. Theterm is generally falling into disuse compared to ‘collaboration software’.

Human Capital. The competencies, know-how, capabilities and experience possessedby individuals. One of the three main components of Intellectual Capital. The others areStructural Capital and Customer Capital.

Information Resources Management (IRM). The techniques of managinginformation as organizational resources. They include the identification of information, itsclassification and ways of valuing and exploiting it.

IAM. Intellectual asset management or Intangible Assets Monitor.

IC. See Intellectual Capital.

IC Measurement. The measurement of the Intellectual Capital of an organization.Over the last few years there have been significant developments in IC measurement methodsto help managers focus on knowledge and other intangible sources of wealth creation.

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IC Multiplier. The ratio of Structural Capital / Human Capital. It indicates how wellan organization leverages its human capital through it structural capital. A higher ratio indicatesgood leverage and minimizes the loss of knowledge when people leave.

IC Reporting. The reporting of an organization’s intellectual capital in a similarway that financial results are reported. Typically this is done as an annual IC supplement tothe formal accounts.

Implicit knowledge. Knowledge that is not explicitly identified but can be inferredfrom its context or packaging. An example is the knowledge held in software that can bededuced by reverse engineering.

Information Audit. See Knowledge Audit.

Instant Messaging. An Internet or intranet facility in which users type messagesinto a window that is simultaneously viewed by other participants in that chat room or area.While commonly associated with informal social groups, the tool is a useful adjunct forsynchronous knowledge exchange in a corporate context, for example as a way of interactionduring a ‘webinar’.

Intangible Assets. Assets that is not physical or tangible in nature. They are thereforemore difficult to identify and count as discrete entities. Knowledge is one type of intangibleasset.

Intangible Assets Monitor (IAM). A method of IC Measurement developed byKarl Erik Sveiby for recording intangible assets. It divides intangible assets into three maincategories - competencies, external structure and internal structure. Indicators are dividedinto four distinctive groups - growth, renewal, efficiency and stability.

Intellectual Capital (IC). The intangible assets of a company not normally valuedon the balance sheet. It is roughly - but not exactly - the difference between the market andbook value of a company. It is often divided into the categories of human capital, customercapital and structural capital. Some schemes separate out intellectual property, whileothers use the broader term relationship capital instead of customer capital.

Intellectual Property (IP). Intellectual capital that is identifiable and protect ablein law. It includes copyrights, patents, designs, trademarks etc.

Internalization. One of four basic knowledge conversion processes described byNonaka and Takeuchi. Internalization is conversion of explicit to tacit, for example throughapplying explicit knowledge and learning from the experience. Contrast withExternalization, Combination and Socialization.

Intranet. An internal internet. In other words an internal computer network that runsthe Internet protocol (TCP/IP). Most intranets have a computer ‘gateway’ to the wider

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(external) Internet and deploy a ‘firewall’ to prevent unauthorized access to a company’sinformation.

IRM. See Information Resources Management.

Just-in-time Knowledge. The concept of delivering knowledge to an individual justat the time that they need it to carry out a task. This overcomes the problem of informationoverload, where knowledge not immediately needed may be forgotten or ignored.Mechanisms that help are alerting systems linked to computerized procedures or what aknowledge worker is typing into their computer and natural language retrieval.

K-Log (Knowledge Log). A blog (weblog) whose subject is knowledge.

KM. See Knowledge Management.

KM Assessment. An assessment of the quality and capabilities of knowledgemanagement within an organization. A typical assessment tool will have a set of questionsagainst which employees score the level of actual and desired capabilities.

KM Maturity. The level of adoption of KM within an organization. This is gaugedby reference to a KM maturity model that looks at stages of maturity from ad-hoc to fullyembedded and integrated into the organization’s core activities.

Know-bot (Knowledge robot). An intelligent agent that gathers or exchangesknowledge from other agents or computer systems.

Knowledge Analyst. A person or business that interprets the needs of a knowledgeseeker and finds the most suitable sources. May also act as a knowledge broker.

Knowledge Archaeology. The process of rediscovering an organization’s historicalknowledge that has become lost.

Knowledge Asset. An identifiable piece of knowledge that has some intrinsic orextrinsic value.

Knowledge Audit. The systematic analysis of an organization’s information andknowledge entities and their key attributes, such as ownership, usage and flows, mappedagainst user and organizational knowledge needs. The terms information audit, knowledgeaudit, knowledge inventory and knowledge mapping are often used synonymously.

Knowledge Base. A computer held database that record knowledge in an appropriateformat for later extraction. It may take various forms depending on whether it supports anexpert system or contains documents and textual information for human retrieval.

Knowledge Based System (KBS). A computer system that draws on AI techniquesor knowledge bases for its operation. Examples include expert systems and neural networks.

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Knowledge-based product. A product in which knowledge is a major component.Contrast with a knowledge product, which is wholly knowledge.

Knowledge Broker. An intermediary that connects knowledge seekers to knowledgeproviders. It may involve brokering a deal and retaining anonymity between buyer andseller until a suitable stage of negotiation. Some overlap with a knowledge analyst.

Knowledge Business. A business whose primary outputs are knowledge productsand services.

Knowledge Café. Informal meeting area for the exchange of knowledge. Caf´s canbe virtual meeting rooms as well as real ones.

Knowledge Capital. The capital of an organization that is not physical or financial.Similar to intellectual capital, this is the term used by Paul Strassmann and Baruch Lev todescribe the results of their methods that start with the capital reported in a company’sbalance sheet.

Knowledge Centre. A central function for managing knowledge resources. Oftendeveloped around a corporate library, a typical knowledge centre will manage both physicaland virtual resources - documents, databases, intranet content, expertise directories etc.

Knowledge Codification. The process of articulating knowledge in a more structuredway. It typically involves eliciting tacit knowledge from an expert, making it explicit andputting it into a template and format that aids dissemination and understanding. High levelsof codification are found in computer software and mathematical formulae.

Knowledge Commercialization. The process of creating tradable goods and servicesfrom a body of knowledge.

Knowledge Cycle. A sequence of core knowledge processes that result in newknowledge. There are two main cycles - the innovation cycle and the knowledge sharingcycle.

Knowledge Economy. An economy in which knowledge is one of the main factorsof production and constitutes the major component of economic output. This may occurdirectly through knowledge products and services or indirectly where knowledge is anadded-value part of other products and services. Contrast with agricultural and industrialeconomies.

Knowledge Elicitation. The process of eliciting knowledge from a human expert inorder to codify it into some form of explicit knowledge base or rule based computersystem (expert system).

Knowledge Inventory. A list or database of knowledge entities - their sources,users and uses. It may be the output of a knowledge audit.

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Knowledge Leakage. The loss of critical or damaging knowledge from an organizationto the outside world (e.g. competitors, unauthorized personnel), either deliberately orunintentionally, when it should remain inside.

Knowledge Management (KM). The explicit and systematic management of vitalknowledge and its associated processes of creating, gathering, organizing, diffusion, useand exploitation in pursuit of organizational objectives.

Knowledge Mapping. The process of identifying core knowledge and the relationshipbetween knowledge elements. A map may be portrayed in many visual formats, such as ahierarchical tree or a node and link diagram. It is typically a task carried out as part of aknowledge audit.

Knowledge Market. A marketplace for the buying and selling of knowledge. Onlineknowledge markets are sometimes referred to as knowledge e-marketplaces. Theycommonly allow the posting of knowledge needs and knowledge offers, and may conductsales by auction.

Knowledge Narrative. The articulation of value of and organization’s products andservices to customers and how knowledge resources are used to achieve this value. Itderives from the organization’s vision and strategy and describes its KM ambitions. Itoften forms part of an IC report.

Knowledge Networking. The process of sharing and developing knowledge throughhuman and computer networks.

Knowledge Object. A piece of knowledge held in a well-defined and structuredformat, such that it is easy to replicate and disseminate. Although predominantly in the formof explicit knowledge, it may contain some element of human knowledge.

Knowledge Practice. A specific method or technique used to manage or processknowledge. Several methods may be used within a knowledge process. See the list ofcommon practices.

Knowledge Process. A broad knowledge activity often performed at an aggregatedlevel. Examples are knowledge gathering, sharing and dissemination. Knowledge movesfrom one process to another as part of a knowledge cycle.

Knowledge Product. A product which consists almost entirely of information orknowledge.

Knowledge Recipe. The transformation processes that uses existing knowledgeassets as inputs and combines them in distinctive ways to create useful outputs and outcomes.

Knowledge Refining. The process of filtering, aggregating and summarizingknowledge drawn from a wide range of resources.

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Knowledge Repository. A store of knowledge. While the term typically refers toexplicit forms of knowledge, such as documents and databases, it can also refer to human-held knowledge.

Knowledge Value Chain. A sequence of knowledge processes including creation,organizing, dissemination and use that create value from knowledge stocks.

Knowledge Worker. An individual whose primary contribution is through theknowledge that they possess or process. This contrasts with workers whose work ispredominantly manual or following highly specified procedures with little scope for individualthought.

Knowledge Wrapper. Information associated with a knowledge object that accuratelydescribes the contents within. It holds metadata in a standard format and may hold encrypteddigital rights information.

Learning Network. A network of individuals who share knowledge for the primarypurpose of personal development and learning. A specific example of a Community ofInterest.

Learning Organization. An organization which has in place systems, mechanismsand processes that are used to continually enhance its capabilities and those who workwith it or for it, to achieve sustainable objectives - for themselves and the communities inwhich they participate.

Mapping. See Knowledge Mapping or Social Network Mapping.

Message Board. An area on a website where messages can be exchanged andviewed by a workgroup or community. Sometimes referred to as a bulletin board. Theconversational interaction via the Web is sometimes called Web conferencing.

Metadata. Data about data. A structured piece of data that describes the contentsof a database record. One common metadata format is that of the Dublin core (pageXXX) that defines metadata fields for bibliographic databases.

Meta-knowledge. Knowledge about knowledge. Knowledge inventories,knowledge maps and expertise directories are examples of meta-knowledge.

Mind Mapping. A visual method of organizing ideas. In most mind mapping systemsthe ideas branch out from a central point. In turn, each branch can have additional branchesor links to other mind maps. A specific form of concept mapping.

Natural Language Processing (NLP). The ability of a computer application, suchas a search engine to accept ordinary language input rather than highly specified instructions.It processes text through analysis of syntax and semantics.

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Neural Networks. An artificial intelligence technique that mimics the operation ofthe human brain. It consists of a network of individual neurons that are triggered accordingto the intensity of various inputs and their relative ‘weights’. It adjusts these weights accordingto the quality of the outcome for a given set of inputs. In other words, a neural networklearns from experience.

Object-based Knowledge. Knowledge that is held in discrete entities (knowledgeobjects). Contrast with human-held knowledge (in people’s heads).

Online Community. A community of interest or practice that uses computer-basedcollaboration facilities (such as message boards, discussion lists and chat, to shareknowledge.

Ontology. An extension to a taxonomy that adds specifications of relationships betweenentities plus a set of automatic inference rules and associated actions. Typical relationshipsinclude “instance of” and “made of”.

Organizational Learning. The processes by which an organization ‘learns’, so asto share best practice and avoid repeating mistakes. The learning may be embedded inindividuals or in organizational systems and organizational memory. Closely related tothe learning organization (an organization which has good organizational learningprocesses).

Organizational Memory. A place, such as a database or a document, whereorganizational knowledge is stored, and is readily accessible for reuse. Without a systematicstoring of such knowledge, it is easily lost as people move around or leave the organization.

Organizational Memory. The core knowledge of an organization’s past includesproject histories, important decisions and their rationale, key documents and customerrelationships. Recalling into organizational memory avoids ‘reinventing the wheel’ andrepeating mistakes.

Precision (of search engine). The proportion of documents retrieved in a searchthat is relevant to the searcher’s intention as opposed to results that are irrelevant (or‘noise’).

Project History. The main activities and decisions taken during a project, recordedin a way that aids knowledge sharing and derives lessons for similar projects in the future.

Portal. The common term for Enterprise Information Portal. A portal is a single pointof entry on the Web or an intranet to a wide range of information and knowledge resourcesand tools that enable a person to do their job more effectively. c.f. common definition of“gateway”.

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RDF. See Resource Description Framework.

Reach. The extent to which knowledge is accessible in various locations. The Internetextends reach, as does the use of portable computers and mobile telephones. Contrastwith Richness.

Recall (of search engine). The proportion of documents from the total that areavailable that are retrieved as the result of a search. Contrast with Precision.

Richness. The depth of knowledge, such as contextual knowledge, that enhances a pieceof core knowledge. Multimedia also adds richness by giving the viewer more visualinformation and cues. Contrast with Reach.

Richness. Resource Description Framework (RDF). A framework developedby W3C for developing metadata standards for WWW resources. It brings together inone place metadata activities for resources such as site maps, content ratings, search enginedata collection and digital library collections. The resource descriptions use XML as theinterchange language.

Schema. A taxonomy (classification) of knowledge or information. Common termsare used to describe an organization’s knowledge domains which are categorized intohierarchies and related terms.

Search Engine. A piece of software or a service that indexes pages from the Weband lists those that match or closely match a user’s search terms. Results are ranked byrelevance or other factors and include items from sources all over the Web. One of thegrowing problems is the ‘hidden’ Web, content that is not indexed because it is generatedon the fly or held in databases. It is estimated that over four fifths of Internet content is nowhidden.

Share Fair. An event especially constructed to encourage the interchange ofknowledge. Typically organized as a conference and exhibition with booths.

Semantic Network. A method of representing structured knowledge. It consists ofnodes and links, where the nodes are concepts or entities and the links represent relationshipsand associations among the concepts. An ontology can be viewed as domain knowledgerepresented in the form of a semantic network.

Semantic Web. The addition of semantic constructs (ontological elements) to WorldWide Web resources to create semantic networks accessible via the Internet. The SemanticWeb is seen by some as the next evolution of the World Wide Web (the ‘intelligent’ Web).

Socialization. One of four basic knowledge conversion processes described byNonaka and Takeuchi. Socialization is conversion of tacit knowledge to other tacit

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knowledge, typically by group processes where people learn together through a sharedexperience. Contrast with Externalization, Internalization and Combination.

Stickiness. A property of knowledge that is difficult to transfer, i.e. it is heavilydependent on personal knowledge and/or context. The term is also applied to a websitethat encourages visitors to spend significant time there and return repeatedly. Portal sitesand search engines are very ‘sticky’.

Storytelling. The use of stories in the organizational context, as a way of sharingknowledge and helping the process of learning.

Structural Capital. A measure of the intangible value of the firm embedded in itsprocesses, systems and other non-human elements. A component of Intellectual Capital.

Tacit knowledge. Knowledge that is not codified but held in people’s heads. Intuitive,experiential, judgmental and context sensitive, it may be difficult to articulate. Contrastwith explicit knowledge.

Tag. Instruction for an application or formatting tool, such as an Internet browser.Tags are used in markup languages (HTML and XML). Tagging content is a key activity inimplementing Content Management Systems.

Taxonomy. A system of classification. A typical taxonomy is a hierarchy of terms(nodes), where lower level terms are more specific instances of higher level ones. Taxonomiesin which a term can appear in more than one branch are called ‘poly-hierarchical’. Contrastwith Thesaurus and Ontology.

Thesaurus. A controlled vocabulary of terms for a corpus of information. An extensionof a taxonomy that includes rules on vocabulary usage for document classification e.g.“preferred terms”, “synonym of”, “belongs to”, “used for” etc.

Topic Map. An ISO standard (ISO 13250) for describing relationships of nodes inan ontology independent of its underlying resources. Associations and Occurrences arekey constructs in the XTM (XML Topic Map) standard.

Text Mining. Extracting the essential concepts and meaning from large amounts oftextual information. The result of text mining a single document and producing a summarywhich includes some of its key sentences. Typically, all the main concepts of a large documentcan be summarized in less than twenty per cent of its original size.

Videoconferencing. Communications over an electronic network using video. Systemsrange from desktop units on PCs (desktop conferencing) to dedicated systems that usecameras and monitors in a conference room setting.

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Virtual Organization. An organization whose participants are geographicallyseparated but who work together through online communications. Less commonly, theterm refers to a temporary organization or network that is created for a specific purpose,but whose members remain independent.

Weblog. The full term for Blog.

Webinar (Web seminar). A presentation delivered over the Web usingvideoconferencing.

Wiki. A collaboration tool that allows multiple authors to create and update Webpages. KMWiki is an example of a Wiki devoted to KM. Contrast with a blog which isauthored by an individual.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language). A Web-based markup language that allowsa wide range of user-defined tags. If a community uses a common XML schema, thenstructured information can be shared between computer applications.

‘Yellow Pages. A colloquial term for an expertise directory, since entries are organizedby category rather than by name.

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Documents

anna university chennai

icfai university press

including grammatical statements

john wiley

building competitive strength

trade secrets protection

pursuing km strategy

intellectual property assets