history of knowledge management moving from the industrial era to the knowledge era created a...
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History of Knowledge Management
Moving from the industrial era to the knowledge era created a
constant state of change. Peter Drucker identified a major trend in
the 1970s when he coined the term “knowledge workers” and began
to write about people whose minds and experience are more important
to the organization than their physical skills.
Change has become a constant. The pace of change is accelerating as we
move further into the knowledge era. The change, in part, is a response
to outdated organizational patterns that were built during the industrial
era, when business decisions were primarily made to allocate
scarce capital, specifically financial capital, to produce results.
An organization that does not learn faster than the speed of change, is ultimately doomed.
History of Knowledge Management
When Knowledge Management became popular in the business
press in the 1990s, many business practitioners initially considered it a fad.
Many discussions about Knowledge Management can be
abstract, leading to a misunderstanding about the real value of
“knowing what you know.” This continues to fuel the debate about
whether Knowledge Management makes a significant contribution
to creating a competitive advantage.
History of Knowledge Management
Despite the debate, organizations have identified successful cases where they have developed and implemented an effective Knowledge Management strategy.
Successful practices have been incorporated into standard
business processes in the same way as accounting and IT have
become integral to all business functions. Organizations such as
British Petroleum (BP), Clarica, Hewlett-Packard, General Motors,
Siemens, the United States Army, McKinsey, De Beers, and Buckman
Laboratories lead a long list of Knowledge Management success
stories—instances where concerted efforts to manage knowledge
assets have resulted in significant competitive advantage through
increased performance and learning.
The KnowledgeManagement Mandate:
What Is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management is fundamentally a systematic approach
for optimizing the access, for individuals and teams within an organ-
ization, to relevant actionable advice, knowledge and experience
from elsewhere. Actionable is the critical element for the KM prac-
tice.
If you cannot use the knowledge, it does not have measurable
value.
The KnowledgeManagement Mandate:
Organizations which are not yet applying Knowledge Man-
agement may be aware that they don’t capture and reuse good or
best practices, that they risk repeating the same mistakes, and that
they are likely to lose what employees learn, but never share, about
suppliers, customers, or competitors. The primary business problem
that Knowledge Management is designed to solve is that teams and
individuals are performing sub-optimally, because they do not have
access to knowledge acquired through experience elsewhere. In addi-
tion, new endeavors and innovations may be impeded from lack of
access to knowledge via Knowledge Management practices and
tools.
Growing interest in KM
Knowledge Management is a vehicle to systematically and
routinely help individuals, groups, teams, and organizations to
learn what the individual knows learn what others know (e.g., individuals and teams) learn what the organization knows learn what you need to learn organize and disseminate these learnings effectively
and simply apply these learnings to new endeavors
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Growing interest in KM
Experience shows there are common questions that anyone starting or involved in a Knowledge Management initiative might have.• Why should I implement or expand Knowledge Managementinitiatives in my firm now?• Are there cultural prerequisites for Knowledge Management?• What level of senior management support is required for KMto be implemented successfully in my firm?• Are there structures that need to be in place before KM can besuccessful?• How can I effectively implement Knowledge Management practicesand tools?• What is the role of information technology (IT) and humanresources (HR) in Knowledge Management?• How can I measure or assess the results of Knowledge Managementinitiatives?
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Definition of Terms
The following terms are frequently used within this course. Brief definitions, which will be expanded on later are:
• Explicit knowledge—Knowledge contained within some artifact,
such as a process, a document or a video, that has typically
been created with the goal of communicating with another
person. It is an intellectual asset of an organization.
• Intangible assets—Things owned by a company that have no
physical existence but have value. As compared with tangible
assets, they are predominantly invisible and may be difficult to
track and quantify.
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Definition of Terms
• Intellectual or knowledge capital—The intangible assets of an
organization which are held by individuals. Relationships, customer
loyalty, employees’ know-how, culture, and values are
elements of intellectual capital.
• Intellectual property—Legally protected knowledge components
of a company. Inventions or patents, trademarks, industrial
designs, copyrights are examples of intellectual property.
• Knowledge Assets—Compilations of the knowledge of an
organization, structured in such a way as to provide guidance
and to be a resource for future knowledge users. The compilations
of knowledge are often stored electronically.
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Definition of Terms
• Physical capital—Infrastructure and natural resources combined
to be useful.
• Tacit knowledge—What the knower knows, that is not obvious
to others and is derived from experience.
• Tangible assets—Physical capital that depreciates with use (e.g.,
plant and equipment).
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Knowledge Assets
Whereas tangible or physical assets usually depreciate with use,
Knowledge Assets can grow when they are shared and transferred. For
example knowledge about a customer leads to repeat business and
loyalty, one employee’s skill can be learned by others in the department,
and so on. Knowledge Assets may be a source of competitive advantage
because they can be unique
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Knowledge Assets
Saint-Onge (Saint-Onge and Wallace, 2003) categorized intellectual or knowledge related assets as follows:
• Knowing how—Human capital: individual capabilities
• Knowing what—Structural capital: organizational capabilities,
including processes
• Knowing who—Relationship capital: knowledge of all stakeholders
(people inside and outside the organization who have
an interest in the organization; e.g., employees, stockholders,
and customers)
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Knowledge Management and Organizational LearningWithout continuous learning, sustainable increases in performance are not
viable. This has been challenging in practice because Knowledge Management builds on and integrates several business and management disciplines:
organizational learning, business management, anthropology, sociology, intellectual capital, virtual teams, and communities of practice.
The solution provided in this course is to approach Knowledge Management by integrating people, process, and technology into a framework for implementation.
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Knowledge Management and Organizational LearningOne source of debate about Knowledge Management
is differentiating between knowledge as a stock (an asset) and as a flow or process. The Knowledge Management framework presented in this course addresses knowledge as an entity (stock) as well as a process (flow). Our framework eliminates the either/or dichotomy and, instead, uses both. Much as a plumbing system in a house includes stocks (tanks and reservoirs) and flows (pipes and pumps), so a Knowledge Management system in an organization also needs to include both stocks and flows.
The Four Phases of Knowledge ManagementThe decade of Knowledge Management can be described as four
phases. David Snowden (2000) summarizes the recent history of
Knowledge Management as three phases. However, there is now evidence
that a fourth phase is in progress.
Phase 1 emphasized technology.
Phase 2 moved the focus to tacit and explicit knowledge
Snowden’s phase 3 recognizes the need to go beyond codified information
by using stories in the form of narrative representation
The 4th phase integrates the previous three by using a systems
approach to Knowledge Management, for the purpose of increasing
performance through learning in an organization’s internal culture
within a specific external environment.
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Phase 1: Information to Support Decision MakersThe first phase is considered to be prior to 1995. Here “knowledge”
as a word was not problematic; it was used without conscious
thought. The focus was on information flow to support decision
makers.
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Phase 1: Information to Support Decision MakersExamples of Knowledge Management applications or systems that
dominated the phase 1 period include:
• Executive information systems—Providing easy-to-access,
summary-level information to executives.
• Data warehousing—Large electronic libraries containing data
that can be combined easily into information for multiple
purposes.
• Process reengineering—Systems designed to improve quality by
analyzing existing processes and implementing more efficient
processes, most often for cost savings (e.g., staff reductions).
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Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit KnowledgeThis second generation of Knowledge Management emphasized the
conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge in order to translate individual knowledge into public or collective knowledge.*
The popular success of The Knowledge Creating Company raised
Knowledge Management to a practice in consulting firms and
launched several software products to support collaboration. These
technologies were labeled “groupware” or “collaborative technology”
and were packaged with methods as well as tools
Explicit knowledgeis represented by some artifact, such as a document or a video,that has typically been created with the goal of communicating withanother person. Tacit knowledge is primarily in the heads of peopleand is the most important basis for the generation of new knowledge.
Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit KnowledgeTacit knowledge is primarily in the heads of people and is the
most important basis for the generation of new knowledge.
According to Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), “the key to knowledge creation lies in the mobilization and conversion of tacit knowledge.”
Both forms of knowledge are important, however, for organizational effectiveness. Creation of new knowledge takes place through the social processes of combination and internalization.
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Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit Knowledge These SECI processes are as followsSocialization (tacit to tacit). Socialization includes the shared formation
and communication of tacit knowledge between people
(e.g., in meetings, or other forms of dialogue). Knowledge sharing is
often done without ever producing explicit knowledge and, to be
most effective, should take place between people who have a
common culture and can work together effectively
Externalization (tacit to explicit). By its nature, tacit knowledge is
difficult to convert into explicit knowledge. Activities that facilitate
conversion include dialogue among team members, responding to questions,
and elicitation of stories (narratives).
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Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit Knowledge These SECI processes are as followsCombination (explicit to explicit). Explicit knowledge can be
shared in meetings, via documents, e-mails, etc., or through education
and training. The use of technology to manage and search collections
of explicit knowledge is well established. An example is to use text
classification to assign documents automatically to a subject (e.g.,
taxonomies) to put a document into a shared database, or to create a
Knowledge Asset.
Internalization (explicit to tacit). In order to act on information,
individuals have to understand and internalize it. This process of
internalizing or habituating the knowledge makes it tacit. By reading
Documents from many sources, people have the opportunity to create new
knowledge by combining their existing tacit knowledge with the
knowledge of others.
Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit Knowledge These SECI processes are as followsIn typical business situations, these processes outlined by Nonaka
do not occur in isolation, but work together in different combinations.
For example, knowledge creation results from the interaction
of people and includes both tacit and explicit knowledge. Through
interaction with others, tacit knowledge is externalized or codified
and shared.
The greatest business value occurs from process combination.In this way new knowledge is created, disseminated, andinternalized by other employees who can act on it and form new experiences and tacit knowledge that can in turn be shared with others
(Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995).
Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit KnowledgeCodification and PersonalizationCodification: the processes that make knowledge explicit “codification.”
Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney (1999) This corresponds to Externalization and
Combination in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model
Personalization: to identify people who have the right knowledge, as a major
component of Knowledge Management methods and tools (Hansen and his
colleagues)
For second-generation thinkers and practitioners, most notably in central
Europe the function of Knowledge Management was
to convert individual or private assets into collective orpublic assets through the extraction of knowledge into codified form.
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Phase 2: Tacit and Explicit KnowledgeCodification and PersonalizationSnowden (2000) argues that the codification approach unnecessarily
focuses on the container rather than the content.
Increasingly, practitioners recognize that much tacit knowledge either cannot or
should not be made explicit. On the other hand Tacit to tacit sharing strategies
can be powerful and add business value
(e.g., job shadowing, mentoring and role modeling)
Knowledge must be actionable to be useful and valuable to anindividual, team or group, and organization. However, a strategy thatdoes not incorporate codification is unable to address the problemsassociated with keeping knowledge in human heads
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Phase 3: The Use of Narrative in Organizationsthe basic operating principles of the third and fourth phases of Knowledge
Management:
The process of moving from head (knowing) to mouth (saying) to hands
(recording) inevitably involves some loss which may at times be massive
We always know more than we will say, and we will always saymore than we will write down. (Snowden, 2000)
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Phase 3: The Use of Narrative in Organizations, 2nd phase in contrastMost second-phase KM approaches are content management.
They focus on documents containing knowledge that is disconnected
and separate from the knowledge holder, which diffuses easily and
is formally structured.
On the other hand, context management
focuses on connecting and linking people through, for example, expertise location, social network stimulation, apprentice models of knowledge transfer, and retention strategies for key people
Managing context requires the recognition that knowledge cannot be easily
separated from human beings either as givers or receivers of information.
Context management takes control of what we know but
are not able to completely say or write, while content management
organizes what we can write.
Phase 3: narrative management“narrative management” the communication
linking between context and content management. Narrative management
is a tool to translate or act as a bridge in the knowledge sharing
process by managing the process of conversation and
attempting to emulate the natural patterns of knowledge acquisition
in organizations.
Narrative management is a tool to translate or act as a bridge in the knowledge
sharing process by managing the process of conversation and attempting to
emulate the natural patterns of knowledge acquisition in organizations. This is
done for two main reasons:
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Phase 3: narrative management It is easier to capture video stories than written knowledge, because one
can record to a video camera in ten minutes what it can take two weeks to get around to writing up.
It is a natural process. When we face a new task or encounter a problem, we find people to talk to, to ask questions, to narrate theirs stories so that they can provide context-sensitive answers and advice. This kind of knowledge cannot be provided by past project reviews and idealized statements of best practice.
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Phase 3: narrative managementThe Important Role of Stories in OrganizationsFor many people, narrative management is about telling stories
that describe experiences and events that occur during organizational
life. A common example is how a manager handles an event such as
downsizing.
The narrative includes the step-by-step process, the interactions between
employees, as well as how the manager and the employees felt and
reacted to the experience
To create Knowledge Assets, the process of capturing and presenting
core stories needs to be a skill for Knowledge Management
professionals. These stories should be real stories, from past experience,
told in the words of the people who gained the experience.
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Phase 3: narrative managementThe Important Role of Stories in Organizations
The most significant use of narrative in relation to
Knowledge management is as a knowledge repository
that permits asynchronous conversations across time
and space (Snowden, 2000).
i.e. Use of narrative databases in employee training
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Phase 4: An Integrated Knowledge Management FrameworkThe fourth phase is described as a framework that synthesizes the
components introduced in a Snowden’s three phases of
Knowledge Management.
Knowledge Management is a framework for applying, structures,
and processes at the individual, group, team, and organizational
levels so that the organization can learn from what
it knows (and acquire new Knowledge if required) to create
value for its customers and communities. The Knowledge Management framework integrates people, processes, and
technology to ensure performance and learning for sustainable growth.
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