Knowledge management

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to

identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights andexperiences. Such insights and
experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in
organizational processes or practice.

An established discipline since 1991 (see Nonaka 1991), KM includes courses taught in the fields

of business administration, information systems, management, and library andinformation sciences (Alavi
& Leidner 1999). More recently, other fields have started contributing to KM research; these include
information and media, computer science, public health, andpublic policy.

Many large companies and non-profit organizations have resources dedicated to internal KM efforts, often

as a part of their 'business strategy', 'information technology', or 'human resource management'
departments (Addicott, McGivern & Ferlie 2006). Several consulting companies also exist that provide
strategy and advice regarding KM to these organizations.

KM efforts typically focus on organizational objectives such as improved performance, competitive

advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of
the organization. KM efforts overlap with organizational learning, and may be distinguished from that by a
greater focus on the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and a focus on encouraging the
sharing of knowledge. KM efforts can help individuals and groups to share valuable organizational
insights, to reduce redundant work, to avoidreinventing the wheel per se, to reduce training time for
new employees, to retain intellectual capital as employees turnover in an organization, and to adapt to
changing environments andmarkets (McAdam & McCreedy 2000) (Thompson & Walsham 2004).

History
KM efforts have a long history, to include on-the-job discussions, formal apprenticeship,
discussion forums, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. More recently, with
increased use of computers in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technologies
such as knowledge bases, expert systems, knowledge repositories, group decision support systems,
intranets, and computer supported cooperative work have been introduced to further enhance such
efforts.[1]

In 1999, the term personal knowledge management was introduced which refers to the management of
knowledge at the individual level (Wright 2005).

In terms of the enterprise, early collections of case studies recognized the importance of knowledge
management dimensions of strategy, process, and measurement (Morey, Maybury & Thuraisingham
2002). Key lessons learned included: people, and the cultures that influence their behaviors, are the
single most critical resource for successful knowledge creation, dissemination, and application; cognitive,
social, and organizational learning processes are essential to the success of a knowledge management
strategy; and measurement, benchmarking, and incentives are essential to accelerate the learning
process and to drive cultural change. In short, knowledge management programs can yield impressive
benefits to individuals and organizations if they are purposeful, concrete, and action-oriented.

More recently with the advent of the Web 2.0, the concept of knowledge management has evolved
towards a vision more based on people participation and emergence. This line of evolution is
termed Enterprise 2.0 (McAfee 2006). However, there is an ongoing debate and discussions (Lakhani &
McAfee 2007) as to whether Enterprise 2.0 is just a fad that does not bring anything new or useful or
whether it is, indeed, the future of knowledge management (Davenport 2008).

[edit]Research

KM emerged as a scientific discipline in the earlier 1990s. It was initially supported solely by practitioners,
when Scandia hired Leif Edvinsson of Sweden as the world’s first Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO). Hubert
Saint-Onge (formerly of CIBC, Canada), started investigating various sides of KM long before that. The
objective of CKOs is to manage and maximize the intangible assets of their organizations. Gradually,
CKOs became interested in not only practical but also theoretical aspects of KM, and the new research
field was formed. The KM ideas taken up by academics, such as Ikujiro Nonaka (Hitotsubashi
University), Hirotaka Takeuchi (Hitotsubashi University), Thomas H. Davenport (Babson College) and
Baruch Lev (New York University). In 2001, Thomas Stewart, former editor at FORTUNE Magazine,
published a cover story highlighting the importance of intellectual capital of organizations. Since its
establishment, the KM discipline has been gradually moving towards academic maturity. First, there is a
trend towards higher cooperation among academics; particularly, there has been a drop in single-
authored publications. Second, the role of practitioners has changed. Their contribution to academic
research has been dramatically declining from 30% of overall contributions up to 2002, to only 10% by
2009 (Serenko et al. 2010).

A broad range of thoughts on the KM discipline exists with no unanimous agreement; approaches vary by
author and school. As the discipline matures, academic debates have increased regarding both
the theory and practice of KM, to include the following perspectives:

 Techno-centric with a focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing and

creation.
 Organizational with a focus on how an organization can be designed to facilitate knowledge
processes best.
 Ecological with a focus on the interaction of people, identity, knowledge, and environmental
factors as a complex adaptive system akin to a natural ecosystem.

Regardless of the school of thought, core components of KM include People,

Processes, Technology (or) Culture, Structure, Technology, depending on the
specific perspective (Spender & Scherer 2007). Different KM schools of thought include
various lenses through which KM can be viewed and explained, to include:

 community of practice (Wenger, McDermott & Synder 2001) [2]

 social network analysis [3]
 intellectual capital (Bontis & Choo 2002) [4]
 information theory [5] (McInerney 2002)
 complexity science [6][7]
 constructivism [8] (Nanjappa & Grant 2003)

The practical relevance of academic research in KM has been questioned (Ferguson 2005) with action
research suggested as having more relevance (Andriessen 2004) and the need to translate the findings
presented in academic journals to a practice (Booker, Bontis & Serenko 2008).

[edit]Dimensions

Different frameworks for distinguishing between knowledge exist. One proposed framework for

categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge represents internalized knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of,
such as how he or she accomplishes particular tasks. At the opposite end of the spectrum, explicit
knowledge represents knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form that can
easily be communicated to others.[9] (Alavi & Leidner 2001).

Early research suggested that a successful KM effort needs to convert internalized tacit knowledge into
explicit knowledge in order to share it, but the same effort must also permit individuals to internalize and
make personally meaningful any codified knowledge retrieved from the KM effort. Subsequent research
into KM suggested that a distinction between tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge represented an
oversimplification and that the notion of explicit knowledge is self-contradictory. Specifically, for
knowledge to be made explicit, it must be translated into information (i.e., symbols outside of our heads)
(Serenko & Bontis 2004). Later on, Ikujiro Nonaka proposed a model (SECI for Socialization,
Externalization, Combination, Internalization) which considers a spiraling knowledge process interaction
between explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge (Nonaka & Takeuchi 1995). In this model, knowledge
follows a cycle in which implicit knowledge is 'extracted' to become explicit knowledge, and explicit
knowledge is 're-internalized' into implicit knowledge.
A second proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between
embedded knowledge of a system outside of a human individual (e.g., an information system may have
knowledge embedded into its design) and embodied knowledge representing a learned capability of a
human body’s nervous and endocrine systems (Sensky 2002).

A third proposed framework for categorizing the dimensions of knowledge distinguishes between the
exploratory creation of "new knowledge" (i.e., innovation) vs. the transfer or exploitation of "established
knowledge" within a group, organization, or community. Collaborative environments such as communities
of practice or the use of social computing tools can be used for both knowledge creation and transfer .[10]

[edit]Strategies

Knowledge may be accessed at three stages: before, during, or after KM-related activities. Different
organizations have tried various knowledge capture incentives, including making content submission
mandatory and incorporating rewards into performance measurement plans. Considerable controversy
exists over whether incentives work or not in this field and no consensus has emerged.

One strategy to KM involves actively managing knowledge (push strategy). In such an instance,

individuals strive to explicitly encode their knowledge into a shared knowledge repository, such as
a database, as well as retrieving knowledge they need that other individuals have provided to the
repository .[11] This is also commonly known as the Codification approach to KM.

Another strategy to KM involves individuals making knowledge requests of experts associated with a

particular subject on an ad hoc basis (pull strategy). In such an instance, expert individual(s) can provide
their insights to the particular person or people needing this (Snowden 2002). This is also commonly
known as the Personalization approach to KM.

Other knowledge management strategies for companies include:

 rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)

 storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)
 cross-project learning
 after action reviews
 knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a company accessible by all)
 communities of practice
 expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the experts)
 best practice transfer
 competence management (systematic evaluation and planning of competences of individual
organization members)
 proximity & architecture (the physical situation of employees can be either conducive or
obstructive to knowledge sharing)
 master-apprentice relationship
 collaborative technologies (groupware, etc)
 knowledge repositories (databases, bookmarking engines, etc)
 measuring and reporting intellectual capital (a way of making explicit knowledge for companies)
 knowledge brokers (some organizational members take on responsibility for a specific "field" and
act as first reference on whom to talk about a specific subject)
 social software (wikis, social bookmarking, blogs, etc)
[edit]Motivations

A number of claims exist as to the motivations leading organizations to undertake a KM effort . [12] Typical

considerations driving a KM effort include:

 Making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision

of products and services
 Achieving shorter new product development cycles
 Facilitating and managing innovation and organizational learning
 Leveraging the expertise of people across the organization
 Increasing network connectivity between internal and external individuals
 Managing business environments and allowing employees to obtain relevant insights
and ideas appropriate to their work
 Solving intractable or wicked problems
 Managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such as the expertise
and know-how possessed by key individuals)

Debate exists whether KM is more than a passing fad, though increasing amount of research in this field
may hopefully help to answer this question, as well as create consensus on what elements of KM help
determine the success or failure of such efforts (Wilson 2002) .[13]

[edit]Technologies

Early KM technologies included online corporate yellow pages as expertise locators

and document management systems. Combined with the early development of collaborative technologies
(in particular Lotus Notes), KM technologies expanded in the mid-1990s. Subsequent KM efforts
leveraged semantic technologies for search and retrieval and the development of e-learning tools
for communities of practice [14] (Capozzi 2007).
More recently, development of social computing tools (such as bookmarks, blogs, and wikis) have
allowed more unstructured, self-governing or ecosystem approaches to the transfer, capture and creation
of knowledge, including the development of new forms of communities, networks, or matrixed
organizations. However such tools for the most part are still based on text and code, and thus represent
explicit knowledge transfer. These tools face challenges in distilling meaningful re-usable knowledge and
ensuring that their content is transmissible through diverse channels [15](Andrus 2005).

Software tools in knowledge management are a collection of technologies and are not necessarily
acquired as a single software solution. Furthermore, these knowledge management software tools have
the advantage of using the organization existing information technology infrastructure. Organizations and
business decision makers spend a great deal of resources and make significant investments in the latest
technology, systems and infrastructure to support knowledge management. It is imperative that these
investments are validated properly, made wisely and that the most appropriate technologies and software
tools are selected or combined to facilitate knowledge management. A set of characteristics that should
support decision makers in the selection of software tools for knowledge management are available . [16]

Knowledge management has also become a cornerstone in emerging business strategies such

as Service Lifecycle Management (SLM) with companies increasingly turning to software vendors to
enhance their efficiency in industries including, but not limited to, the aviation industry. [17]

[edit]Knowledge Management and Collaboration

Development of Web2.0 added new dimension to knowledge management process. The web-based
collaborative tools, such as wiki, made it possible for corporate employees to continuosly contribute and
access information to / from central repository. Companies that implemented wiki-style knowledge base
reported significant increase in productivity once the habit of contribiting, sharing and accessing
knowledge is instilled.

Virtual worlds further increased collaborative opportunities in the process of knowledge sharing. Unlike
Web2.0 applications, in virtual worlds a team can work synchronously. The new generations of virtual
worlds tools (such as Collaborative Knowledge Management tool), allow the team not only meet and
exchange ideas verbally, but document them by creating flow charts and diagrams of concepts,
processes or procedures that are -- explicitly or implicitly -- are a part of the organizational knowledge
base.

[edit]Knowledge managers
"Knowledge manager" is a role and designation that has gained popularity over the past decade. The role
has evolved drastically from that of one involving the creation and maintenance of knowledge repositories
to one that involves influencing the culture of an organization toward improved knowledge sharing, reuse,
learning, collaboration and innovation. Knowledge management functions are associated with different
departments in different organizations. It may be combined with Quality, Sales, HR, Innovation,
Operations etc and is likely to be determined by the KM motivation of that particular organization.

Knowledge managers have varied backgrounds ranging from Information Sciences to Business
Management. An effective knowledge manager is likely to be someone who has a versatile skills portfolio
and is comfortable with the concepts of organizational behavior/culture, processes, branding & marketing
and collaborative technology.