Knowledge Management

By
Mr.Abdul Majeed K M
Lecturer
PACE Mangalore

9-1
 Learning Objectives

• Define knowledge.
• Learn the characteristics of knowledge management.
• Describe organizational learning.
• Understand the knowledge management cycle.
• Understand knowledge management system technology and how it
is implemented.
• Learn knowledge management approaches.
• Understand the activities of the CKO and knowledge workers.
• Describe the role of knowledge management in the organization.
• Be able to evaluate intellectual capital.
• Understand knowledge management systems implementation.
• Illustrate the role of technology, people, and management with
regards to knowledge management.
• Understand the benefits and problems of knowledge management
initiatives.
• Learn how knowledge management can change organizations.

9-2
 Siemens Knows What It Knows
Through Knowledge Management
Vignette
• Knowledge management
– Community of interest
• Repositories
• Communities of practice
• Informal knowledge-sharing techniques
– Employee initiated
• Created ShareNet
– Easy to share knowledge
– Incentives for posting
– Internal evangelists responsible for training,
monitoring, and assisting users
– Top management support

9-3
 Knowledge Management

• Process to help organization identify,

select, organize, disseminate, transfer
information
• Structuring enables problem-solving,
dynamic learning, strategic planning,
decision-making
• Leverage value of intellectual capital
through reuse

9-4
 Knowledge

• Data = collection of facts, measurements,

statistics
• Information = organized data
• Knowledge = contextual, relevant,
actionable information
– Strong experiential and reflective elements
– Good leverage and increasing returns
– Dynamic
– Branches and fragments with growth
– Difficult to estimate impact of investment
– Uncertain value in sharing
– Evolves over time with experience
9-5
 Knowledge

• Explicit knowledge
– Objective, rational, technical
– Policies, goals, strategies, papers, reports
– Codified
– Leaky knowledge
• Tacit knowledge
– Subjective, cognitive, experiential learning
– Highly personalized
– Difficult to formalize
– Sticky knowledge

9-6
 Knowledge Management

• Systematic and active management

of ideas, information, and knowledge
residing within organization’s
employees
• Knowledge management systems
– Use of technologies to manage
knowledge
– Used with turnover, change, downsizing
– Provide consistent levels of service

9-7
 Organizational Learning
• Learning organization
– Ability to learn from past
– To improve, organization must learn
– Issues
• Meaning, management, measurement
– Activities
• Problem-solving, experimentation, learning from past, learning from
acknowledged best practices, transfer of knowledge within
organization
– Must have organizational memory, way to save and share it
• Organizational learning
– Develop new knowledge
– Corporate memory critical
• Organizational culture
– Pattern of shared basic assumptions

9-8
 Knowledge Management
Initiatives
• Aims
– Make knowledge visible
– Develop knowledge intensive culture
– Build knowledge infrastructure
• Surrounding processes
– Creation of knowledge
– Sharing of knowledge
– Seeking out knowledge
– Using knowledge
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 Knowledge Management
Initiatives
• Knowledge creation
– Generating new ideas, routines, insights
– Modes
• Socialization, externalization, internalization,
combination
• Knowledge sharing
– Willing explanation to another directly or
through an intermediary
• Knowledge seeking
– Knowledge sourcing

9-10
 Approaches to Knowledge
Management
• Process Approach
– Codifies knowledge
• Formalized controls, approaches, technologies
• Fails to capture most tacit knowledge
• Practice Approach
– Assumes that most knowledge is tacit
• Informal systems
– Social events, communities of practice, person-to-
person contacts
• Challenge to make tacit knowledge explicit, capture it,
add to it, transfer it

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 Approaches to Knowledge
Management
• Hybrid Approach
– Practice approach initially used to store explicit
knowledge
– Tacit knowledge primarily stored as contact information
– Best practices captured and managed
• Best practices
– Methods that effective organizations use to operate and
manage functions
• Knowledge repository
– Place for capture and storage of knowledge
– Different storage mechanisms depending upon data
captured

9-12
 Knowledge Management
System Cycle
• Creates knowledge
through new ways of doing
things
• Identifies and captures
new knowledge
• Places knowledge into
context so it is usable
• Stores knowledge in
repository
Disseminate
• Reviews for accuracy and
relevance
• Makes knowledge
available at all times to
anyone

9-13
 Components of Knowledge
Management Systems
• Technologies
– Communication
• Access knowledge
• Communicates with others
– Collaboration
• Perform groupwork
• Synchronous or asynchronous
• Same place/different place
– Storage and retrieval
• Capture, storing, retrieval, and management of both
explicit and tacit knowledge through collaborative
systems

9-14
 Components of Knowledge
Management Systems
• Supporting technologies
– Artificial intelligence
• Expert systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic, intelligent agents
– Intelligent agents
• Systems that learn how users work and provide assistance
– Knowledge discovery in databases
• Process used to search for and extract information
– Internal = data and document mining
– External = model marts and model warehouses
– XML
• Extensible Markup Language
• Enables standardized representations of data
• Better collaboration and communication through portals

9-15
 Knowledge Management
System Implementation
• Challenge to identify and integrate components
– Early systems developed with networks, groupware,
databases
• Knowware
– Technology tools that support knowledge management
• Collaborative computing tools
– Groupware
• Knowledge servers
• Enterprise knowledge portals
• Document management systems
– Content management systems
• Knowledge harvesting tools
• Search engines
• Knowledge management suites
– Complete out-of-the-box solutions

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 Knowledge Management
System Implementation
• Implementation
– Software packages available
• Include one or more tools
– Consulting firms
– Outsourcing
• Application Service Providers

9-17
 Knowledge Management
System Integration
• Integration with enterprise and information
systems
• DSS/BI
– Integrates models and activates them for specific problem
• Artificial Intelligence
– Expert system = if-then-else rules
– Natural language processing = understanding searches
– Artificial neural networks = understanding text
– Artificial intelligence based tools = identify and classify
expertise

9-18
 Knowledge Management
System Integration
• Database
– Knowledge discovery in databases
• CRM
– Provide tacit knowledge to users
• Supply chain management systems
– Can access combined tacit and explicit knowledge
• Corporate intranets and extranets
– Knowledge flows more freely in both directions
– Capture knowledge directly with little user involvement
– Deliver knowledge when system thinks it is needed

9-19
 Human Resources
• Chief knowledge officer
– Senior level
– Sets strategic priorities
– Defines area of knowledge based on organization mission and goals
– Creates infrastructure
– Identifies knowledge champions
– Manages content produced by groups
– Adds to knowledge base
• CEO
– Champion knowledge management
• Upper management
– Ensures availability of resources to CKO
• Communities of practice
• Knowledge management system developers
– Team members that develop system
• Knowledge management system staff
– Catalog and manage knowledge

9-20
 Knowledge Management
Valuation
• Asset-based approaches
– Identifies intellectual assets
– Focuses on increasing value
• Knowledge linked to applications and
business benefits approaches
– Balanced scorecard
– Economic value added
– Inclusive valuation methodology
– Return on management ratio
– Knowledge capital measure
• Estimated sale price approach

9-21
 Metrics

• Financial
– ROI
– Perceptual, rather than absolute
– Intellectual capital not considered an asset
• Non-financial
– Value of intangibles
• External relationship linkages capital
• Structural capital
• Human capital
• Social capital
• Environmental capital

9-22
 Factors Leading to Success
and Failure of Systems
• Success
– Companies must assess need
– System needs technical and organizational infrastructure
to build on
– System must have economic value to organization
– Senior management support
– Organization needs multiple channels for knowledge
transfer
– Appropriate organizational culture
• Failure
– System does not meet organization’s needs
– Lack of commitment
– No incentive to use system
– Lack of integration

9-23