Information & Knowledge Management

Knowledge Management State of The Art

Marielba ZacariasProf. Auxiliar DEEI

FCT I, Gab 2.69, Ext. 7749mzacaria@ualg.pt

http://w3.ualg.pt/~mzacaria

SummaryWhy invest in Knowledge Management

Knowledge and Leadership

Organizational Culture

Knowledge sharing between organizations

Knowledge sharing vulnerabilities

Knowledge Property

“Infoglut”

Tool section: Wikis

Basic assumption

We continuously challenge our knowledge and how we apply it

When knowledge stops evolving, transforms into opinions or dogmas

Thomas Davenport and Larry Prusak

Knowledge Management ValueEssential questions

How to be competitive?

How can we accelerate “time-to-market” cycles?

How to maximize new products production rate?

How to minimize production costs or re-working?

How to eliminate inconsistencies that

hinder customer satisfaction?

represent organizational risks?

Intellectual Capital ValueDifficult to measure

skills, relationship with clients, motivation and support structures

Skandia AFS insurance company made important progress in this matter

Principle:

It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong

Three types of human capital

Human CapitalEdvinsson & Stewart

Intellectual Sum of employee knowledge

Value = cost of recreating it

Internal awareness

ClientExternal awareness

Value of relationship with clients

brand loyalty, ability of understanding their needs and requirements

Cost of getting new clients (6 vs 1 of maintaining clients)

StructuralValue of the services, products and systems created by the human capital

Example USA government “Lobbyist”

Need of improving employee productivity

Researchers spent 20% of their time searching existing knowledge out of the organization

Employees spent 5 years in achieving expertise in identifying and efficiently exploiting internal resources

Solution: intranet technology accelerated search and problem research leaving more time to production and innovation tasks.

Knowledge and Leadership

Essential element in adopting a knowledge management strategy

Creation of a culture of trust and collaboration

ImplicationsRedefine the ways of measuring value creation

Change the ways people approach work

Change organizational culture

This requires a POWERFUL chief

CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer)

It also requires...

Knowledge Engineers

Knowledge Analysts

Knowledge Managers

Knowledge stewards

Knowledge EngineersTactical/procedural approach

Responsible for eliciting and converting explicit knowledge in replicable instructions and procedures in order to allow its codification within applications

Problems:

Temptation of exaggerating the function

More coded -> more difficult to change

Knowledge AnalystFosters good practices

Responsible for the collection, organization and dissemination of knowledge typically on demand

Human repositories of good practices

Problems:

they leave, they go with them!

may stay strapped to that position

Knowledge ManagersThey supervise the process

Approach work well when distributed among several individuals throughout the organization Coordenam esforços dos engenheiros e analistas do conhecimento

Useful in big organizations where the sharing process risks fragmentation and isolation

Problems:

Risk of appearing “feudal” territories

CKOHierarchical top-down approach

Global coordination of knowledge management efforts

Leadership role

Problem:

Create the function before creating a knowledge sharing culture

Knowledge StewardUseful in distributed knowledge management approaches

Minimal but continuous support of knowledge management efforts

Provide expertise in using knowledge management tools, practices and methods

The role of Culture

“The greatest challenge is not in convincing people of adopting new ideas but in convincing them in abandoning the old ones”

John Maynard Keynes

Culture as an obstacle to knowledge managementHas been referred as the main obstacle to knowledge management efforts...

...when they are not appropriate for such efforts, for example in

change resistance, risk aversion, or individualistic environments

Universal challenges

Build a community of “knowledge sharers”

Knowledge ownership

knowledge & information means power!

Incentive management

Knowledge BaseTo be valuable must be used throughout the organization

Creation and maintenance of sharing communities...

...without them no attempt to propagate knowledge will succeed

Example 1

At the USA “lobbyist”, while managers constantly spoke about sharing knowledge

All their actions in meetings and memos promoted inter-department rivalry

Budgeting policy: everyone competed for the same dollars

Example 2

In an aerospatial company, they asked employees to innovate more but...

.. they publicly discouraged such innovation because...

New products were frequently rejected for not going in the same direction of the enterprise mission (that no one new)

Example 3In pharmaceutical company with a strong community spirit

groups with common causes

put drugs in market

those groups were regarded as “family”

Together with a open climate created a group dynamics that was used in creating knowledge sharing communities

Globalization

Regional Cultures difficult knowledge management efforts in transnational companies...

But the problem will always be the existence of an appropriate culture

Example 1

In a metallurgic company, english was imposed as the official work language in all countries

Knowledge sharing sites in countries with different languages were not fed due to the translation effort required

Example 2Transnational Pharmaceutical where

americans seen as “cowboys” who “shoot” (act) before thinking

englishmen seen as“over-thinkers” who “sit” (reflect) on a subject months before doing anything

Example 2 (cont)An organizational culture of openness and trust, and an effective group leadership that fostered frequent social meetings between team members of both countries created a strong team notion, that allowed to overcome the differences between the two countries

Critical success factor

Ignore traditional organizational constructs such as departments or business units or regions and focus on common interest areas

Acknowledge the existence of formal or informal groups sharing common interests

Support them through knowledge management processes and tools

Inter-organizational environments

The interest in knowledge management and internet has also triggered knowledge sharing between organizations

So, today we can also find inter-organizational knowledge sharing environments

A more intimate relationship with clients, suppliers and other partners (including competitors!)

VulnerabilitiesWhen we build sharing networks where knowledge providers and consumers do not know each other

Trust and responsibility are critical

Credibility is also critical

Proper privacy and security mechanisms are essential

Liabilities are critical in inter-organizational environments

Knowledge PropertyIf knowledge is inside human minds, can it be managed?, when..

Management entails external control and ownership

The goal should then be

foster sharing and a collective knowledge base

Cultivate rather than Managing

“Information politics”Monarchy

Feudalism

Federalism

Technocratic Utopia

Anarchy

“Infoglut”Happens when the knowledge supplier does not know well the requirements of knowledge consumers

Problems with

Categorization

Organization

Struture

Search

Technical solution: The semantic Web

Tool sectionWikis

WikisWiki = fast (hawaian)

Website

Creation and edition of inter-linked web pages

Using

wysiwyg

html

PBWorks