What is Knowledge Management?

An Introduction to the Topic

LIS 880 Knowledge Management

Dominican University

Chris Kiess

The Field Defined

Knowledge Management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizations as processes or practices. ~ The KM Institute

NASA Definition

Knowledge management is getting the right information to the right people at the right time, and helping people create knowledge and share and act upon information in ways that will measurably improve the performance of NASA and its partners. ~ NASA

Another Definition

There are several different, and sometimes quite confusing statements that claim to be a definition of Knowledge Management' and there are different perspectives on what Knowledge Management is. For example:

o KM is about systems and technologies

o KM is about people and learning organisations

o KM is about processes, methods and techniques

o KM is about managing knowledge assets

o KM is a holistic initiative across the entire organisation

o KM is not a discipline, as such, and should be an integral part of every knowledge workers daily responsibilities

~ Knowledge Management Online

Practical Examples

The pediatric unit of a hospital has been solicited by a vendor to purchase temporal thermometers. The vendor claims these are better and cites a self-funded study as proof. The initial order would be 50 temporal thermometers at $500 each for a total of $25,000. Peggy in the ICU / CVU unit has already tested the temporal thermometers and knows they are not as accurate as other thermometry types. Peggy does not associate with the pediatric unit since it is on the other side of the hospital and she knows no one from the unit.

Practical Examples

Department A purchases 500 towel rolls each month. Department B purchases 300 towel rolls, but from a separate vendor. Department C purchases 100 towel rolls from a even other vendor but pays as much as department B does for 300 rolls.

Practical Examples

Lucy recently used a new approach for a project with a new client. The approach failed not because it was faulty, but because Lucy did not follow the approach doctrine correctly. She was able to salvage the project by working 80 hours in a single week to fix the problems. After the project was complete, Lucy swept her mistakes under the rug to avoid a bad review.

Practical Examples

Dr. Chow just saw a child with a sore on her thigh that he diagnosed as a simple spider or bug bite. A week later the child returns with a high grade fever and the sore is extremely infected. Dr. Chow just saw another child that morning with the same type of sore and now learns the first child with a fever has a MRSA – not a bug bite. He realizes there is an infectious disease spreading. Dr. Liu across town has just seen three patients that morning with similar sores. Drs. Liu and Chow belong to the same hospital and network, but do not communicate save for the annual Holiday Party at the hospital.

Practical Examples

Susan works for ACME Oil, which just discovered an offshore oil rig leak a mile below the surface of the ocean. Jon just hired in at an executive level position and previously worked the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. He has intimate knowledge of how to manage, contain and monitor such spills as well as close contacts with government agencies monitoring such activities and commerce. However, Jon’s current position has him managing a whole new set of tasks having nothing to do with offshore drilling and instead managing Alaskan drilling sites.

Different Problems, KM Solutions

Bring Communities of Practice (COP) together

Bring People together

Retain Knowledge Retain Employees

Lessons Learned

Capture Critical Know-how

KM Requires New Approaches & New Perspectives in Organizations

Understand Organizational Behavior / Psychology

Understand Human Information Behavior

Understand How We Learn / Know as Individuals and Organizations

Understand Information Spread

Map Organizational Knowledge

New Approaches Require:

Change Management – change does not just happen

Culture Change Across the Organization

Breaking Silos & Restructuring

Policy Revisions (Reward Failure and Learn from it)

New Ways of Thinking

IT Comes after all of this!

Course Topics

Agnotology

Epistemology

Dissemination of Innovation

Organizational Dynamics

Capturing Know-how

Program Structuring

KM Tools & Organizing Information

Questions

Contact Me via Email

Post to Discussion Forums