Knowledge

Management
DSC3213 Strategic Information Systems

CHEN JIEMIN
U087132A

I declare that this report is based on my own research and is not

plagiarized. I have dutifully cited all relevant references used in this report. I
understand I will be severely penalized if I am found guilty of plagiarism.

Signed: __________________________
CONTENTS

Introduction..........................................................................................................2

Definition of knowledge management....................................................................2

Classifications of knowledge..............................................................................3

Competitve Advantage...........................................................................................4

Avoidance of Repeated Mistakes........................................................................4

Effective Delegation.........................................................................................5

Efficiency........................................................................................................5

Knowledge Management Systems............................................................................6

Knowledge Sharing Culture.....................................................................................7

Incentives..........................................................................................................7

Leaders.............................................................................................................8

Barriers................................................................................................................9

Costliness..........................................................................................................9

Process in transfering knowledge........................................................................10

Security...........................................................................................................11

Social Networking - a Solution..............................................................................11

Right Technical Environment..............................................................................12

Intrinsic Rewards..............................................................................................12

Bridge gaps......................................................................................................13

Challenges..........................................................................................................14

People Culture..................................................................................................14

Defining Expectations........................................................................................15

Case Study.........................................................................................................15

World Bank......................................................................................................15

Accenture........................................................................................................18

Conclusion..........................................................................................................20

Bibliography........................................................................................................22

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INTRODUCTION

Human knowledge is deemed as a core asset in an organization.

Knowledge management is the management of human knowledge. It

supports critical business processes by providing resources through a

collective pool of individuals when necessary. The need of retaining

experts and professional for their knowledge is important but more

significantly, it is to retain the knowledge for a knowledge-based

organization. Thus, it is critical to manage the knowledge that is might

seem insignificant but of great potentials. Managing knowledge is difficult

as tracing the contributors to enquire for further information may not be

possible due to the lack of updated data of the authors. Thus it is critical

to manage the information using methods such as embedding updated

contact information of the writer. Technology has served as an enabler of

knowledge management. One such tool is knowledge management

systems that has effectively help in achieving productive environment for

members of the organization to work in. Social networking tools are being

immersed within knowledge management to be an effectual.

DEFINITION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

“Knowledge management is a strategy of getting the right knowledge to

the right people at the right time through disseminating information in

ways that will improve organization performance and generate

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sustainable competitive advantage.” [ CITATION 4 \l 1033 ][ CITATION 12 \l

1033 ]

It has been identified that with current technology, knowledge is the

strategic tool that helps to achieve competitive advantage.

CLASSIFICATIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

There are many types of classifications for knowledge and the two main

types are explicit versus tacit and individual versus social. Despite the

classifications, there are some knowledge that co-exist in different types

of classifications. [ CITATION 0 \l 1033 ]

 Explicit & tacit

Explicit knowledge is an expressible form of information that

is easily transferable between individuals such as operational

manuals or policy documents, whereas tacit knowledge is

individual experience, expertise and hands-on skill which may

not be impossible to translate into literal forms.

 Individual & social

Individual knowledge would refer to expertise and insights

pertaining to the mind of an individual and social knowledge

would be the collective knowledge generated by a group.

Amongst the classifications, tacit knowledge, which comprises of both

individual and social knowledge, is most difficult to be contained in an

organization as those experiences are difficult to be documented. Being

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unable to retain this type of knowledge, it is a loss to the organization or

the society as a whole.

Knowledge management would then require a formulated channel that

enables the organization’s stakeholders to obtain, represent and distribute

the insights developed and experience encountered by individuals or any

of the stakeholders.

COMPETITVE ADVANTAGE

Information is required to make good decision. Inter-department sharing

of knowledge and information will lead to better cohesion and

collaboration. For example information from sales department can be

valuable to product development as product developers will have a better

idea of customer’s preference and are able to provide suitable solutions

that can reach sales target. Thus such cases encourage firms to look for

better ways to support knowledge with IT infrastructure to obtain

competitive advantage.[ CITATION 5 \l 1033 ]

AVOIDANCE OF REPEATED MISTAKES

The advantage of knowledge management is that it speeds up the

decision making process by providing successful examples and failures

from previous projects which the team can learn from.

Trial and error learning in an organization will be an expense to the firm.

The cost will include the time wasted in brain storming, failure of projects

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will be detrimental to the company’s reputation, which will also affect

confidence of customers in the firm. In addition, employees will not have

confidence due to such a failure and they may be afraid of contribution.

Thus, learning by trial and error is not encouraged, since it is an

uneconomical learning process and that it can be recursive.

EFFECTIVE DELEGATION

When delegating work, if members of the organization do not have

sufficient knowledge to fulfill job requirement, time will be wasted on

researching. Whereas, should the transfer of knowledge occurs, the

member will not need to “reinvent the wheel”. Such a learning proves to

be beneficial for more projects to come.

Knowledge transfer between projects aims to reuse knowledge from

similar project to new projects, thus avoiding the need to “reinvent the

wheel”. There are more advantages as learning processes would be

brought to subsequent projects. This is an effective delegation.

EFFICIENCY

There would be lower cost in searching and retrieving information as the

organization would have a network that support documented database.

With information and prior knowledge being present, work practice can be

improved such that it supports innovative work practice as employees

would not need to waste time searching for the best suited information

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required for the organization objectives. Being able to do so, higher

productivity will be achieved. Together with better decision-making,

service and product quality for the customer would be improved

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Knowledge management systems is the integrated technology that aids in

organizing and disseminating information and knowledge ranging from

work-flow purposes, projects, roles and media content to improve on

dissemination of knowledge through better interfaces and different

communication channels.[ CITATION 3 \l 1033 ]

A study on 122 senior executives had been conducted [ CITATION 10 \l

1033 ],

 most respondents implied that in making better management

decisions, IT should make it easier to analyze and drill down into

information.

 The main drawback of information-related decision to knowledge-

sharing and effective decision-making is that information is not

adequately prioritized

 The main obstacle in achieving efficient flow and use of knowledge

within the organization is the internal barrier to the cross-

departmental sharing of information and knowledge

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  Last but not least, knowledge management solutions / business

intelligence is the technology that is the most important to achieve

their companies’ strategic goals over the next three years

Under consensus, knowledge management systems is important in

conjunction with achieving strategic desires.

If knowledge is shared globally, beyond organization boundaries, it will

would allow different organizations to generate the capability in deriving

with unexpected opportunities and innovations.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING CULTURE

Most of successful factors are dependent on people culture. Technology

can help in connecting employees globally, reducing generation gap,

involving trust and understanding. However, there are fears in

inculcating information technology infrastructure and network capacity

due to technophobia, confidentiality and privacy. Incentive would serve as

a motivation for employees.

INCENTIVES

To promote the culture for having knowledge sharing incentives could be

one of the ways, as employees may need be able to visualize how

knowledge sharing would be beneficial to them or the organization. They

would perhaps think of the amount of time that have to be contributed

and thus may not be urge to share. Thus, to induce employees into this

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culture of sharing, rewards could be the most direct way. [ CITATION

2HoS1 \l 1033 ]

There are mainly two types of rewards, extrinsic and intrinsic,

 Extrinsic rewards

It can be used to share specific knowledge from projects or

unique knowledge that are learnt from elsewhere that could

help in understanding in their field of work.

 Intrinsic rewards

Reputation which is one of the intrinsic rewards can be

determined by the peers as the number of people who thinks

the shared work helpful and of quality and would be able to

rated well and recognize their peers.

For an organization, it might be difficult to choose which rewarding

system would be better. For extrinsic, it would induce more employees to

participate, thus getting more participation despite quality of product. Yet,

it can be too costly for the whole organization bear and additional cost

have to be included for managing quality of shared knowledge.

On the other hand, although intrinsic reward may bring on few interested

employees, but it is based on altruism and thus may not be effective

depending on the culture of the company.

LEADERS

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In considering which type of incentives will be best suited, intrinsic

rewarding system will be more feasible. Both types of remuneration

systems would require top management’s support and commitment.

However, a better solution to encouraging the culture of cooperation and

enhancing the willingness to share will be through the appointment of

“champion leaders”. They are usually the ones that are specialized in their

field of work to share their experiences. [ CITATION 11 \l 1033 ] It also helps

to support innovative work practice

Having a “knowledge manager” is reasonable and could be another

practical solution as well. The job of the knowledge manager is to utilize

technology and associate themselves with different departments and

different organizations. They will be required to be multi-expertise and to

be involved in ideas sharing. This will allow them to be able to influence

organization culture, processes, branding and making of and collaboration

with technology. [ CITATION 8 \l 1033 ]

BARRIERS

COSTLINESS

The requirements to implementing good knowledge management to an

organization are costly, and some organization does not see the direct

benefit of sharing knowledge. Instead, they saw the possibility of

information being misused and the increasing cost that may be needed to

better sustain the knowledge management system. It could be considered

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as expensive in deploying a expensive technology with powerful search

facilities required.

Furthermore, to have a successful knowledge management, management

will have to induce shared knowledge of good practices which requires

significant investment in change management such as to establish formal

knowledge process and organization structures.

PROCESS IN TRANSFERING KNOWLEDGE

To transfer tacit knowledge and for knowledge generation, most

organizations will adopt mentoring or apprenticeship so that they can

leverage on their senior associates to gain knowledge as they are the

ones that have insights and experience to critique the younger members

of the organization in projects and drive the organization in their business

objectives. [ CITATION 15 \l 1033 ]

However that would still result in the inability to effectively document the

tacit knowledge. As tacit knowledge is difficult to be recorded, having a

Blog may be effective in capturing knowledge and making tacit knowledge

explicit .[ CITATION 19 \l 1033 ]

Thus, Blogosphere[ CITATION 20 \l 1033 ] improved the use of Blog by

mapping corporate knowledge sources to direct people to references that

impart useful and important knowledge.

So, Blogs would eventually be connected through such a medium such as

community or social network. Evaluation can be given to these

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information and references to these experts can be provided to address

the issue concerned and make communications easier.

SECURITY

When people contribute to the organization they may have feared that the

information will end up unused or misused by others. Or when members

of the organization obtain information from the knowledge sharing portal,

the fear that the source cannot be trusted and problems will arise due to

lack of trust. The confidentiality and privacy of information could be

infringed in any organization as might be leaked through sharing of

information and leakages through the internet. It will be necessary to step

up on information security to control the use of information in sharing

and, vpossibly, fraud. The internet technology infrastructure and network

capacity have to be created in a way that they would lessen the

occurrence of problems and technophobia of the members in the

organization.

SOCIAL NETWORKING - A SOLUTION

Social networking services can connect global members of the

organization easily for collaborations of virtual teams. Social or corporate

networking tools are also available to facilitate communication process

and stimulate innovation, thus, aids in easy distribution of information

and correct procedures to understand those information with the help of

peers which have the know-how, it would be beneficial to inculcate the

practice to the organization to share knowledge.

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RIGHT TECHNICAL ENVIRONMENT

The usage of social networking sites solely for chatting and creating

networks is only minimal. There is an extraordinary increase in number of

people creating and disseminating user generated content. It has been

forecasted that social networking services can “transform” organization.

[ CITATION 7 \l 1033 ] With the assistance from networking sites, ideas can

be co-generated, innovative ideas can be generated with the mass

collaboration with people willing to voluntarily add information.

Social networking sites like Facebook for instance already had the

capability of providing the technology, on top of which LinkedIn and other

professional networking services have inbuilt applications that help in

corporate networking. These networking sites are commonly used by

business professionals. Furthermore, if most of the members of the

organization has already attempted to use it, the need to provide

trainings on the usage of such sites/applications will be greatly reduced.

INTRINSIC REWARDS

To effectively instill knowledge sharing culture, there is a requirement for

having theright technical environment, and social networking sites had

been capable to induce people to use such sites through means of

contacting people to such sites or to through online advertisement that

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had drawn users to. With intrinsic rewards, mainly recognition, members

in the organization people can more interested in using these sites to

engage in sharing voluntarily. The shared content can contribute to any

topic that could have some relevance for their colleagues works. One

prominent example would be Facebook groups [ CITATION 16 \l 1033 ].

“Facebook generation will wipe out the command control infrastructure in

business today”. [ CITATION 7 \l 1033 ]

BRIDGE GAPS

The main advantage of social networking for knowledge management, is

the dissolution of the status of a user in a organization so that they would

not feel pressurized in contributing their ideas to someone of a higher

seniority or more respectable. When they embrace the concept of bringing

social networking, it makes the implementation of the knowledge

management system faster to the decentralized network of organizations.

[ CITATION 17 \l 1033 ]

In addition the new generation is thought of as the spur to

communication technology in which they are “setting behavioral trends

that influence people of all ages”, bridging generation gaps can be

expected of in the organization to stimulate cohesion.

Furthermore, it can help to obtain feedback both from inside and outside

the organization if the organization involves the end-user or consumer to

interact together in the community.

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CHALLENGES

Navigating people and expectation require great leadership and

management skills. The organization would want to hold on to certain

degree of control whereas in doing so, constant monitoring might cause

defectiveness to the organizational growth.

PEOPLE CULTURE

Employees are afraid of their inability of disseminating “correct”

knowledge, which results in the fear of failing, thus they would be unlikely

to participate and share their knowledge. In this case, organisation can

use the previous suggestion to employ a leader, this leader will be able to

assure the members that their knowledge and information are reliable by

reviewing, commenting and shaping such that it complements knowledge

required in the organisation. By doing this, members would feel that it is

alright to suggest “wrong” answers, thus participate and improve in

effective knowledge transfer and adapt to the knowledge sharing culture.

Furthermore, the leaders can encourage members to try new ideas with

the given knowledge and so, innovations will occur to help sustain

competitive advantage in the knowledge-intensive economy. Therefore, it

is important to create an environment for the people to understand the

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value of creating, representing and distributing knowledge. [ CITATION 15 \l

1033 ]

DEFINING EXPECTATIONS

Behavioral and procedural changes will be required in social networking to

capitalize on opportunities.

Even when social networks, there is a need to establish the right process,

protocol and documentation. A group may be created to manage the

standard of the information, reducing redundancy and inaccurate

information. Concise tagging of words that can ease in search of

documents. Organizations would have to go through minimal training to

allow employees to understand these expectation and roles.

CASE STUDY

The following case studies found shows that knowledge management is

critical for fundamental functioning processes.

WORLD BANK

The World Bank provides loan to developing countries for capital

programs and at the same time they give recommendations on

improvements to be done to the developing countries. Recommendation

given were based on historical data and knowledge of the past developing

countries and information given by economics experts. World Bank has a

very decentralized organization and the enabler that lead World Bank to a

qualified influential bank is through the knowledge-sharing technology

that enabled desired knowledge management.

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Problems and solutions are faced by World Bank are made using

knowledge management systems. As Stephen Denning, Former Program

Director of Knowledge Management had mentioned, “we needed to make

knowledge at least as important as lending”. Knowledge management in

this context affects the global community.[ CITATION 21 \l 1033 ] They had

successfully overcome those problems and are known as one of the best

practices in knowledge management.

PROBLEMS FACED

 Conservative and change-resistance organization

Both the organization and their clients are skeptical about

using knowledge sharing and technology.

 Abundance of information, but not utilized properly

There are no sharing repositories that can make knowledge

more readily accessible to staff, client and partners. This is

ineffective in helping countries to reduce poverty as

information and solution could not be able to be consolidated

to achieve towards the optimal solution. The learning

experience would not be as comprehensive as the bank could

had been.

 Multiple IT database and systems to manage similar procedures in

different departments

They are unable to document properly as there is no common

platform to store information. As there is no common

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 platform, there are inconsistent information and delays on all

managing levels are common.

RESULTS

From this case study, it is essential that knowledge management is

identified as the critical success factor. The World Bank had incorporated

cooperation and management support had to play a prominent role. As

the business survival of the World Bank was dependent on sharing

knowledge. It is emphasized sharing knowledge would improve the quality

of service, increase innovation and reduce cost. [ CITATION 22 \l 1033 ] As

knowledge sharing provide global access to develop, this applies to

organization that want to sustain competitive advantage in their industry

as well.

Presence of IT advancement that fulfilled the bank’s needs of gathering

and sharing experience internally and also with clients. They developed a

World Bank Knowledge Sharing Portal that helps to deposit knowledge-

sharing strategies on poverty reduction and development tools.

Although the World Bank does not aim to achieve competitive advantage,

they had strategically used knowledge management to manage their

repositories demonstrating that there is an importance in managing

people culture. Setting an example, they have their knowledge manager

appointed-- Stephen Denning who had help to lead the organization to a

dramatic transformation.

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In addition, the collaborative need in systems in a decentralized

management is emphasized as well as one common platform would be

able to speed findings faster.

ACCENTURE

Accenture is a global management consulting firm that provides

technological service as well as outsourcing. [ CITATION 23 \l 1033 ]. As a

consulting firm, their most important asset would be their people.

Because they are a global agency, they have members that work in

dispersed locations and multiple organization units for different projects.

Communication, cooperation and identification of knowledge flow is

required together with collaborative tools, in this case it is Microsoft Office

SharePoint Server 2007 . They have to optimize information flow to

improve efficiency so that they can reduce cost and improve productivity

and reduce cost.

For management consulting firms, business services are knowledge-based

and thus, applications with good search functionalities are required to

manage information effectively. There is a need for tools to allow them to

collaborate and share information and knowledge in a decentralized

distributed environment. The organisation is also dependent on how to

deploy people so that their knowledge would fit the customer’s

expectations well, as it would determine their strength of client database.

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PROBLEMS FACED

 Building Virtual Teams

Previously they had a few routes in searching for the right

project members. It was considered time consuming as there

is a need to search different directories and it did not produce

appropriate search results and details that required additional

calling and emailing that increased time consumed to be even

more.

 Difficulty Finding Corporate Information

The company’s intranet portal and web applications have not

been upgraded in their old technology. As such, their findings

are incorrect and resources are unable to be viewed easily.

Likewise, due to its technology, it does not have features that

tags to people with their reference details to the source of

information.

RESULTS

The solution that they selected through Microsoft was a social networking

enabled solution. IT helps to engaged all the members of the organization

so there are no resistance to know the counterparts on the other side of

the globe. As the interface used is easy and similar to other social

networking sites, it allows them to contact and communicate with each

other easily.

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People are the organization’s core asset, it is required for the best talent

to be retained. The solution had helped to contribute to cohesion as well,

as they are able to socialize and build friendship.

Additionally, improvement in information access helps improves service

with right knowledge. The benefits accrued from the social networking

tool helps Accenture to gain a competitive advantage, as the members of

the organization is able to connect effortlessly with each other. Together

with the right information and knowledge presented by the repository, it

helps drives the work environment to its potential.

CONCLUSION

Knowledge management helps in the adoption of insights and experience.

These knowledge whether explicit or implicit, helps in providing better

organization practice and processes. IT helps to identify solutions to

problem faster through distribution of information that reduces risk to an

organization. The strategies used mainly serve to contain all knowledge

that is present so that there are avoidance of repeated mistakes that

might induce cost to the firm and effective delegation so that learning

processes will be shorten. Last but not least, it helps in improving overall

efficiency that an organization may benefit from and over time, results

can be seen through competitive advantage in an industry, and thus, the

society will be able to gain through a knowledge-based society.

Social networking are changing trends which should be manipulated so

that it will benefit the organization to produce youthful innovations in the

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“application savvy generation”[ CITATION 7 \l 1033 ] that has more

understanding of the web technology.

Organizations can choose different approaches, either social networking

or other knowledge management systems. The members using the

system have to be interested and enjoy knowledge sharing and learning

so that knowledge management systems implementations would be

carried out smoothly and successfully.

The purpose is amplified if the combination of existing knowledge

potentials can be realized by anyone in the organization to generate new

product and services to contribute to research and development in an

organization and to fulfill to the firm’s objectives and enhance the

organization’s capabilities to achieve sustainable competitive advantage.

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