Introduction
Knowledge management is one of the major areas of concentration in organizational learning and business in developing strategic advantages. Organizations always collect and assess knowledge to take decision on the services and processes to deliver them to stay in the market competition. Most of the organizations have already approached knowledge management in collection explicit knowledge and storing for future retrieval. But it is now recognized that this explicit knowledge must be interpreted using peoples expertise and experiences of context in innovative outcome. Utilizing tacit knowledge to improve competitiveness and innovation in the organizations is widely practiced. Thus tacit knowledge is now seen as a very critical knowledge needed to develop new ideas, transferring knowledge for better practice and service. Knowledge management mostly deals with tacit knowledge management.
This paper aims to provide a concept of Knowledge, Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge management in practice and what it means in practice in the given case study.
This document covers:
What is Knowledge?
Before getting into the Knowledge Management (KM), there is a need to know what Knowledge is. Knowing is a cognizance, a conscious state of being aware or informed (having knowledge) (Oxford English Dictionary, 2002, p. 1510).
According to (Wikipedia, 2009), the definition of KM varies. There is no single definition for Knowledge Management. Different definitions have been proposed by different authors.
Basically knowledge is something that comes from information processed by using data and information. It includes experience, values, insights, and contextual information and helps in evaluation and incorporation of new experiences and creation of new knowledge. Knowledge originates from, and is applied by knowledge workers who are involved in a particular job or task. People use their knowledge in making decisions as well as many other actions. In the last few years, many organizations realize they own a vast amount of knowledge and that this knowledge needs to be managed in order to be useful.
Stair & Reynolds (1998) provides a good definition of data, information and knowledge and differentiates them as "Data consists of raw facts. Information is a collection of facts organized in such a way that they have an additional value beyond the value of the facts themselves. Knowledge is the body of rules, guidelines and procedure s used to select, organize and manipulate data to make it suitable for a specific task. "(Stair & Reynolds, 1998, p5)
Davenport and Prusak (1998) defined knowledge as a "Fluid mixture of experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information". They argue that knowledge originates and is applied in the minds of people. In organizations, it becomes embedded in documents and repositories, in organizational routines, in processes, practices, and norms.
There is a slightly different definition given by Alavi and Leidner (1999). They see knowledge as a "Justified personal belief that increases an individual's capacity to take action".
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) states that there are two type of knowledge, namely explicit and tacit knowledge.
Tacit knowledge is obtained by internal individual processes and stored in human beings. Such knowledge is sometimes described as experience, reflection, internalization or individual Talent. (Nonaka and Takeuchi,1995)
Explicit knowledge is stored in a mechanical or technological device, such as documents or databases. This knowledge would be more useful if it could be shared and used among the community that works together using collaborative technology at any time, any place and any where as shown in Figure 1
Fred Nicklols (2003) also points out about two types of knowledge in his article about knowledge in knowledge management. According to his point of view,
This brings us to the concepts of explicit, implicit and tacit knowledge.
Explicit knowledge is which is already been articulated and captured in the form of text, tables, diagrams, product specifications, codes, formula and so on. In a well-known and frequently cited 1991 Harvard Business Review article titled "The Know-ledge Creating Company," Ikujiro Nonaka refers to explicit know-ledge as "formal and systematic" and offers pro-duct specifications, scientific formulas and computer programs as examples.
Tacit knowledge is that which can not be articulated. But Dahlbom and Metheassen (1999) states slightly different views as "even though we may not be able to articulate a lot of our 'know how' as opposed to 'know what' or 'know that', it is felt that there is a proportion that can be". They made a separation between tacit knowledge as articulable and inarticulable tacit knowledge which can be said as a true tacit. True tacit knowledge is very hard to transfer and some times impossible.
Fred Nickols (2003) defines Implicit Knowledge as Knowledge that can be articulated but has not is implicit knowledge. Its existence is implied by or inferred from observable behaviour or performance. This is the kind of knowledge that can often be teased out of a competent performer by a task analyst, knowledge engineer or other person skilled in identifying the kind of knowledge that can be articulated but hasn't.
Implicit knowledge is articulable tacit knowledge which is the main focus of the present knowledge management domain which is basically articulable tacit knowledge management and the case study.
What is Knowledge Management?
Knowledge Management (KM) can be best described as a discipline of organisation and management. It is an approach to improving performance across the full range of an organisation's activities, and this improvement is achieved by making better use of the knowledge that employees possess.
The IDeA (2007) defines knowledge management as the creation and management of an environment that encourages knowledge to created, shared, learnt, enhanced, organised and exploited for the benefit of the organisation and its customers.
Turban et al (2005) describes, Knowledge Management (KM) is a process that helps organizations identify, select, organize, disseminate, and transfer important information and expertise that are part of the organization's memory and that typically reside within the organization in as unstructured manner. The structuring of knowledge enables effective and efficient problems solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making. Knowledge management initiatives focused on identifying knowledge, explicating in such a way that it can be shared in a formal manner and leveraging its value through reuse.
According to KMTool Community (2008) Knowledge Management -Information or data management with the additional practice of capturing the tacit experience of the individual to be shared, used and built upon by the organization leading to increased productivity (Tacit Knowledge - Innovation, creation of new knowledge often comes from collaboration and interaction with experts. These are some of the many ways to create a culture where there is greater collaboration, team work and sharing of ideas.).
Without knowledge management organisations will tend to remain fixed in warehouse, poorly bonded together, with little or no sharing of good practice or information and prone to reinventing the wheel. Knowledge management is about connecting people with information and people with people. Interesting thing is many KM practitioners claim that the term 'knowledge management' doesn't make any sense, arguing that 'knowledge' is something that can't be managed at all, in the same way that, say 'accounts' or 'facilities' or "actions' can be managed.
Problem areas
The knowledge needs to be transferred
What Knowledge exists in the case study
Working procedures and product information, such as new parts and their features, requirements and functionalities are normally come with user's manual and handbook. As this type of knowledge is already articulated or articulable and transferable, it is clearly explicit knowledge which can he handled in the information management system.
Scott(1992)refers that "the capturing of professional expertise usually means articulating tacit knowledge in the form of generalisable principles so that these principles may then be transferred to others, so that novices will be preferably be in a position to gain from a more experienced, yet perhaps not always mentor. This kind of knowledge then is explicated but this always comes from tacit. " In the case study the general knowledge of assembling or servicing of any computer can be articulable and that is implicit but hands on experience over a life long are sometimes very much impossible or totally impossible to be articulated. This can be a true tacit knowledge. This is a challenging task in the case study to be handled.
The Other knowledge area, "History of company's product and services "is articulable tacit knowledge or implicit knowledge. As there is no organized system exists to handle this, staffs usually memorize them all. But Upon leaving the company the knowledge they retained also carried with them and the company lost its intellectual capital.
Bibliography
The KMS Case Study 4
Computer Business
Overview
The business is a 'grey-box' computer seller building computers to order mainly for personal use at home or in micro-businesses. As such, price is a critical component of any sale. Support is also important, but not as critical in making a sale.
Components are sourced from numerous suppliers with both suppliers and components being chosen depending on where the best price can be obtained for the period when the components will be required. This may mean that the same supplier may supply different brands and models of, say video cards, over a period of time while the same video card may also be sourced from several different suppliers.
The components are assembled to meet the customers order with there being few configurations that will be the same in any week. Because of the high rate of upgrades with components, within as little as 6 months, a configuration may not be using any components that were part of the 'standard' configuration six months previously.
With vendors supplying a number of related components (e.g. a vendor may supply 6 or more different types of video cards), and vendors regularly updating these components, different items from the same supplier may require different configuration settings, while the same item may require different configuration settings when installed in combination with other components e.g. the disk drive controller may be configured differently depending on the brand, or the model, of disk drive installed. There are times when batches of components may exhibit faults, either failing or not working consistently, when installed with specific combinations of other components, or when configured to operate in a particular manner.
When computers are returned for servicing, or due to faults, it is necessary to be able to identify who 'built' the machine, what components are installed, the configuration of the components, and the supplier of those components.
The Case
While each of the above issues need to addressed, the overall problems are exacerbated due to the relatively low salaries paid to staff. Positions in this company are usually taken to be "transitional" (i.e. something to earn some money; and learn something about building computers), before moving to a more lucrative or more interesting position. The result is that there are frequent new recruits with a major issue within the business being the training of these new staff.
The knowledge needing to be transferred to new staff is largely in three areas:
The company does not have formal record-keeping procedures. As such the company struggles to provide new staff members with the minimal knowledge they need in all three knowledge areas to become effective within the business within as a short a time-frame as possible. Learning beyond the minimum knowledge may take several months to build with many staff leaving before they have been employed for 12 months.
This approach generates enormous pressure on new staff members, with the business owner being over-committed with the all-too-frequent need to acquaint new staff with knowledge about business practices, technical issues on the various types of computers and computer hardware, and past practices and the components used when building computers.
After a number of years operating in this manner, the business owner has become the only person with knowledge in these three areas and, as such, is required to train all new staff members over a three to four week period - while still managing the business, handling customer requirements including making sales, and keeping himself current with changing trends in computing and the needs of customers.
The business owner has tried several different ways to solve the problem. He has considered a pay raise, but this is unlikely to eliminate the problem. Aside from the company having only very small profit margins, an experienced employee is still more likely to prefer a job with a larger organisation.
Another method tried was to have employees document what they know about their job. While the intentions were good, this has not been successful. There are no standards or guidelines for this documentation resulting in different employees recording different information, omitting critical information e.g. when staff have resolved an issue relating to incompatibility between hardware components, the solution is rarely documented (or even discussed) in a manner that would enable the information to be re-used.
Some employees wrote down every step (each keyboard stroke), which is too detailed and rarely gave the reader an overview of what was being done. Others staff wrote down only task names (e.g. updating BIOS, setting FBS to 166), meaning that without prior experience in these tasks, it would be difficult to successfully perform these tasks.
There is no version control on these documents. Seven or eight different employees have produced dozens of documents over several years. These documents are, seemingly, randomly titled and placed on the computer in directories of the employees choosing. The result is that the available information is difficult to find, difficult to understand, and may not be the version of the information that is required. Many staff has complained that the documentation is of little help to them in learning their job, and can usually only understand the documentation when they already know how to perform the task!
The business owner is looking for a system that can be used to document and update working procedures and product information. The system should have some means of storing staff-generated documents, maintaining version control, keep a record of products sold in the past (including details such as hardware settings, customers' requirements, etc.).
