Knowledge

Management
Meaning

Knowledge management (KM) is the

process of finding, capturing, sharing,
using and managing the knowledge of an
organization.
The knowledge consists of
documents, procedures, resources,
and worker skills. 
History of Knowledge
Management
 Although the term knowledge management entered popular
usage in the late 1980’s (e.g.; conferences in KM began
appearing ,books on KM were published, and the term began to
be used in business journals)philosophers ,teachers ,and writers
have been making use of the same techniques for decades.
 Denning(2002)related how from ‘time immemorial, the elder ,the
traditional healer, and the midwife in the village have been the
source and Disseminators of knowledge
History

 Some form of knowledge sources were around the world for a

long time ,and people have found a way to share knowledge in
order to build on earlier experience ,eliminate costly
redundancies, and avoid making same mistakes again.
 For e.g. knowledge sharing often took the form of town
meetings ,workshops, seminars ,and mentoring sessions.
 The primary vehicle for knowledge transfer was people
themselves.
History

 Drucker was the first to coin the term knowledge worker in the
early 1960s(Drucker 1964)
 Senge(1990)focused on the learning organization as one that can
learn from past experiences stored in corporate memory
systems.
 Nonaka and Takeuchi(1995) studied how knowledge is
produced,used and diffused within organizations and how this
contributes to the diffusion of innovation.
 Technologies enable valuable knowledge to be remembered and
enable various knowledge to be published, that is widely
disseminated to all stakeholders.
Multidisciplinary nature of KM
Knowledge management draws upon a vast number of diverse fields such as:
 Organizational science
 Cognitive Science
 Linguistic subject
 Information technologies such as knowledge based systems, document and
information management and database management
 Information and library science
 Journalism
 Education and training
 Story telling and communication studies
 Groupware such as intranet, extranet and other web technologies.
Data, Information, Knowledge
 Drivers of KM/ Why is KM Important
today?
The major business drivers behind today’s increased interest in and
application of KM lie in four key areas:
 1. Globalization of business: Organizations today are more global—
multisite, multilingual, and multicultural in nature.
 2. Leaner organizations: We are doing more and we are doing it
faster, but we also need to work smarter as knowledge workers, adopting
an increased pace and workload.
 3. “Corporate amnesia.” We are more mobile as a workforce, which
creates problems of knowledge continuity for the organization and places
continuous learning demands on the knowledge worker. We no longer
expect to spend our entire work life with the same organization.
 4. Technological advances. We are more connected. Advances in
information technology not only have made connectivity omnipresent
but have radically changed expectations. We are expected to be “on” at
all times, and the turnaround time in responding is now measured in
minutes, not weeks.
Types of knowledge

 Tacit knowledge: It  is the kind of knowledge that is difficult to

transfer to another person by means of writing it down or
verbalizing it.
 Explicit knowledge: It is the knowledge that can be readily
articulated, codified, accessed and verbalized. It can be easily
transmitted to others. Most forms of explicit knowledge can be
stored in certain media.
The following examples are the
examples for tacit knowledge:
 1. How to speak a language
 2. Innovation: Some individuals struggle with innovation for many decades
with little success. Other individuals seem to innovate effortlessly for a
period of time. 
 3. Leadership: Complex social skills such as leadership are difficult to teach.
 4. Aesthetic Sense: It's difficult to verbalize the appeal of a work of art. It's
even more difficult to teach an aesthetic sense. 
 5. Sales: It is another complex social skill that's fairly difficult to teach.
 6.Humor:It's difficult to teach a sense of humor. For example, humor
requires a particular timing that's considered intuitive. 
 7.Body Language
Examples for Explicit knowledge

 Company data sheets, research reports, etc. are all explicit

company knowledge.
 The information found in encyclopedias ,Wikipedia's are excellent
examples of explicit knowledge.
Explicit Knowledge

 This type of knowledge is formalized and codified, and is

sometimes referred to as know-what (Brown & Duguid 1998).
 It is therefore fairly easy to identify, store, and retrieve (Wellman
2009).
 This is the type of knowledge most easily handled by KMS, which
are very effective at facilitating the storage, retrieval, and
modification of documents and texts.
 Explicit knowledge is found in: databases, memos, notes,
documents, etc. (Botha et al. 2008)
Tacit Knowledge
 It is sometimes referred to as know-how (Brown & Duguid 1998) and refers to
intuitive, hard to define knowledge that is largely experience based.

 Tacit knowledge occurs in the form of subjective insight, intuition, judgment,

innovation, or inspiration. It is a problem-solving expertise that is gained more
from one’s experiences than from other sources.

 Tacit knowledge is also regarded as being the most valuable source of

knowledge, and the most likely to lead to breakthroughs in the organization
(Wellman 2009).
 Lack of focus on tacit knowledge directly reduces the capability of organisation
in innovation and sustained competitiveness(Gamble & Blackwell 2001)
Tacit Knowledge
 It should be quite apparent that it would be near impossible to
convey our tacit knowledge i.e intuitive understanding gathered
from years of experience and practice.
 A specialist doctor cures his patient on his experience and
intuition. It would be very difficult for him to codify his
knowledge into a document that could convey his know-how to a
beginner. This is one reason why experience in a particular field
is so highly regarded in the job market.
 Tacit knowledge is found in: the minds of human stakeholders. It
includes cultural beliefs, values, attitudes, mental models, etc.
as well as skills, capabilities and expertise (Botha et al 2008)
 Tacit Knowledge of Best sales managers, conflict handlers, best
managers what is important for the organization.
Managing Knowledge

 Share What we learn today and preserve it for the future

If you are an employer, below are some strategies
that may help you capture tacit knowledge from
employees:

 1. Organizational Culture
Establish a culture that incentivizes knowledge-sharing behavior. Set
up monthly meetings, conferences, presentations, and other one-on-
one interviews with key people. Reduce attrition rates and retain
older employees to preserve the tacit knowledge of the company.

 2. Mentorship programs
Encourage senior employees to train juniors have junior employees
participate in informal discussions with their superiors. Invite experts
to talk about concepts and share their real-life experiences with your
employees.
 3. Workplace Collaboration
Encouraging teamwork and workplace collaboration helps in effective
knowledge sharing and management.

 4. Documentation
Use technology, information and document management systems to store
knowledge in a structured manner for easy access. User guides, manuals,
how-to books, presentations, policies, and tutorials definitely help.

 6. Forums and Informal Groups

Create forums on an internal platform for employees to discuss work
problems and processes
 7. Training
Since tacit knowledge is mostly experiential, employee training
becomes pivotal in knowledge sharing and management.
Experiential learning can include on-the-job training,
demonstrations, and simulations.
 8. Professional and Social Networks
Big organizations use professional networks like LinkedIn and
premium features like LinkedIn to have employees share their
knowledge. Each employee has a profile that explains what he/she
does in the organization. Every employee can share his/her own
work experiences or knowledge as articles or share information
  Storytelling is the mechanism by which early civilizations
passed on their values and their wisdom from one generation to
the next. The earliest mechanisms for knowledge capture dates
to the anthropological use of stories
Human thinking and learning(Page
no:75 ,76 Awad text book on KM)
 Learning without thinking is useless .Thinking without learning is
dangerous-Confucius
 In cognitive psychology, it is possible to find a strong relationship
between learning and thinking in as much as thinking skills are
considered to be of central importance to higher-order cognitive
learning
 However, it is possible to consider learning without thinking (e.g.,
learning by rote or by accident) as well as learning with thinking
in order to produce new knowledge.
The knowledge gained through the learning with thinking could be
used extensively in knowledge management and is important.
Concept Analysis Technique for
KM
Concept analysis can be used to visually map out conceptual information in

the process of defining a word (Novak, 1990, 1991).
 This technique is derived from the fields of philosophy and science
education (Bareholz and Tamir, 1992; Lawson, 1994) and is typically used in
clearly defining complex, value-laden terms such as democracy or religion.
 It is a graphical approach to help develop a rich, in-depth understanding of
a concept.
 The concept analysis approach rests on obtaining consensus on three major
dimensions of a given concept 1. A list of key attributes that must be
present in the definition2. A list of illustrative examples. 3. A list of
illustrative non examples.
Concept Analysis Technique for
KM
Ruggles and Holtshouse (1999) identified the following key attributes of
knowledge management:
 ■ Generating new knowledge.
 ■ Accessing valuable knowledge from outside sources.
 ■ Using accessible knowledge in decision making.
 ■ Embedding knowledge in processes, products, and/or services
 ■ Representing knowledge in documents, databases, and software
 ■ Facilitating knowledge growth through culture and incentives.
 ■ Transferring existing knowledge into other parts of the organization.
 ■ Measuring the value of knowledge assets and/or impact of
knowledge management.
 Concept Analysis Technique for KM

It is highly recommended that each organization undertake the concept

analysis exercise to clarify its understanding of what KM means in its own
organization’s context.

The best way to do so would be to work as a group, enabling them to

achieve a shared understanding at the same time that they develop a
clearer conceptualization of the KM concept.

Each participant can take a turn contributing one good example of what
KM is and another example of what KM is not.

The entire group can then discuss this example– nonexample pair in order
to identify one (or several) key KM attributes.

Once the group members feel they have covered as much ground as they
are likely to, the key attributes can be summarized in the form of a KM
concept “formula” such as: “In our organization, knowledge management
must include the following: both tacit and explicit knowledge; a framework
to measure the value of knowledge assets; a process for managing
knowledge assets. . . .”
Expert Knowledge(kindly refer
page no:72&73 Awad text book
on KM))
 Knowledge possessed by experts in a particular domain.

 “Expert knowledge” is what qualified individuals know as a result

of their technical practices, training, and experience (Booker and
McNamara 2004 ) .
 It may include recalled facts or evidence, inferences made by the
expert on the basis of “hard facts” in response to new or
undocumented situations(Kaplan 1992 )
Expert Knowledge

 Expert knowledge is a product of unique reasoning systems

 Experts are skilled in determining the most relevant information
for a given context, structuring the problem definition, and
finding an appropriate solution method
 Their reasoning typically is characterized as being automatic,
abstract, intuitive and tacit.
 An expert operating in their area of direct expertise is often able
to perform tasks without being aware of exactly how or what they
do
From physical assets to
knowledge assets
 Knowledge has become increasingly more valuable than the more traditional
physical or tangible assets.

For example in the manufacturing sector, the value of nonphysical assets such as
just-in-time (JIT The idea is to receive production inputs only as needed in the
production process) inventory systems is rapidly providing more value. This is the
example of how intellectual asset, is considered more valuable in the organization
than the tangible asset
 Intellectual assets are represented by the sum total of what employees of the
organization know and what they know how to do.
Similarly, traditionally, an airline organization’s assets included the physical
inventory of airplanes. Today, the airlines’ greatest asset is the SABRE
reservation system, software that enables the airline to manage the passenger
reservations and to implement a seat “yield management system.” The yield
management system is used to ensure that maximum revenue is generated from
each seat
 From physical assets to knowledge assets

Some examples of intellectual capital include:

 1. Competence—the skills necessary to achieve a high level of performance. Core
competencies, found at a tactical level. Some examples would be a process, a specialized
type of knowledge, or a particular kind of expertise that is rare or unique to the
organization. These are the things that an organization knows how to do well and that
provide a competitive advantage.
 2. Capability—strategic skills necessary to integrate and apply competencies.
Capabilities, found at a more strategic level. Sound KM practices are required in order for
the capability to be realized.
 3. Technologies—tools and methods required to produce certain physical results.

It should be noted that the more valuable a capability is and the less it is shared
among many employees, then the more vulnerable the organization becomes
should those employees leave.
From physical assets to
knowledge assets
 The accounting profession still has considerable difficulty in
accommodating itself to these new forms of assets. Some
progress has been made for e.g., Skandia was the first
organization to report intellectual capital as part of its yearly
financial report, but much more work remains to be done in this
area.
KM for Individuals, Communities
and Organizations,
For the individual, KM:
 Helps people do their jobs and save time through better decision
making and problem solving.
 Builds a sense of community bonds within the organization.
 Helps people to keep up to date.
For the community of practice(for the Professionals), KM:
 Develops professional skills.
 Promotes peer-to-peer mentoring.
 Facilitates more effective networking and collaboration.
 Develops a professional code of ethics that members can follow.
 Develops a common language.
For the organization, KM:
 Helps drive strategy.
 Solves problems quickly.
 Diffuses best practices.
 Improves knowledge embedded in products and services.
 Increases opportunities for innovation.
 Enables organizations to stay ahead of the competition better.
 Builds organizational memory.
Challenges in KM

  Getting Employees On-Board: This is perhaps biggest

challenge to make employees participate in the knowledge
management process. It is challenge to compel employees to
share their knowledge and skills because of which they are
surviving in the organization. Some psychological barriers such
as losing the job because their knowledge is no more unique,
jealousy or complex. All these factors may become a barrier in
KM implementation.
Challenges in KM

  Allowing Technology to Dictate :KM is highly influenced by

Information Technology but not to be misunderstood as an
Information Technology concept. It only facilitates efficient
functioning of KM activities. Because of overshadowing of IT on
KM, the real essence of KM might be lost and misunderstood as
an Information technology discipline.
Challenges in KM

 Not Having Specific Business Goals: The end result of KMS is

to bring best out of the organization so as it can successfully
achieve its goals. If goals are not properly defined the complete
process of KMS will head towards a wrong direction and result in
a mess and wastage of time and money.
Challenges for KM

  Not all information is Knowledge : KMS is all about

knowledge gathering, organizing and sharing. It is very important
to identify which knowledge needs to shared and which not.
Sharing wrong knowledge can result in disaster. Thus,
organization must scrutinize the knowledge before being
disseminated.
Challenges for KM

Some critical KM challenges are to

 manage content effectively,
 help knowledge workers connect and find experts, and

 facilitate cooperation,
 help the organization to learn and make decisions based
on complete, valid, and well interpreted data,
information, and knowledge
Organizational Perspectives on
Knowledge Management
Wiig (1993) considers knowledge management in organizations
from three perspectives, each with different horizons and purposes:
 1. Business Perspective—focusing on why, where, and to what
extent the organization must invest in or exploit knowledge.
 2. Management Perspective—focusing on d, organizing,
directing, facilitating, and monitoring knowledge-related
practices and activities required to achieve the desired business
strategies and objectives.
 3. Hands-on Perspective—focusing on applying the expertise
to conduct explicit knowledge-related work and tasks.