Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
by
Palvinderjit Kaur
April 2007
palvin@apiit.edu.my
Abstract
Knowledge management has now become the ultimate goal and business strategy in
many organisations to gain the competitive edge. Knowledge is known to be the most
powerful and intellectual asset in organisation which require managing and sharing
capabilities. Organisations will be able to upgrade their position by becoming
knowledge intensive organisations if they start valuing knowledge and use it as a
powerful tool to meet business challenges.
Knowledge repository implementation will add value to the success of knowledge
management by providing a new platform for continuous learning process. The process
of creating, managing and storing knowledge requires a new shift that now focuses on
knowledge sharing to leverage the organisational capital asset which is the knowledge.
The entire concept of knowledge management will not work if a knowledge sharing
culture is not established. This paper describes concepts such as the 3C‟s and CoPs
which need to be incorporated to guarantee the success of knowledge management.
By examining the application of models and frameworks for knowledge management a
framework for a building knowledge sharing culture is recommended. No knowledge
can be managed if sharing capabilities are not supported with the cultural and
technological shifts. With this understanding, the framework includes 5 key enablers
which are simplified and presented as a checklist to guide organisational interest in
implementing knowledge management. Methods which can be adopted to encourage
the success of the recommended framework are then discussed.
Knowledge management with the strong support of a knowledge sharing culture will
raise any organisation to a new level for meeting business challenges This can be
achieved with the creation of knowledge repositories and generating knowledge
workers as part of their business strategy.
Keywords: Knowledge management, knowledge sharing, models, framework and key
enablers.
is also about the sharing element that is the
1. Introduction most important aspect that is still difficult to be
Organisations in today‟s world are viewing a established and achieved by organisations. The
new business strategy which includes reason for this is that knowledge is known to
knowledge management as their ultimate goal be the most powerful asset to an individual.
for competition advantage and success factors. Authors such as Koulopoulas and Frappaolo
According to the Head of Knowledge (1999) and Polanyi (1964) highlight that the
Management in Hindustan Lever Limited, only irreplaceable capital organisations possess
“knowledge management refers to all is their knowledge.
systematic activities for the creation and
sharing of knowledge that connect people to Regardless of the fact that knowledge is either
people and people to information” (Murty, explicit or tacit, it is important to be shared and
2004). improved continuously. Churman (1971)
mentions that knowledge is a collection of
Knowledge management is not just about information that resides in the person‟s mind.
capturing and disseminating knowledge but it
enhance knowledge sharing capabilities. The sharing to work with the power of the internet
Knowledge Life Cycle model can be used for and networking.
knowledge creation and is good for
identification of tacit and explicit knowledge One clear discovery is that if organisations are
(Polanyi, 1997). not moving forward to knowledge
management then they will face some of the
Based on a review of the ABCs of Knowledge following warning signs that are not healthy
Management compiled by Santosus and for their business‟ success.
Surmacs in 2001 “explicit knowledge consists
of anything that can be documented, achieved The warning signs are:
and codified often with the help of Information 1. Repetition of mistakes.
Technology (IT) but it is harder to grasp the
concept of tacit knowledge the know-how 2. Duplication of work.
contained in people‟s heads”. The challenges
are to create knowledge repositories that will 3. Failure to share good ideas.
recognise, generate, manage and share tacit
4. Loss of competitive position in the
knowledge. This will provide an excellent
market place.
solution for competitive edge within the
organisation ensuring that best practices and 5. Inefficiencies in launching new
knowledge are safe and will be just one click technology.
away.
It becomes equally reflective that with the
incorporation of knowledge management,
warning signs can be reduced and
2.3 Importance of Knowledge organisations should obtain benefits such as
Management having a dynamic and ever growing number of
activities and knowledge that can be freely
shared if knowledge sharing culture is
In a nutshell, organisations needs to recognise cultivated in their organisation.
the power of knowledge management as it is a
way to obtain the most valuable intellectual
assets as confirmed by Santosus and Surmacs
(2001). The advantages of knowledge 3. Knowledge Sharing
management that they identify are:
Hjelmsoe (2003) stated that “knowledge
1. The fostering of “innovation by management is 5% technology and 95%
encouraging the free flow of ideas”. management”. The prime aim of “knowledge
2. Improvement in “customer service by sharing is to share and enrich organisational
streamlining response times”. knowledge by cultivating the culture of sharing
at the individual level right up to management
3. Boosting revenue by getting products level” (Gurteen, 1999).
or services to market faster.
Knowledge management includes sets of
4. Enhancing “employee retention” rates principles, processes, organisation structures
by recognising “the value of and technology applications which are required
employees‟ knowledge and rewarding to be shared and leveraged if the sharing
them for it”. culture is cultivated. Webster‟s New Collegiate
Dictionary (Gurteen, 1999) defined culture as
5. “Streamlining operations and “the integrated pattern of human behaviour
reducing costs by eliminating that includes thought, speech, action, and
redundant or unnecessary processes”. artefacts and depends upon man's capacity for
learning and transmitting knowledge”. This
The same review was supported by
culture (Gurteen, 1999) should be transparent
Robert.E.Cole (2002) by the claims that
in organisation and the establishment of
organisations will benefit in areas such as
community of practices should be formed
globalisation, global integration, increased
(Amin, et.al,.20001).
growth and scope and networking, as
employees will be able to manage, share and Research was conducted in Sugar Land Texas,
retain their knowledge. This becomes possible USA, where a team was set up with common
with knowledge repositories and Information or community goals to a problem solving
Technology which allows collaboration and situation. The team was reported to be highly
motivated and was experiencing a new by Wenger (2004) were used in the survey.
situation where multiple ideas, expertise and The elements are:
skills was seen being discussed and shared
among the team members to decide on the 1. Domain – Task, team and area of
suggested solution to the problem domain. “knowledge” to be explored.
The team was also reported to be 2. Community – “group of people for
collaborating, pooling and disseminating their whom the domain is relevant, the
collective experiences using the knowledge quality of the relationships among
repositories made available. It is noted that the members and the definition of the
knowledge sharing process will not only boundary between inside and outside
encouraged the team member but will lead the of the community”.
organisation to become knowledge learning
organisation. 3. Practice – “body of knowledge,
methods, tools, stories, cases and
Senge (1999) suggests that “the rate at which documents which members share and
organisations learn may become the only develop”.
sustainable source of competitive advantage”.
Generative learning or double loop learning From the survey conducted with 50
(Argyris, 1997) can be applied by participants, more than 80% were interested in
organisations where any experiences or establishing CoPs in their organisation as it
feedback that had improved from the existing was not formally done and highlighted that the
knowledge is made compulsory to be stored in concept had started but needs improvement
knowledge repositories. This application will especially for the knowledge repositories as it
encourage continuous learning and will be the lacked the technological and cultural
base for ongoing examination which can be establishment which were not fully formalised
part of evaluation and measurement process. and supported by management.
This is required for the benchmarking and
checking the optimisation of the knowledge Therefore senior management involvement is
and the way the organisation goes about using important in the creation of CoPs and the
the knowledge for defining and solving sharing of knowledge should be value as one
problems. of the business strategy and communicated to
all employees. Denning (2004) supported his
As many organisations are rigorously claim by stating that with CoPs established in
adopting knowledge management with the best organisations, it increases sharing of common
people producing and applying the best interest or passion in an area of competence
technology, using the best product or service, which results in a continuous learning effort.
seems to be more effective with the cultural Opinion leaders who believe in practices and
shift and the creation of Communities of behaviour should be appointed to the CoPs to
Practice (CoPs) within the knowledge sharing lead the sharing and management of the
domain. knowledge (Cheng, 2002) because knowledge
is power for organisations in today‟s world.
3.1 Communities of Practices
(CoPs)
3.2 Why share knowledge?
Communities of Practice (CoPs) are workers
or experts who share and utilise their
knowledge assets. Wenger (2004) defines Generally, organisations do realise the need for
“CoPs as groups of people who share a passion knowledge sharing. Gurteen (1999) believes
for something that they know how to do (tacit that if an organisation does not cultivate a
knowledge) and who interact regularly in order knowledge sharing culture then it will face the
to learn to do it better”. CoPs are “practitioner following difficulties:
who use knowledge in their activities and are 1. Intangible products such as ideas,
in the best position to manage and share the processes, and information will take
knowledge” (Wenger, 2004). “a growing share of global trade from
A survey was conducted by the author in 2005 the traditional, tangible goods of the
using Global shared service centre with IT manufacturing economy”.
excellence and one University College in
Malaysia as sample case study to define the 2. There will be an increasing turnover
impact of CoPs. Three key elements suggested of staff.” People don‟t take a job for
life any more. When someone leaves 4. People feels that the effort of
an organisation their knowledge sharing knowledge required trust
walks out of door with them”. and support that might not be
encouraged and recognised by
3. An organisation will not know what it the organisation.
knows. “Large global or even small
geographically dispersed organisation 5. Lack of time as people feel it
does not know what they know. takes more work to create and
Expertise learnt and applied in one store knowledge. It feels like an
part of the organisation is not additional task besides their
leveraged in another”. existing duties.
Organisations that have successfully One of the solutions to overcome the above
implemented knowledge sharing are Ernst and problems is to apply the 3C‟s of the knowledge
Young, Anderson Consulting, IBM and British sharing concept.
Petroleum. For the global shared service centre
used in the survey it was suggested that they
follow in the footsteps of the successful 3.4 The 3C’s of Knowledge
organisations, meanwhile for the university
Sharing
college the example of Czeh University that
implemented knowledge sharing in their
academic community should be seen as a good
The 3C‟s of knowledge sharing suggested by
example (Cesh et.al.,2003).
Skyrme in 2002 is an application and proven
These successful organisations explained that theory that organisations should be applied to
with the use of technology, such as telephone, initialise the effort of knowledge management:
e-mail, video conferencing and the internet,
1. Culture change – “the way we do
knowledge can then be easily shared regardless
things here”
of the place and time dimension. It will be a
tremendous effort for organisations to analyse Organisations should carry out a culture
how and why people do not want to share audit through questionnaires and
knowledge. This lack of willingness to share interviews to solve the issue pointed out
has become the drawback for knowledge by Skyrme in section 3.3.
management success.
For example, Siemens incorporated an
3.3 Why people do not want to audit culture and built their CoPs with a
share knowledge? rewards scheme to encourage the
knowledge sharing capabilities.
One of the most important aspects of it‟s about improving the way
knowledge sharing is commitment and things get done by sharing the
this should start right with a management little things”. (Gurteen, 1999)
motivation scheme.
Making it Knowledge sharing starts at
Rewarding systems and a development happen individual, department, team or
programme should be in place. Groupware organisation level with the
functions and application details confirm concept of CoPs.
that the 3C‟s would increase Fundamentally, “sharing is
communication, collaboration and about being more open” in the
coordination (Chaffey, 1998). workplace and the relationship
with others.
1. Knowledge Sharing – is the “extent to The similarities of the models and framework
which people share their knowledge”. findings highlighted that Ernst & Young,
Knowledge Associates, Marquardt and O‟Dell
2. Knowledge Accessibility – is the “extent use a set of activities for knowledge
to which people have accesses to the management where the emphasis is on a
information they need to make decisions, knowledge cycle. This is inclusive of tasks
solve problems, and perform job tasks such as acquiring knowledge by Anderson
and service customers”. Consulting, Knowledge Associates and
Marquardt. American Management System,
3. Knowledge Assimilation – is the “extent Ernst and Young and O‟Dell state the first step
to which people learn or assimilate the is to find knowledge and the collect the
knowledge they need to perform well”. combination of “tacit and explicit knowledge”.
4. Knowledge Application– is the “extent to The generation and creation of knowledge r
which people apply and use knowledge to needs to be ongoing and continuous learning
effectively make decisions, solve process. It was analysed that that the same
problems and service customers”. models suggested by Nonaka and Takeuchi
(1995) with the application of five-phase
Besides aspects above, Rastogi (2000) and model of Tannembum and Alliger (2000) is
Leverde (2000) also suggested that noted to be the most popular combination for
management should include the following set knowledge management application in many
of operations in their consideration for organisations.
knowledge management.
The difference is that Arthur Anderson
Identification – of the “knowledge required Consulting uses a hybrid collection of
for a competitively effective implementation of frameworks such as knowledge cycle and
the enterprise strategy”. conversion of tacit and explicit knowledge but
firstly the model actually evaluates and defines
Mapping – “the existing and available the role of knowledge before aligning to their
knowledge including expertise and skills”. business strategy as defined by the steps of
Syrme (2000). As for Anderson Consulting.,
Capturing – “the existing knowledge through
the strategy first is to identify processes,
its formalised representation”.
cultural and technological aspects.
Acquiring – “the needed knowledge and
Conducive environment for knowledge sharing
information including know-how”.
will require crucial application of two major
Storing – “the existing, acquired, and created elements which include the motivation and
knowledge in properly indexed and interlinked recognition as the key success factors for
knowledge repositories”. knowledge sharing and is suggested by
American Management System.
This can be confirmed with the establishment of old knowledge with the modification
of the intensification scheme and Community on new knowledge must be placed and
of Practices (CoPs). Implementation of a stored using knowledge repositories in
feedback mechanism in Arthur Anderson the format of identified knowledge
Consulting prepared the organisations to create categories or maps.
an environment for continuous learning which
provided freedom to share and improve the Individual level within the CoPs needs to
existing repositories. This knowledge has now identify and select one leader who will be
guided the framework for building the called as opinion leader to guide and
knowledge sharing culture. influence the teams to share their
knowledge. To motivate the CoPs to
share knowledge, cultural audit and
rewarding schemes needs to be
5. Recommendation for communicated and integrated within the
building a knowledge-sharing organisation.
framework 3. Technologies, methods and tools are
important in the effort to build and share
From the preceding investigation of models of knowledge and will include the
and frameworks, it can be seen that knowledge concept of Computer Supported
management includes much more than a Cooperative Work. This concept will
knowledge cycle or tasks. Therefore the steps assist in identifying the workflow of the
that can be taken as a holistic view to create a knowledge sharing, with the assistance of
generic framework to build the knowledge technology that will allow the sharing and
sharing culture will require the following: dissemination of knowledge globally.
1. Organisations should emphasise on Accessibility to workflow, document
cultural aspects as claimed by Bob systems, real time collaborations, online
Buckmans of Bukman Labs learning systems, portalisation and
(Montano,et,.al. 2004), who stated that custom web applications are some of the
90% of knowledge management effort in technology enablers being utilised (Early
any organisation is cultural and this was & Associates, 2005).
confirmed by Larry Bobbitt of Anderson
Consulting who explained that the first 4. Establishing a framework should include
step is to evaluate and define the role of a measurement and feedback step as
knowledge as this will takes up 80% of suggested by Arthur Anderson
the effort to perform the cultural shift. Consulting. Continuous learning will
involve the implementation of feedback
This can be confirmed with the mechanisms to enable an iterative process
establishment of the 3C‟s of Knowledge to focus on the key enablers that
Sharing and the steps suggested by (identified below).
Skyrme (2000) to help build a knowledge
sharing culture. This will include the
analysis of the business strategy, how to
motivate employees with the 6 Identification of Key
establishment of community of practices Enablers
(CoPs) as defined by Wenger (2004).
Continuous learning should be extended The key enablers in this section are
to other groups to meet corporate recommended for any global shared service
business strategy. (Senge, 1990). centre, academic institute or any organisation
wishing to setup a knowledge sharing culture.
2. The second step is to focus on
knowledge; this refers to the Nonaka and
Takeuchi Model (1995), the knowledge
life cycle or conversion. The
identification of tacit and explicit
knowledge should be identified for the
CoPs. The process of knowledge sharing
should start with creation, acquiring and
generating of new knowledge. As for the
continuous learning process, acquisition
Avoiding the need to completely rebuild Organisations should start off with the review
sites as new technologies and of the 3C‟s and the implementation of 7 steps
opportunities arise. or incentives to enhance and encourage
knowledge sharing to be cultivated in their
Ensuring the technology is reliable and organisation with the concept of CoPs .
provides accessibility to the community
of practice to reuse and acquire Therefore why wait, the framework for
knowledge. building the knowledge sharing culture should
be adopted to obtain and manage the most
5) Feedback and Measurement valuable intellectual asset (knowledge). By
adopting a knowledge sharing culture, the key
Feedback and measurement will be required to foundation for collaboration can be obtained
test and manage the acceptance of the and will increase the advantages of the
knowledge being share. This is important also organisation to gain a competitive edge.
to monitor the continuous learning process.
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