Description
Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences.
Management of knowledge
Mikael Petersson
School of Management and Economics
Växjö University S-351 95 VÄXJÖ SWEDEN Tel: +46 470 70 86 39 Fax: +46 470 82 47 8 E-mail: [email protected] and The Systems Management Consortium Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University Electrum 230 S-16440 KISTA SWEDEN
mailto:[email protected]
Keywords: Knowledge management, Organisational learning, Intellectual property, Intangible assets, Research
Abstract: This paper investigates the concept of management of knowledge and defines a framework in order to do empirical work in the field. The paper defines management of knowledge as the processes needed to make the organisation act as intelligent as possible in order to secure its viability and overall success as a system and to manage its knowledge assets to best value. The framework highlights four parts that make up critical areas that the researcher has to deal with during an empirical study, and helps in classifying the knowledge management activities.
1. Introduction
This paper tries to create a platform for an empirical study in order to find out what companies in Sweden does in terms of management of knowledge and compare these findings to those in "more advanced countries" such as the U.S.A. The paper is structured in two parts. The first takes a look on definitions of knowledge and related topics such as wisdom, information, data and symbols. It also takes a look at studies similar to the one intended, in order to find valuble insights and concepts to include in the proposed framework. In the second part of the paper we construct and discuss a framework based on the findings in the first part of the paper.
1.1 The rationale for research in management of information
Today or some say in a not too far future, fast changing markets will demand other qualities than traditional input of labour capital and land. The debate focuses more and more on the resources residing inside the employees' e.g. their knowledge. The rationale behind this assumption lies in the fact that more and more jobs are created within the service sector, not in the traditional industrial sector. The shift can bee seen as a reiteration of the industrial revolution where people moved from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Drucker (1995) wrote, "knowledge is the only meaningful economic resource. In the post-industrial era, the success of a corporation lies more in its intellectual and systems capabilities than in its physical assets (Quinn Anderson Finkelstein 1998). Management of knowledge is however nothing new, it has been done as long as mankind has walked the earth, but
it is this transition from an industrial culture to one based on knowledge and information that has accentuated this interest. Huber (1984) describes this transition as one that increases the amount of available knowledge and its absolute growth. At the same time the organisational complexity consisting of numerosity, diversity and interdependence will increase making it more difficult to cope with the surrounding environment. Systems theory tells us that as the number of components within a system increases the specialisation and interdependence of the components will increase (Johanssen Olaisen Olsen 1999). If we accept a future there organisations will rely more on the knowledge of their employees to carry out their business and an environment that will be more turbulent and complex we will have to face the challenge of managing this knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage or just in order to survive. A word of caution (Wielinga Sandberg Schriber, 1997) even though knowledge-based systems can be built and usefully employed most knowledge still resides in the heads of humans and in documents that cannot be easily formalised.
2. A tentative definition of knowledge management
In order to carry out this work we need some form of tentative definition of our concept of management of knowledge to give us a starting point from where we can start our work. From our findings we will then derive a more solid definition of the concept.
2.1 The definition
Our initial definition of management of knowledge is a common sense solution. As Knowledge is a inherent property of the individual, the maintenance of this knowledge ought to be of interest. We choose to call this competence and has to do with developing and maintaining the knowledge of employees through a continues learning process. Knowledge also has to do with the creation of new knowledge, structuring new ideas. As Huber (1990) states the change in the organisational environment will lead to a need for faster decision making. A key feature will be to be able to provide the decision-maker with current information, quickly. Finally as knowledge will be an essential feature of the products or services provided by the organisations we need to be able to capture best practices and incorporate the knowledge into the products. We also need to shorten cycle times, as the environment is likely to be turbulent. All of this needs to be tied in with the organisational culture and strategy in order to work.
3. A review of the literature
In this section we review a number of papers related to our initial definition of management of knowledge in order to create a more solid and scientific definition of the term.
3.1 The relation of signs, data, information, knowledge and wisdom
Much confusion has been caused by a rather loose use of these terms. In this section we will try to define what we mean by the terms. Sign has according to Segerstad (1982) several dimensions and it is necessary to divide these dimensions into subgroups in order to talk about them. One such division has been made by Carles S. Peirce. Peirce divides the sign into three groups, Icon, Index, and symbol. An Icon has a likeness to that which it represents, for example a picture or a mathematical equation. The Index has casual relation to that which it represents. We need an understanding of the world around us in order to make sense of indexes, that is we need theoretical knowledge. The third group Symbols get their meaning through an agreement between individuals, and can therefore look like anything. In an article Ackoff (1989) defines the relation data to wisdom. Ackoff defines the relation as a hierarchy of content types of the human mind. Data, is at the bottom of the hierarchy are symbols that represent some property of the real world. Information, the next type in the hierarchy is contained in descriptions, answers to questions. Information is inferred from data, and needs a context in order to be meaningful. We have to have a frame of reference to be able to make sense of the data. Stepping up the hierarchy we find knowledge. Knowledge come in several forms; Formal (declarative), Procedural, Meta, Impressionistic (tacit) (Davis Naumann, 1997), and is a high-level, value added form of information. Formal knowledge is a general knowledge of problem solving, facts, concepts, it is the
knowledge communicated by textbooks. Procedural knowledge is the knowledge about how to do something, more informal by nature and harder to communicate through a textbook. Meta knowledge is knowledge about knowledge and deals with how knowledge is organised and how you can gain access to knowledge. Impressionistic or tacit knowledge lies hidden in the sense that it is unstructured and not formal and resides in the head of the individual. Knowledge can be obtained either through transmission from someone who has it, by instruction, or by extracting it from experience. Wisdom, at the top of the hierarchy has to do with moral issues, of right and wrong. When do we apply our knowledge and why, what are the consequences.
3.2 Approaches to Knowledge management
A study from 1997 (Ruggles, 1998) identifies eight categories of knowledge focused activities; Generating new knowledge, assessing valuable knowledge from outside sources, using accessible knowledge in decision making, embedding knowledge in 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 organisation, measuring the value of knowledge assets and/or impact of knowledge management. The study found that four types of projects were more popular. Much attention focused on creating an Intranet to support access to knowledge and exchange of experience. Knowledge repositories were created in order to capture explicit codified knowledge in varying levels of context. Knowledge repositories are part of the organisational memory that is made up of rules, procedures and organisational culture, decision support tools were also a big area. As said earlier (Huber, 1990) providing decision-maker with accurate, timely information make it possible to make decisions faster. We must however be aware of the different decision making modes that exist. The fourth area is group ware to support collaboration. Collaboration is needed in order to generate new knowledge and to transfer existing knowledge. Another paper (Coombs Hull, 1998) Presents a framework for KM research that defines what they call Knowledge management practice. A KMP has four characteristics; Knowledge processing, Knowledge domains or topics, The part of the organisation that will be most effected, and the format or degree of formalisation. The use of KPMs can be used to classify activities or processes that qualify for knowledge management. In a paper (Jordan Jones, 1997) the authors present an approach for diagnosing a company's knowledge management status. The motivation for the diagnose is that the importance of intellectual capital then it comes to place a value of the company. As an example in 1985 IBM paid seven times the book value for Lotus. The diagnostic tool is made up of five different areas describing the knowledge mode of the organisation; Knowledge acquisition, problem solving, dissemination, ownership, and storage/memory. The more control the organisation has over each area the better knowledge management they have. Demarest (1997) Introduces something he calls commercial knowledge, that differs from academic and philosophical knowledge in that it does not have to be true, but lead to effective performance. The problem of a typical organisation is that there is no commonly held model for knowledge creation and dissemination within the firm, that there are no processes or systems focused on supporting these activities, that there are no metrics for evaluating the role of effectiveness of knowledge creation and knowledge disseminating activities, finally that there are no command and control systems focused on measuring and evaluating the various knowledge creating and disseminating processes in the firm. The answer to the firm is to look at what the culture and actions of the managers say about the value of knowledge in the firm. To look at how knowledge is created , embodied and disseminated and used in innovation. Where is the firm in terms of maturity of its knowledge systems, how to organise for knowledge management, What role does IT play in the organisations knowledge management. In an article Hedlund and Nonaka (1991) describes a model of Knowledge management that distinguishes between Tacit and explicit knowledge in terms of; cognition, skills, and embodied in artefacts, and syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic level. The model also distinguishes between the different carriers of knowledge; the individual, the small group, the organisation, and the inter organisational domain.
3.3 Organisational structure for Knowledge Management
In the literature (Drucker 1998, Nonaka 1995, Nonaka 1998) we find evidence that there is a need for a more dynamic structure of the organisation. Drucker claims that we in the near future will see only about a third of the managers that we have today. A reason for this is the information technology that makes middle management redundant. Instead Drucker sees a flatter organisation without middle management. Nonaka views the knowledge based organisation as something he calls the hypertext organisation. Made up of three layers. First a project team layer, where knowledge is created in a networked form, and made up of people that are taken out of their daily routine to work on a specific project. It is here that the knowledge is created. At the bottom we have a Knowledge base layer ther the individuals reflect on the knowledge and experience they have created and make this knowledge more explicit and available to the third layer the business layer. The business layer is the backbone of the organisation it is more stable than the project team layer and functions more like a bureaucracy and is therefore more adept in accumulating operational knowledge.
3.3 The learning organisation
Three critical issues must be resolved before an organisation can call itself a learning organisation (Garvin 1998) the question of meaning, the question of management, and the question of measurement. Teece (1998) also brings up the question of measurement. Garvin defines a learning organisation as "an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights". The organisation is made up of five building blocks; systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, learning from own experience and past history, learning from the experience and best practices of others, and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently through the organisation. In order to create a learning organisation the members have to reflect on what they are doing (Argyris 1998) this is done through a double loop learning process where you reflect on your own behaviour.
3.4 Competence
One motive for Knowledge management is to reduce learning curves for new employees in the organisation, as it gets less normal for employees to stay their entire lives within the same organisation (Hurme 1998). As one of knowledge management cornerstones is to use the knowledge of the individual to gain competitive advantage, it is therefor necessary to capture the knowledge residing in the heads of the employees.
3.5 Productivity
To increase productivity we could use systems that provide us with information and tools to analyse the information. One such approach is described in davenport, De Long, and Beers (1998) a repository not only with raw data, but also providing context and synthesis routed knowledge on different topics to managers with specific interest in a subject. In the article they describe three types of repositories; External knowledge, Structured internal knowledge, and informal knowledge. Other projects that help in increasing productivity is providing access to the knowledge. Yet another way is to improve the environment in which knowledge is created, transferred, and used.
3.6 Responsiveness
Responsiveness has to do with giving people access to the information they need when they need it, in order to make decisions faster, and to respond more quickly to changing needs on the market. The intranet has been said to be the solution for organisational technology when it comes to faster information systems development access to system data, and integration of incompatible systems, as well as enabling workflow management and accessing organisational knowledge (Scott 1998)
3.7 Innovation
Innovation takes place when different ideas, perspectives, and ways of processing and judging information collide (Leonard Straus 1998). And it also requires collaboration among people who see the world differently. Two major influences (Coombs, Hull, 1998) can be found in the discussion of
KM and innovation, the first seems internal to innovation research, and the second comes from the interface between innovation research and management research. It derives from perceived increase in importance of knowledge as a factor in production . Nonaka (1995) creates a model of knowledge management in support of innovation from a series of empirical studies of new product development. At the heart of the model is the assumption that it is possible to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and vice versa. In order to support this conversion a new organisational structure, the hypertext organisation, is needed. Before an organisation can learn from innovation, it must rethink the process by which innovation is transmitted through the organisation (Brown 1998). Research must coproduce by developing a shared understanding why innovations are important.
3.8 Strategy
In an article Wiig (1997a, 1997b) describe intellectual capital management (ICM) and knowledge management to be two complementary disciplines to manage the organisations knowledge. ICM focuses on building and governing intellectual assets from a strategic and enterprise perspective, whereas Knowledge management has tactical and operational perspectives. KM is more focused on facilitating and managing knowledge related activities such as creation, capture transformation, and use of knowledge. Its function is to plan, implement, operate and monitor all of the knowledge related activities. To do this organisations one or several of five basic knowledge centered strategies; Knowledge strategy as business strategy, Intellectual asset management, Personal knowledge, knowledge creation, knowledge transfer. To persue these strategies, organisations create programs, projects and activities. Create supporting infrastructures and incentives to motivate employees to take part.
3.9 Organisational culture
Culture can according to Schein (Nonaka, 1995) be viewed as a set of basic assumptions, invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. To facilitate knowledge creation and transfer, we need an infrastructure that provides us with a vehicle for this purpose. Organisational structure and culture (Quintas Lefrere Jones, 1997) including the development of structures to facilitate the growth of communities of practice, is an essential part to make knowledge transfer possible. Nonaka (1995) says that organisational culture orients the mindset and action of every employee. What is needed is a forum there the knowledge can be shared between the individuals within the organisation and enough motivation for the individuals to share what they know. As Alee (1997) puts it "For knowledge sharing to become a reality, you have to create a climate of trust in your organisation". One way of accommodating learning is to relive past events through storytelling (Kleiner Roth 1998). Storytelling lets people reexperience an event together and learn its meaning collectively.
4. A working definition of knowledge management
We have now come to a stage where we are able to make a more clear and precise definition of the concept of management of knowledge. We are also ready to define the area of interest for further study. The chosen area of further study will later be connected to different areas and concepts found in the literature review through a theoretical framework, that will be the foundation for the empirical study. We define the management of knowledge as the processes needed to make the organisation act as intelligent as possible in order to secure it viability and overall success as a system, and to manage all of its knowledge assets to best value. Creating a structure and an organisational culture that puts knowledge in focus does this. Arenas, systems, and incentives are needed in order to levitate the creation, capture, and transfer of knowledge in order to make knowledge part of the organisational memory as well as part of the individual knowledge, and to make the organisations knowledge related activities as effective as possible.
5. A framework for further studies
We will now describe the framework for the intended study. In the framework we describe the different areas of interest. The connections between the different concepts are defined and discussed, we also argue the rationality between the concepts and the chosen study object. We start the discussion by dividing the framework into two parts, or two sub-disciplines for knowledge management, a micro and macro level defined thus: The micro level is concerned with the individual and their use of knowledge and the systems that are designed to facilitate such use. It focuses on retrieval of knowledge and knowledge-systems. The macro level is more concerned with the relationship between knowledge and the organisation and its surrounding. The reason for this division is that we can choose to focus either on the individual need of support, or on the infrastructure that makes it all possible. The next part in the framework is to describe the carriers of the knowledge, it can be an individual, a group, an organisation, or of an inter-organisational kind. The knowledge carried can be either of tacit or explicit form and have to do with mental constructs, skills, and knowledge embodied in products. The knowledge activities or knowledge projects can be roughly categorised, according to (Ruggles 1998, Coombs Hull 1999) as falling into one of the following categories; Knowledge generation, Assessing outside sources, decision making, embedding knowledge into products, representing knowledge, facilitating knowledge growth, transferring existing knowledge and measuring the value of knowledge management. Each activity can be described further by describing the knowledge processing characteristics, the knowledge domain, the part of the organisation that will be most effected, and the degree of formality of the knowledge. To diagnose the maturity of the organisations knowledge management status we can use the diagnostic tool presented by Jordan and Jones (1997) with some additions from Demerast (1997) in order to capture the cultural elements and use of IT in knowledge management. The diagnostic tool can be used either on the whole organisation or on each activity or project, as the maturity of the different parts of the organisation can differ. To complete the picture we now present a rough sketch of the framework. Individual Activity Process Domain Org. Part Group Organisation Interorganisation
Tacit
Explicit
Diagistic tool Little Knowledge aquisition Problem solving Dissemination Ownership Storage Culture Maturity KM organisation Role of IT X X X X X X X X Lot
6. Where to go next
The next step is to make the framework more operative in order to be able to ask specific questions to the organisations to find out where their efforts fits in the framework, and to compare the results with findings in other studies.
7. Concluding remarks
Much of the knowledge management today has been criticised for being too focused on IT and managing data (Nonaka Reinmoeller Senoo, 1998). We need to understand that IT by itself does not create knowledge (Pemberton, 1998) any more than a library. Many KM-paths with an IT-focus assumes that knowledge can be treated as an object that can be stored, manipulated and transmitted. As we have shown this is only possible with a very small portion of knowledge.
References
Ackoff R. L., "From data to wisdom: Presidential adress to USGSR, June 1988", Journal of applied systems analysis, Volume 16, 1989, pp 3-9. Allee Verna, "12 principles of Knowledge Management", Training and development, November 1997, pp. 71-74. Argyris Chris, "Theaching smart people how to learn", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 81-108. Brown John Seely, "Research that reinvents the corporation", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp.153-180. Bukowitz Wendi R., Williams Ruth L., "The Knowledge Management Fieldbook", Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1999. Coombs Rod, Hull Richard, "Knowledge management practices and path-dependency in innovation", Research policy 27 (1998), pp 237-253. Davis Gordon B, Naumann J. David, "Personal productivity with information technology", McCrawHill, 1997 Davenport Thomas H, De Long David W, Beers Michael C., "Successful Knowledge Management Projects", Sloan Management review, Winter 1998, pp. 43-57. Demerest Marc, "Understanding Knowledge Management", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 374-384. Drucker Peter F. "The coming of the new organization", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 1-20. Drucker Peter F., "The informastion executives truly need", Harvard business review, January-februaru 1995, pp.54-62. Garvin A David, "Building a Learning Organization", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 47-80. Grant Robert M., "The Knowledge-based View of the Firm Imlications for Management Practice", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 450-453. Hedlund Gunnar, Nonaka Ikujiro, "Models of Knowledge Management in the West and Japan", Institute of International Business, September 1991. Huber George P., "The nature and design of post-industrial organizations", Management science, Vol 30, no 8, August 1984, pp. 928 - 951 Huber George P., "A teory of the effects of advenced information technologies on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making", Academy of management review, 1990, vol 15 no 1, pp.47-71.
Hurme Ingrid, "Knowledge Management i USA", Utlandsrapport, Sveriges tekniska Attacheer, 1998, In Swedish. Hård af Segerstad Peder, "Information och kommunikation", Hallgren och Fallgren, 1982, In swedish. Johanessen Jon-Arild, Olaisen Johan, Olsen Björn, "Systemic Thinking as the philosophical foundation for knowledge management and organizational learning", Kybernetes, vol 28, no 1, 1999 pp. 24-26. Jordan Judith, Jones Penelope, "Assessing your Company's Knowledge management style", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 392 - 398. Kleiner Art, Roth George, "How to make experience your company's best techer", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 137-152. Leonard Dorothy, Straus Susaan, "Putting your company's Whole Brain to work", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 109-136. Nonaka Ikujiro, "The Knowledge creating company", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 21-47. Nonaka Ikujiro, Reinmoeller Patrick, Senoo Dai, "Management Focus The 'ART' of Knowledge: Systems to Capitalize on Market Knowledge", European Management Journal, vol 16, no 6, December 1998, pp. 673-684. Nonaka Ikujiro, Takeuchi Hirotaka, "The Knowledge Creating Company", Oxford University press, 1995. Pemberton J Michael, "Knowledge Management (KM) and the epistemic tradition", Information management Journal, jul 1999. Probst Gilbert, Raub Steffen, Romhardt Kai, "Managing Knowledge, Wiley, 1999. Quinn James Brian, Anderson Philip, Finkelstein Sydney, "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the most of the best", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 181-206. Quintas Paul, Lefrere Paul, Jones Geoff, "Knowledge Management: a Strategic Agenda", Long range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 385-391. Rowley Jennifer, "Towards a Framework for Information Management", International Journal of information Management, vol 18, no 5, pp. 359-369. Ruggles Rudy, "The state of the notion: Knowledge management i practice", California management review, Berkeley, spring 1998. Scott Judy E., "Organizational Knowledge and the Intranet", Decision support Systems 23 (1998), pp. 3-17. Teece David J, "Research directions for knowledge management", California Management Review, Berkley Spring 1998. Wielinga Bob, Sandberg Jacobijn, Schreiber Guus, "Methods and techniques for Knowledge Management: What Has Knowledge Engineering to offer?", Expert systems with applications, vol 13, no 1, 1997, pp 73-84. Willard Patricia, Mychalyn Janette, "New Information Management Work in a Changing World: an Australian Survay", International Journal of information Management, vol 18, no 5, pp. 315-327. Wiig Karl M., "Integrating Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management". Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997a, pp. 399-405. Wiig Karl M, "Knowledge Management: Where did it come from and where will it go?", Expert systems with applications, vol 13, no 1, 1997b, pp 1-14.
doc_150351969.pdf
Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences.
Management of knowledge
Mikael Petersson
School of Management and Economics
Växjö University S-351 95 VÄXJÖ SWEDEN Tel: +46 470 70 86 39 Fax: +46 470 82 47 8 E-mail: [email protected] and The Systems Management Consortium Department of Computer and Systems Sciences Stockholm University Electrum 230 S-16440 KISTA SWEDEN
mailto:[email protected]
Keywords: Knowledge management, Organisational learning, Intellectual property, Intangible assets, Research
Abstract: This paper investigates the concept of management of knowledge and defines a framework in order to do empirical work in the field. The paper defines management of knowledge as the processes needed to make the organisation act as intelligent as possible in order to secure its viability and overall success as a system and to manage its knowledge assets to best value. The framework highlights four parts that make up critical areas that the researcher has to deal with during an empirical study, and helps in classifying the knowledge management activities.
1. Introduction
This paper tries to create a platform for an empirical study in order to find out what companies in Sweden does in terms of management of knowledge and compare these findings to those in "more advanced countries" such as the U.S.A. The paper is structured in two parts. The first takes a look on definitions of knowledge and related topics such as wisdom, information, data and symbols. It also takes a look at studies similar to the one intended, in order to find valuble insights and concepts to include in the proposed framework. In the second part of the paper we construct and discuss a framework based on the findings in the first part of the paper.
1.1 The rationale for research in management of information
Today or some say in a not too far future, fast changing markets will demand other qualities than traditional input of labour capital and land. The debate focuses more and more on the resources residing inside the employees' e.g. their knowledge. The rationale behind this assumption lies in the fact that more and more jobs are created within the service sector, not in the traditional industrial sector. The shift can bee seen as a reiteration of the industrial revolution where people moved from an agricultural society to an industrial one. Drucker (1995) wrote, "knowledge is the only meaningful economic resource. In the post-industrial era, the success of a corporation lies more in its intellectual and systems capabilities than in its physical assets (Quinn Anderson Finkelstein 1998). Management of knowledge is however nothing new, it has been done as long as mankind has walked the earth, but
it is this transition from an industrial culture to one based on knowledge and information that has accentuated this interest. Huber (1984) describes this transition as one that increases the amount of available knowledge and its absolute growth. At the same time the organisational complexity consisting of numerosity, diversity and interdependence will increase making it more difficult to cope with the surrounding environment. Systems theory tells us that as the number of components within a system increases the specialisation and interdependence of the components will increase (Johanssen Olaisen Olsen 1999). If we accept a future there organisations will rely more on the knowledge of their employees to carry out their business and an environment that will be more turbulent and complex we will have to face the challenge of managing this knowledge in order to gain competitive advantage or just in order to survive. A word of caution (Wielinga Sandberg Schriber, 1997) even though knowledge-based systems can be built and usefully employed most knowledge still resides in the heads of humans and in documents that cannot be easily formalised.
2. A tentative definition of knowledge management
In order to carry out this work we need some form of tentative definition of our concept of management of knowledge to give us a starting point from where we can start our work. From our findings we will then derive a more solid definition of the concept.
2.1 The definition
Our initial definition of management of knowledge is a common sense solution. As Knowledge is a inherent property of the individual, the maintenance of this knowledge ought to be of interest. We choose to call this competence and has to do with developing and maintaining the knowledge of employees through a continues learning process. Knowledge also has to do with the creation of new knowledge, structuring new ideas. As Huber (1990) states the change in the organisational environment will lead to a need for faster decision making. A key feature will be to be able to provide the decision-maker with current information, quickly. Finally as knowledge will be an essential feature of the products or services provided by the organisations we need to be able to capture best practices and incorporate the knowledge into the products. We also need to shorten cycle times, as the environment is likely to be turbulent. All of this needs to be tied in with the organisational culture and strategy in order to work.
3. A review of the literature
In this section we review a number of papers related to our initial definition of management of knowledge in order to create a more solid and scientific definition of the term.
3.1 The relation of signs, data, information, knowledge and wisdom
Much confusion has been caused by a rather loose use of these terms. In this section we will try to define what we mean by the terms. Sign has according to Segerstad (1982) several dimensions and it is necessary to divide these dimensions into subgroups in order to talk about them. One such division has been made by Carles S. Peirce. Peirce divides the sign into three groups, Icon, Index, and symbol. An Icon has a likeness to that which it represents, for example a picture or a mathematical equation. The Index has casual relation to that which it represents. We need an understanding of the world around us in order to make sense of indexes, that is we need theoretical knowledge. The third group Symbols get their meaning through an agreement between individuals, and can therefore look like anything. In an article Ackoff (1989) defines the relation data to wisdom. Ackoff defines the relation as a hierarchy of content types of the human mind. Data, is at the bottom of the hierarchy are symbols that represent some property of the real world. Information, the next type in the hierarchy is contained in descriptions, answers to questions. Information is inferred from data, and needs a context in order to be meaningful. We have to have a frame of reference to be able to make sense of the data. Stepping up the hierarchy we find knowledge. Knowledge come in several forms; Formal (declarative), Procedural, Meta, Impressionistic (tacit) (Davis Naumann, 1997), and is a high-level, value added form of information. Formal knowledge is a general knowledge of problem solving, facts, concepts, it is the
knowledge communicated by textbooks. Procedural knowledge is the knowledge about how to do something, more informal by nature and harder to communicate through a textbook. Meta knowledge is knowledge about knowledge and deals with how knowledge is organised and how you can gain access to knowledge. Impressionistic or tacit knowledge lies hidden in the sense that it is unstructured and not formal and resides in the head of the individual. Knowledge can be obtained either through transmission from someone who has it, by instruction, or by extracting it from experience. Wisdom, at the top of the hierarchy has to do with moral issues, of right and wrong. When do we apply our knowledge and why, what are the consequences.
3.2 Approaches to Knowledge management
A study from 1997 (Ruggles, 1998) identifies eight categories of knowledge focused activities; Generating new knowledge, assessing valuable knowledge from outside sources, using accessible knowledge in decision making, embedding knowledge in 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 organisation, measuring the value of knowledge assets and/or impact of knowledge management. The study found that four types of projects were more popular. Much attention focused on creating an Intranet to support access to knowledge and exchange of experience. Knowledge repositories were created in order to capture explicit codified knowledge in varying levels of context. Knowledge repositories are part of the organisational memory that is made up of rules, procedures and organisational culture, decision support tools were also a big area. As said earlier (Huber, 1990) providing decision-maker with accurate, timely information make it possible to make decisions faster. We must however be aware of the different decision making modes that exist. The fourth area is group ware to support collaboration. Collaboration is needed in order to generate new knowledge and to transfer existing knowledge. Another paper (Coombs Hull, 1998) Presents a framework for KM research that defines what they call Knowledge management practice. A KMP has four characteristics; Knowledge processing, Knowledge domains or topics, The part of the organisation that will be most effected, and the format or degree of formalisation. The use of KPMs can be used to classify activities or processes that qualify for knowledge management. In a paper (Jordan Jones, 1997) the authors present an approach for diagnosing a company's knowledge management status. The motivation for the diagnose is that the importance of intellectual capital then it comes to place a value of the company. As an example in 1985 IBM paid seven times the book value for Lotus. The diagnostic tool is made up of five different areas describing the knowledge mode of the organisation; Knowledge acquisition, problem solving, dissemination, ownership, and storage/memory. The more control the organisation has over each area the better knowledge management they have. Demarest (1997) Introduces something he calls commercial knowledge, that differs from academic and philosophical knowledge in that it does not have to be true, but lead to effective performance. The problem of a typical organisation is that there is no commonly held model for knowledge creation and dissemination within the firm, that there are no processes or systems focused on supporting these activities, that there are no metrics for evaluating the role of effectiveness of knowledge creation and knowledge disseminating activities, finally that there are no command and control systems focused on measuring and evaluating the various knowledge creating and disseminating processes in the firm. The answer to the firm is to look at what the culture and actions of the managers say about the value of knowledge in the firm. To look at how knowledge is created , embodied and disseminated and used in innovation. Where is the firm in terms of maturity of its knowledge systems, how to organise for knowledge management, What role does IT play in the organisations knowledge management. In an article Hedlund and Nonaka (1991) describes a model of Knowledge management that distinguishes between Tacit and explicit knowledge in terms of; cognition, skills, and embodied in artefacts, and syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic level. The model also distinguishes between the different carriers of knowledge; the individual, the small group, the organisation, and the inter organisational domain.
3.3 Organisational structure for Knowledge Management
In the literature (Drucker 1998, Nonaka 1995, Nonaka 1998) we find evidence that there is a need for a more dynamic structure of the organisation. Drucker claims that we in the near future will see only about a third of the managers that we have today. A reason for this is the information technology that makes middle management redundant. Instead Drucker sees a flatter organisation without middle management. Nonaka views the knowledge based organisation as something he calls the hypertext organisation. Made up of three layers. First a project team layer, where knowledge is created in a networked form, and made up of people that are taken out of their daily routine to work on a specific project. It is here that the knowledge is created. At the bottom we have a Knowledge base layer ther the individuals reflect on the knowledge and experience they have created and make this knowledge more explicit and available to the third layer the business layer. The business layer is the backbone of the organisation it is more stable than the project team layer and functions more like a bureaucracy and is therefore more adept in accumulating operational knowledge.
3.3 The learning organisation
Three critical issues must be resolved before an organisation can call itself a learning organisation (Garvin 1998) the question of meaning, the question of management, and the question of measurement. Teece (1998) also brings up the question of measurement. Garvin defines a learning organisation as "an organisation skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights". The organisation is made up of five building blocks; systematic problem solving, experimentation with new approaches, learning from own experience and past history, learning from the experience and best practices of others, and transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently through the organisation. In order to create a learning organisation the members have to reflect on what they are doing (Argyris 1998) this is done through a double loop learning process where you reflect on your own behaviour.
3.4 Competence
One motive for Knowledge management is to reduce learning curves for new employees in the organisation, as it gets less normal for employees to stay their entire lives within the same organisation (Hurme 1998). As one of knowledge management cornerstones is to use the knowledge of the individual to gain competitive advantage, it is therefor necessary to capture the knowledge residing in the heads of the employees.
3.5 Productivity
To increase productivity we could use systems that provide us with information and tools to analyse the information. One such approach is described in davenport, De Long, and Beers (1998) a repository not only with raw data, but also providing context and synthesis routed knowledge on different topics to managers with specific interest in a subject. In the article they describe three types of repositories; External knowledge, Structured internal knowledge, and informal knowledge. Other projects that help in increasing productivity is providing access to the knowledge. Yet another way is to improve the environment in which knowledge is created, transferred, and used.
3.6 Responsiveness
Responsiveness has to do with giving people access to the information they need when they need it, in order to make decisions faster, and to respond more quickly to changing needs on the market. The intranet has been said to be the solution for organisational technology when it comes to faster information systems development access to system data, and integration of incompatible systems, as well as enabling workflow management and accessing organisational knowledge (Scott 1998)
3.7 Innovation
Innovation takes place when different ideas, perspectives, and ways of processing and judging information collide (Leonard Straus 1998). And it also requires collaboration among people who see the world differently. Two major influences (Coombs, Hull, 1998) can be found in the discussion of
KM and innovation, the first seems internal to innovation research, and the second comes from the interface between innovation research and management research. It derives from perceived increase in importance of knowledge as a factor in production . Nonaka (1995) creates a model of knowledge management in support of innovation from a series of empirical studies of new product development. At the heart of the model is the assumption that it is possible to convert tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and vice versa. In order to support this conversion a new organisational structure, the hypertext organisation, is needed. Before an organisation can learn from innovation, it must rethink the process by which innovation is transmitted through the organisation (Brown 1998). Research must coproduce by developing a shared understanding why innovations are important.
3.8 Strategy
In an article Wiig (1997a, 1997b) describe intellectual capital management (ICM) and knowledge management to be two complementary disciplines to manage the organisations knowledge. ICM focuses on building and governing intellectual assets from a strategic and enterprise perspective, whereas Knowledge management has tactical and operational perspectives. KM is more focused on facilitating and managing knowledge related activities such as creation, capture transformation, and use of knowledge. Its function is to plan, implement, operate and monitor all of the knowledge related activities. To do this organisations one or several of five basic knowledge centered strategies; Knowledge strategy as business strategy, Intellectual asset management, Personal knowledge, knowledge creation, knowledge transfer. To persue these strategies, organisations create programs, projects and activities. Create supporting infrastructures and incentives to motivate employees to take part.
3.9 Organisational culture
Culture can according to Schein (Nonaka, 1995) be viewed as a set of basic assumptions, invented, discovered, or developed by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external adaptation and internal integration. To facilitate knowledge creation and transfer, we need an infrastructure that provides us with a vehicle for this purpose. Organisational structure and culture (Quintas Lefrere Jones, 1997) including the development of structures to facilitate the growth of communities of practice, is an essential part to make knowledge transfer possible. Nonaka (1995) says that organisational culture orients the mindset and action of every employee. What is needed is a forum there the knowledge can be shared between the individuals within the organisation and enough motivation for the individuals to share what they know. As Alee (1997) puts it "For knowledge sharing to become a reality, you have to create a climate of trust in your organisation". One way of accommodating learning is to relive past events through storytelling (Kleiner Roth 1998). Storytelling lets people reexperience an event together and learn its meaning collectively.
4. A working definition of knowledge management
We have now come to a stage where we are able to make a more clear and precise definition of the concept of management of knowledge. We are also ready to define the area of interest for further study. The chosen area of further study will later be connected to different areas and concepts found in the literature review through a theoretical framework, that will be the foundation for the empirical study. We define the management of knowledge as the processes needed to make the organisation act as intelligent as possible in order to secure it viability and overall success as a system, and to manage all of its knowledge assets to best value. Creating a structure and an organisational culture that puts knowledge in focus does this. Arenas, systems, and incentives are needed in order to levitate the creation, capture, and transfer of knowledge in order to make knowledge part of the organisational memory as well as part of the individual knowledge, and to make the organisations knowledge related activities as effective as possible.
5. A framework for further studies
We will now describe the framework for the intended study. In the framework we describe the different areas of interest. The connections between the different concepts are defined and discussed, we also argue the rationality between the concepts and the chosen study object. We start the discussion by dividing the framework into two parts, or two sub-disciplines for knowledge management, a micro and macro level defined thus: The micro level is concerned with the individual and their use of knowledge and the systems that are designed to facilitate such use. It focuses on retrieval of knowledge and knowledge-systems. The macro level is more concerned with the relationship between knowledge and the organisation and its surrounding. The reason for this division is that we can choose to focus either on the individual need of support, or on the infrastructure that makes it all possible. The next part in the framework is to describe the carriers of the knowledge, it can be an individual, a group, an organisation, or of an inter-organisational kind. The knowledge carried can be either of tacit or explicit form and have to do with mental constructs, skills, and knowledge embodied in products. The knowledge activities or knowledge projects can be roughly categorised, according to (Ruggles 1998, Coombs Hull 1999) as falling into one of the following categories; Knowledge generation, Assessing outside sources, decision making, embedding knowledge into products, representing knowledge, facilitating knowledge growth, transferring existing knowledge and measuring the value of knowledge management. Each activity can be described further by describing the knowledge processing characteristics, the knowledge domain, the part of the organisation that will be most effected, and the degree of formality of the knowledge. To diagnose the maturity of the organisations knowledge management status we can use the diagnostic tool presented by Jordan and Jones (1997) with some additions from Demerast (1997) in order to capture the cultural elements and use of IT in knowledge management. The diagnostic tool can be used either on the whole organisation or on each activity or project, as the maturity of the different parts of the organisation can differ. To complete the picture we now present a rough sketch of the framework. Individual Activity Process Domain Org. Part Group Organisation Interorganisation
Tacit
Explicit
Diagistic tool Little Knowledge aquisition Problem solving Dissemination Ownership Storage Culture Maturity KM organisation Role of IT X X X X X X X X Lot
6. Where to go next
The next step is to make the framework more operative in order to be able to ask specific questions to the organisations to find out where their efforts fits in the framework, and to compare the results with findings in other studies.
7. Concluding remarks
Much of the knowledge management today has been criticised for being too focused on IT and managing data (Nonaka Reinmoeller Senoo, 1998). We need to understand that IT by itself does not create knowledge (Pemberton, 1998) any more than a library. Many KM-paths with an IT-focus assumes that knowledge can be treated as an object that can be stored, manipulated and transmitted. As we have shown this is only possible with a very small portion of knowledge.
References
Ackoff R. L., "From data to wisdom: Presidential adress to USGSR, June 1988", Journal of applied systems analysis, Volume 16, 1989, pp 3-9. Allee Verna, "12 principles of Knowledge Management", Training and development, November 1997, pp. 71-74. Argyris Chris, "Theaching smart people how to learn", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 81-108. Brown John Seely, "Research that reinvents the corporation", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp.153-180. Bukowitz Wendi R., Williams Ruth L., "The Knowledge Management Fieldbook", Financial Times Prentice Hall, 1999. Coombs Rod, Hull Richard, "Knowledge management practices and path-dependency in innovation", Research policy 27 (1998), pp 237-253. Davis Gordon B, Naumann J. David, "Personal productivity with information technology", McCrawHill, 1997 Davenport Thomas H, De Long David W, Beers Michael C., "Successful Knowledge Management Projects", Sloan Management review, Winter 1998, pp. 43-57. Demerest Marc, "Understanding Knowledge Management", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 374-384. Drucker Peter F. "The coming of the new organization", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 1-20. Drucker Peter F., "The informastion executives truly need", Harvard business review, January-februaru 1995, pp.54-62. Garvin A David, "Building a Learning Organization", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 47-80. Grant Robert M., "The Knowledge-based View of the Firm Imlications for Management Practice", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 450-453. Hedlund Gunnar, Nonaka Ikujiro, "Models of Knowledge Management in the West and Japan", Institute of International Business, September 1991. Huber George P., "The nature and design of post-industrial organizations", Management science, Vol 30, no 8, August 1984, pp. 928 - 951 Huber George P., "A teory of the effects of advenced information technologies on organizational design, intelligence, and decision making", Academy of management review, 1990, vol 15 no 1, pp.47-71.
Hurme Ingrid, "Knowledge Management i USA", Utlandsrapport, Sveriges tekniska Attacheer, 1998, In Swedish. Hård af Segerstad Peder, "Information och kommunikation", Hallgren och Fallgren, 1982, In swedish. Johanessen Jon-Arild, Olaisen Johan, Olsen Björn, "Systemic Thinking as the philosophical foundation for knowledge management and organizational learning", Kybernetes, vol 28, no 1, 1999 pp. 24-26. Jordan Judith, Jones Penelope, "Assessing your Company's Knowledge management style", Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 392 - 398. Kleiner Art, Roth George, "How to make experience your company's best techer", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 137-152. Leonard Dorothy, Straus Susaan, "Putting your company's Whole Brain to work", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 109-136. Nonaka Ikujiro, "The Knowledge creating company", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 21-47. Nonaka Ikujiro, Reinmoeller Patrick, Senoo Dai, "Management Focus The 'ART' of Knowledge: Systems to Capitalize on Market Knowledge", European Management Journal, vol 16, no 6, December 1998, pp. 673-684. Nonaka Ikujiro, Takeuchi Hirotaka, "The Knowledge Creating Company", Oxford University press, 1995. Pemberton J Michael, "Knowledge Management (KM) and the epistemic tradition", Information management Journal, jul 1999. Probst Gilbert, Raub Steffen, Romhardt Kai, "Managing Knowledge, Wiley, 1999. Quinn James Brian, Anderson Philip, Finkelstein Sydney, "Managing Professional Intellect: Making the most of the best", Harvard Business review on Knowledge Management, pp. 181-206. Quintas Paul, Lefrere Paul, Jones Geoff, "Knowledge Management: a Strategic Agenda", Long range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997, pp. 385-391. Rowley Jennifer, "Towards a Framework for Information Management", International Journal of information Management, vol 18, no 5, pp. 359-369. Ruggles Rudy, "The state of the notion: Knowledge management i practice", California management review, Berkeley, spring 1998. Scott Judy E., "Organizational Knowledge and the Intranet", Decision support Systems 23 (1998), pp. 3-17. Teece David J, "Research directions for knowledge management", California Management Review, Berkley Spring 1998. Wielinga Bob, Sandberg Jacobijn, Schreiber Guus, "Methods and techniques for Knowledge Management: What Has Knowledge Engineering to offer?", Expert systems with applications, vol 13, no 1, 1997, pp 73-84. Willard Patricia, Mychalyn Janette, "New Information Management Work in a Changing World: an Australian Survay", International Journal of information Management, vol 18, no 5, pp. 315-327. Wiig Karl M., "Integrating Intellectual Capital and Knowledge Management". Long Range Planning, vol 30, no 3, 1997a, pp. 399-405. Wiig Karl M, "Knowledge Management: Where did it come from and where will it go?", Expert systems with applications, vol 13, no 1, 1997b, pp 1-14.
doc_150351969.pdf