Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice

Kimiz Dalkir

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136389740
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Betriebswirtschaft
• Subtopic: Business allgemein

First published in 2011. As knowledge management becomes embedded within organisations it becomes more important for students to understand its principles and applications. In this text the author provides a comprehensive overview of the field of knowledge management with an emphasis on translating theory into practice, Working from a multidisciplinary perspective, he weaves key concepts, tools, and techniques from sociology, cognitive science, content management, knowledge engineering, cybernetics, organisational behaviour, change management and information science into a three level approach.

1

Introduction to Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice

A light bulb in the socket is worth two in the pocket.

Bill Wolf (1950–2001)

This chapter provides an introduction to the study of knowledge management (KM). A brief history of knowledge management concepts is outlined, noting that much of KM existed before the actual term came into popular use. The lack of consensus over what constitutes a good definition of KM is addressed, and the concept analysis technique is described as a means of clarifying the conceptual confusion that persists over precisely what KM is. The multidisciplinary roots of KM are enumerated, together with their contributions to the discipline. The two major forms of knowledge, tacit and explicit, are compared and contrasted. The importance of KM today for individuals, for communities of practice, and for organizations are described, together with the emerging KM roles and responsibilities needed to ensure successful KM implementations.

Learning Objectives

1. Use a framework and a clear language for knowledge management concepts.
2. Define key knowledge management concepts such as intellectual capital, organizational learning and memory, knowledge taxonomy, and communities of practice using concept analysis.
3. Provide an overview of the history of knowledge management and identify key milestones.
4. Describe the key roles and responsibilities required for knowledge management applications.

Introduction

The ability to manage knowledge is becoming increasingly more crucial in today’s knowledge economy. The creation and diffusion of knowledge have become ever more important factors in competitiveness. More and more, knowledge is being regarded as a valuable commodity that is embedded in products (especially high-technology products) and in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile employees. Although knowledge is increasingly being viewed as a commodity or an intellectual asset, it possesses some paradoxical characteristics that are radically different from those of other valuable commodities. These knowledge characteristics include the following:

▪ Use of knowledge does not consume it.

▪ Transferral of knowledge does not result in losing it.

▪ Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is scarce.

▪ Much of an organization’s valuable knowledge walks out the door at the end of the day.

The advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web have made unlimited sources of knowledge available to us all. Pundits are heralding the dawn of the Knowledge Age supplanting the Industrial Era. Forty years ago, nearly half of all workers in industrialized countries were making or helping to make things; today that proportion is down to 20% (Drucker, 1994; Bart, 2000). Laborintensive manufacturing with a large pool of relatively cheap, relatively homogeneous labor and hierarchical management has given way to knowledge-based organizations. There are fewer people doing more work. Organizational hierarchies are being put aside as knowledge work calls for more collaboration. The only sustainable advance a firm has comes from what it collectively knows, how efficiently it uses what it knows, and how quickly it acquires and uses new knowledge (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). An organization in the Knowledge Age is one that learns, remembers, and acts based on the best available information, knowledge, and know-how.

All of these developments have created a strong need for a deliberate and systematic approach to cultivating and sharing a company’s knowledge base— one populated with valid and valuable lessons learned and best practices. In other words, in order to be successful in today’s challenging organizational environment, companies need to learn from their past errors and not reinvent the wheel again and again. Organizational knowledge is not intended to replace individual knowledge but to complement it by making it stronger, more coherent, and more broadly applicative. Knowledge management represents a deliberate and systematic approach to ensure the full utilization of the organization’s knowledge base, coupled with the potential of individual skills, competencies, thoughts, innovations, and ideas to create a more efficient and effective organization. The Iaccoca Institute found that “CEOs, when asked how much of the knowledge that is available to the organization is actually used, responded ‘only about 20%.’ Yet if this figure represented average utilization of production capacity, it would only be acceptable to the most foolhardy CEOs” (Agile People Enterprise Development Group Newsletter, Iacocca Institute, Pennsylvania, November 1996).

Knowledge management (KM) was initially defined as the process of applying a systematic approach to the capture, structure, management, and dissemination of knowledge throughout an organization in order to work faster, reuse best practices, and reduce costly rework from project to project (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Pasternack and Viscio, 1998; Pfeiffer and Sutton, 1999; Ruggles and Holtshouse, 1999). KM is often characterized by a “pack rat” approach to content: “save it, it may prove useful sometime in the future.” Many documents tend to be warehoused, sophisticated search engines are then used to try to retrieve some of this content, and fairly large-scale and costly KM systems are built. Knowledge management solutions have proven to be most successful in the capture, storage, and subsequent dissemination of knowledge that has been rendered explicit—particularly lessons learned and best practices.

The focus of intellectual capital management (ICM), on the other hand, is on those pieces of knowledge that are of business value to the organization— referred to as intellectual capital or assets (Bontis and Nikitopoulos, 2001). Although some of these are more visible (e.g., patents, intellectual property), the majority consist of know-how, know-why, experience, and expertise that tend to reside within the head of one or a few employees (Klein, 1998; Stewart, 1997). ICM is characterized by less content—because content is filtered and judged, and only the best are inventoried (the “top ten,” for example). ICM content tends to be more representative of a person’s real thinking (contextual information, opinions, stories) owing to its emphasis on actionable knowledge and know-how. As a result, endeavors are less costly and the focus shifts to learning (at the individual, community, and organizational level) rather than to the building of systems.

A good definition of knowledge management incorporates both the capturing and storing of the knowledge perspective, together with the valuing of intellectual assets. For example:

Knowledge management is the deliberate and systematic coordination of an organization’s people, technology, processes, and organizational structure in order to add value through reuse and innovation. This coordination is achieved through creating, sharing, and applying knowledge as well as through feeding the valuable lessons learned and best practices into corporate memory in order to foster continued organizational learning.

When asked, most executives often state that their greatest asset is the knowledge held by their employees. They also invariably add that they have no idea how to manage this knowledge! It is essential to identify that knowledge that is of value and is also at risk of being lost to the organization, through retirement, turnover, and competition using the intellectual capital or asset approach. In addition, the selective or value-based knowledge management approach should be a three-tiered one. That is, it should also be applied to three organizational levels: the individual, the group or community, and the organization itself. The best way to retain valuable knowledge is to identify intellectual assets and then to ensure that legacy materials are produced and subsequently stored in such a way as to make their future retrieval and reuse as easy as possible (Stewart, 2000). These tangible by-products need to flow from individual to individual, between members of a community of practice, and, of course, back to the organization itself, in the form of lessons learned, best practices, and corporate memory.

Many knowledge management (KM) efforts have been largely concerned with capturing, codifying, and sharing the knowledge held by people in organizations. Although there is still a lack of consensus over what constitutes a good definition of KM (see the next section), there is widespread agreement as to the goals of an organization that undertakes KM. Nickols (2000) summarizes these goals as follows: “the basic aim of knowledge management is to leverage knowledge to the organization’s advantage.” Some of management’s motives are obvious: the loss of skilled people through turnover, pressures to avoid reinventing the wheel, pressures for organization-wide innovations in processes as well as products, management of risk, and the accelerating rate at which new knowledge is being created. Some typical knowledge management objectives are to:

▪ Facilitate a smooth transition from those retiring to their successors who are recruited to fill their positions.

▪ Minimize loss of corporate memory due to attrition and retirement.

▪ Identify critical resources and critical areas of knowledge so that the corporation “knows what it knows and does it well—and why.”

▪ Build up a toolkit of methods that can be used with individuals, with groups, and with the organization to stem the potential loss of intellectual capital.

What is Knowledge Management?

An informal survey conducted by the author identified over 100 published definitions of knowledge management, and of these, at least 72 could be considered very good! Clearly, KM is a multidisciplinary field of study that covers a lot of ground. This finding should not be surprising, for applying knowledge to work is integral to most business activities. However, the field of KM does suffer from the “Three Blind Men and an Elephant” syndrome. In fact, there are likely more than three distinct perspectives on KM, and each leads to a different extrapolation and a different definition.

From the business perspective:

Knowledge management is a business activity w...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction to Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice
• 2. The Knowledge Management Cycle
• 3. Knowledge Management Models
• 4. Knowledge Capture and Codification
• 5. Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice
• 6. Knowledge Application
• 7. The Role of Organizational Culture
• 8. Knowledge Management Tools
• 9. KM Strategy and Metrics
• 10. The KM Team
• 11. Future Challenges for KM
• Glossary
• Index