COMP3740 CR32:Knowledge Management

and Adaptive Systems

Organisational Knowledge Management

By Eric Atwell, School of Computing, University of Leeds

(including re-use of teaching resources from other sources, esp. Stuart Roberts, School of Computing, Univ of Leeds)

Module Objectives include …

“On completion of this module, students should be able to:

… understand the nature and importance of different types of knowledge, including organisational knowledge; …”

… recap …

Knowledge in Knowledge Management

Three meanings:

• the state of knowing or to be acquainted or familiar with (“know about”)

• the capacity for action (“know how”)

• codified, captured and accumulated facts, methods, principles and techniques.

Based on: F Nickols,

The Knowledge in Knowledge Management. KM Handbook.

From Information to Knowledge

high

high

low

low

Human Agency

Order/Structure

SIGNALS

DATA

INFORMATION

KNOWLEDGE

Physical-

Structu

ring

* sensin

g

* selectin

g

Cognitive-

Structu

ring

Belief-

Structu

ring

* meanin

g

* sig

nificance

* belie

fs

* justif

ication

Google practice and theory

• Google finds hits, ORDERED using lots of metrics eg no of links TO and FROM each page

• Finds html pages, also ppt, images, maps

• Google has other tools: scholar, books, code, labs

• We looked at basic maths: compute many weights, add/multiply together …

• Google API can be called by a program, to find hits and download them to a CORPUS; BootCat can use a SEED-LIST of many more than 10 keywords

Organisational Knowledge

The view of knowledge taken in this module is a very narrow one, motivated by those KM tasks that can be aided by technology. This lecture attempts to redress this imbalance a little by showing that KM is more than simply a technical issue.

Knowledge Management

• “It could be argued that the concept of knowledge management either is an oxymoron.. or misleading..”

Alvesson and Karreman, “Odd Couple: Making sense of the curious concept of knowledge management”, J Man

Studies, 38:7, 995-1018, Nov 2001.

• “You cannot manage knowledge any more than you can manage love or friendship or religion”

Stephen Denning, World Bank

Oxymoron

• LDOCE: oxymoron: a deliberate combination of two words that seem to mean the opposite of each other, such as ‘you’ve got to be cruel to be kind’

Organisational Knowledge

• What is known or knowable – “Most organizations have a far richer store

of ..knowledge than is ever utilized for the benefit of the enterprise as a whole, because it is piecemeal, is dispersed throughout the organization and is held principally as unrecorded impressions and insights in the heads of individuals”.

Organisational Knowledge

• “Programmed” information (explicit/implicit)– operational, transaction-oriented systems;

– databases, information systems, decision-support systems.

– text, if searched using IR/IE (or text analytics – NLP)

• “Non-programmed information” (tacit, cultural)– “intelligence” (in the military sense);

– strategic knowledge (“know why” and “know when”);

– gained through casual interaction; “unpremeditated information”.

Where is human knowledge stored?

• Individual – explicit AND tacit

• Culture – shared beliefs, norm, values

• Ecology – eg the trend towards open plan offices attempts to promote knowledge sharing

12%

20%

26%

42%

Electronic knowledgebasesElectronic documents

Paper documents

Employees brains

Where corporate knowledge resides

Delphi Group 2000 survey of 700 US companies

Knowledge Bases• 2/3 of knowledge is NOT in electronic form• Of the remainder, 2/3 is in “documents”: English text• 1/3 of 1/3 (12%) is in “knowledge bases”: data with

structure , eg– Databases– XML (HTML, SGML,…) tagged text/data– Knowledge representation formalisms, eg predicate logic,

ONTOLOGIES, DATR, RDF, OWL, semantic networks– KM Consultants must know lots of terminology !

Process view of KM

• Knowledge management revolves around a number of processes which typically include:– Knowledge gathering: creation and acquisition– Knowledge organising and storage– Knowledge refining: finding patterns, clusters, …– Knowledge transfer and use

Example process view: The processes suggested by Coleman are:

1 Gathering – process of bringing information and data into the system;

2. Organising and storage – process of associating items to subjects, giving them a context, making them easier to find;

3. Refining – process of adding value by discovering relationships, abstracting, synthesis and sharing;

4. Disseminating – process of getting knowledge to those who can use it.

Coleman D, “Collaborating on the Internet and Intranets”, Proc. Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences, IEEE Computer Society, 2:350-8, 1997

Coleman’s KM processes: examples• Can you give examples of Coleman’s processes in

teaching and research in the School of Computing?– Knowledge gathering: creation and acquisition– Knowledge organising and storage– Knowledge refining: finding patterns, clusters, …– Knowledge transfer and use

• Can you give examples in use of a specific KM IT system, eg Leeds Uni library catalogue?

People-oriented Knowledge Creation• Socialisation: (tacit tacit)

– Tacit knowledge acquired through shared experiences

• Externalisation: (tacit explicit)– Converting tacit (implicit) knowledge to explicit through use of abstractions,

metaphors, analogies and models

• Combination: (explicit explicit)– Creating new explicit knowledge by bringing together knowledge from different

sources.

• Internalisation: (explicit tacit)– Embodying explicit knowledge into the shared mental models and work

practices of the organisation.

Knowledge diffusion: a 3-D Model

Undiffused Diffused

Abstract

Concrete Uncodifi

ed

Codifi

ed

Personal (Tacit) Knowledge

Proprietary (Explicit)

Knowledge

Public(Explicit)

Knowledge

Common Sense(Cultural)

Knowledge

Knowledge Utilisation

• Tacit, explicit and cultural knowledge combine:• architect

– understands what is aesthetically pleasing (tacit )– material characteristics (explicit)– norms and conventions of their profession (cultural)

• driving a car – clutch control (tacit ‘know how’)– highway code (explicit)– when to bend the rules (cultural)

Why is ‘KM’ important?

• More and more work is ‘knowledge work’, less and less is manual work.

• In 1920 the ratio of manual work to knowledge work was 2:1. By 1980 it was the other way round

• Data, information, knowledge – these are the resources needed for knowledge work.– Fred Nickols, “What Is” in the World of Work and Working:

Some implications of the Shift to Knowledge Work, in “The Knowledge Management Yearbook 2001-2002”, JW Cortada and JA Woods (Eds), Butterworth Heinmann

Knowledge is a resource

The basic economic resource is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labour. It is and will be knowledge. Value is now created by productivity and innovation, both applications of knowledge at work.

Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993) Knowledge is power

– In a competitive environment individuals may not be open to sharing their knowledge.

– For example: try to find out how Google works…

KM provides the competitive edge

• First generation computer systems replaced manual with IT-based procedures.

• Databases and data communications led to availability of better Information for decision-making. “Information Management” foregrounded.

• “Knowledge management” changes the focus from the technology to the organisation. Increases differentiation.

This, coupled with the importance of adaptability leads to the idea of the ‘learning organisation’.

Use of IT

• Knowledge Management is more than an IT issue.• Computer technology can help to:

– organise, analyse and make accessible the information from which knowledge derives

– Integrate disparate information sources

– aid articulation of tacit knowledge

– aid knowledge diffusion, sharing and cooperative working

– discover knowledge in the form of patterns and abstractions

Issues to think about…

• Does an organisation hold any knowledge that is not associated with individuals?

• Is knowledge a resource? How does it differ from other managed resources?

• Is there more to KM than “(managing) the infrastructure and work environment to help exchange, flow and capture what people know”?

• Which of Coleman’s processes could be aided by IT?• Can you give examples of Coleman’s processes in a

specific Knowledge Management scenario?