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Knowledge Management

BY:

Mohanad Ali Kareem

MBA

IV semester

2015

Department of Commerce and Business Administration

Acharya Nagarjuna University

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UNIT- I

LEVERAGING KNOWLEDGE:

Knowledge evolves knowledge-leveraging practices with the communities that

embody them. Knowledge-leveraging practices and communities where

practitioners think and act together to transform information and experience into

insights and insights into products, services and competencies enhance an

organizations ability to live in change and thus, to continue to deliver value in

the midst of uncertainty, paradox, complexity and the unknown. Knowledge-

leveraging practices and communities engage the fullness of our human ability

to learn, create, change. Thus, e-Knowledge adds value to knowledge-

leveraging initiatives primarily by participating as co-learner and empathic

provocateur in the journey of optimizing organizational performance.

Specific services include:

assessing an organizations knowledge base (its common sense shaping

its decisions and practices)

identifying and seeding communities that upgrade and leverage

knowledge strategic to business strategy and core competencies

creating and implementing online collaboration environments to support

communities of practice, e-learning, virtual teams;

developing database-driven solutions to complement face-to-face services

as well as administrative, fundraising, marketing and evaluative

functions;

offering the full range of Internet presence services: web hosting,

domain name registration, e-commerce, SSL certificates, Internet

marketing.

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Knowledge Management:

Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices

used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable

adoption of insights and experiences.

Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in

individuals or embedded in organizations as processes or practices.

Knowledge management efforts typically focus on organizational objectives

such as improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing

of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organization.

"Knowledge management is a discipline that promotes an integrated approach to

identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise's

information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies,

procedures, and previously un-captured expertise and experience in individual

workers.

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE:

Knowledge is intangible, dynamic, and difficult to measure, but without it no organization can survive.

Tacit: or unarticulated knowledge is more personal, experiential, context specific, and hard to formalize; is difficult to communicate or

share with others; and is generally in the heads of individuals and teams.

Explicit: explicit knowledge can easily be written down and codified.

Explicit Knowledge is knowledge that is consciously understood & can be articulated. In other words, knowledge the knower is aware of & can talk about.

Explicit knowledge Objective, rational, technical Policies, goals, strategies, papers, reports Codified Leaky knowledge

Tacit Knowledge is knowledge that knower is not aware about. Tacit knowledge

Subjective, cognitive, experiential learning Highly personalized Difficult to formalize Sticky knowledge

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DATA, INFORMATION & KNOWLEDGE:

Data are symbols Information are the data that are processed to be useful; provides

answers to "who", "what", "where", and "when" questions.

Knowledge is nothing but application of data and information; answers "how" questions.

Data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence. It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself.

In computer parlance, a spreadsheet generally starts out by holding data.

Information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection. This "meaning" can be useful, but does not have to be. In

computer parlance, a relational database makes information from the data

stored within it.

Knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's intent is to be useful.

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Organizational knowledge:

is a newly emerging, interdisciplinary business model that has knowledge

within the framework of an organization as its focus.

Organizational knowledge supports & coordinates the creation, transfer &

application of individual knowledge into value creation process.

Organizational knowledge is a process which helps organizations to

identify, select, organize, disseminate, and transfer important information

and expertise that are part of organizations memory.

Characteristics of Organizational knowledge:

Extraordinary leverage and increasing returns

Fragmentation , Leakage, and the need to refresh

Uncertain value

Uncertain value of sharing

Rooted in time

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Components of organizational knowledge:

People

Process

Technology

1. People

People manage the system and processes.

Need is to convince people about the benefits of strategic knowledge

management.

2. Processes

Careful management of the alignment of strategies, principles,

processes and practices needs to be done.

3. Technologies

Contributor to the health and effectiveness of the organization.

knowledge management program:

A winning knowledge management program increases staff productivity,

product and service quality, and deliverable consistency by capitalizing on

intellectual and knowledge-based assets.

Many organizations leap into a knowledge management solution (e.g. document

management, data mining, blogging, and community forums) without first

considering the purpose or objectives they wish to fulfill or how the

organization will adopt and follow best practices for managing its knowledge

assets long term.

people

ProcessesTechnologies

organizational

knowledge

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A successful knowledge management program will consider more than just

technology. An organization should also consider

People. They represent how you increase the ability of individuals within

the organization to influence others with their knowledge.

Processes. They involve how you establish best practices and governance

for the efficient and accurate identification, management, and

dissemination of knowledge.

Technology. It addresses how you choose, configure, and utilize tools

and automation to enable knowledge management.

Structure. It directs how you transform organizational structures to

facilitate and encourage cross-discipline awareness and expertise.

Culture. It embodies how you establish and cultivate a knowledge-

sharing, knowledge-driven culture.

Challenges of Implementing a knowledge management

program:

Implementing a knowledge management program is no easy feat. You will

encounter many challenges along the way including many of the following:

Inability to recognize or articulate knowledge; turning tacit knowledge

into explicit knowledge.

Geographical distance and/or language barriers in an international

company.

Limitations of information and communication technologies.

Loosely defined areas of expertise.

Internal conflicts (e.g. professional territoriality).

Lack of incentives or performance management goals.

Poor training or mentoring programs.

Cultural barriers (e.g. this is how we've always done it mentality).

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The following eight-step approach will enable you to identify these challenges

so you can plan for them, thus minimizing the risks and maximizing the

rewards. This approach was developed based on logical, tried-and-true activities

for implementing any new organizational program. The early steps involve

strategy, planning, and requirements gathering while the later steps focus on

execution and continual improvement.

Step 1: Establish Knowledge Management Program Objectives

Before selecting a tool, defining a process, and developing workflows, you

should envision and articulate the end state. In order to establish the appropriate

program objectives, identify and document the business problems that need

resolution and the business drivers that will provide momentum and justification

for the endeavor.

Step 2: Prepare for Change

Knowledge management is more than just an application of technology. It

involves cultural changes in the way employees perceive and share knowledge

they develop or possess. One common cultural hurdle to increasing the sharing

Step 3: Define High-Level Process

To facilitate the effective management of your organization's knowledge assets,

you should begin by laying out a high-level knowledge management

process. The process can be progressively developed with detailed procedures

and work instructions throughout steps four, five, and six. However, it should be

finalized and approved prior to step seven (implementation).

Step 4: Determine and Prioritize Technology Needs

Depending on the program objectives established in step one and the process

controls and criteria defined in step three, you can begin to determine and

prioritize your knowledge management technology needs. With such a variety

of knowledge management solutions, it is imperative to understand the cost and

benefit of each type of technology and the primary technology providers in the

marketplace.

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Step 5: Assess Current State

Now that you've established your program objectives to solve your business

problem, prepared for change to address cultural issues, defined a high-level

process to enable the effective management of your knowledge assets, and

determined and prioritized your technology needs that will enhance and

automate knowledge management related activities, you are in a position to

assess the current state of knowledge management within your organization.

Step 6: Build a Knowledge Management Implementation Roadmap

With the current-state assessment in hand, it is time to build the implementation

roadmap for your knowledge management program. But before going too far,

you should re-confirm senior leadership's support and commitment, as well as

the funding to implement and maintain the knowledge management program.

Step 7: Implementation

Implementing a knowledge management program and maturing the overall

effectiveness of your organization will require significant personnel resources

and funding. Be prepared for the long haul, but at the same time, ensure that

incremental advances are made and publicized.

Step 8: Measure and Improve the Knowledge Management Program

How will you know your knowledge management investments are

working? You will need a way of measuring your actual effectiveness and

comparing that to anticipated results. If possible, establish some baseline

measurements in order to capture the before shot of the organizations

performance prior to implementing the knowledge management program. Then,

after implementation, trend and compare the new results to the old results to see

how performance has improved.

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UNIT- I I

IT in Knowledge Management:

KM systems are developed using three sets of technologies

communication, collaboration, and storage and retrieval

Several technologies supported KM are:-

Artificial intelligence

Intelligent agents

Knowledge discovery databases

Extensible markup Language (XML)

Information technology, by itself is not KM

However,

o KM is often facilitated by IT

o IT provides solutions to KM

o IT is a tool to increase the efficiency and capability of KM

facilitates document management, data storage, access of information, the

dissemination, exchange and sharing of ideas

Knowledge

Information

technology

Knowledge

management

Enhancing efficiency!

Higher productivity!

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KM systems classification based on observations on the KM systems

implementations:

Knowledge Discovery Systems

Knowledge Capture Systems

Knowledge Sharing Systems

Knowledge Application Systems

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS:

The development of IT for organisations has produced many successful ERP-type

systems that manage well-defined processes. But systems to manage ill-defined,

knowledge intensive processes have met with less success. KM practitioners use a

wide range of IT tools to share, create, codify, and share knowledge. The trend in the

development of IT for organisations is toward more communication and collaboration

tools.

A number of tools are available to support the functionalities and processes of KM,

which are listed below:

(i) Tools to access knowledge:These tools provide access to explicit knowledge

that can be shared and transferred Convera is a tool used for retrieval ware. It

works on powerful indexing systems to classify expertise based on both content

and collaboration dynamics and networks within the enterprise.

(ii) Tools for semantic mapping: These tools are meant to quickly support

presentation of information, analysis, and decision making. Ontology tools are

also part of this category as they enable users to organize information and

knowledge by groups and schemata that represent the organizational knowledge

base.

(iii) Tools for knowledge extraction: These tools support structured queries and

replies. They help mining text by interpreting relationships among different

elements and documents.

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(iv) Tools for expertise localization: These tools enable quick location of the

knowledge holders in the enterprise and facilitate collaboration and knowledge

exchange. For example, ActiveNet maintains a continuous, real-time view of

organisational activities.

(v) Tools for collaboration work: These tools enable teams to globally share

dedicated spaces for managing the project lifecycle; editing and publishing

materials; conducting live discussions and interactions.

Other tools of knowledge management :

Email or messaging

Document management

Search engines

Enterprise information portal

Data warehouse

Groupware

Workflow management

Web-based training

Data Warehouse and data mining :

Data Warehouse:

A single, complete and consistent store of data obtained from a variety of

different sources made available to end users in a what they can

understand and use in a business context.

A process of transforming data into information and making it available

to users in a timely enough manner to make a difference.

Data warehousing refers to single, centralized, and unified repository of

data that works across the enterprise.

A data warehouse is subject-oriented, integrated, time-varying, non-

volatile collection of data that is used primarily in organizational decision

making.

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Database with the following distinctive characteristics:

Separate from operational databases

Subject oriented: provides a simple, concise view on one or

more selected areas, in support of the decision process

Constructed by integrating multiple, heterogeneous data

sources

Contains historical data: spans a much longer time horizon

than operational databases

(Mostly) Read-Only access: periodic, infrequent updates

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Data mining:

Data mining refers to extracting or mining knowledge from large amount

of data.

Data mining is also known as knowledge discovery in database.

Data mining software tools find hidden pattern and relationships in large

pool of data and infer rules from them that can be used to predict future

behavior guide.

The major reason why data mining gained a great deal of attraction is

due to wide availability of data and imminent need of turning that data

into information and knowledge.

The mining of gold from sand or rocks is referred to as gold mining rather

than rock or sand mining. Thus data mining should have been named

knowledge mining from data.

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Data Mining: A KDD Process

Data mining: the core of knowledge discovery process.

Data Cleaning

Data Integration

Databases

Data Warehouse

Task-relevant Data

Selection

Data Mining

Pattern Evaluation

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UNIT- I I I

Companies on the road to knowledge management :

1- Assessment of Impacts on employees :

KM can impact an organizations employees by facilitating their learning from

each other, from prior experiences of former employees, and from external

sources. KM can also enable employees to become more flexible by enhancing

their awareness of new ideas, which prepares them to respond to changes and

also by making them more likely to accept change.

2- Assessment of Impacts on Processes:

KM can improve organizational processesfor example marketing,

manufacturing, accounting, engineering, public relations, and so forth. These

improvements can occur along three major dimensions: effectiveness,

efficiency, and degree of innovation of the processes.

3- Assessment of Impacts on product:

KM can also impact the organizations products by helping to produce either

value-added products or inherently knowledge-based products. Value-added

products are new or improved products that provide a significant additional

value as compared to earlier products. Inherently knowledge-based products

refer for example to products from the consulting and software development

industries.

4- Assessment of Impacts on organizational Performance:

KM can impact overall organizational performance either directly or indirectly.

Direct impacts concern revenues and/or costs, and can be explicitly linked to the

organizations vision or strategy. Consequently direct impact can be observed in

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terms of increased sales, decreased costs, and higher profitability or return on

investment.

KM in manufacturing and service :

enables improvements in organizational processes such as marketing,

manufacturing, accounting, engineering, and public relations

These impacts can be seen along three major dimensions

Effectiveness

Efficiency

Degree of innovation of the processes

Effectiveness is performing the most suitable processes and making the best

possible decisions

Efficiency is performing the processes quickly and in a low-cost fashion.

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Innovation is performing the processes in a creative and novel fashion, that

improves effectiveness and efficiencyor at least marketability.

KM can enable organizations to become more effective by helping them to

select and perform the most appropriate processes.

Impact on products can be:

Value added products

Knowledge based products

Challenges in KM:

1. Developing a working definition of knowledge:

Not developing a working definition of knowledge is a critical error

contributing directly to many errors and failures in the knowledge-management

process.

2. Dealing with Tacit Knowledge and Utilization of IT :

Very difficult to articulate tacit knowledge- highly situated in the context and to

abstract it from its context of application would mean to lose much of its

intrinsic meaning and value.

knowledge

management

knowledge

Value-added Products

Knowledge

Knowledge-based

products

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3. Adaptation to Cultural Complexity:

Inappropriate culture is generally regarded as the key inhibitor of effective

knowledge sharing.

4. Attention to Human Resources :

Success of any KM initiative is critically dependent on having competent and

suitably motivated people taking an active role in the process.

5. Developing New Organizational Structures:

Developing a new organizational structure must be balanced with the crucial

need for business continuity.

6. Coping with Increased Competition:

Intense worldwide competition forces the firms to take new actions

responding to environmental demands, pressures, and challenges almost day

to day.

Future of knowledge management :

1-The Importance Of Support From Top Management.

2-The Importance of Communication.

3-The Importance of Creativity .

4-The Importance of Culture and People.

5- The Importance of Sharing Knowledge.

6- The Importance of Incentives.

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Unit-4

Stages of Knowledge Management Process:

The process of knowledge management is universal for any enterprise.

Step 1: Collecting

This is the most important step of the knowledge management

process.

If you collect the incorrect or irrelevant data, the resulting knowledge

may not be the most accurate.

Therefore, the decisions made based on such knowledge could be

inaccurate as well.

The data collection procedure defines certain data collection points.

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Step 2: Organizing

The data collected need to be organized. This organization usually

happens based on certain rules. These rules are defined by the

organization.

As an example, all sales related data can be filed together and all staff

related data could be stored in the same database table. This type of

organization helps to maintain data accurately within a database.

If there is much data in the database, techniques such as 'normalization'

can be used for organizing and reducing the duplication.

This way, data is logically arranged and related to one another for easy

retrieval. When data passes step 2, it becomes information.

Step 3: Summarizing

In this step, the information is summarized in order to take the essence of

it. The lengthy information is presented in tabular or graphical format and

stored appropriately.

For summarizing, there are many tools that can be used such as software

packages, charts (Pareto, cause-and-effect), and different techniques.

Step 4: Analyzing

At this stage, the information is analyzed in order to find the

relationships, redundancies, and patterns.

An expert or an expert team should be assigned for this purpose as the

experience of the person / team plays a vital role. Usually, there are

reports created after analysis of information.

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Step 5: Synthesizing

At this point, information becomes knowledge. The results of analysis

(usually the reports) are combined together to derive various concepts and

artifacts.

A pattern or behavior of one entity can be applied to explain another and

collectively, the organization will have a set of knowledge elements that

can be used across the organization.

This knowledge is then stored in the organizational knowledge base for

further use.

Step 6: Decision Making:

At this stage, the knowledge is used for decisions making. As an

example, when estimating a specific type of a project or a task, the

knowledge related to previous estimates can be used.

This accelerates the estimation process and adds high accuracy. This is

how the organizational knowledge management adds value and save

money in the long run.

KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL VS PHYSICAL CAPITAL :

KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL PHYSICAL CAPITAL

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Business Ethics in Knowledge management:

# Knowledge and skills are valuable but not easily "own able" as objects. Nor is

it obvious who has the greater rights to an idea: the company who trained the

employee, or the employee themselves? The country in which the plant grew, or

the company which discovered and developed the plant's medicinal potential?

As a result, attempts to assert ownership and ethical disputes over ownership

arise.

# Patent infringement, copyright infringement, trademark infringement.

# Misuse of the intellectual property systems to stifle competition: patent

misuse, copyright misuse, patent troll, submarine patent.

# Even the notion of intellectual property itself has been criticized on ethical

grounds: see intellectual property.

# Employee raiding: the practice of attracting key employees away from a

competitor to take unfair advantage of the knowledge or skills they may

possess.

# The practice of employing all the most talented people in a specific field,

regardless of need, in order to prevent any competitors emloin them.

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Unit-5

The role of knowledge management in organizational restructuring :

O Companies restructure for various reasons are mentioned under portfolio

strategy, mergers and acquisition & turn around management

O It may be expansion or contraction of portfolio

O Changes in nature, volume of business, business condition etc

O It helps to prevent a unit from becoming sick

Organizational Restructuring: Restructuring strategy designed to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of personnel, through significant changes in

the organizational structure.

Is a response changes in the business and related environments.

Takes the form of divestiture and acquisitions

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7 Key Organizational Levers of KM

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Learning Organization:

A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring,

interpreting, transferring, and retaining knowledge, and at purposely modifying

its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.

the one that has developed the capacity to adopt and change.

the one that uses new information which challenges accepted organizational

norms and practices..to reexamine the way in which the organization

performs its functions, and thus helps the organization unlearn its previously

used dysfunctional patterns.

the one in which people at all levels, individually and collectively, are

continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about.

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Four Tasks Of a Learning Organization:

Designing learning settings.

Promoting a culture of learning.

Leading a learning process.

Demonstrating personal investment in learning.

Characteristics of a Learning Organization:

Senges

5 Disciplines

System Thinking

Team Learning

Personal Mastery

Mental Models

Shared vision

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How KM operates in an Organization

Value to

Organization

Organizational

Learning

Active Knowledge

Transfer

Expert Knowledge Base

Contact Links

Expert Assistance as Needed

Communities of Practice Index

Decision Making Tools

Profiles for Customization

Pushed Reports & News

Collaboration Tools

Repositories

Best Practices

Reports

Documents

Presentation Slides

Tips

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