C H A PT E R 6

Knowledge Management in

Practice

Knowledge management or knowledge sharing manifest themselves in many ways in the workplace; that may include ordinary events, such as facilitated meetings or informal conversations or more complex interactions that require information and communication technology. Under the aegis of ‘knowledge management’, there are three types of processes that are generally considered to be essential: finding or uncovering knowledge [Ehrlich, K., 2003, Learn, L., 2002, Zack,M., 1999], sharing knowledge [Ackerman et al., 2003], and the development of new knowledge [Argyris and Schon, 1978, 1996, Baumard, P., 1999, Harvard Business Review, 1998]. Allmay play a role in assisting with decision making and encouraging innovation.

6.1 KM IN PRACTICE – PROCESSES

A very useful way of thinking is to conceptualize KM as the actualization of what Powell,T. [2001a] calls the “Knowledge Value Chain.” The chain is straightforward, a pyramid, in fact, leading from Data at the bottom through Information, Knowledge, Intelligence, Decision, and Action, to Value. The notion is simple, but the explication is sophisticated and complex. Value to the organization is ultimately what KM is about.

6.1.1 FINDING INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Finding information and knowledge refers to processes that allow organizations to make sense and make use of data, information, and knowledge objects that may be present but are not codified, analyzed, nor accessible to members. Knowledge exists in all organizations, but all knowledge may not be explicit. A long-time employee may have a deep understanding of processes and guidelines, but he or she may never have written them down or compiled them in a document like a procedural manual.

6.1.2 SHARING INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

Sharing of information for knowledge development is the most traditional collection of processes, easily understood, but often overlooked in a systematic knowledge management program. Based on his experience at Arthur D. Little, he found that the principal reason for reluctance on the part of key players to put their knowledge into a lessons learned database was a concern that the lesson learned might be misapplied if the congruence, or the lack of, between the context of the area from which the lesson was derived and the context of the intended application area was not well understood.

6.1.3 DEVELOPMENT OFKNOWLEDGE

Knowledge development takes place when individuals work to create new understandings, innovations, and a synthesis of what is known already together with newly acquired information or knowledge. Although individuals can intentionally develop their own knowledge through seeking opportunities to be creative and learn, the development of knowledge is often a social process.

6.2 KMIN PRACTICE - PROCEDURES AND PRACTICES

Note that KM is a complex topic, and in attempting to write about its various dimensions and to address it from different perspectives, some overlap is unavoidable.

6.2.1 KNOWLEDGE AUDIT

The obvious first step in launching a formalKMprogram throughout an organization is to conduct an information or knowledge audit. the Information Resources Management (IRM) movement of the 1970’s was a strong emphasis upon the information or knowledge audit. fear was that the data was not being well documented that it was being was stored in silos and that valuable data and information, whose very existence was sometimes known only to a few people was

often unknown to many of those who could benefit from using it.

Some of the reasons for and benefits of an information audit include:

First of course, the elucidation of what information the organization possesses: where it is

located? how is it organized? how can it be accessed? who is responsible for it? etc.

In addition:

The identification of duplicate or partially duplicated information and information gathering

and maintenance, with the potential realization of cost savings.

The identification of information being gathered and maintained that is no longer salient or necessary, with the potential realization of cost savings.

The ideal result is a “map” of:

Who is connected to whom, formally and informally?

What are their formal roles and job descriptions, and informal relationships and roles?

Where do expertise, methods, differing views of the organization reside?

What are the successful knowledge sharing engagements and practices?

What are the barriers to information and knowledge transfer?

What are the cultural behaviors that are dictating successes or failures to share and leverage

knowledge?

Clearly, the techniques used in creating a knowledge audit or knowledge map are those borrowed

from social network analysis and anthropology, and appropriately so, since Knowledge Management is interdisciplinary by nature, spanning boundaries of thought and interests.

The KM era notion of an information audit, in contrast with the earlier IRM era, is definitely focused on people first. In fact, Moulton’s third stage of the knowledge audit is essentially the traditional information audit, with a Stage one and a Stage two added in front.

6.2.2 TAGS,TAXONOMIES,AND CONTENTMANAGEMENT

Having identified and located information and knowledge, the obvious next step is to make it relocatable and retrievable, made possible by tagging and creating taxonomies. The tag and taxonomy stage of KM consists primarily of assembling various information resources in some sort of portal-like environment and making them available to the organization. The Enron scandal and consequent Sarbanes- Oxley legislation in the US had made the retention and management of electronic information mandatory, not optional. This massive increase in information interaction, including use of digitized video and audio and the organization’s own web pages has resulted in the development of what is a major subfield within KM, that of “Content Management” or “Enterprise Content Management.” Most of those organizations are represented among the vendors at theKMWorld Conference.KMWorld, a controlled circulation, i.e., free, magazine publishes a very useful annual compilation of vendors and products, particularly in the CMS domain, but including KM broadly as well.

6.2.3 LESSONS LEARNEDDATABASES

Lessons Learned databases are databases that attempt to capture and to make accessible knowledge that has been operationally obtained and typically would not have been captured in a fixed medium (to use copyright terminology). The lessons learned concept or practice is one that might be described as having been birthed by KM, as there is very little in the way of a direct antecedent. Early in the KM movement, the phrase typically used was “best practices,” but that phrase was soon replaced with “lessons learned.” The reasons were that “lessons learned” was broader and more inclusive, and because “best practice” seemed too restrictive and could be interpreted as meaning there was only one best practice in a situation. The primary purpose was to gather military intelligence, but a clear secondary purpose was to identify lessons learned, though they were not so named, to pass on to other pilots and instructors.

6.2.4 EXPERTISE LOCATION

If knowledge resides in people, then one of the best ways to learn what an expert knows is to talk with one. Locating the right expert with the knowledge you need, though, can be a problem. The basic function of an expertise locator system is straightforward, it is to identify and locate those persons within an organization who have expertise in a particular area. Expertise location systems are another aspect of KM that certainly predates KM thinking. The Mitre Corporation, for example, developed such a system in 1978. It was based upon creating   database developed from reformatted resumes retrieved from word-processing tapes, and upon the development of a competence area thesaurus to improve retrieval. There are nowthree areas which typically supply data for an expertise locator system, employee resumes, employee self identification of areas of expertise, typically by being requested to fill out a form online, or by algorithmic analysis of electronic communications from and to the employee.

6.2.5 COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE (COPS)

Communities of Practice (CoPs) are groups of individuals with shared interests that come together in person or virtually to tell stories, discuss best practices, and talk over lessons learned [Wenger, E.,1998a,Wenger and Snyder, 1999].

For a CoP, some questions that need to be thought about are:

Who fills those roles? manager, moderator, and thought leader.

How is the CoP managed?

Are postings open, or does someone vet or edit the postings?

How is the CoP kept fresh and vital?

When and how (under what rules) are items removed?

How are those items archived? (Stratification again)

Who reviews the CoP for activity? Identifies potential for new members, or suggests that the

CoP may have outlived its usefulness?

6.3 PROCESSES,PROCEDURES,AND PRACTICESMATRIX

If we create a matrix in which the rows are KM Processes and the columns KM Procedures and

Practices, and in which the ordering, top to bottom and left to right is roughly in chronological or

developmental order, and we check which process a practice or procedure is primarily designed to serve, the matrix looks like:

K Audit Tags, T, & CM Lessons

Figure 6.1: Processes and Procedures & Practices Matrix.

That matrix reveals several interesting things. Almost everything one does in KM is designed

to help find information and knowledge.However, if we assume that the main goal ofKMis to share knowledge and even more importantly to develop new knowledge, then the Knowledge Audit and the Tags, Taxonomies and Content Management stages are the underpinnings and the tools. It is

the knowledge sharing and knowledge creation of one on one communications enabled by expertise

locators, and the communal sharing and creation of knowledge enabled by communities of practice

toward which KM development should be aimed.

C H A PT E R 5

Knowledge “Acts”

5.1 QUESTION ASKING AND ANSWERING

Question asking and answering is a foundational process by which what people know tacitly becomes expressed, and hence, externalized as knowledge. In adapting the theory, Hirschheim et al. [1995] describe types of speech acts that pertain to aspects of either Knowledge Management (KM), or Information Management (IM). For example, Boahene and Ditsa [2003] suggest that Information Management systems target a base of expressive speech acts by mainly supporting the recall of meaning-attribution while Knowledge Management systems target regulative and constantive speech acts primarily to support the organization and management of dynamic complexity. They reason that IM addresses questions such as ‘Where,’ ‘Who,’ ‘When,’ and ‘What,’ while KM targets problems involving dynamic complexity,

 addressing solutions to questions such as ‘How’ and ‘Why.’

Another category of questions, “What-if,” will also fall in the domain of knowledge activity. Since such questions necessitate predicting and prioritizing outcomes, attempts to address such “what-if ” questions will require integrating understanding of “what” with “why” and “how” to arrive at reasonable resolution.

5.2 POSTING CONTENTTOREPOSITORIES

Contributing content such as lessons-learned, project experiences, and success stories is another approach to knowledge sharing. O’Dell and Jackson [1998] point out the importance of frameworks for classifying information.For example, they note that Chevron and other groups organize information in their best practice databases using the Process Classification Framework developed by APQC (American Productivity and Quality Council) and Arthur Andersen. since busy professionals rarely have the time to enter a practice into the database unless it is their job.On the other hand, professionals may not have the time to hand off a document for submission to an appointed surrogate either. For many professionals who are used to online communication and accessing databases and discussion lists, we could argue that it is quicker and easier for the professionals to make the contribution themselves. The authors point out that the product supports both the construction of knowledge as content, or as the collaborative, negotiated, co-constructed approach to verifying and validating content, essentially accommodating both the content and process views of knowledge construction. The developed content is then made available to others for (re)use, or, for re-combination, to support newinstances of knowledge creation. As awareness increases for the importance of making knowledge explicit, more and more products will appear to help with creating knowledge bases and decision recommendations, but it is a mindset open to using, sharing, and creating knowledge that will make a difference in creating an organizational knowledge culture.

5.3 (RE)USINGKNOWLEDGE

Desouza et al. [2006] assert that the decision to consume knowledge can be framed as a problem of risk evaluation, with perceived complexity and relative advantage being identified as factors relating to intentions to “consume” knowledge. However, it is essential that the knowledge consumer is able to reasonably frame his or her knowledge needs. They recognize the notion of information value, allowing for the matching of information to the knowledge needs of the user. They propose that good representations of both information characteristics and user characteristics are essential.

5.4 KNOWLEDGE-BASEDDECISIONMAKING

In general, decision making involves identifying alternatives, projecting probabilities and outcomes of alternatives, and evaluating outcomes according to known preferences and implications for stakeholders. Shared meanings and purposes as well as newknowledge and capabilities, converge on decision making as the activity leading to the selection and initiation of action. Choo further proposes that information flows are a central process that bridges knowledge creation and decision making activity. Information flows continuously between sense making, knowledge creating, and decision making, so that the outcome of information use in one mode provides the elaborated context and the expanded resources for information use in the other modes [Choo, C., 2002, p. 85]. In such decision oriented activity, we have proposed that “what-if ” questions are the dominant type of speech act performed.Support for such scenario predicting questions will demand rich context upon which to apply knowledge of the past and the present to bear on the problem or situation at hand.

 

C H A PT E R 4

Conceptualizing Knowledge

Emergence

4.1    GATEKEEPERS,INFORMATION, STARS,AND

BOUNDARY SPANNERS

A substantial body of research has been developed on the transmission of information within organizations,

particularly R&D organizations.

The seminal work was that of Thomas J. Allen of MIT [Allen and Cohen, 1969, Allen,T.,

1977] who conducted a number of studies relating to information flow in industrial and corporate

R&Dlaboratories.Allen’s most ingenious contribution to the field was to seize upon the phenomenon that in many cases in the context of military R&D and procurement, the same contract is awarded to two different organizations to achieve the same end, typically in the case of a critical component of a larger system. Duplicative development contracts may, in fact, be very worthwhile insurance against the failure of a key component of a system. This duplication provided a wonderfully robust context in which to examine information flows and what distinguished the information flows in the more successful projects from the less successful.

Allen coined the term ‘Gatekeeper’ to describe the information flow stars that he discovered, the heavily connected nodes in the information flow pattern. The reason that he chose that term was that much of the development and project work that he investigated was classified military work, where there seemed to be something of a paradox, how was a team to be successful if it didn’t effectively connect with the world of information outside the organization? But how did it do that in a classified and communication restricted environment?What he discovered was that the information stars, the sociometric stars, were the answer to that paradox; they were the information channels through which external information reached the project team.

Furthermore, the “information stars” were central to information flow both within the organization at large, and within their project or projects. The characteristics that distinguished these stars were:

extensive communication with their field outside of the organization

greater perusal of information sources, journals, etc., information mavens

a high degree of connectedness with other information stars, one can infer that their utility

was not just having more information at their fingertips, but knowing to whom to turn within

the organization for further information

an above average degree of formal education compared to their project teammates

These characteristics of information stars were further corroborated by Mondschein, L. [1990] in a study of R&D activities across several industries.

In the context of KM, this tradition relates very directly to the development of Communities of Practice (CoP). Given the relative non-alignment of organizational structure and information flowand sharing,CoPs can be seen as the setting up of an alternative structure to facilitate information flow and sharing.

4.2 RESEARCHPRODUCTIVITY ANDKNOWLEDGE

The ‘Gatekeepers, Information Stars & Boundary Spanner’ tradition is very consistent with a substantial body of work studying research productivity. Koenig,M. [1992a], for example, in the context of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, studied the relationship between research productivity and the information environment in which that research was conducted.

This measure, however, was refined by weighting the NDAs in regard to:

1) whether or not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) judged the drug to be an “important

therapeutic advance,” 2) the chemical novelty of the drug, and 3) the filing company’s patent position

in regard to the drug, an indicator of where the bulk of the research was done.

4.3 LACK OF RECOGNITION OFTHESE FINDINGS INTHE

BUSINESS COMMUNITY

As Allen pointed out in his study, there is a surprising lack of recognition of these findings about the importance of information stars in the business community. For example, one major study that reviewed a large corpus of work on R&D innovation, [Goldhar et al., 1976], concluded that there are six characteristics of environments that are conducive to technological innovations. The three most important characteristics are all related to the information environment and information flow – specifically: 1) easy access to information by individuals; 2) free flow of information both into and out of the organizations; 3) rewards for sharing, seeking, and using “new” externally developed information sources.

4.4 COMMUNITY-BASEDMODELS

The idea of Community of Practice [Wenger and Snyder, 1999], which descends logically from the “Gatekeepers, Information Stars, Boundary Spanners” stream of development has been cited frequently as an important knowledge sharing model. The Community of Practice (CoP) is not necessarily department-based nor centered in one organization.ACoP can consist of those in charge of human resources training, for example, in a number of organizations.

The Information Systems literature points to an abundance ofKMstrategies in the category of Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). Such systems provide the infrastructure for enabling the interactions needed for a group’s knowledge synergies and interactive activities [Maier, R., 2002] and may include bulletin boards, electronic meeting/conferencing, or online chat. In this model, the notion of space [Ruhleder, K., 2002], physical or otherwise, is important primarily because the meeting place or system provides an environment that allows for interactions to unfold, at the convenience of individual participants, often asynchronously. Further, such CMC interactions allow for the creation of persistent records [Robins, J., 2002] of the interactions.

Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs) were originally conceived of as collaborative tools where groups came together, participated in brainstorming and then, through human facilitation, voted on items and issues important to the organization.These systems allowed for anonymous voting that moved decisions along rapidly by prioritizing topics more easily than trying to do so without the system’s assistance. Participants’ knowledge and experience contributed to the democratic process. Another advantage of Group Decision Support Systems, in general, is the ability for each person to speak (through entering opinions via a keypad, or original ideas via a keyboard) anonymously without fear of being politically incorrect or worrying about speaking in opposition to the manager. Contributions could be confidential with the shy on an even plane with the extroverts.

The GDSS has not migrated easily to theWeb, however, some web-based systems are available and have adapted to an asynchronous situation. The ability for groups to share knowledge and make decisions using decision technology tools is a beneficial way to combine human know-how and experience with database and display systems.

Generic Decision Support Systems (DSS) that act more like expert systems with the added feature of suggesting decision options are well suited to the Web, and they are proliferating as the Web becomes the ubiquitous information and communication platform for information storage and retrieval, and for interaction as well.The range ofWeb-based DSSs vary in quality fromthemundane (e.g., cosmetics or movie choices) to sophisticated tools such as diagnosing illnesses and suggesting appropriate drug therapies.

4.5 REPOSITORYMODEL

The knowledge management repository, a space to store and retrieve knowledge objects has long been a standard in KMprograms. It is a model that emphasizes the creation of quality knowledge content in online repositories with re-use as a goal. Markus, M. [2001] argues that the purpose and content of knowledge records in repositories often differ depending on who needs the documentation: the content producer, similar others, or dissimilar others. She emphasizes that a great deal of effort is required to produce quality content, and, as such, part of the burden of documenting and packaging knowledge objects can be transferred to intermediaries, saving time and energy of the organization’s staff.

4.6 ACTIVITY-BASEDMODELS

While there has been significant work done in terms of Information Systems support for the coordination of work [Winograd,T., 1988], the next logical progression would be to link knowledge production and capture with work processes. proposed rudiments of a KM system influenced by activity-based models that would link work activities with people and content. They also propose a meta-model knowledge structure called Knowledge-In-Context that specifies relationships among processes.