1. Information & Knowledge
Management
Knowledge Management State of The Art
Marielba Zacarias
Prof. Auxiliar DEEI
FCT I, Gab 2.69, Ext. 7749
mzacaria@ualg.pt
http://w3.ualg.pt/~mzacaria
2. Summary
Why invest in Knowledge Management
Knowledge and Leadership
Organizational Culture
Knowledge sharing between organizations
Knowledge sharing vulnerabilities
Knowledge Property
“Infoglut”
Tool section: Wikis
3. Basic assumption
We continuously challenge our knowledge
and how we apply it
When knowledge stops evolving,
transforms into opinions or dogmas
Thomas Davenport and Larry Prusak
4. Knowledge Management Value
Essential questions
How to be competitive?
How can we accelerate “time-to-market” cycles?
How to maximize new products production rate?
How to minimize production costs or re-working?
How to eliminate inconsistencies that
hinder customer satisfaction?
represent organizational risks?
5. Intellectual Capital Value
Difficult to measure
skills, relationship with clients, motivation and support
structures
Skandia AFS insurance company made important progress
in this matter
Principle:
It is better to be approximately right than precisely wrong
Three types of human capital
6. Human Capital
Edvinsson & Stewart
Intellectual
Sum of employee knowledge
Value = cost of recreating it
Internal awareness
Client
External awareness
Value of relationship with clients
brand loyalty, ability of understanding their needs and requirements
Cost of getting new clients (6 vs 1 of maintaining clients)
Structural
Value of the services, products and systems created by the human capital
7. Example
USA government “Lobbyist”
Need of improving employee productivity
Researchers spent 20% of their time searching existing knowledge out of
the organization
Employees spent 5 years in achieving expertise in identifying and efficiently
exploiting internal resources
Solution: intranet technology accelerated search and problem research
leaving more time to production and innovation tasks.
8. Knowledge and Leadership
Essential element in adopting a
knowledge management strategy
Creation of a culture of trust and
collaboration
9. Implications
Redefine the ways of measuring value
creation
Change the ways people approach work
Change organizational culture
This requires a POWERFUL chief
CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer)
11. Knowledge Engineers
Tactical/procedural approach
Responsible for eliciting and converting
explicit knowledge in replicable instructions
and procedures in order to allow its
codification within applications
Problems:
Temptation of exaggerating the function
More coded -> more difficult to change
12. Knowledge Analyst
Fosters good practices
Responsible for the collection, organization and
dissemination of knowledge typically on demand
Human repositories of good practices
Problems:
they leave, they go with them!
may stay strapped to that position
13. Knowledge Managers
They supervise the process
Approach work well when distributed among
several individuals throughout the organization
Coordenam esforços dos engenheiros e analistas do
conhecimento
Useful in big organizations where the sharing
process risks fragmentation and isolation
Problems:
Risk of appearing “feudal” territories
14. CKO
Hierarchical top-down approach
Global coordination of knowledge
management efforts
Leadership role
Problem:
Create the function before creating a
knowledge sharing culture
15. Knowledge Steward
Useful in distributed knowledge
management approaches
Minimal but continuous support of
knowledge management efforts
Provide expertise in using knowledge
management tools, practices and methods
16. The role of Culture
“The greatest challenge is not in
convincing people of adopting new
ideas but in convincing them in
abandoning the old ones”
John Maynard Keynes
17. Culture as an obstacle to
knowledge management
Has been referred as the main obstacle to
knowledge management efforts...
...when they are not appropriate for such
efforts, for example in
change resistance, risk aversion, or
individualistic environments
18. Universal challenges
Build a community of “knowledge sharers”
Knowledge ownership
knowledge & information means power!
Incentive management
19. Knowledge Base
To be valuable must be used throughout
the organization
Creation and maintenance of sharing
communities...
...without them no attempt to propagate
knowledge will succeed
20. Example 1
At the USA “lobbyist”, while managers
constantly spoke about sharing knowledge
All their actions in meetings and memos
promoted inter-department rivalry
Budgeting policy: everyone competed for the
same dollars
21. Example 2
In an aerospatial company, they asked employees to
innovate more but...
.. they publicly discouraged such innovation
because...
New products were frequently rejected for not
going in the same direction of the enterprise mission
(that no one new)
22. Example 3
In pharmaceutical company with a strong
community spirit
groups with common causes
put drugs in market
those groups were regarded as “family”
Together with a open climate created a group
dynamics that was used in creating knowledge
sharing communities
23. Globalization
Regional Cultures difficult knowledge
management efforts in transnational
companies...
But the problem will always be the
existence of an appropriate culture
24. Example 1
In a metallurgic company, english was
imposed as the official work language in all
countries
Knowledge sharing sites in countries with
different languages were not fed due to the
translation effort required
25. Example 2
Transnational Pharmaceutical where
americans seen as “cowboys” who
“shoot” (act) before thinking
englishmen seen as“over-thinkers” who
“sit” (reflect) on a subject months before
doing anything
26. Example 2 (cont)
An organizational culture of
openness and trust, and an effective
group leadership that fostered frequent
social meetings between team
members of both countries created
a strong team notion, that allowed to
overcome the differences between the two
countries
27. Critical success factor
Ignore traditional organizational constructs
such as departments or business units or
regions and focus on common interest areas
Acknowledge the existence of formal or
informal groups sharing common interests
Support them through knowledge management
processes and tools
28. Inter-organizational
environments
The interest in knowledge management and
internet has also triggered knowledge sharing
between organizations
So, today we can also find inter-organizational
knowledge sharing environments
A more intimate relationship with clients, suppliers
and other partners (including competitors!)
29. Vulnerabilities
When we build sharing networks where knowledge
providers and consumers do not know each other
Trust and responsibility are critical
Credibility is also critical
Proper privacy and security mechanisms are
essential
Liabilities are critical in inter-organizational
environments
30. Knowledge Property
If knowledge is inside human minds, can it be
managed?, when..
Management entails external control and
ownership
The goal should then be
foster sharing and a collective knowledge
base
Cultivate rather than Managing
32. “Infoglut”
Happens when the knowledge supplier does not know
well the requirements of knowledge consumers
Problems with
Categorization
Organization
Struture
Search
Technical solution: The semantic Web
