Corporate Communications Today, Course Module 5: Knowledge Management

Corporate Communications Today
Course Module 5: Knowledge Management
29.01.2013
Susanne Robra-Bissantz

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Course Modules

CM 1
Social Media

CM 3
„Marketing“

CM 2
Collaboration

CM 4
Innovation

CM 5
Knowledge

CM 6
Web Society

WS 2012/13 | Prof. Dr. Susanne Robra-Bissantz | Corporate Communications Today| Seite

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Collaboration approaches: internal – external?
Innovation Management
Knowledge Management

Collaborative creativity
Project support

Organizational Learning

Complaints: ideas and problems


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Knowledge Management - Facts
The ability to apply knowledge in the company and share it with partners correlates
positively with the ability to build competitive advantages
(Chew et al. 1990)

The best ideas come through weak ties in a network– „the strength of weak ties“
(Granovetter 1979).

Groups often make better decisions than individuals– „the wisdom of the crowds“
(Surowiecki 2004)

Knowledge can be used by the entire company, if implicit knowledge of the individual is
externalized.
(Nonaka,Takeuchi 1997).

Phenomenon of Information Stickiness – Knowledge „sticks“, it is difficult to transfer
(from Hippel 1994).


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And summarized:
Collaboration seems to be important for organisations, but, it seems to be difficult. And the
reason is the so called „information stickyness“.
Organisations know that, and they try to transfer knowledge – from implicit knowledge to explicit
knowledge.
Implicit knowledge is not externalised and kept by one person. This may be because the person
doesn‘t want to explicate it, but also because it is hard (or even impossible) to verbalize or
because the person is unconscious about the fact that his knowledge may be important for
others.
Explicit knowledge is externalised (verbalized), even categorized and connected to other
knowledge. Like this it can be adopted by others.
They implement Knowledge Management Systems and use Incentives in order to make people
share their knowledge. For example „points“ for knowledge pieces you provide.


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Information Stickiness
explicit
knowledge

categorized /
networked

KMS, Incentives

conscious

unconscious

implicit
knowledge
not / difficult
verbalizable

verbalizable

verbalized


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Instruments of Knowledge Management
Lessons
Learned
Skill
Management
Best
Practices

Instruments of

Knowledge
Cards

Yellow
Pages

Find a quite good summary on knowledge management and different
instruments on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management.

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In social media, we try and start with the differences between implicit and explicit knowledge,
and find out, that in order to transfer knowledge we need:
• Occasions for Communication, that may appear in discussions on Blogs, Wikis and especially
with status updates or activity streams,
• Contexts – that may be interpersonal context, people are networked. In this case knowledge
doesn‘t have to be explicated, but it is enough to know who knows what. Contexts on
electronical platforms – between the contents – can brilliantly achieved via tagging, social
tagging and tag clouds, as we introduced them last week.
And: in our second lecture on social Media and Collaboration, you‘ll find functions in information
cylce (slide 16), where you‘ll find „occasions for communication“ and „creation of contexts“.
By the way: in the introduction of a Knowledge Management System, that has to be used
voluntarily and because someone is motivated to to so, the following way has been proven to be
successfull: Start with problems and questions that people may post. That is easy. The others
will answer. Then let them post good ideas. Only after that finally build a social network, where
you expect people to post what ever they know and may find interesting. By then they have
probably understood the mechanic of giving and getting knowledge. And they feel good in
posting contents to a social media plattform. What is difficult in the beginning...


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categorized /
networked

conscious

unconscious

explicit
knowledge

knowledge of
relationships

Networking
Person

KMS, Incentives
Blog
Wiki
Status update

Networking
Content
Tagging
Tagcloud

Create
contexts

implicit
knowledge
not / difficult
verbalizable

verbalizable

verbalized

Create occasions for communication

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Communication occasion question/problem
A good starting point for communication, that may be implemented, are problems. Enable employees to
ask their question. Others provide solutions, they may be discussed and evaluated and also linked
together.
IT enables the system to learn in every step. Find better respondands, discuss and integrate.

Problems /
Questions

Response /
Solution

Discussion

Learn

Integrate and
link

Evaluate


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Focus communication occasion: Question- and Responsecards
Occasion for communication: Problem

Question

Additional motivation:
- Votings
- Expert status

Proposed contacts for the question that
had answers to the topic earlier.

Answers may be
evaluated and rated.


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Focus communication context: Knowledge network
Basis: Social Network
(Relationships) with
• People
• Relationships
• Projects
and all of them connected by
• Activities
• Tags


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Problems – research questions
1. How do I motivate my employees to contribute knowledge?
2. How do I motivate my employees to augment knowledge together?

Starting points:
Contributions: How do they have to be formulated in
order to foster answers?
Platform: Which features are needed, like status,
evaluation....?
Environment: What has to happen with the
organisational culture – collaboration?!?


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Fun to collaborate – willingness to collaborate
openness

contributions are
valuable

Social
closeness

mutuality

Motivation

trust

Willingness to
collaborate

fun to
contribute

Participation

shared
understanding

Interaction

ideas grow
„big“

many supporters


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In these self-enforcing cycles:
• Motivation is enhanced, because everybody realizes, that his contributions are valuable, and
that then it is fun to contribute.
• This enhances interaction and many employees support common knowledge. This again
leads to a mutual understanding, via discussions and tagging.
• The mutual understanding makes ideas grow as a result of a wisdom of the crowds – of
participation. And at the same time trust raises – as collaborating works.
• With trust a social closeness may grow. You learn that it is worth, being open and a sense of
mutuallity appears. This again rises motivation.
... and concluding: the willingness to collaborate rises.

But, as always, before you try and implement an IC-System, think about your goals
(pinkish) first.


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Need more knowledge?
Social Bookmarking
• Explicit knowledge is the asset for our organization. Our knowledge and a lot of knowledge from other sources is available – but often we do not find it.

Wiki
• Together, we know much more than every individual. We are working on a shared knowledge base.

Skill-Network
• It is enough if we know someone who knows something. Anything else is too much work.

Social Network
• Our knowledge is so difficult to grasp and articulate. Sometimes we only realize what is important in conversations.

Idea-Blog
• We want to continue to discuss and develop. Every individual, every new idea is valuable for our company.

(Multi)-News-Blog
• We work on projects which accumulate regularly and predictably a lot of information for different groups.

Twitter
• Not binding, share something not so important– it also strengthens the social cohesion


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Collaboration approaches: internal – external?
Innovation Management

Collaborative creativity
Project support

Organizational Learning

Complaints: ideas and problems


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In a short excursus, let‘s think about „learning“ – like we do it in organizational contexts, e. g. in
courses and during knowledge management.
Without explicating different possible systems – it is probably self explaining, that today frontal
teaching without interaction and following a strict curriculum, like in lectures, doesn‘t fit learners
needs.
What we need is learning – in order to escape from the uncertainty we are faced with. We even
need life-long-learning. But learning as to be connected to the problems we are faced with.
Actually about 80% of what we know, doesn‘t come from institutional learning (in school,
university and further education). We learn in contexts and, as information behaviour shows it, at
information encounters – spaces in which discussion take place, often unplanned.
This is even more important for the so called digital natives – that grow up with the internet and
that have a completely different access to knowledge.
Therefore we need a „modern“ learning – in situations, in collaboration ...


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Demands of the modern "professional" learning
Needs of learners
connectivity

„Modern“ learning
ad hoc, in situations

self-responsibility
collaborative
discursive formats
self-controlled

Knowledge in situations

Construct knowledge

playful?, authentic?
acquiring skills

Digital Natives
Find knowledge

Knowledge through exchange


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We have actually learned about learning. Learning theories have changed – and also the
functions of media – coloured in red typing in the next slide.
The first behavioural approach stresses learning as based on experiences on stimulusresponse-relations. Material has to be structured and presented - media can support that in
knowledge representation.
In cognitive theories, internal cognitive processes are taken into account. The learner doesn‘t
learn facts but processes that lead him to problem solving. The focus of media is knowledge
transfer and the regulation of learning processes, that enable the learner to build new
connections and approaches.
In constructivist learning, we presume, that reality is always constructed and may only be
learned in situations, where the learner is introduced in social or real contexts and works on
problem solving himself and together with other learners and teachers. Media support this, when
they provide knowledge tools – actually like our knowledge management systems.
But still – in todays information behaviour, Kerres sees problems in media supported learning in
embedding knowledge in authentic situations and social contexts. Social media may be a


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Media in modern learning

Behaviourist
approach

Cognitive
theories

Constructivist
theories

Theories of
information behavior

Knowledge presentation:
Presentation and organization of knowledge
Knowledge transfer:
Control and regulation of the learning process
Knowledge tool:
Communication and construction of knowledge
(Kerres, M.: Multimediale und telemediale Lernumgebungen,
München et al. 2001, S. 95 ff.)

„With its emphasis on social interaction in
authentic contexts it seems that
especially media-based learning is questionable.“
(Kerres, M.: Multimediale und telemediale Lernumgebungen, München et al. 2001, S. 82)


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Technologies
Social Media:
- Facebook, Wikis, Twitter
- Networking of people
- Creation of platforms (Spaces)
„With its emphasis on social interaction in
authentic contexts it seems that
especially media-based learning is questionable.“
(Kerres, M.: Multimediale und telemediale Lernumgebungen, München et al. 2001, S. 82)

contextualising:
- Identification of contexts
- Reaction to contexts


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Examples: Web 2.0 in teaching

Video-Discussion
• Advanced level
• Youtube thesis videos
• Collaboration
• Ongoing discussion - public

Twitter-Lecture
• Mass lecture
• Individual adaptation
• Discussion, own contributions
• Continuation online

Wiki-Seminar
• Smaller groups
• Learning by teaching
• Collaboration
• Responsibility

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