Knowledge Management Introduction

Knowledge Management is a conscious strategy of getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time, and helping people share and put knowledge into action for improving the organizational performance. The key concept is ‘organizational performance’ or ‘productivity improvement’. If the usage of computers for productivity improvement can be analyzed, it can be seen that the starting point was basic data processing systems. Data processing systems process transactions and produce reports. It represents the automation of fundamental, routine processing to support operations. For this purpose Electronic Data Processing (EDP) departments were set up in many organizations. The idea of using the information captured in transaction processing system for decision making gave birth to Decision Support Systems(DSS), Management Information Systems(MIS), Enterprise Information Management (EIM) etc, though the contribution from data processing system is minimal . In a similar way is the idea of ‘Knowledge Management’ has evolved from ‘Information Management’ there are contradicting views on this. In this paper we consider ‘Knowledge Management’ as different from ‘Information Management’ and the only similarities are both aids in improving organizational productivity and both use ‘Information Technology’ like computers , networks etc. Organizational Memory (OM) can be defined as a set of repositories of data, information and knowledge that the organization has acquired and retains over a period of time. Stein and Zwass (1995) define OM as the means where by knowledge from the past is brought to bear on present activities resulting on higher or lower levels of organizational* Electronics and Instrumentation Group, Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research193effectiveness. Walsh and Ungson (1991) define OM as stored information from an organization’s history that can be thought to bear as the present decisions. The main goals of OM are to integrate information and knowledge across organizational boundaries, to assist current activities based on past experiences and to avoid repetition of past mistakes. Basic function of OM are perception, acquisition, abstraction, recording, storage, retrieval, interpretation and transmission of organizational knowledge (Stein and Zwass 1995). Walsh and Ungson (1991) propose that organizational memory consist of five retention facilities:

Individuals, culture, transformation, structures and ecology. OM consists of unstructured and structured data, information and knowledge, unstructured concepts information and knowledge that exist in the organization’s culture and in the minds of the employees can be partially elicited and represented in electronic documents, audio, video recordings etc. Structured concepts, data, information and knowledge that resides in various pockets of the organization can be completely captured and represent by electronic documents, databases etc. From the above discussions it is obvious that OM consists of data, information &knowledge and knowledge management is a subset of organizational memory management. In simple terms Knowledge Management refers to Management of ‘Knowledge’ similar to Human Resource Management or Materials Management. When the ‘Knowledge’ refers to ‘Personal Knowledge’ it is “Personal Knowledge Management”; when it refers to the knowledge of an organization it is “Organizational Knowledge Management”; when it refers to the knowledge of a nation, it is “National Knowledge Management” and so on. However in general and in this paper the term “Knowledge Management” refers to “Organizational Knowledge Management”. Knowledge management is a broad subject with many facets. The process and terminology associated with knowledge management appears abstract. Based on the review of the literatures presented by many academics and practitioners, it can be concluded that there is not yet a common consensus on the definition and the concept of knowledge management (Earl, 1999). Defining knowledge management is akin to the old fable of the blind men and the elephant where each 134 person touches different part of the elephant’s body and arrives at their perception of what the elephant looks like and really is (Bonanno, 2003).In a broad sense there are two schools of knowledge management; one centered around explicit knowledge and another one centered around people and tacit knowledge. For the first group knowledge management deals with collecting and codifying the knowledge available in different pockets of the organization and making it available to all the relevant employees of the organization. One of the definitions appropriate for this group is “knowledge management is the process of capturing a company’s collective expertise wherever it resides in databases or paper or in people’s heads and distributing it to wherever it can help to produce the biggest pay off” (Hibbard, 1997). The researchers and practitioners in this field have their education in information technology and information science. For this group knowledge is a tangible object which can be identified and handled in information systems. For the second group, knowledge management is synonymous with people management, adding a new dimension to traditional human resource management, because they believe that knowledge resides only in the minds of people and what is available explicitly is only information. The researchers in this field have their education in business management, philosophy, psychology, sociology etc. They are primarily involved in assessing and improving human skills and behaviour. For them, knowledge is a process, a complex set of dynamic skills, know how etc., which is constantly changing. Knowledge is the capacity to act and it is synonymous with individual competence (Sveiby, 2001). Based on this, we can define “knowledge management as the one which creates and nurtures the organizational environment where knowledge sharing, creation and growth takes place in the organization as an integral process in every role, on a continuous basis ,thereby improving the dynamic capacity of the employees to act effectively in various situations”. Knowledge management initiatives can be classified in to two main types. This classification is based on the way knowledge is shared. One method is ‘indirect’ by converting the tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge and shared. It is by the process of exernalisation, combination and internalization. This method is also called the codification approach where the strategy is people to document and document to people. The other method is ‘direct’ where tacit knowledge is shared among people where the strategy is people to people. This method is also called personalization approach. A holistic approach to knowledge management should address both direct and indirect methods.

Knowledge may be explicitly available in the form of reports of activities, minutes of meetings, memoranda, proceedings of conferences, other documents or databases, audio and video recordings, and multimedia presentations or implicitly as the experience, emotions, values, hunches and understanding of the people in the organization. Hence Knowledge can be classified in to ‘tacit’ and ‘explicit’. Tacit knowledge resides in the heads of people and explicit knowledge is available in paper, computer etc. Tacit knowledge is what the knower knows, which is derived from experience and embodies beliefs and values. According to Nonanka “explicit knowledge is the knowledge that is easily expressed, captured stored and reused. In contrast, tacit knowledge is highly personal and resides in the minds of people as the experience, emotions, values, hunches and understanding. It is hard to formalize and therefore difficult to communicate to others” (Nonanka, 1991). For Nonanka tacit and explicit knowledge are not separate but mutually complimentary entities. They interact with each other in the creative activities of human beings. Nonanka calls this as the knowledge conversion process. This conversion process consists of socialization, externalization, combination and internalization. Socialization transfers tacit knowledge between individuals through observation, discussion, demonstration etc. Externalization converts the tacit knowledge in to explicit knowledge in the form of documents , video recordings etc. Combination re-configures explicit knowledge through adding, combining, modifying and categorizing. Combination also includes making available the explicit 135 knowledge to others. Internalization translates explicit knowledge in to tacit knowledge by absorbing the explicit knowledge by individuals. However we use the term ‘explicit knowledge’ where the knowledge is already available explicitly in the form of documents , audio/ video recordings etc in electronic or non electronic form and the term ‘tacit knowledge’ where the knowledge still resides in the minds of people in the form of experience, feelings, opinions, intuition etc. We feel that certain percentage of the tacit knowledge can be converted into explicit by suitable knowledge elicitation methods. In this paper the term ‘knowledge’ is used to refer the combined knowledge available both in explicit and tacit form.

Organizational Knowledge

Organizational Knowledge refers to the combined knowledge of all past and present employees of the organization. In this sense it may not be possible to capture the complete organizational knowledge into accessible repositories, because it involves tacit knowledge and it involves past employees. However we use the term ‘Organizational Knowledge’ to refer to the combined knowledge of all past and present employees of the organization which are captured into accessible repositories.

Knowledge has often been considered as a resource, strategic asset, and most importantly a source of competitive advantage to organizations. Knowledge unlike other organizational resources like ‘men’, ‘money’, ‘machines’ and ‘materials’ is difficult to imitate, and strategically difficult to substitute. For a firm to gain a competitive advantage it requires the capability to transform resources, and knowledge provide that ability. Hence in the absence of organizational knowledge, other resources cannot be utilized effectively. Davenport and Prusak (1998) view knowledge as an evolving combination of experiences, expert insights, values, contextual information etc. that provides a frame work for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. In other words, organizational knowledge facilitates creation of new knowledge. Nonanka (1991) states that knowledge is context specific and is about the “meaning”. This implies that for a knowledge repository to be useful, it must also store the context in which the knowledge was generated. The context specific nature of knowledge implies that ‘Knowledge’ as it is cannot be applied universally but new knowledge applicable for the given context need to be generated from the available knowledge.

Organizational Memory

Organizational Memory is the body of data, information and knowledge relevant to an individual organization’s existence. It has two repositories – an organization’s record of activities/products , including its electronic data bases, and individuals’ memories. The composition of OM includes prior data and information, all internally-generated documentation related to the organizational activities such as intellectual property, details of events, products and individuals, relevant published reference material and – importantly – institution-created knowledge. OM can be visualized as the data, information and knowledge captured by an organization in accessible repositories. These repositories consist of documents, audio, video, people, culture and computers. The effective use of captured data, information and knowledge results in ‘learning’ by individuals and organization. The effective use is possible only if it can be accessed when required, necessitating effective retrieval systems. It is generally expected that learning will improve organizational effectiveness. But, it is also possible that organizations can learn incorrect behaviors. In order to avoid such a pitfall, the contents of OM, its usage and the resultant performance need to be continuously monitored. The basic components of Organizational Memory System(OMS) are capturing, storing, searching, retrieving, using and assessing. In other words OM is a subset of OMS. However we use the terms OM and OMS interchangeably.

The simplified representation of an OM is shown in figure 1. The central repository consists of data, information and knowledge created and used by various organizational entities. The organizational entities can be individual employees, team, sections, task force, departments.

Organizational Learning

Organizational Learning characterizes how organizations learn from their own and others’ experiences. It is also known as Experiential Learning. When it comes to experiential learning, an awareness of both the explicit and tacit components of OM on their own is not generally enough to create new knowledge efficiently. As a general rule it needs to be accompanied by a focused learning phase. Most models of experiential learning are cyclical and have three basic phases: They are awareness of an experience or problem situation, a reflective phase within which the learner examines the OM around the experience and draws bookish learning from that reflection, and a testing phase within which the new insights or learning’s, having been integrated with the learner’s own conceptual framework, and applied to a new problem situation or experience. The concept’s starting point is that individuals or organizations seldom learn from experience unless the experience is assessed and then assigned its own meaning in terms of individual and/or the organization’s own goals, aims, ambitions and expectations. From these processes come the insights and added meaning, which is then applied to new circumstances. The end product is better decision-making.

Knowledge Management, which is the process of collecting and disseminating know-how and experiences within an organization, enables the process of Organizational Learning, or Experiential Learning, to take place. Malhotra (1996) defines organizational learning (OL) as the process of detection and correction of errors. Organizations learns through individuals acting as agents for them. Individual learning activities by organizational factors which can be called an organizational learning system. Organizational learning is the process whereby an organization assimilates experiences of its members and uses that experience to modify the organizations potential actions. During work employees gain experience, observe and reflect in making sense out of what they are doing. They analyze these experiences and general abstractions are arrived. They formulate perceptions on better methods of doing work. As these employees influence the co-workers the “organization learns and the work culture is gradually changed”. OM is necessary to facilitate the processing and retention of information and knowledge needed for learning to take place. Organizational learning uses OM as its knowledge base.

Functions of OM

The function of OM is to store the captured data, information and knowledge applicable to the organization in accessible repositories. OM is created as a result of individual and organizational activities and learning. Capturing the experience involves capturing the structured explicit knowledge and the unstructured tacit knowledge. Capturing the structured explicit knowledge is relatively easy. It can be captured from documents, reports, publications, work procedures, data processing systems, Information Management Systems etc. Capturing the unstructured, abstract, tacit knowledge though difficult is important for the OM. For this individuals act as the agents of capturing the knowledge as they synthesize it in to their own internal knowledge base and apply to actions such as changing procedures and work processes. The context and reasoning of such changes can be captured and stored in OM. In addition to this limited capture of tacit knowledge, individuals themselves are the main 137 source of tacit knowledge. As the data, information and knowledge stored in OM are applied over time, the organizational culture changes to reflect its use. Cultural change of organization takes time, because organizational members need to reach a consensus that the anticipated changes in organizational actions, norms and values are appropriate, acceptable and beneficial to the organization. Consensus making is time consuming.

Management of OMS

The management of OMS consists of planning, identifying, capturing, quality controlling, storing, searching, retrieving, and using the data, information & knowledge relevant to the organization. Monitoring the benefits to the individuals and to the whole organization is also a part of the management of OMS. It is possible to automate the capture of certain data, information and knowledge in to the organizational memory. However, it is also necessary to capture the relevant knowledge manually, codify and store in the OM. The usage and benefit of OMS should be monitored. The OMS subsystems which are effective in improving the organizational performance should be maintained and expanded and others which are not effective should be analyzed and made effective or dropped.

Approaches to build OMS

There are two approaches to building an OMS. They are process based approach and infrastructure based approach. The process based approach focuses on the area of OM by participants in a process, task or project in order to improve their effectiveness. This approach identifies the data, information and knowledge needs of the process and its users, capture them and store in OM. It has well defined users and hence it is user centric. The infrastructure based approach focuses on building a base system to capture, store and distribute OM for use throughout the organization. It is more concerned with the technical details associated with identification, storage, search, retrieval and use of OM. The approach focuses on network capacity, database, information and knowledge classification etc. The approach is technology centric and takes longer time for visible success. Combination of both approaches needs to be used to create organization wide OM. Since, the process based approach supports specific process and projects and identified users and knowledge requirements. The infrastructure based approach integrates all OM in to a single system and hence provides higher benefits, since it is spread across the entire organization rather than a few process. The process based approach is more suitable for small organizations with well defined OM goals. The infrastructure approach is preferred for large organizations, where the OM needs are not known, but the organization knows that OM is necessary. Studies of different OM implementations (Ackerman, 1994) reveals that, the success rate of process based OM is high compared to infrastructure based organization wide OM. Hence, it is suggested that even in infrastructure based organization wide OM, it is preferable to break OM into manageable pieces, that correspond to specific process, task, project or department and integration of these smaller pieces to form the overall OM. This hybrid approach of having an overall plan of infrastructure based OM, identifying the components as process based OM and finally integrating to form the complete organization wide OM has the dual benefits of infrastructure based approach and process based approach.

Design of OMS

The basic components of OMS are capturing, storing, searching, retrieving, using and assessing OM. The issues affecting the design of OMS are perspective of OM from different organizational groups, information overload, quality control and security of OM, capturing mechanism, storing, retrieval, usage and integration of memory components. OM repositories need to be designed to accommodate different types of data like metadata, structured data, semi structured data and unstructured data. Organization and representation of memory and the user interfaces are the keys to success of OMS. Effective memory maps need to be designed based on the user requirements. Capture of certain memory can be done automatically from transaction processing system. However it is also required to capture manually by designated personnel. The content in OM ages with time and need to be purged when it is no longer required. Methods for identifying and purging outdated memory, like validity period and automatic/ administrator controlled purging after the validity period etc. need to be evolved. Design of OMS should also consider the technology infrastructure like network, servers, storage, back up devices etc.

The organization has various transaction processing systems like Human Resource Management System, Finance, Projects, Procurement and Materials Management etc. The relevant data and information from these systems can be captured in to the OM through proper quality control and filtering mechanism. Similarly the relevant data from Scientific Data Warehouse and Digital Library can be brought into the OM. Also information and knowledge available in various Departments need to be consciously captured into the OM. The performance of OM can be monitored through user feedback and performance measurement methods. The mechanism of purging like validity period, ‘no usage’ etc. can be used.

Organizational Memory Systems

When an Organization has implemented OMS, the effectiveness need to be measured and the design of OMS should include appropriate methods to measure it. However, it is also necessary to predict the effectiveness by appropriate methods even before the implementation. Organizational effectiveness can be described using the competing values model (Stein and Zwass, 1995, Quinn and Rhorbaugh, 1983). This model assumes that organizational effectiveness is related to OMS. It uses four organizational effectiveness criteria: integration, adaptation, goal attainment and pattern maintenance. The integration function is the technology capability for providing access to the OM which may be distributed across the entire organization in space and time. The adaptive function is the ability of the organization to adapt to the changes in the organization. The goal attainment function is the ability of the organization to set goals and evaluate the degree of their fulfillment. The pattern maintenance function is the ability of the organization to maintain the cohesion and the morale of the human resource. The competing values model, though predicts the effectiveness of OMS, through the organizational effectiveness 139 variables, it does not predict the usage of OMS. The generalized assessment of OMS success can be predicted by adapting the Information System Success Model which (Jennex Adolfman, 2002, Delone and McLean’s 1992) depicted in Figure 2. 200

The ‘System Quality’ refers to the technological characteristics of the OMS. This includes the capability of the organization to develop and maintain OMS in terms of quality human resource (developers and users) and advanced hardware & software. It also includes the level of integration: how much of the accessible memory is online and available through a single interface. In addition it includes the quality of search and retrieval functions. The ‘Information Quality’ defines the quality of the memory content in terms of its richness, the linkages and to the extent to which it meets the needs of the users on a long terms basis. The ‘use’ refers to the utilization of the outputs of the system and can be used to measure the success of the system when the usage of the system is voluntary. ‘User satisfaction’ measures the users’ perception of the system. Use and user satisfaction will influence each other. The usage of OMS by an individual will produce an impact on his / her performance in the work place. Each individual impact will in turn have an impact on the performance of the Organization, though it may not be a simple addition.

Managing Organizations Memory

It is usually perceived that an organization will benefit from using OM. However, it does not happen always. The Organizational benefit depends on the context in which OM is used. For example, if in a situation where a non routine response was required, the usage of OM resulted in a routine decision, organizational performance deteriorates. Hence, effective management of OM is necessary for improved organizational performance. Also management actions are required for creation and implementation of OM Policies, Procedures and Standards, ensure adequate resources to develop and maintain OM, monitoring the usage of OM and ensure its effectiveness, adequate training to users, encourage the OM usage and orient the organizational culture to facilitate the effective growth and usage of OM. The growth and usage of OM is tightly linked to the organizational culture that promotes sharing between organizational members. Sharing culture can be promoted through management support and by reward system used by the organization to assess individual performance. Changing Organizational culture is time consuming and the management needs to make available the time and other resources required for this change management.