Defining Knowledge Management and Its Functioning - Assignment Example

Portfolio exercise 1 (500 words) 1. Write a synopsis of the central research problem you intend to address in your thesis. Discuss a) why this problem was chosen; b) why it is a problem suitable for research at doctoral level; what you hope will be the distinctive and original contribution made by the research. 2. Using the materials as a rough, not exact, guideline, sketch out a timetable for your research thesis. Please note, you can include many more than the fifteen steps listed above. Identify those stages that your feel will prove hardest to undertake and/or where you need to develop your skills as a researcher. Answer Knowledge management, in its simplest definition, seeks to formulate the superlative use of knowledge obtainable to an organisation and in so doing generating new knowledge that will ensure the survival and competence of an organisation in a constantly evolving environment. The purpose of this study is to identify and define knowledge management and its functioning and application of theoretical concepts to real-world situations, designs and tools, and its influence on an organisation, with specific reference to Greece. Knowledge management represents an organisational process that seeks to coalesce data and information to increase the imaginative capacity of its employees. In order to accomplish this aim the study will be conducted on a cross-section of five industries prevalent in Greece such as airline industry, call centres, IT firms, consulting firms and the banking industry. Apostolou and Mentzas (1999)1 characterised that companies in Greece feel an urgent need to efficiently utilising their knowledge base, not just for competitive advantage but this desire is intensified by their aim to provide high quality services to their customers. The research draws its inspiration from the popular view that employees are an organisation’s most valued asset as quality, quantity of work output is directly related to personnel potential and commitment, and that better knowledge management in an organisation will ultimately lead to competence and predominance of the organisation. Predominance being the ultimate goal, ultimately benefits the Greek organisations by advocating effective implementation of knowledge management designs and tools, by helping to identify knowledge and methods of gaining knowledge, expertise and intellectual capital, a range of processes and practices and assets for transfer and reprocess information across the organisation. Since the initiation and improvement of technology, further facilitating technologies have come forth, with which the scope for research and potential growth of knowledge management practices has increased manifold providing organisations with platforms by which the realisation of their goals is thus multiplied greatly. The results of knowledge management programs will therefore vary from organisation to organisation depending on the objectives outlining the specified targets to be attained, overall performance, and competitive advantage of the organisation. In order to complete an efficient study of the project, the research will comprise of the following stages; a detailed literary search, anthology of a bibliography, drafting the literary review, designing the research instrument, revising, planning and organising the research, making a glossary of the bibliography, scheduling, conducting a research, collating and analysing the data generated by different agencies on a regular basis, writing the results and analysis, writing the full draft, proofreading and final submission of the research. The most time consuming of these stages will include the collecting of data that will require time, finances and researchers and other professionals including field level workers, writing up the results and analysis after a the data has been channelised to the resource centre detailed review of the data collected and of course drafting the literature review. Providing an accurate list of citations and annotations for the research in itself will be a lengthy and time-consuming procedure. Portfolio exercise 2 (500 words) Plan a search on your research topic; execute the search, and obtain ten articles/other forms of text. 1. Briefly evaluate five of the ten articles in relation to your research problem: how might they inform your research? 2. What problems (if any) did you encounter in getting hold of the materials? How did you overcome these? 3. How might the review of these articles inform the revision of your research proposal? What further questions are raised? Answer Upon conducting a research for articles in relation to the impact of culture in knowledge management, many informative and helpful articles were discovered that led to further revision of the research and included information previously unexplored. These topics included first generation2 and second generation approaches to understanding knowledge management, knowledge management drivers3, ad hoc knowledge access and many more that we shall discuss in certain detail in the following paragraphs. As explained in the initial research, tacit and explicit knowledge are the basis of distinction between pioneering knowledge management practitioners. While tacit is defined as subconscious and internalised, explicit is defined as consciously communicated through codified, written or other permanent forms of communication. These two simple terms and others such as intellectual capital, metric form an indispensable part of knowledge management practitioners. The basic belief held by Nonaka and Takeuchi4 is that tacit knowledge needs to be converted into explicit knowledge and in doing so be shared among others in the organisation in order to achieve the basic role of knowledge management that is to create new knowledge for the benefit of the organisation. Turning tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge will in turn enable an alternative strategy to encoding knowledge into a database that is to allow employees access to a panel of specialists that will enrich the content of the knowledge required and contextualise it to the specific problem thereby benefiting the organisation greatly. Far from popular view that organisations aim to efficiently manage their knowledge base to gain competitive advantage, many other reasons were discovered such as facilitating and managing of organisational innovation, to leverage the expertise of people across the organisation, to better manage the proliferation of data and information in complex environments, achieving shorter and more efficient product development cycles and so on. With reference to this discovery, the first generation5 concepts of knowledge management that centre around people sharing knowledge could be further expanded and enhanced by second generation knowledge management concepts that centre around the belief that sharing knowledge within an organisation leads to stagnation and should therefore be shared with other organisations which will then lead to improved innovative ideas further enabled by software solutions. The idea though complex is rather quite straightforward and involves an idea to be filtered and analysed by colleagues, enhanced with their feedbacks and suggestions, the idea is further revised thus leading to knowledge creation, also called the knowledge management lifecycle6. This lifecycle is then supported by evolving technology such as messaging, video conferencing and so on that helps spread the idea leading to further augmentation and thereby avoiding stagnation completely. These discoveries also led to the rise of certain unexplored questions such as the impact of other management systems and theories on knowledge management, such as the impact of econometric methods on knowledge management and its auxiliary impact on the organisation retaining knowledge management programs. Portfolio exercise 3 (1500 words) Using your own proposed research: 1. Outline the ethical dilemmas that may arise, explaining why these particular aspects are important. 2. Explore how you might deal with these issues. Answer As stated earlier, the purpose of the study is to identify and define knowledge management and its functioning and application of theoretical concepts to real-world situations, designs and tools, and its influence on an organisation, with specific reference to Greece and in doing so five industries namely, IT industry, call centre industry, banking industry, airline industry and consultancy industry, will be studied. In order to collate data for the research, these industries will be asked to share sensitive information such as documents, financial data for in-depth analysis, surveys and interviews of employees such as managers and so on. Here lies the ethical issue, for ours is a corrupt world, financially and otherwise. In order to attain sensitive data, companies will have to be informed where the data is being used and for what purpose, there will also be a need to reassure these companies that their data will not be misused under any circumstances. Main concerns such as these, will bound to haunt the companies in question and will prove a hindrance in the research if they do not agree to allow for a comprehensive study of their organisation, knowledge management and production methods. In order to reassure these companies it may be essential to provide them with guarantees that their information will not be misused. In case of theft or misuse of information, penalty clauses may have to be included to compensate companies or respondents. Another ethical issue would include publication of sensitive data. This could greatly harm an organisation let us say for example a call centre, that may expose the fact that other countries or companies are providing cheaper services or products. In such a case, prior informed consent forms may need to be signed by the company in question to allow for publication of research data. Since call centres collect data such as social security numbers, phone numbers and addresses, credit card information ,it is a possibility that the information is misused and therefore the company in question refuses to share sensitive data in order to protect its clients. Upon misuse of such data, the call centre could be blamed by its customers and hence be held legally responsible and will automatically generate negative publicity and reduce customer base. A third ethical issue that may occur would be confidentiality of information. Collecting sensitive data from companies in the form of documents and financial records that when exposed to rival companies will cause great harm to the companies being researched, therefore confidentiality of information must be provided and in lieu of accidental mishaps or theft of such information, a penalty clause must be included to reimburse the companies in question. In addition, another factor that needs to be explored is the possibility of generating a hypothesis that may cause great harm to the company in question by exposing reduction of income as a direct result of some actions on behalf of either the company, its personnel or the research. Let us take the example of IT firms as state din the initial research, where it is stated that IT firms collate two types of data, structured internal knowledge referring to internal corporate documents such as production, sales and marketing information and informal internal knowledge referring to text messages, electronic chats, bulletin boards, and email messages and so on. Collating such data belonging to other companies, outside of the research realm might prove unacceptable by the firm in question and in doing so might prove a hindrance to the research in question. It is therefore essential to reassure the company of confidentiality guarantees and penalty clauses in case of accidents. In addition, as stated in the initial research, newer models that discuss teams as tools in the functioning of knowledge management, imply that the knowledge structure of the team, referring to knowledge distribution in teams, can significantly affect the team's knowledge-processing ability (Hinsz et al., 1997)7. Simply put, the theory advocates that knowledge structures can affect the team's ability to perform. For example, whilst developing a new product, a design engineer's knowledge of how the product should function can be combined with a manufacturing technician's knowledge of how to produce it and in doing so produce an efficient product leading to the competence, success and predominance of an organisation. Access to such sensitive knowledge database can pose an ethical dilemma as this information could easily be misused thereby causing the company great harm. All steps must be taken in such cases to protect the information as released by the company in question by enforcing stringent confidentiality practices on part of the researchers and analysts. Moreover, it is not uncommon practice for sensitive data such as addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers and social security numbers and so on to be sold or stolen for misuse or for marketing purposes by other companies. In such cases, organisations will need to be assured that susceptible data will be properly protected against misuse and will not under any circumstances be sold to competing companies for marketing or other purposes. The most important ethical consideration might be that the information the research aims at collecting and analysing is unacceptable by respondents or organisations. In such cases, it is essential that the aims and objectives of the research or proposed study be clarified and that guarantees or written contracts are provided that will reassure the organization or respondent of where and how the information is being used and in addition, that the information will remain confidential under all circumstances. Since the main aim of the proposed study is to study the impact of culture on Greek organisations and their consequent use of knowledge and its management either globally or otherwise, it is possible that employees belonging to certain cultures are negatively affected by a possible hypothesis that reflects their potential in a negative light. Again, in such cases, the employees will need to assured of confidentiality of information collated and if possible, penalty clauses to reimburse them for damages and consent forms in case disclosure of information is called for either to the company in question or through publication of the research data. Another ethical issue that comes to mind is that when collating data such as informal internal knowledge shared by employees over e-mails, text messages or chat rooms might encroach on their personal private space and the employee may not be willing to accept official recording of such knowledge exchange. This hesitation might be further aggravated by the knowledge that the data may be published at some point if found relevant to the study in question. Again, it will be fundamental that the researcher possess sensitive and exceptional interpersonal skills in order to persuade allowance of such encroachment on an employees private space and if essential leading to official recording and even publication. In cases where such information causes damage to the employees, it is essential for the researcher to possess a consent form to avoid legal issues or in lieu of which a reimbursement contract that will compensate the employee in case of damages incurred or if possible, to manage efficiently the propagation of data and information in such complex environments avoiding damages altogether. Another important factor in knowledge activities is the role of technology, the issue of innovation leading to possible plagiarism, responsiveness and so on. These ethical issues must be kept in mind primarily during collation of data through either surveys, interviews, research over the internet or other sources such as books and publications. Ethical and moral codes of conduct must therefore be strictly adhered to by researchers to avoid damages or penalties caused by legal action as a direct result of their methodology involving knowledge activities. In conclusion, before the research commences, a series of debates and agreements will be required that will cover all basic moral and ethical issues as discussed above, and steps to minimise penalties, damages and inconvenience imposed. Stringent rules regarding confidentiality of information must be enforced to ensure that companies are comfortable releasing sensitive information to researchers in order for researchers to gain all the fundamental knowledge and in depth information regarding methods, practices and means of production of companies, and in doing so making the research complete and the hypothesis as accurate as possible for publication purposes exacerbated by the need to accomplish the goal; competence and predominance of Greek industries. It is also a probability that during the research and analysis proposed, questions raised earlier such as, the impact of other management systems and theories on knowledge management, the impact of econometric methods on knowledge management and its auxiliary impact on the organisation retaining knowledge management programs and others will be answered leading to greater capacity of accomplishment of the proposed research. Portfolio exercise 4 (1500 words) 1. Using the technique of free writing and then redrafting, write a strict 1000 word introduction to your research problem. Use the reading from Becker ‘editing by ear’ as a guide for editing your work. 2. Reflect upon how you re-wrote and edited the piece, re-wrote and restructured sections, changed language in order to make your writing clearer and in order to fit in the space allocated (500 words, strictly observed). Knowledge transfer has always existed, right from early civilisations through oral or written methods. Today organisations simply study knowledge transfer by means of knowledge bases, expert systems and other storehouses to efficiently manage the process of accretion of knowledge and thereby facilitating the coalescence of various constituents of thoughts and processes relating to knowledge management. Key characteristics are identified by defining the two common terms in a knowledge management practitioner’s vocabulary, tacit and explicit knowledge8. Often subconscious and internalised, tacit knowledge must be converted into explicit knowledge to increase the knowledge database and in doing so the intellectual capacity of employees in an organisation thereby benefiting the organisation directly since employee creativity, commitment and competence is directly related to the output of the organisation. Along with implementation of the tools and designs of knowledge management must come the study of drivers of knowledge management that include the motivations of an organisation undertaking a knowledge management program, to superior understanding of the goals and objectives of an organisation thereby enhancing the productivity of knowledge management programs making its implementation a success leading to the competence of the organisation in question. Perhaps the most common driver is competitive advantage, however, on further exploration it was discovered that other greater motivating reasons exists such as assisting and supervision of organisational innovation, to influence the expertise of people across the organisation, to manage efficiently the propagation of data and information in complex environments, achieving shorter and more efficient product development cycles and so on. The advent of technology and its constant evolving nature has lead to greater creativity, innovation that in turn leads to greater customer satisfaction and consistency in products and quality, sharing of knowledge across countries within a global organisation and the continuous transmission of the knowledge management lifecycle without incurring stagnation, ultimately leading to the augmentation and competitive advantage of an organisation. This study hopes to identify and define knowledge management and its execution and functioning of theoretical concepts to real-world situations, designs and tools, and its influence on an organisation, with specific reference to Greece by studying a cross-section of five industries as listed below namely airline industry, call centre industry, banking industry, IT firms and consulting firms. Since the culture factor and how it impacts knowledge management in Greece has yet to be illustrated, the proposed study will investigate the effects of culture in the success or failure of tools, designs and implementation of knowledge management and in doing so will be of assistance to the Greek economy and it’s organisations to gain competitive advantage in the international playing field. A conviction of knowledge management is that activities of knowledge and its effective collection and distribution lies on certain tools that are now enhanced by evolving technology and refer to information and communication technologies. It was discovered by Davenport, De Long, and Beers (1998) that IT firms collected two categories of information; structured internal knowledge and informal internal knowledge that included production, sales, marketing, PowerPoint presentations, memos and reports, chat rooms, electronic bulletin boards and so on9. Keeping a textual exchange of information shared through these means was an excellent method of enhancing the knowledge database allowing for the maximum quality and quantity of knowledge with reference to contextualising and problem solving solutions being gathered. In order to successfully implement knowledge management programs in an organisation, it is essential to study the various models of knowledge management that exist today. One such model developed by Nonaka (1991)10 describes the evolution of tacit knowledge. However according to critics, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s differentiation between tacit and explicit knowledge is generalised and self-contradictory11, thereby making this model far from perfect. Other models of knowledge management have been suggested by various practitioners such as Leonard-Baton12 and Romhardt and Probst13 that propose the combining of distinctive qualities of employees of an organisation thereby enhancing knowledge building, APQC14 that proposes a model that considers internal benchmarking and transfer of best practices, a more holistic approach to knowledge management is advocated by Huang and Young who propose to accommodate knowledge managements interdisciplinary nature and consider various organisational, cultural and technological issues. It is evident that knowledge sharing will transpire only if employees within firms get along as team players thereby acting as tools through which knowledge can be managed leading to the inherent success of knowledge management programs. As stated by Cohen and Bailey (1997) the augmented perceptive understanding of knowledge dispensation in teams could develop their ability to meet an extensive assortment of organisational demands and significantly improve the performance of firms15. Simply put, knowledge structures can affect the team’s ability to perform better as knowledge management and its distribution will equip employees to deal with problems by promptly finding contextualised solutions, generating new knowledge and meeting the requirements of the organisation. The most effective means of applying knowledge management systems is by starting from the higher positions or by indulging a small group of individuals. Alternatively, critics have proposed another method of applying knowledge management systems successfully; by starting in the extreme direction of bottom-up to successfully capture knowledge and encode it correctly. The most efficient method of studying and conducting the research will involve qualitative and quantitative techniques of collating and analysing data from MNC’s that will provide a cross-sectional study and will also include secondary sources of data such as documents and financial analysis. To estimate the collated data analysis instruments such as percentage and chi-squares will be employed. A multiple regression analysis using ANOVA will also be used to successfully establish the significance of relationships between culture and knowledge management designs and implementation in real-world scenarios. Part B 3. Reflect upon how you re-wrote and edited the piece, re-wrote and restructured sections, changed language in order to make your writing clearer and in order to fit in the space allocated (500 words, strictly observed). In order to edit and clarify thoughts and ideas as presented in the initial research, it was essential to forget the initial research draft. This was accomplished by putting the document away, taking the essential ‘drawer time’ before opening the research and attempting to make corrections. In addition Becker’s advise of writing as fast as one can think without stopping to check for typos and to check for errors was helpful, as the chain of thought can sometimes be overwhelmed and forgotten when distracted by nerves and writer’s block16. Another helpful method was to avoid using big prose until the draft was completed upon which a proof read allowed for improvement of language. Let us study a few examples, in the portfolio exercises part 1, the sentence used was; Knowledge management represents an organisational process that seeks to coalesce data and information to increase the imaginative capacity of its employees whereas in the re-edited version the sentence changes to; Today organisations simply study knowledge transfer by means of knowledge bases, expert systems and other storehouses to efficiently manage the process of accretion of knowledge and thereby facilitating the coalescence of various constituents of thoughts and processes relating to knowledge management. This tactic of converging two or more sentences to form one sentence, changes the meaning of the sentence dramatically without removing the suggestion behind the original sentence and inadvertently links ideas for improved clarity. Another such example is the culmination of the following sentences from the initial research; the culture factor in knowledge management has yet to be illustrated in Greece. Indeed, the importance of knowledge as a crucial part in the growth of MNCs in Greece warrants further investigation as this can greatly impact the competitiveness of Greece in the world economy. For MNCs, the effective utilisation of their workforces’ knowledge would be a crucial factor in attaining competitiveness. This proposed study focuses on the human resource management and development, as the researcher would be seeking to apply his experiences and to enhance his skills in the field of human resource management with particular emphasis on knowledge management, to form the sentences; The purpose of this study is to identify and define knowledge management and its functioning and application of theoretical concepts to real-world situations, designs and tools, and its influence on an organisation, with specific reference to Greece, companies in Greece feel an urgent need to efficiently utilising their knowledge base, not just for competitive advantage but this desire is intensified by their aim to provide high quality services to their customers. In addition to editing the initial research draft, it was essential to perform a research on the subject in question to accumulate outside information thereby gathering better insight and models of writing to achieve the purpose of making the research as clear and interesting as possible. Furthermore, Becker’s advice of showing the draft to others for a critical review was helpful as certain errors and shortcomings remain unnoticed by the writer or editor that are exposed17. References Apostolou, D. and Mentzas, G. (1999) ‘Managing Corporate Knowledge: A Comparative Analysis of Experiences in Consulting Firms’, Knowledge and Process Management, 6(3), pp129–138. APQC – American Productivity & Quality Center (1997) Using information technology to support knowledge management, Consortium Benchmarking Study: Final Report. Becker, H. (1986 a) Writing for Social Scientists, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, pp68-89 Becker, H. (1986 b) Writing for Social Scientists, Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, pp68-89 Cohen, S. G. and Bailey, D. E. (1997) ‘What Makes Teams Work: Group Effectiveness Research from the Shop Floor to the Executive Suite’, Journal of Management 23, pp239-290. Cruz, R. 2006 [online] Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia. Available from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_management. Davenport, T. H., De Long, D. W. and Beers, M. C. (1998) ‘Successful knowledge management projects’, Sloan Management Review; 39(2), pp43-57. Garvin, D. A. (2000), Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA. Hinsz, V. B., Tindale, R. S. and Vollrath, D. A. (1997) ‘The Emerging Conceptualization of Groups as Information Processors’, Psychological Bulletin, 121(1), pp43-64. Leonard-Barton, D. (1995) Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation, Harvard Business School Press, Cambridge, MA. McElroy, Mark W (2002-10-10 a). The New Knowledge Management : Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation. Butterworth-Heinemann McElroy, Mark W (2002-10-10 b). The New Knowledge Management : Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation. Butterworth-Heinemann. McElroy, Mark W (2002-10-10 c). The New Knowledge Management : Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation. Butterworth-Heinemann Nonaka, I; Takeuchi, H (1995-05-18). The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Nonaka, I., and Takeuchi, H. (1995) The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nonaka, I. (1991) ‘The knowledge-creating company’, Harvard Business Review, 79(1), pp96–104. Romhardt, K. and Probst, G. (1997) ‘Building blocks of knowledge management — a practical approach’, Input-Paper for the seminar: Knowledge Management and the European Union-Towards a European Knowledge Union, 12-14 May 1997 at Utrecht, Kennis Centrum/Dutch Ministry for Education. Read More