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Knowledge management

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Knowledge management (KM) is associated with the processes for the creation, dissemination, testing, integration, and utilization of knowledge within organizations, to support decision making process.

Definition

Knowledge means Information in one hand and EXPERIENCE in the other. KM means how you handle BOTH, not only one. A widely accepted 'working definition' of knowledge management applied in worldwide organizations is available from the WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management:

"Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings."

This definition not only gives an indication of what Knowledge Management is, but of how its advocates often treat the English language. In simpler terms, Knowledge Management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to an organization, creating new knowledge in the process.

It is helpful to make a clear distinction between knowledge on the one hand, and information and data on the other. Information can be considered as a message. It typically has a sender and a receiver. Information is the sort of stuff that can, at least potentially, be saved onto a computer. Data is a type of information that is structured, but has not been interpreted.

Knowledge might be described as information that has a use or purpose. Whereas information can be placed onto a computer, knowledge exists in the heads of people. Knowledge is information to which an intent has been attached.

Basic Knowledge Management involves the capture of information and experience so that it is easily accessible in a corporate environment. An alternate term is "knowledge capture". Managing this capture allows the system to grow into a powerful information asset.

The development of KM

KM has been around for ages: librarians, teachers, philosophers and writers have been practising it. In the context of the Information Age and the increasing use of computers, it has come to be seen as a deliberate effort that deals with the process particularly in the context of organizations. Acknowledging the crucial importance of those technologies in KM, the term Knowledge technologies is more and more used to refer to information technologies used to support Knowledge Management.

By the early nineties, it was clear that there were two distinct branches of Knowledge Management.

The first branch had its roots firmly in the use of technology. In this view Knowledge Management is an issue of information storage and retrieval. It uses ideas derived from systems analysis and management theory. This approach led to a boom in consultancies and in the development of knowledge technologies. Typically first-generation Knowledge Management involved developing sophisticated data analysis and retrieval systems with little thought to how the information they contained would be developed or used.

Management theory functions as a branch of economics, and to a large extent it adopts econometric standards. When it became apparent that it would be useful to be able to manage knowledge, it was natural for managers to attempt to apply their preferred econometric methods to the cause. But econometrics is about commodities and cash flow. It found it therefore necessary to treat knowledge as if it were a commodity.

This, of course, was a surprisingly difficult thing to do, essentially because knowledge is not a commodity but a process. But a suitable epistemology was found, in the form of that developed by Michael Polanyi. Polanyi’s epistemology objectified the cognitive component of knowledge – learning and doing – by labelling it tacit knowledge and for the most part removing it from the public view. Learning and doing became a 'black box' that was not really subject to management; the best that could be done was to make tacit knowledge explicit.

The second branch gives priority to the way in which knowledge is constructed and used. It derives its ideas from complex systems, often making use of organic metaphors to describe knowledge growth. It is closely related to organizational learning. It recognises that learning and doing are more important to organisational success than dissemination and imitation.

Managing the instructions

The use of the word 'management' highlights the fact that knowledge is an important resource/asset (in academic accounting regimes it is referred to as instructional capital). Like other styles of capital it requires a focused effort to optimise acquisition, transfer and deployment in an organization and to make sure of its availability and reliability at the right time for decision making. Regardless of how contentious or adversarial this process becomes, an underlying layer of consensus decision making is always required to deal with the choice of language, level of vocabulary, information technology tools, database or ontology. The term knowledge base is often used to describe these foundations. Maintenance of the knowledge base is an additional characteristic of this discipline.

KM is often described as being in step with other organizational initiatives and systems such as quality management and Business Process Reengineering. It may be undertaken in parallel with accounting reform to better optimize the organization to exploit its own instructional capital. It seems also to grow out of software configuration management ambitions.

Criticisms of KM - control versus creativity

However, instructions for humans are not quite like code for computers. Many authors claim that knowledge cannot be "managed". Since management implies control, and knowledge relies on creativity, relationships, and context, they argue that heavy-handed control can stifle knowledge creation [Krogh]. Human development theory for instance draws a strong parallel between the natural capital of the planet's ecologies and the individual capital of human beings, and argues that both simply grow on their own. They gain little from intervention, other than minimal guidance and protection. To put in place any regime of "management", such arguments go, is simply to force these living things into the structures and rules that evolved for infrastructural capital and financial capital. This is unsatisfactory because they respond to very different treatments.

A similar argument applies to customer relationship management and social capital, with detractors arguing that such systems impose social control.

For the above reasons some consultants are now using the terms Knowledge Sharing and Information Management (KS&IM) rather than KM. According to this view, Knowledge cannot be managed; it exists in people's heads and can only be shared. Information, however, can be managed. To achieve a high performing knowledge organization requires a combination of cultural change (to promote sharing) and appropriate infrastructure (to enable information storage and retrieval). For the transfer of knowledge visual representation are promising. Its potential is examined in the research area Knowledge visualization.

See also

References

  • Enabling Knowledge Creation: New Tools for Unlocking the Mysteries of Tacit Understanding by Ikujiro Nonaka, Georg Von Krogh, and Kazuo Ichijo, Oxford University Press, 2000, hardcover, 304 pages, ISBN 0195126165
  • Bernbom, Gerald, editor. (2001). Information Alchemy: The Art and Science of Knowledge Management. EDUCAUSE Leadership Series #3. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Graham, Ricci. (2001).
  • Graham, Ricci. (2001). "Benchmarking Jackson State." Knowledge Management, (4): 5. p. 11. May, 2001.
  • A. Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Orchestrating IT, Strategy, and Knowledge Platforms (2nd Edition), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.
  • Ward, Lewis. (2001). "Collaborative KM Tools: Putting Customer Care Online." Knowledge Management (4):4. pp. CS1-CS6. Special Advertising Section.
  • Leibold, M. Probst, G. and Gibbert, M. (2001) Strategic Management in the Knowledge Economy, Wiley, Erlangen 2001.
  • Probst, G. Raub, S. and Romhardt K. (1999) Managing Knowledge, Wiley, London, 1999 (Exists also in other languages).
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