Knowledge Management and Learning Organizations http:www'managementsupport'com

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Knowledge ManagementandLearning
Organizations http//www.managementsupport.com
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Outline

• Why the Interest?
• Knowledge Management
• Trends in Knowledge Management
• Forms of Knowledge
• Intellectual Capital
• Challenges Critical Success Factors
• Learning Organizations
• Team Learning Personal Mastery

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Knowledge Management

• Some Definitions
• Policies, procedures and technologies employed
  for operating a continuously updated linked pair
  of networked databases. (Anthes)
• Bringing tacit knowledge to the surface,
  consolidating it in forms by which it is more
  widely accessible, and promoting its continuing
  creation. (Birket)
• Process of capturing, distributing and
  effectively using knowledge. (Davenport)
• Knowledge management is the process of capturing
  a company s collective expertise wherever it
  resides-in databases, on paper, or in people s
  head-and distributing it to wherever it can help
  produce the biggest payoff. Knowledge management
  is getting the right knowledge to the right
  person at the right time .(Info Week 10/20/97)

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Paradoxes of Knowledge

• Using knowledge does not consume it but it does
  get obsolete.

• Transferring knowledge does not lose it but
  market mechanisms allow ownership.

• Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it
  is scarce.

• Producing knowledge resists organization.

• Much of it walks out the door at the end of the
  day.

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KM vs Information Management

• One expert calls idea that knowledge management
  is about managing knowledge, while information
  management is about managing information a
  myth
• She says knowledge and information are the same
  stuff but that IM focuses on finding the
  stuff and moving it around, while the KM is
  also concerned about how people create and use
  the stuff.
• Also knowledge management deals with a far
  broader range of approaches to communicating and
  using both knowledge and information.
• Source Ruth Williams (PWC consultant) on
  CIO.com, 18 October 1999

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Problems with Implementation

• In too many instances, knowledge management
  initiatives start in the information technology
  department ultimately focusing on the IT
  infrastructure, and what the IT people deem
  important. As a result many of these efforts
  focus on information rather than knowledge.
• It is difficult to evaluate learning or to place
  a value on intangibles such as knowledge,
  especially tacit knowledge. Some types of
  knowledge take years to digest so that the
  benefits of learning may not appear until some
  time in the future.

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The Knowledge Value Chain
We must recognise that there is a value chain for
Knowledge in just the same way that Michael
Porter (1985) proposed that business functions be
organised in terms of the value added to
customers.
Creation
Preservation
Integration
Transmission
Application

• Within the value chain, business processes and KM
  processes interweave and at the touch points,
  create the Points of Confluence that require
  integration of KM practices

It can be argued that part of the societal role
of a university is to nurture and protect this
value chain
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Shared Vision

• The practice of shared vision involves the skills
  of unearthing shared pictures of the future that
  foster genuine commitment and enrollment rather
  than compliance.
• The single thread that runs through all success
  stories is the involvement of large numbers of
  individuals in identifying the vision. How the
  words get written are just as important as what
  get written..
• All must understand, share in and contribute to
  the organization s vision, or that vision will
  not become a reality.
• It is not truly a vision until it connects with
  the personal vision of the people throughout the
  organization--a by product of interactions of
  personal visions.