Knowledge Management

1
Knowledge Management

• Lecture 7 - Knowledge formalized into numerical
  measures of agreements

2
Outline of the lecture

• Theories of measurement
• Technology and KM
• Knowledge management network
• Oppositions seminar

3
Measures

• Goal increase interest to add to employees
  experience, discoveries and solutions to the
  firms knowledge repositories
• How can we measure
• qualitative - quantitative
• intangible - tangible
• tacit explicit
• Different models

4
Definitions of measurement within the KM area

• Used in relation to a rule or a principle
• What you cannot measure you cannot control (Curt
  Nicolain, Director of SAF)
• We need to measure because if we do not we are
  victims of complete subjectivity instead of
  partial and standardized subjectivity
• The most simple example of socio-metrics can be
  found in weekly magazines. Measure yourself
  concerning your ability to X
• More definitions

5
Measures should be

• Easy to
• understand
• apply
• communicate
• summarize gt numeric
• General
• Valid
• Reliable
• Pedagogic examples

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Quality of rules

• Rules should be as simple and as generic as
  possible
• The better the rules 
• the less need for control
• the less execution of power from management
• Football would not be entertaining for the
  audience if there were no rules

7
Which are the good rules?

• Rules that are
• Global
• Simple
• Consistent
• As few as possible
• Flexible
• Synchronized

8
Three levels of synchronizing organizational
activity 

• 3 Reward structures
• People can do what they want but are rewarded if
  the results are beneficial for the organization
• Abstract formalization and centralization of
  principles enables impersonal control
• The power of IT enables virtual control
• 2 Management By Objectives
• Telling people which results are expected
• 1 Monitoring
• Controlling that people do what they are told to
  do

9
Feedback learning organization

• Assess the value of the delivered product/service
  by giving feedback concerning how needed the
  product/service was
• Why is it good or necessary
• How can it be improved. If we do not relate the
  quality of something to any kind of general
  standard the person who delivers something will
  not know if it can be improved or not.
• There should be a formalization of possible
  alternative ways to improve it
• Establish a measure for the product/service that
  shows the quality of it

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PDCA cycle

• Deming (TQM, 1986)
• successful quality strategy
• PDCA cycle, adjusted for KM
• Plan - capturing and creating knowledge
• Do sharing knowledge
• Check - measuring the effects
• Act - feedback and improving

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Knowledge Management model

• COST model

Organization
Customer
Supplier
Technology
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The KM Matrix

• COST PDCA matrix

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Customer Matrix
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Organizational Matrix
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Supplier Matrix
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Technology Matrix
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Matrix Exercise

• Case
• KM course at KTH
• Mobile company
• Consultancy agency
• Restaurant

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Popular KM Measurement Tools

• Economic Value Added (EVA)
• The Balanced Scorecard (BSC)
• Intellectual Capital (IC)

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Economic Value Added (EVA)

• Tool that helps organizations to pursue financial
  directive by aiding in maximizing wealth of their
  shareholders
• EVA Net Sales Operating Expenses Taxes
  Capital Charges
• Besides income EVA makes managers care about
  managing and effective use of assets.

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The Balanced Scorecard (BSC)

• Multidimensional measurement system takes into
  consideration the following perspectives
• Financial
• Customer
• Internal Business Processes
• Learning and Growth

Source www.balancedscorecard.org
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Measuring Intellectual Capital (IC)

• 5 areas of focus
• Financial
• (ex. Investment in IT)
• Customer
• (ex. market share)
• Human
• (ex. Leadership Index)
• Process
• (ex. Administrative expenses/total revenue)
• Renewal and Development
• (ex. Competence development/employee)

The Scandia Navigator. Source Learning Through
KM, p.102
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Measure description

• Explicitly show the flow of products/services/info
  rmation within the transaction
• How a rule can be related to a general rule.
• How is the value of a measure added on to a
  general measure
• The frequency or reports of the measure.
• How is it weighted in relation to other measures
• Be defined by its users. The machines should be
  designed and modified by the ones who use them.
  The machines are here to allow us to be more
  spontaneous. Form enhances creativity.
• Example How many times have any of your
  colleague given you the "good help card". Each
  employee can give away five such cards every
  month to those who have been supportive for their
  work.

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Developing prototype measures

• Getting a working set of initial hypothetic
  measures
• The company creates initial measures
• Each employee agrees with personal goals with
  each boss
• Refinement phase
• All measures are refined
• Each employee makes frame agreements with boss
• Completion phase
• Measures are standardized globally
• Each employee writes reports
• Management governs by assigning rewarding weights
  on targets

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Examples of general measures and evaluations

• Personal
• Evaluate a person for a job
• Evaluate a persons knowledge
• Organizational
• Degree of centralization
• Degree of creativity
• Degree of efficiency
• Degree of motivated employees
• Degree of business intelligence
• Value of organization. This is the most important
  area
• Results from new investments
• Results from selling production units
• Deficit from investments
• Cost of maintenance
• Economy
• All possible quotas
• Results of politics. Should be a department
• Comparing governments
• Benchmarking governments

25
Measurement exercise examples

• Knowledge sharing
• Group rewards
• Knowledge weight contribution bonus
• Management motivation
• intrinsic motivation
• extrinsic motivation
• Customer support
• Call volume
• Customer satisfaction
• Problem handling
• Response time
• Number of problems

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5min Measurement exercise individual

• Give an example of measurement of
• Knowledge acquisition
• Knowledge application
• Customer satisfaction
• Employee motivation
• Product improvement

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Continuous refinement of measures

• The only way to measure is through benchmarking
  standard figures
• with other companies in the branch
• with all companies
• with yourself over time

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Advantages of using measures

• Game efficiencyThe efficiency and creativity of
  any game is related to the cost of making
  spontaneous "on the fly" commitments. The
  entrepreneurs must be allowed to improvise.
• Knowledge transferKnowledge transfer should be
  as simple as possible and coded into the culture
  of the organization. For instance Each Friday
  afternoon we select the one who tells the best
  story in our five person self-help group. We
  write a number on a slip of paper.

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Risks and dangers when introducing formalisms

• There is a risk that reward systems conserves
  bureaucracies
• The measures should be instantly created in every
  negotiations
• Is all that should be discussed at yearly
  conferences
• They should be related to return of investments

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Technological Aspects

• Helps to create right culture to facilitate
  proper knowledge capture, storage and
  dissemination

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Technology for knowing what organization knows

• Databases complexity increases
• Only a small percentage of data captured is
  actually made use of again to aid the
  decision-making process (Learning through KM,
  p.105)
• Need for common pool of information with search
  on demand engines
• Data warehousing

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Creating Knowledge Repositories - Data
Warehousing

• Repositories organizations knowledge
• Capture data, information and knowledge
• Problem lack of context
• Solution
• Meaningful headings
• Ability to add comments to the any type of file
• 2 types of IS
• Operational systems - day-to-day operations
• Informational systems analysis of data,
  decision support

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Using an Intranet

• Operate within org. boundaries, usually protected
  by firewalls and password access
• Support knowledge access and exchange within
  organization (globally)
• Possible users employees, stakeholders,
  customers, suppliers

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Technology for knowing what employee knows
Sharing knowledge
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Skills Directory

• Gather, retrieves, points to and develop
  information within the organization
• Enables dramatic increase in overall
  productivity (p.108) due to the time saved in
  re-inventing the wheel
• Promotes learning organization

36
Using Groupware

• Group shared working e-space
• Encourage the sharing of ideas in a much more
  free flowing manner
• Through collaboration a lot of knowledge is
  generated and transferred

37
Implementing KM Technology

• Selecting correct/right KM tool for the
  organization
• Tools that will help to recognize problem and
  suggest possible solution
• General KM tools capabilities
• Analyze current sources of info and knowledge
• Document knowledge
• Sharing Knowledge
• Applying knowledge

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Selecting the right KM tool for the organization

• Able to capture organize
• Searchable
• Able to recognize the user
• Able to facilitate dissemination and learning

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Knowledge Management Network

• Framework for implementing KM in an organization

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Oppositions seminar

• Work in groups (4-6 per)
• Use any kind of presentation help you need (.ppt,
  print your WebPages, write a presentation as text
  and etc.), however we do not provide any
  assistance with the computers
• Group leaders do not take part in the
  oppositions, acts like a chairman, by steering
  the oppositions. Leaders shall use oppositions as
  a help for a fulfillment for their assignment.
• Speaker makes a 15 min presentation, where s/he
  presents
• Knowledge earned from other students during the
  seminars
• Organization they have studied and proposed
  Improvement-innovation-.... of a KM Strategy in
  that organization, additionally support the
  solution(s) (with some measures)
• Presentation should be followed by 15-20 min
  opposition discussion
• Fill in the seminar report and keep it! Sign an
  attendance list.

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What to pay attention to when opposing

• How well speaker
• Communicates knowledge
• Transfer knowledge to another person and control
  that the other person has understood it the right
  way
• Convert explicit knowledge to implicit knowledge
• Understand in what situations this type of
  transformation is necessary
• Transform implicit knowledge to explicit
  knowledge and also to understand in what
  situations this type of transformation is
  necessary
• Prerequisites for how to process knowledge to
  make it suited for
• Being reused by people that are not experts in
  the area
• Being stored in a knowledge base
• Being indexed and retrieved from a database in an
  efficient way
• Being described in a way allows people to search
  for the knowledge without knowing how it is
  indexed
• Motivates employees to share knowledge
• Describe how Knowledge management technologies
  can be implemented in an organization
• Generalize Knowledge
• Compresses and fuses knowledge with other
  knowledge