From Information Management to Knowledge Management

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From Information Management to Knowledge
Management

• Yale BraunsteinJune 2004

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Background - 1

• Information management is central
• to the collaboration of groups of individuals
• to the mission of organizations of all types
  (businesses, education, and government)
• to geographically centralized and distributed
  communities
• and to society as a whole.
• While this predates modern information
  technology, computing and especially networking
  have vastly expanded the importance of
  information to these social contexts.

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Background - 2

• Largely as a result of these technologies,
  information has become
• less centralized
• more widely distributed
• chaotically organized
• overwhelmingly plentiful.
• This places a premium on ways to distribute the
  management of information, to turn chaos into
  organization, to identify targeted or useful
  information.

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Background - 3

• While IT is responsible for creating problems, it
  is also a major hope for solutions.
• Both centralized and distributed information
  collections can be much more effectively
  organized.
• This allows individuals, groups, organizations,
  communities and society to leverage their
  information assets.

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Putting this into Historical Perspective

• Complete autonomy
• Self-sufficiency
• Serfs guilds
• Role of trade
• necessary for improved standard of living
• Hanseatic league as early form of
  decentralization
• Mass production
• Multi-plant / multi-market mass production
• Decentralization
• Virtual offices
• Virtual organizations

TIME ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
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Where to firms come from? (Modern theories)

• Coase Theory of the Firm
• Role of transactions costs
• Stigler Economies of Scale is Limited by the
  Extent of the Market
• Interplay of production technology and mass
  market possibilities

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Markets vs. Hierarchies

• Internal production
• External production (out-sourcing)
• Role of information and IT

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Information Management Themes and Challenges

• 1. Digital networks and organization
• 2. Information management and knowledge
  management.
• 3. Business planning for the introduction of IT
  to organizations
• 4. Managing change

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1. Digital Networks

• How are digital networks changing the
  organization and management of systems (e.g.,
  information flows and publication) and
  enterprises (e.g., for-profit business and
  non-profit organizationsNGOs)?
• Case study How does decision making by groups
  meeting face-to-face differ from decision making
  by virtual groups?

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2. IT and Organization

• How is information technology changing
• information management the basic information
  process of organizations (e.g., budget,
  inventory, personnel, etc.)?
• knowledge management the basic human skills
  and social relationships of organizations (e.g.,
  collaborative work, career management,
  communication with customers)?
• the structure of organizations, and relations
  between them?

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3. Business Planning

• The introduction of IT to organizations implies
  change, therefore the need for strategic
  planning, management and communication.
• New business models for organizations
• Methods for gathering information
• Building for-profit non-profit budgets
• Creating business plans

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4. Managing Change

• How can the implementation of information
  technologies be managed
• To avoid stress and conflict?
• To encourage innovation?
• To optimize career development?

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Information Management As Part of Management

• Venkatramans postulate Management is evolving
  from a command paradigm to the communications
  paradigm. This leads to
• flatter organizations
• more local autonomy
• management by coordination rather than command
  and control
• Information management has rationalized the
  organization, but real time network communication
  is changing it fundamentally
• from hierarchy to enterprise (networks of self
  managed enterprises that operate like an internal
  market system).

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Networks Are Strategic

• Walter Powells argument
• Networks are changing the firm and its
  environment, such as from from EDI to B2B
• Different ways to focus on the network
• Rosegger strategic alliances
• Powell networks and firms
• Cisco web enterprises

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New Models of Management

• All of the above has led to the design and
  analysis of new approaches to management

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The Firm As an Experimental Machine.

• Eliasson Key knowledge is know how, tacit
  knowledge that cannot be communicated, but is
  based upon experimentation in the marketplace.
• The organization of this experimental learning is
  the key to innovation
• the competent team is the key
• the market is being continuously reinvented
• Rosegger knowledge acquisition has become the
  heart of enterprises

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Eliassons Entrepreneurial Model of Decision
Making

• Strategic selection by top competent team,
  answering What?, based on career experience
  knowledge
• Control coordination by executive staff,
  answering In what order?, based upon expertise
  from professional education
• Operations, by managers, answering How?, based
  upon training and experience.

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Competency (Eliasson)

• The competency of organizations is a function of
  knowledge management, e.g., entrepreneurial
  vision, experimental attitude towards markets,
  career management
• Sense of direction (intuition)
• Daring (risk-willingness)
• Efficiency in identifying mistakes (analysis)
• Effectiveness in correcting mistakes (activity)
• Effectiveness in managing (coordinating)
  successful experiments
• Effectiveness in feeding acquired experience back
  into a sense of direction.

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The Career

• Eliassons model of the firm requires a theory of
  the career, since tacit knowledge acquired by
  experience is the basis of entrepreneurship.
• One of the key tasks of management is to provide
  a logical sequence of jobs to develop this
  capability.

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Fahey Three Dimensions of Strategic Management

• Competitive environment Marketplace strategy
• Managing the organization Making executing
  choices
• Strategic Management Balancing the two

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Investment

• IT involves investment. Understand the business
  model, culture, and decision making process of
  your organization to figure out the politics of
  IT investment.
• (a) internal reallocation
• (b) loans
• (c) venture capital formation

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KM is broader than IM

• Relation to "flows" and "stocks" ?
• IM managing flow of information
• KM managing stock of knowledge
• KM is "the task of developing and exploiting an
  organization's tangible and intangible knowledge
  resources" (J. McCune, 1999)
• Tangible assets patents, licenses, customer
  lists, competitive info, etc.
• Intangible assets knowledge possessed by
  employees (experiential, etc.)
• (Others distinguish between explicit and tacit
  knowledge)