Chapter
1
Introduction
1.1
WHAT
IS KM?
1. Davenport,T (1994) offered the following: “knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge”
2. Duhon, 1998 : “A discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously uncaptured expertise and experience in individual workers”.
3. The third definition by McInerney, C. [2002] is that “KM is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization.Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge objects or artifacts.”
1.2 THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF KM
1. Davenport,T (1994) offered the following: “knowledge management is the process of capturing, distributing, and effectively using knowledge”
2. Duhon, 1998 : “A discipline that promotes an integrated approach to identifying, capturing, evaluating, retrieving, and sharing all of an enterprise’s information assets. These assets may include databases, documents, policies, procedures, and previously uncaptured expertise and experience in individual workers”.
3. The third definition by McInerney, C. [2002] is that “KM is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization.Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge objects or artifacts.”
1.2 THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF KM
The appearance of the term “Knowledge
Management” is a rather recent phenomenon. It appeared
1.3 THE STAGES OF KM DEVELOPMENT
1. “By the Internet out of Intellectual
Capital” : Information Technology, Intellectual Capital, The Internet (including intranets, extranets, etc.) and Key Phrases: “best practices,” later replaced by the more
politic “lessons learned”
2. Human and cultural dimensions,
the HR, Human Relations stage : Communities of Practice, Organizational Culture,The Learning Organization (Senge), and Tacit Knowledge (Nonaka) incorporated into KM, Key Phrase: “communities of practice”.
3. Content and Retrievability : Structuring content and assigning descriptors (index terms), Key Phrases: “ content
management” and “taxonomies”
4. Access to External Information : Emphases upon External Information and the recognition of the Importance
of Context, Key Terms: “context” and “extranet”
1.4 SUPPLEMENTARY WAYS
OF LOOKING AT KM
1.4.1 THE IBM TWO BY
TWO MATRIX
A MAP OF
THE DOMAIN OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
KM may also be displayed and to a
degree defined graphically through mapping. The following
presents an expanded form of a graphic
used by IBM in their KM consultancy to explain the value
1.4.2 THE FOREST AND THE TREES
KM-The New Business Potpourri or not
Seeing the Forest for theTrees
What is that fundamentally important
difference?
Think of all the management fads and
enthusiasms of the late 20th century, 1975
– 2000.What is striking is how many of those
management fads, enthusiasms, and topics are highly related with the management of
information, knowledge flow in organizations or the management of information
1.4.3 KM AS THE EXTENSION OFTHE SUCCESSFUL
R&D ENVIRONMENT
Meta-Research, or KMis the Extension
of the SuccessfulR&DEnvironment
A final way to view KMis to
observeKMas the movement to replicate the information environment
C
H A PT E R 2
Background Bibliographic
Analysis
One
measure of the influence of a discipline is to track the “formal
communications” or published works in that discipline. Ponzi observed that “knowledge
management is one emerging discipline that remains strong and does not appear
to be fading”. The authors have continued that tracking of the KM literature
time series (Figure 2.1 below) through the 2009 literature. The KM business
literature continues to grow.
Below
(Figure 2.2) are the literature growth patterns of three of those major
business enthusiasms. The difference is dramatic. Quality Circles, Business
Process Engineering, and Total Quality Management all show an almostm identical
pattern of approximately five years of dramatic, exponential, growth, then they
peak and fall off to near nothing almost as quickly. KM, by contrast, has that
same period of five years of exponential growth, 1994 to 1999, but in the
decade since it has not declined, rather it has continued to grow steadily and
consistently. All the hallmarks are here of a rather permanent development.
Figure 2.2: Literature graphs for “Quality Circles,” “TotalQuality
Management,” and “Business Process
Reengineering.”
See
Figure 2.3 below for the publication pattern. In general, the number of
dissertations focusing on some aspect of knowledge management rises gradually
until 2006 and has remained steady with about 100 theses produced each year in
English with, however, a decline in 2008 and 2009.
Figure 2.3: Doctoral Dissertations and Masters Theses written with ‘Knowledge
Management’ in the
Title, Abstract or KeyWord Fields 1996–2009.
C H A PT E R 3
Theorizing
Knowledge in
Organizations
3.1
KNOWLEDGE AS RESOURCE AND PROCESS
Through
the resource perspective, organizations view knowledge as a fundamental
resource in addition to the traditional resources of land, labor, and capital.
It is held that the knowledge that the firm possesses is a source of
sustainable competitive advantage, and is, accordingly, regarded as a strategic
resource of the firm in need of management attention. On the other hand, through
the process view, organizations are thought of as information processing and
knowledge generating systems [Grant, R., 1996]. Baumard, P. [1999] proposes
looking at knowledge in organizations along two dimensions: tacit-explicit
versus individual-collective. He defines four quadrants in which knowledge
types are situated: tacit-individual (intuitiveness), tacit-collective (social
practice), explicit-individual (expertise), and, explicit-collective (rules).
Grounding the use of the quadrants in observations of exemplar case-study
organizations, Baumard suggests that the creation of organizational knowledge
can be tracked by locating actors’ responses (knowing) within the appropriate
quadrants of the matrix.
3.2
INTERACTIONS FOR KNOWLEDGE CREATION
While
knowledge itself may be perceived as a resource, its creation occurs through
human interactions, whether physical or virtual. For example, for knowledge to
emerge from within a group, interactions that occur among its members shape the
knowledge that emerges from the mutual engagement and participation of the
group members. Nonaka and Takeuchi are the most prominent theorists in the
knowledge management domain. Their SECI (Socialization, Externalization,
Combination, Internalization) model posits a spiral-type process in which
knowledge goes from within a person’s own knowledge store to a more explicit
state that can be shared socially with others.
3.3
ACTIVITY AS CONTEXT
Instead
of examining knowledge per se,
Blackler, F. [1995] and others propose that attention should focus on systems
through which knowing and doing are achieved. By suggesting an alternative stance
of knowing as mediated, situated, provisional, pragmatic, and contested, as
opposed to a more classic viewof knowledge as embodied, embrained, encultured,
and encoded, Blackler recognizes that knowledge permeates activity systems
within the organization. Building on Engeström, Y. [1999] general model of
socially distributed activity systems, Blackler, F. [1995] proposes that
knowledge can be observed as emerging out of the tensions that arise within an
organization’s activity systems, that is, among individuals and their
communities, their environment (rules and regulations), and the instruments and
resources that mediate their activities.
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