Introduction
Knowledge Management refers to a range of practices and techniques used by organizations to identify, represent and distribute knowledge, know-how, expertise, intellectual capital and other forms of knowledge for leverage, reuse and transfer of knowledge and learning across the organization. Knowledge management programs are typically tied to organizational objectives and are intended to lead to the achievement of specific business outcomes such as improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation. Of recent years Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) practice has arisen by which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their role in the organization and their career development, Knowledge management is an evolving discipline. While knowledge transfer (an aspect of knowledge management) has always existed in one form or another, for example through on-the-job discussions with peers, formally through apprenticeship, the maintenance of corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programmes, and — since the late twentieth century — technologically through knowledge bases, expert systems, and other knowledge repositories, knowledge management programs claim to consciously evaluate and manage the process of accumulation, creation and application of knowledge which is also referred to by some as intellectual capital.
Approaches to knowledge management
There is a broad range of thought on knowledge management with no agreed definition current or likely. The approaches varying by author and school. For example, knowledge management may be viewed from each of the following perspectives: Techno-centric: Focus on technologies, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing / growth, frequently any technology that does fancy stuff with information. Theoretical: Focus on the underlying concepts of knowledge and truth. People view: Focus on bringing people together and helping them exchange knowledge. Process view: Focus on the processes of knowledge creation, transmission, transformation, and others. Organizational: How does the organization need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes? Ecological: seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system Combinatory: Combining more than one of the above approaches where possible without contradiction.
In addition as the discipline is maturing we see an increasing presence of academic debates within epistemology emerging in both the theory and practice of knowledge management. UK and Australian Standards Bodies have both produced documents which attempt to bound and scope the field but these have received limited take up or awareness.
Knowledge capture stages
Knowledge may be accessed, or captured, at three stages: before, during, or after knowledge-related activities. For example, individuals undertaking a new project for an organization might access information resources to learn best practices and lessons learned for similar projects undertaken previously, access relevant information again during the project implementation to seek advice on issues encountered, and access relevant information afterwards for advice on after-project actions and review
activities. Knowledge management practitioners offer systems, repositories, and corporate processes to encourage and formalize these activities. Similarly, knowledge may be captured and recorded before the project implementation, for example as the project team learns information and lessons during the initial project analysis. Similarly, lessons learned during the project operation may be recorded, and after-action reviews may lead to further insights and lessons being recorded for future access.
Drivers of knowledge management
There are a number of 'drivers', or motivations, leading to organizations undertaking a knowledge management program. Perhaps first among these is to gain the competitive advantage that comes with improved or faster learning and new knowledge creation. Knowledge management programs may lead to greater innovation, better customer experiences, consistency in good practices and knowledge access across a global organization, as well as many other benefits, and knowledge management programs may be driven with these goals in mind. Considerations driving a knowledge management program might include: making available increased knowledge content in the development and provision of products and services achieving shorter new product development cycles facilitating and managing organizational innovation leverage the expertise of people across the organization Benefiting from 'network effects' as the number of productive connections between employees in the organization increases and the quality of information shared increases managing the proliferation of data and information in complex business environments and allowing employees to rapidly access useful and relevant knowledge resources and best practice guidelines facilitate organizational learning managing intellectual capital and intellectual assets in the workforce (such as the expertise and know-how possessed by key individuals) as individuals retire and new workers are hired
Knowledge management enablers
Historically, there have been a number of technologies 'enabling' or facilitating knowledge management practices in the organization, including expert systems, knowledge bases, software help desk tools, document management systems and other IT systems supporting organizational knowledge flows. The advent of the Internet brought with it further enabling technologies, including e-learning, web conferencing, collaborative software, content management systems, corporate 'Yellow pages' directories, email lists, wikis, blogs, and other technologies. Each enabling technology can expand the level of inquiry available to an employee, while providing a platform to achieve specific goals or actions. The practice of KM will continue to evolve with the growth of collaboration applications available by IT and through the Internet. Since its adoption by the mainstream population and business community, the Internet has led to an increase in creative collaboration, learning and research, ecommerce, and instant information.
Knowledge management roles & organizational structure
Knowledge management activities may be centralised in a Knowledge Management Office, or responsibility for knowledge management may be located in existing departmental functions, such as the Human Resource (to manage intellectual capital) or IT departments (for content management, social computing etc.). Different departments and functions may have a knowledge management function and those fuctions may not be connected other than informally
The value of knowledge management
In an organizational context, data represents facts or values of results, and relations between data and other relations have the capacity to represent information. Patterns of relations of data and information and other patterns have the capacity to represent knowledge. For the representation to be of any utility it must be understood, and when understood the representation is information or knowledge to the one that understands. Yet, what is the real value of information and knowledge, and what does it mean to manage it? Without associations we have little chance of understanding anything. We understand things based on the associations we are able to discern. If someone
says that sales started at $100,000 per quarter and have been rising 20% per quarter for the last four quarters, I am somewhat confident that sales are now about $207,000 per quarter. I am confident because I know what "rising 20% per quarter" means and I can do the math. Yet, if someone asks what sales are apt to be next quarter, I would have to say, "It depends!" I would have to say this because although I have data and information, I have no knowledge. This is a trap that many fall into, because they don't understand that data doesn't predict trends of data. What predicts trends of data is the activity that is responsible for the data. To be able to estimate the sales for next quarter, I would need information about the competition, market size, extent of market saturation, current backlog, customer satisfaction levels associated with current product delivery, current production capacity, the extent of capacity utilization, and a whole host of other things. When I was able to amass sufficient data and information to form a complete pattern that I understood, I would have knowledge, and would then be somewhat comfortable estimating the sales for next quarter. Anything less would be just fantasy! In this example what needs to be managed to create value is the data that defines past results, the data and information associated with the organization, its market, its customers, and its competition, and the patterns which relate all these items to enable a reliable level of predictability of the future. What I would refer to as knowledge management would be the capture, retention, and reuse of the foundation for imparting an understanding of how all these pieces fit together and how to convey them meaningfully to some other person. The value of Knowledge Management relates directly to the effectiveness with which the managed knowledge enables the members of the organization to deal with today's situations and effectively envision and create their future. Without on-demand access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed based on what the individual or group brings to the situation with them. With on-demand access to managed knowledge, every situation is addressed with the sum total of everything anyone in the organization has ever learned about a situation of a similar nature. Which approach would you perceive would make a more effective organization?
Personal knowledge management
Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a concept that has grown out of a combination of knowledge management (KM) and personal information management (PIM) and cognitive human abilities. More particular, the Personal KM is focused on helping an individual be more effective -- to work better. While the focus is the individual, the goal of the movement is to enable individuals to operate better in groups and in corporations as well. This is as opposed to the traditional view of KM, which appears to be more centered on enabling the corporation to be more effective by "recording" and making available what its people know. A core focus of PKM is 'personal inquiry', a quest to find, connect, learn and explore. PKM is a response to the idea that knowledge workers increasingly need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. They need processes and tools by which they can evaluate what they know in a given situation, and then seek out ways to fill the gaps when needed. This frequently implies technology, but one can be good at PKM without much in the way of special tools. The nice thing about PKM is that the "what's in it for me” factor is taken care of immediately, so you get quicker individual buy-in. The difficult thing is how you show a traditional company that individual employee effectiveness necessarily leads to better organizational effectiveness. PKM has recently been linked to social bookmarking, blogging or k-logs. The idea is individuals use their blogs to capture ideas, opinions or thoughts and this 'voicing' will encourage cognitive diversity, promote free exchanges away from a centralized policed knowledge repository that is additional to ordinary work.
Personal knowledge management Skills
Skills associated with personal knowledge management. Reflection. Continuous improvement on how the individual operates. Manage learning. Manage how and when the individual learns. Information literacy. Understanding what information is important and how to find unknown information. Organizational skills. Personal librarianship? Personal categorization and taxonomies.
Networking with others. Knowing what your network of people knows. Knowing who might have additional knowledge and resources to help you Researching, canvassing, paying attention, interviewing and observational 'cultural anthropology' skills Communication skills. Perception, intuition, expression, visualization, and interpreting. Creative skills. Imagination, pattern-recognition, appreciation, innovation, inference. Understanding of complex adaptive systems. Collaboration skills. Coordination, synchronization, experimentation, cooperation, and design.