Addis Ababa University

School of Information science

Graduate Program
INss 626: Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning
 Introduction

Basics of Knowledge Management

 Knowledge

 Knowledge has always been valuable to people.

 The key to wealth creation is the creation of knowledge.

 Highly profitable companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems,

Oracle, and Sun—all of which were started from scratch by
college kids with nothing but knowledge, passion, and
vision.

 Most executives often state that their greatest asset is the

knowledge held by the employees.
◦ They are successful because of the skills and experience of
their employees, not because of some physical asset they
control.
Why Manage Knowledge? ..cont’d
 Any organization needs knowledge so as to perform its
functions. – OM, OL
 We need
 formalized knowledge,
 Rules and regulations,
 policies, laws, programs and procedures,
 know-how, skills, and experience of people.

 Knowledge includes the way that organizations function,

communicate, analyze situations, develop new solutions to
problems, and develop new ways of doing business.

 Knowledge involves issues of culture, custom, and values

as well as relationships
Why Manage Knowledge? ..cont’d
 Knowledge is lost from an organization through
retirement, turnover, death

 knowledge assets need to be handled.

 Knowledge needs to be gathered, stored, transmitted,

applied, updated, or generated.

 Organizationsthat are aware of their knowledge

resources possess a valuable unique resource
Why manage knowledge? …cont’d
 The ability to manage knowledge is becoming
increasingly more crucial
◦ Managing knowledge is a necessity due to changes in the
environment such as increasing competition.
◦ Management of Knowledge is a controversially discussed
concept

 There is still a debate on the meaning, definitions and

dimensions of KM
◦ All however agree that knowledge is more than just mere
data and information
 Data, Information, Knowledge
 Data is
◦ row fact
◦ a set of discrete objective facts about events
◦ represented by characters and can be produced,
codified, and distributed without a reference to the
context or person
◦ considered as the basis for creating information and
knowledge
◦ content that is directly observable or verifiable,
Data, Information, Knowledge …cont’d
 Information
 Processed data
 Refers to context
 Can be considered as messages or news created by
the interpretation of data
 Can be understood by the recipient and has
meaning to the recipient
 Content that represents analyzed data
Data, Information, Knowledge… cont’d
 Knowledge:
 stored for future use
 Emerges from the processing of the perceived
information and contextualization of a person
 A mix of framed experience, values, contextual
information
 expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating
and incorporating new experiences and information
 Can also be defined as the ability of persons to evaluate
information and act effectively
 Examples
Data
 Listings of the times and locations of all movies being
shown today (can be downloaded)
Information
 I can not leave before 3, so I will go to the 7:00 PM
show
Knowledge:
 At that time of day, it will be impossible to find parking. I
remember the last time I took the car, I was so frustrated
and stressed because I thought I would miss the opening
credits. I will therefore take a taxi.
 But first I will have to check with …. I usually love all the
movies he hates so I want to make sure it is worth seeing.
 Examples …cont’d
Data
 List of applicants for entrance examination
Information
 There are a lot of applicants for Information Science,
only 30 students will be accepted.
 I only have a small chance of passing the entrance
examination
Knowledge
 Last time, I saw the exam, the English exam is mostly
taken from standardized tests. I better concentrate
on that
 I may not be able to finish the mathematics anyway,
so I have to concentrate on English and IT
Data Information Knowledge
knowledge involves the recognition or
the understanding of patterns
 Characteristics of Knowledge

 Knowledge is based on values, perceptions and

experience
 Use of knowledge does not consume it
 Transferal of Knowledge does not result in losing it
 Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it is
scarce
 Much of an organization’s valuable knowledge walks
out the door at the end of the day
 KM Definition

 From Business Perspective

◦ KM is a collaborative and integrated approach to the
creation, capture, organization, access and use of an
organization’s intellectual assets.

 From Technology Perspective

◦ KM is the concept under which information is changed
into actionable knowledge and made available in a
useable form to the people who can apply it

 KM includes all the activities that utilize knowledge

to accomplish the organizational objectives to be
faster, more efficient or more innovative.
 KM definition …cont’d
Knowledge management involves the acquisition,
storage, retrieval, application, generation, and review
of the knowledge assets of an organization in a
controlled way.

 Value based knowledge management is applied in

three-tiered manner (three organizational levels)
◦ Individual
◦ Group or Community
◦ Organization itself
 Definition… cont’d
 KMincludes deliberate and systematic coordination of an
organization’s people, technology, processes and
organizational structure

 Coordination is achieved through

 creating, sharing and applying knowledge
 feeding the valuable lessons learned and best practices
into corporate memory
 fostering continued organizational learning
 What knowledge is managed???
 People and KM

 people-oriented approaches represent a central

element in KM.  HRM strongly interrelates with
knowledge management
 Employees create, hold and apply knowledge.
 New employees bring their knowledge and ideas to an
organization.
 Individuals that are already members of the organization
 learn individually as well as in teams and networks
 participate in organizational training and development programs.
 Employees who leave the organization take their
knowledge with them.
 What Knowledge is managed?

 The knowledge critical to our company

◦ Knowledge of a particular job

◦ Knowledge of who knows what in a company,
who solved a similar problem last time.
◦ Knowledge of who is best to perform a particular
job or task,
◦ who has the latest training or best qualifications in
a particular subject.
 What Knowledge is managed? …
 Knowledge of corporate history—
has this process been tried before, what was
the outcome?
 Knowledge of a particular customer and
knowledge of similar customers.
 Knowledge of how to put together a team
that can work on a project,
who has worked successfully together in the
past?
what skills were needed on similar projects.
 Two forms of knowledge

Tacit knowledge-
 Personal and context-specific knowledge of a
person
 Tends to reside within the heads of the knower
 difficult to articulate
 Difficult to put into words
 Highly skilled, experienced and expert individuals
may find it harder to articulate their know-how.
 Not possible to separate, store and distribute the
whole knowledge of somebody.
 Two forms of knowledge …
 Explicit Knowledge
◦ Represents content that has been captured in some
tangible form such as words, audio recording or images
◦ Can be codified, collected, stored and disseminated

 Novices are more apt to easily verbalize what

they are attempting to do because they are
typically following a manual/guide.
 The sort of knowledge you can easily recognize is
explicit knowledge—
◦ explicit in the sense that it can be codified or written
down.
 Organizational perspectives in KM?
 Business Perspective
◦ focusing on why, where, and to what extent the
organization must invest
◦ What strategies, products, services, should be considered
from knowledge-related points of view.

 Management Perspective
◦ focusing on determining, organizing, directing, facilitating,
and monitoring knowledge-related practices
◦ Focusing on activities required to achieve the desired
business strategies and objectives.

 Hands-on Perspective
◦ focusing on applying the expertise to conduct explicit
knowledge-related work and tasks.
 Why is KM important today?
Corporate amnesia.
 We are more mobile as a workforce, which creates
problems of knowledge continuity for the organization
and places continuous learning demands on the
knowledge worker.
 We no longer expect to spend our entire work life with
the same organization.

Information-overload
 a response to the challenge of trying to manage an
information-overloaded work environment.
 Why is KM important today?

Technological advances.
◦ We are more connected.
◦ Advances in information technology not only have made
connectivity global but have radically changed
expectations.
◦ We are expected to be “on” at all times,
 KM for individuals

 KM:
 Helps people do their jobs and save time through better
decision making and problem solving.

 Builds a sense of community bonds within the

organization.

 Helps people to keep up to date.

 Provides challenges and opportunities to contribute.

 KM for Communities of Practice

 KM

 Develops professional skills.

 Promotes peer-to-peer mentoring.
 Facilitates more effective networking and
collaboration.
 Develops a professional code of ethics that members
can follow.
 Develops a common language.
 KM for Organizations
 KM:
 Helps drive strategy.
 Solves problems quickly.
 Diffuses best practices.
 Improves knowledge embedded in products and
services.
 increases opportunities for innovation.
 Enables organizations to stay ahead of the
competition better.
 Builds organizational memory.
 Summary
 Knowledge is more complex than data or
information; it is subjective, often based on
experience, and highly contextual.
 Knowledge exists in two forms:
◦ explicit knowledge that can be codified
◦ tacit knowledge that cannot always be codified.

 KM is not necessarily “completely new” but

has been practiced in a wide variety of
settings
 Summary …

 There is no generally accepted definition of KM, but

most practitioners and professionals concur that KM
treats both tacit and explicit knowledge with the
objective of adding value to the organization.

 If a knowledge representation is too formalized, much

tacit knowledge will be lost.

◦ Thus knowledge representations for knowledge

management systems must be flexible and discursive.
 Traditional office work vs. knowledge
work (From Maier)
Traditional Office Work Knowledge Work
Data oriented Communication Oriented
Highly Structured, Deterministic Weakly structured, ad-hoc work
processes, pre-structured work flows
flows
Business process reengineering, Knowledge management,
business process improvement knowledge process redesign
Work group / Department Project team, network, community
One job position per person Multiple roles per person
Structured data – tables, Semi-structured data, content links,
quantitative data hypertext documents, messaging

Fixed work Space Mobile office, virtual office,

multiple work spaces
 Organizational culture
 Concepts that exist in an organization
 trust,
 norms and standards,
 unwritten rules,
 symbols or artifacts

 These concepts are shared by the members of an

organization and provide orientation in a complex
world.
 ishanded on to new members of the organization in a
process of socialization.
 Organizational Culture …

 Organizational culture impacts the behavior of

members of the organization.

 Supportive organizational culture positively affects

 knowledge creation
 especially knowledge sharing,

Across sub-cultures, such as the ones of executives,

engineers and operators, etc.
 Organizational memory

 refers to a system capable of storing things perceived,

experienced or self-constructed beyond the duration
of actual occurrence, and of retrieving them at a later
point in time
 a prerequisite for organizational learning
 Calls for management of data, information and
knowledge