This chapter contains a people-centered discussion and examines the role of the individual and teams in knowledge management. He is a regular speaker at international venues in the field of quality, innovation and knowledge management.
Emergence of knowledge management
From this beginning it is easy to conclude that the modern conceptualization of knowledge management is an umbrella for capturing a range of organizational problems. Shortly thereafter, many began to view knowledge management and learning as a core competency, fundamental to maintaining a competitive advantage.
Towards new approaches for competitive advantage
Chandler, argued in the 1960s that the structure of an organization governs the effective use of its resources. It is in the science of developing core competencies that organizational learning and knowledge management are most closely linked.
Defining knowledge and knowledge management
One big reason why tacit knowledge is rarely managed is because it is much more difficult to manage. Some knowledge can be codified, but because tacit knowledge is embedded in people's minds, it is often 'sticky' as it tends to stay in people's heads.
Defining learning
Real learning has two critical dimensions embedded in the phrase 'expanding the ability to create'. Another strand in the evolution of the learning organization emerges in the work of Arie de Geus.
Knowledge management strategies
2 Mechanistic knowledge management (a) systematic program (explicit) (b) organization-wide implementation (c) mandate from senior management (d) driven by middle management (e) organization-wide awareness (f) organization-wide involvement. g) good awareness of potential gains for the individual (h) IT-driven (but processes and systems led). j) benefits broadly understood (efficiency and effectiveness). 3 Organic knowledge management (a) systematic program (explicit) (b) organization-wide implementation (c) mandate from senior management (d) driven by middle management (e) organization-wide awareness (f) organization-wide involvement. g) good awareness of potential gains for the individual (h) human-driven (but backed by IT) processes and systems (i) broadly understood benefits (efficiency and effectiveness) (j) open and evolving structures/processes.
Conclusion
In the future, companies will have to focus strongly on coming up with innovative solutions to current problems and must anticipate the changing environment. This overcomes the previous polarities of analyzing and managing parts and sub-parts or adopting the 'black box' perspective of managing the whole.
The knowledge creation process
Definition of the problem is crucial, but can be adversely affected by the paradigms of the definer. 5 Strategic rotation: The rotation of personnel exposes the individual to different perspectives, but also allows him or her to communicate in the language of the others in the organization.
Characteristics in the use of tacit knowledge
Authors writing about the stages of creative thinking often refer to the preparation and incubation that precedes flashes of insight. Similar to subconscious knowledge of a solution is Melone's (1994) concept of the autonomous stage of learning.
Knowledge and learning process
Knowledge work presents challenges, in that the nature of the activity and the people often resist highly structured and standardized approaches. 1 Firms can change knowledge work itself by reducing (or, in some cases, creating) a unit of knowledge that workers can reuse or access or by improving knowledge capture techniques.
Creating competences through knowledge and learning
The experience factory converts insights and learning into reusable units (through the process of analyzing experiences) and delivers them back to the project organization (through the packaging of actionable insights and knowledge). The project organization takes the lead in this and is supported by the experience factory and the people factory.
Types of processes
Behavioral processes capture patterns and characteristics of how the organization acts and interacts. Indeed, it is the actions and mechanisms of implementation that are at the heart of the process approach.
The process context
Building a shared vision is the ability to develop and hold a shared picture of the future. In knowledge and learning environments, the ability of an organization/manager is not measured by what it knows – the product of learning, but rather by how it learns – the process of learning.
The knowledge imagery
A key driver of an organization's capacity for change is its ability to manage knowledge. However, a word of caution – a culture of knowledge sharing must match the organizational heritage, competence base and environment.
Knowledge cultures versus knowledge climates
The degree and extent to which this happens depends on the strength of the culture. By endorsing its philosophy, the organization becomes part of the employees' own identity.
Organizational culture and effectiveness
Nevertheless, in each case, the degree of consistency of the system is a salient characteristic of the organization's culture. First, a mission provides purpose and meaning, and a host of non-economic reasons why the organization's work is important.
The individual and knowledge culture
Second, a sense of mission defines the right course of action for the organization and its members. Organizational culture, as well as other aspects of the organization, can be difficult to change because people attracted to the organization may resist accepting new cognitive styles.
Structure and knowledge sharing
Knowledge creation and exploitation is influenced by relevant skills such as expertise, technical skills, talent, etc. When a change is forced, individuals attracted to the old organization may leave as they no longer fit the newly accepted cognitive style.
Cultural norms for knowledge sharing and transfer
3 Dynamism and future orientation – the extent to which the organization actively and forward-looking. 4 External orientation – the extent to which the organization is sensitive to customers and external environment.
Culture change
Trust, along with appropriate rewards, encourages employees to continue to contribute to the organization's store of knowledge. 1 Knowledge is power. This attitude gives employees a sense of security and political influence in the organization.
Strategies for sharing
As a result of business process redesign and other change initiatives, many companies have transitioned to a cross-functional team model as a key building block of the organization. It also helps to give credibility to the entrepreneurial and building aspects of the job, because you have been in the organization and had a certain length of experience.
Leadership criteria
Leadership support and commitment to empowerment gives people the freedom to take responsibility for knowledge sharing. For knowledge sharing to occur, leaders must ensure that there are few barriers that stifle sharing efforts.
Corporate missions, philosophy statements and knowledge culture
What we have learned is that the soft and the hard are becoming more and more intertwined. A company's values - what it stands for, what its people believe in - are critical to its competitive success.
Leadership actions for knowledge culture
Development to this stage only occurs if there is a clear level of satisfaction between the individual and the organization. Here, individuals find the organization intrinsically rewarding and congruent with their own personal values.
Teams for knowledge and learning
Advice on how to manage teams and communities of practice is varied and extensive. The direct exercise of power by senior management over knowledge structures such as communities of practice often leads to feelings of powerlessness among team members.
Management considerations for different types of knowledge and learning outcomes
Individual roles for knowledge creation and transfer
The strategies and skills required to perform most boundary-spanning roles are acquired on the job over many years of professional experience. This seems to suggest that participants learn strategies and skills for such higher roles after many years of work experience.
Managing the individual towards learning
In extreme cases of rote learning, the transition to learning can be very difficult to overcome. In the beginning, when individual and team understanding is short, the leader should focus on the "what".
Managing people towards knowledge climates and cultures
Indeed, it is not only the availability of resources, but the availability of resources over time that appears to have a positive impact on knowledge sharing and transfer. Therefore, knowledge program success appears to be linked to both experience and expectations regarding resource availability.
The PDCA cycle in a knowledge management context
Therefore, building a knowledge resource would allow firms to gain a competitive advantage that others will not easily copy. The importance of the source of knowledge has long been evident, especially when evaluating companies for stock market trading purposes.
Knowledge management model
According to the TQM philosophy of continuous improvement, the above actions will lead the organization to continue to strive to improve "results". This service demonstrates the importance of technology that connects all three key elements of the above model to ensure high quality customer satisfaction.
The knowledge management matrix
Partnerships with suppliers have only recently come into the public eye and been recognized as an integral part of an organization's success. How can we 'police' published information in terms of information accuracy.
Popular knowledge management measurement tools
2 Customer perspective: measures related to the performance of the organization's products or services, as well as marketing-. At the center of the house is the 'human focus', which is the heart and soul of the entire organization.
Technological aspects
Over time, these repositories will contribute to maintaining the collective intelligence and organizational memory of the organization. After using the information, the user must be able to add value to any new experiences gained from using the information and also be able to modify the original information and store it back into the knowledge management system for future users.
In the age of knowledge
Thus, the most important challenge of the knowledge-based economy is to find a methodology, a discipline or a process by which information can be made productive. It has been estimated that 50 percent of the gross national product (GNP) of the largest European countries is knowledge-based (OECD, 1996).
Why knowledge management programmes are failing to produce bottom-line impact
A Malcolm Baldrige Award winner is supposed to have said, "We can have two factories facing each other, and it's the damnedest thing to force them to transfer best practices." In the context of knowledge and learning, firms must understand not just some, but all of the key elements of a knowledge creation and exploitation strategy, and they must master many of them.
Looking into the future: a scenario of knowledge management developments ahead
In order to create broad and integrated capabilities, most of the changes introduced by these developments will not be able to stand alone, but will partly be combined with other changes, many of which will probably have a focus other than knowledge management. This will be achieved by, for example: a) to educate employees in the principles of their work (via scripts, schemata and abstract mental models).
Stages of organization development: past into the future
Based on the above characteristics, it seems safe to say that most companies entering the knowledge and learning journey are in the middle of the second phase. By managing and learning knowledge, we can respond to many of the challenges of global economic turbulence.
Conclusion: final reflections
Getting the knowledge plane off the ground
British Airways rose to this challenge by first identifying the prevailing beliefs in the company and then widely communicating a response to clarify and promote knowledge management among its people.
The top five knowledge management myths at BA
The response of BA proponents: Knowledge management is two-thirds culture and behavior, and only one-third technology. Three success stories that were used to launch and sell knowledge management efforts are described below.
Knowledge management stories to fuel internal energy and interest
To help people understand and appreciate the value of knowledge management and the way it can be used within the company, BA champions tell numerous stories about knowledge management. British Petroleum is a leader in knowledge management and has some very simple messages like 'learn before, while learning, learn afterwards'.
Winning the hearts and minds of people
Learning: If you are part of a knowledge community, what are the supports and organizational blocks for that community to meet and interact. The link between knowledge management and the company's mission was explicitly examined, as it is a key factor in gaining top-down support (Table 7.2).
British Airways’ strategic approach to knowledge man- agement
Truly global Making the whole organization and its partners aware – getting a consistent and relevant response whether you're in Bilbao, Bogota or Brisbane. Inspired People The type of company where knowledge management is able to take root will tend to be a company that values and trusts its people, and one that values their knowledge and contribution to the business.
Managing culture and people for sharing
Organization – how knowledge management is currently performed, how it can be improved and how it benefits the company. These tables illustrate the limiting and facilitating factors for knowledge management along each dimension, along with what BA is currently undertaking, with examples and questions for individual reflection.
Final reflection
Make some suggestions/recommendations on how your part of the organization can be structured more effectively. Under John Browne's leadership, the company became one of the most profitable of the major oil companies.
Connect: BP Amoco’s knowledge resource
From the beginning, the explicit aim of the knowledge management initiative was to drive performance improvement by promoting knowledge sharing. These form the fundamental principles of accessing the company's most valuable resource – 1 million working years of experience.
Developing Connect
To build and maintain momentum, the company actively ran an awareness campaign. While this experiment produced good content, the company found it difficult to scale the operation under difficult trading conditions.
Complementary tools and practices
This is in line with BP Amoco's efforts to integrate knowledge management within core business processes. BP Amoco recognizes that all efforts to connect, interact and share will amount to nothing in the absence of the right culture.
Importance of knowledge management for organizations
On the other axis you have a knowledge company where you face a high-intensity problem that requires a customized and often unique solution. This requires the knowledge company to be on a constant learning curve to solve new problems.
Handling tacit knowledge
Celemi: I would say that you have service companies on one axis and knowledge companies on the other. So you have these cases where someone who has been involved in something says, 'This is what I did.
Measuring intangibles
External structure, internal structure and competencies are the three categories of intangible assets in Celemi's monitor. Growth and renewal, efficiency and stability are the dimensions by which Celemi measures its intangible assets (Table 9.1).
Final word
Typically in this industry, sales are generated through the personal interaction between sales associates and customers, so the intangibles should logically be found in the competency of the sales associate. It is involved in every aspect of the industry, from exploration and production to transportation, refining and retail marketing, as well as the production and sale of chemicals.
History
Smart people learn when they can, fools when they have to. Chevron Corporation is one of the largest integrated oil companies in the world. In 1993, Chevron reached a new milestone when it joined the Republic of Kazakhstan in the largest joint venture between a Western company and a member of the former Soviet Union.
Managing learning and knowledge: the formula for success today and tomorrow
A new company, Tengizchevroil, was formed to develop the Tengiz oil field, the largest discovery in the last thirty years. In fact, I believe this priority was one of the keys to reducing our operating costs by more than $2 billion a year—from about $9.4 billion to $7.4 billion—over the past seven years.
The learning company
Originally published in 1995, The Chevron Way provided a strategic framework for the company, capturing what the company was, where it was going, and how it would get there. The words that sum up The Chevron Way capture the company's orientation and belief in learning and knowledge: 'We will create an organization that learns faster and better than competitors through benchmarking.
Organizational structure: decentralization
The Chevron Way serves as the framework for integrating the company's key company initiatives. While everything contained in The Chevron Way previously existed in one form or another within the company, Chevron man-.
Problems of work in downsized environments
To help make this possible, the company has undertaken a major overhaul to expand the availability and use of web-based knowledge sharing and management tools through GIL. 2 The main conference event on Chevron's calendar over the years is the Chevron Chemical Quality Conference.
Sustaining learning through tools and techniques
The map is a kind of snapshot of the company at a certain point in time. The company found that this also helped refocus research efforts more on the business needs of their customers – the large subsidiaries that fund their research budgets.
