Knowledge Management Critical Success Factors - Research Proposal Example

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Introduction  Under the current competitive economy, the basis organizational success has shifted from physical and tangible resources of organizational performance to knowledge transfer (Lehner & Haas, 2010). Organizational development has also become dependable on the analysis and identification of the factors that lead to the effectiveness of an organization (Shahzad, Luqman, Khan & Shabbir, 2012). It is widely known that knowledge management is an essential factor for most organizations. As stated (Rasula, Vuksic & Stemberger, 2012), knowledge is essential in production, labor and land and capital; it also forms intellectual capital transfers. Hence, the main goal of management is to improve the processes of integration and use of knowledge, which management of knowledge tries to do. However, it is a complex question of knowledge management and certain methodology should be utilized to measure its maturity. While organizational culture is a great contributor to knowledge management, its features as basic beliefs, values and norms predispose knowledge generation, sharing and use of knowledge within an organization. By creating and using knowledge about the processes and integrating knowledge into business practices, an organization is able to achieve its competitive edge. In the following paper the notion of knowledge management and critical factors to support knowledge management system will be examined and applied toward petroleum industry. Research objectives The main goal of the research is to understand how knowledge management is applied in companies of petroleum sector. The main objectives are: to redefine the problem of knowledge management and its critical factors to identify the concept of knowledge management culture to identify the relation between organizational performance and knowledge management to apply critical factors of knowledge management of petroleum industry Literature review Problem of knowledge management redefined The attention to knowledge management is paid due to the different organizations to already establish positive connections with the concept and have implemented practices of knowledge management. However, there has been still no sufficient examination of the success factors of knowledge management until recent period; hence the success validation of knowledge management should be provided in order to measure the success of company functioning (Roy, Tey, Wegen & Steele, 2000). The first what should be paid attention to is the concept of knowledge management culture, which is planned and structured approach that manages the creation, sharing, nurturing and leveraging knowledge as critical organizational asset, which increases at the same time organization’s effectiveness in delivering services and products in line with its strategy (Du Plessis, 2006). Within an organizational culture with its expectations of behavior and rules of formally written down, it makes a great impact on knowledge management. This is because a cultural exchange notion is aimed to share in order to help an organization to meet its business goals and objectives. Moreover, according to Rao (2012), it is organizational culture that predisposes values of transparency and trust to positively influence the knowledge sharing and knowledge creation as unique process. It is also worth mentioning that in many of modern organizations knowledge management implementation fails due to contradictions in rules. It challenges knowledge management to come up with new ways. Organizational performance and knowledge management The interrelation with organizational culture means that successful knowledge management application is possible under using of a set of approaches, which include accumulation, utilization, sharing and ownership (Rasula, Vuksic & Stemberger, 2012). In terms of critical success factors, knowledge sharing is the most important as if knowledge shared within an organization does not enable creation of values, it means that an organization fails to use such factor as its advantage (Koenig, 2004). In such case, an organization fails to meet dimension of human being as the main influential unit on knowledge management. In terms of organization dimension, the critical factors are those that enable a business to operate and design an organization itself. The technological factor relates here to the goods and arrangement of the supporting knowledge management systems. The firm, its manager and the broader business environment should ensure successful competitive advantage for the organization (AL-Hakim & Hassan, 2012). Application of knowledge management toward petroleum industry Koeni (2004), Hasanali (2002), Lehner and Haas (2010) and AL-Ghamd (2013) define leadership, culture, structure, roles and responsibilities, IT infrastructure and measurement as critical success factors of knowledge management system. In oil and gas industry knowledge management is an advantage taken for more than a decade and with the rapid changes such as advance in technology, extension of the offshore drilling and growing reliance on foreign oil sources, much attention is given to the knowledge management initiatives (Leavitt, 2002). Inside petroleum industry knowledge management provides support through technology and it also plays a significant part in forecasting and scheduling the process and technique innovation. In addition, knowledge management initiatives help to expand to address the point of sale technology and effectiveness of procedures (Leavitt, 2002). The petroleum industry operates with its main emphasis on the natural resources, infrastructure, facility and technology processing, involves human potential and produces energy products which are at a high demand in the present. These are the main factors that affect the industry and if failing of at least one of them, it creates weakness in this specter. In order to be a successful venture, petroleum enterprises should make their best in ensuring these sources to be used and meet the shortcomings by best practical suitable practices (Ramanigopal, 2012). As oil business is a global one, the challenges are similar to all the platforms and refinery; hence knowledge management is an effective solution to these challenges. In terms of roles and responsibilities, petroleum organizations should understand the cost of their internal knowledge that people involve into the processes and these challenges should be solved to maximize the corporate returns. As a part of knowledge management, organizational culture and safety as the main aspect of all petroleum companies is the biggest challenge for this sector. Here knowledge management is ready to provide better solutions. IT infrastructure within a petroleum industry plays an important role as it facilitates the assembly of databases, software tools associated with them, provide users a personalized access for certain content, uses groupware to create a shared space for exchange of knowledge and manages common tasks and resources (Grant, 2013). Proposed methodology and framework To better understand knowledge management concept applied in petroleum industry, statistics analysis and a case study were prepared in order to help investigate questions (Yazdani, Yaghoubi & Hajiabadi, 2011). Using the framework with critical factors of knowledge management, it is possible to analyze an effectiveness of knowledge transfer and sharing, which impacts organizational performance. Leadership as one of the critical factors influencing the knowledge management. Misalignment of organizational and individual goals and culture negatively impacts the business of oil and gas production and Source: Theriou, Maditinos and Theriou (n.d.) distribution. Certain problems occur with the implementation of the new knowledge management projects from senior management. Participants are also not able to accept changes or reveal present poor practices. In this case, effective leadership is critical as it will enable organization to achieve its knowledge management objectives (Analoui, Doloriert & Sambrook, 2012). Organizational culture in petroleum sector impacts the selection of the knowledge management projects, which outside consultants use for planning and implementing knowledge management projects. While with time organizational culture changes due to the adjustments to environmental practices, its affective factor on knowledge management is essential (Tuggle & Shaw, 2000). Studies conducted (Tuggle & Shaw, 2000) recognized the organizational culture to be the main barrier to knowledge management success, since its broad concept consist of such aspects as knowledge management collaboration, trust, which is crucial for knowledge transfer and harmony aspect, which should be managed by the organizations in order to foster culture. Technological aspect of knowledge management means that through information technology knowledge transfer is made quickly, all participants have access to information, are able to cooperate and communicate. Hence, technology is one of the critical factors that impacts knowledge management (Smith & Lumba, 2008). Moreover, technology enable organizations to obtain knowledge, define, store, categorize, and connect knowledge, search and identify related content and express the content on flexible basis. It is the information technology that positively influences knowledge management. Knowledge management strategy is employed in line with the knowledge resources and capabilities, generating and codifying explicit and tacit knowledge within an organization. It also determines the needs of an organization in knowledge and activities accompanied with it (Smith & Lumba, 2008). People are the developers of knowledge management success within an organization and they are the main critical factor that predisposes effective knowledge sharing. Influencing greatly on the knowledge management, people increase the companies’ tend to invest in technology and enhances companies’ capabilities in creation of effective visions, capabilities for working environment (Wig, 2004). Khatib (2014) analyzed the adoption of knowledge management by such company as British Petroleum, which was made in 1996 for the purposes of learning and best practice transfer in oil and gas upstream. It is known that in the present time British Petroleum has become one of the leaders in knowledge management adoption leveraging knowledge from different stages of oil and gas processing. Here the critical factor was the information technology that enabled the company to improve the effectiveness and despite competitors relied more on the codification of the information, British Petroleum paid more attention to workforce and has achieved its knowledge management objectives. IT Management was the main driver of technology and activities oriented on people. However, as Khatib (2014) reported, the main challenge for British Petroleum was implementation of knowledge management initiatives. The problem was that the company was living through difficulties at early stages on knowledge management implementation. It had problems with the storage and database creation, technical and managerial performance data and company yellow pages. However, the company used Google search engine and the real time tools in order to capture operations of data faster. In the present British Petroleum utilizes personalized applications which make it possible to company employees and customers to retrieve and share knowledge and documents, and reduce inconvenience from using multiple applications (Khatib, 2014). Research Findings By analyzing the case study of British Petroleum and framework, the main finding in knowledge strategy is that whether the company provides a well-planned strategy of knowledge transfer an sharing, this provides the basis for the organization deployment of its capabilities and resources that help to achieve the knowledge management objectives. The other important aspect is the need to conduct training programs that would allow organizations to spread knowledge policies and increase the totality of knowledge, while employees will become completely familiar with the concepts of knowledge. In terms of leadership, petroleum companies should support and express more commitment toward the course of knowledge management programs, and support the design and implementation of knowledge management. Organizational culture is effective factor that impacts the knowledge management, hence, it should be aimed on creating an environment where knowledge will be shared and encourage such environment. In terms of technology, knowledge management will be successful if saving of knowledge of organizations will be managed through use of databases, storage of tacit and explicit knowledge (Akhavan, Akhavan, Jafari & Fathian, 2006).. Contribution of the Study The value of knowledge management is in its effectiveness to an organizations performance in terms of managing knowledge and enabling the members of the organization to deal with the tough business situations as well as effective envision of future performance. While these factors are critical to success of knowledge management system, the creation and sharing of knowledge is due to the collaborative culture. Here the information technology helps to share and store the knowledge, leadership provides a friendly environment and encourages people to share their expertise. An organizational culture takes into account critical success factor of knowledge management. That is why studying the effects of knowledge management on organizational performance are important. References Akhavan, P., Jafari, M. and Fathian, M. 2006. Critical Success Factors of Knowledge Management Systems: a Multi-Case Analysis, European Business Review Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 97-113 AL-Ghamd, A. 2013. 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