How Knowledge Management Can Help Prganisations Improve Their Performance - Coursework Example

RUNNING HEAD: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Knowledge Management [Name of the Writer] [Name of the Institution] Knowledge Management Introduction Knowledge Management has made considerable development over the past 40 years. While Knowledge Management has been ever present in organisations since their birth, the greatest developments in Knowledge Management as an academic and practical discipline appear to have occurred over the last part of the twentieth century and the early part of the new millennium. During the 1990s, Knowledge Management was seen as a critical part of service provision, and indeed ‘by the mid 1990s intellectual and information processes accounted for almost 80 percent of jobs in the large service industries’ (Quinn et al., 1996 as cited in Gloet & Berrell, 2003, p. 80). This is not at all surprising as it coincides with the industrial revolution slowly coming to a close and the emergence of the post industrial era. By the latter part of the 1990s, Knowledge Management was considered a significant economic and political resource within organisations. Wickramasinghe (2003, p. 295) argued that ‘we are not only in a new millennium, but also a new era’ and while there are a variety of terms to describe this new era, ‘most agreed that . . . the key defining and unifying themes of this period is knowledge management’ (Wickramasinghe, 2003, p. 295). The popularity of Knowledge Management however, was starting to plateau and as far as its importance at an organisational level was concerned, the focus seemed to turn towards being able to extract as much value from existing Knowledge Management models as possible in order to develop a competitive advantage. There is a paradigmatic split between the IT approach and the humanist approach, as well as a difference between explicit and tacit knowledge, which accounts for a gap which we propose exists in the field of Knowledge Management. Gloet (2002) indicates that there is a growing body of literature that suggests that those organisations that adopt either a predominantly humanist or a predominately IT focused knowledge management strategy fail to show any ‘positive impact on knowledge management or innovation performance’ (Gloet, 2002, p. 311). Not for a moment do we suggest that one form of Knowledge Management should dominate over the other, but that it is indeed dependent on many unique conditions. In fact, it is central to our position that both a humanist and IT concept needs to exist within an organisation for it to be able to deliver quality to its customers. The internal culture, norms and values of the organisation, as well as its environment, can undoubtedly influence the degree to which one paradigm is adopted over the other. Objectives of the Study This study is concerned with how knowledge management can help organisations improve their performance. It investigates the extent to which knowledge management is practiced, and addresses the relationship between knowledge management and performance improvement. Specifically, it examines the effects of factors such as organisational culture, organisational infrastructure, technical infrastructure, management support, reward, and vision clarity on performance improvement in organisations in Australia. The study seeks to achieve these objectives by covering the following points: Objectives of knowledge management and its relationship to employee rewards management. Various HRM strategies that could be adopted to encourage employees to share their knowledge. how employee learning and development strategies could be implemented Objectives of Knowledge Management and Its Relationship to Employee Rewards Management It has been advised that knowledge management as a subject of research will have considerable thrust through discussion and arguments across various disciplines, and that it will yield rich rewards as it moves into a new paradigm of work (Jashapara, 2004). To some, knowledge management is seen to be a logical extension of three basic business trends (Guptill, 2005): (a) Increasing amount of digitised information data that is readily available. (b) Globalisation of business such that production can occur anywhere in the world as it is the knowledge that is the true source of competitive advantage. (c) Growing complexity of business requires that new business processes will deliver `the right information at the right time' so as to ensure accountability and reduce the risk of mistakes. Definitions of Knowledge Management The literature contains many definitions of knowledge management. A few are listed here in order to observe difference in perceptions of scope and emphasis: “any processes or practice of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, wherever it resides, to enhance learning and performance in organisations'' (Swan et al., 1999). “all methods, instruments and tools that in a holistic approach contributes to the promotion of core knowledge processes” (Mertins et al., 2000). ``Knowledge management is the identification, storage, protection of knowledge for future operational and strategic benefit of the organisation ± this may be implicit or explicit'' (Perrott, 2006). There is considerable debate in the literature about the various types and dimensions of knowledge. The difference between implicit and open knowledge receives considerable attention. Tacit knowledge is that held in the minds of individuals while explicit knowledge is that externalised and shared with others. It has been suggested that there are four modes of interaction between these two forms of knowledge (Polanyi, 1967): From tacit knowledge to tacit knowledge: the process of `socialisation' through shared experience and interaction. From explicit knowledge to explicit knowledge: the process of grouping through reconfiguring obtainable knowledge such as categorization, adding, re-categorising and reconceptualising explicit knowledge can lead to new knowledge. From tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge: the process of `externalisation' using metaphors and figurative language. From open knowledge to implicit knowledge: the procedure of internalization by the learning process. One author describes the knowledge management process as necessarily loose and collaborative because the human characteristics of knowledge such as understanding, intuition and values are not only the most precious, but also the hardest thing to manage and maximise (Davenport and Prusak, 2000). Hence, the knowledge management practice puts together theories from at least four different areas; theories about organisational culture, organisational structures, organisational behaviour and knowledge-based systems leading to theories about knowledge support infrastructures (Baskerville and Dulipovici, 2006). More recent research emphasises the importance of context in the knowledge conversion process (Ancori et al., 2000) and that knowledge should be seen as a cultural process situated in and inextricably linked to the material and social circumstances in which it is produced and consumed (Hassard and Keleman, 2002).A balanced environment of power, control and trust is observed as an important situation for a successful knowledge-oriented culture. Allee (2003) recommends that if people stop trusting each other, they cannot swap knowledge and ideas. Trust assists build and maintain valuable systems and rewarding associations while a lack of trust grind down knowledge leadership, establishment and transfer. The knowledge management process is seen to begin with the creation and realization of strategies for the construction, personification, sharing and use of organisational knowledge. Other approaches include those for the essential management purposes to watch and measure the knowledge possessions and processes (Quintas et al., 1997). The renewed focus on the management of knowledge can be explained by the increasing demands placed by the operating environment of contemporary organisations. Knowledge becomes the critical currency in determining outcomes in a competitive and demanding world. More demanding pressures are seen to include the following: rapidly changing and turbulent operating environments, high stakeholder demands, corporate governance requirements, accountable risk management strategies and the need to replicate acceptable performance (Perrott, 2006). Knowledge management is focused on the capture, codification, transfer and sharing of knowledge that is usually embedded in organisational routines and processes. As such knowledge generally resides in the heads of employees in a tacit form, the challenge for management is to decide how and when such knowledge should be made explicit, using an effective mix of technologies and management strategies such as leadership and rewards. The serious role of knowledge in organisational success has altered the very core of organisations, what they do, and how they do it. Its insinuation for the inspiration and reward systems of an organisation are important. Organisational reward systems require maintaining both the submission of knowledge to resolve current business troubles and the development of modifications in the type of knowledge an organisation will want as the surroundings changes. Uses of Knowledge Management Kleiner and Roth (1998) aptly note, “Managers have few tools with which to capture institutional experience, disseminate its lessons, and translate them into effective action.” This is as concise an objective for KM as we could hope for. They go on to say, “People in firms act together, but they trained independently. That is the central tenet and frustration of organizational learning today.” This, though, isn’t true. Argote and Epple (1990) noted that organizations seem to learn (e.g., continuing to reduce the unit cost of manufactured goods) even after skilled people leave the firm. The only possible conclusion is that workers teach each other, and that this teaching and learning is sometimes implicit and invisible—tacit, if you will. Kleiner and Roth advocate the use of “learning histories,” collaboratively authored narratives of project successes and failures. They point out that working together on these histories builds trust among members of an organization— but also allow project participants’ anonymous comments, and it is difficult to see how the latter can build trust. We can discern at least four levels of application for KM, and seeming contradictions in the early writer’s recommendations may be due to confusing the level of application that is addressed. The levels are: 1. Supporting the individual initiatives of constituents; 2. Supporting project collaboration; 3. Creating and sustaining the learning organization; and 4. Automated decision making. KM may also aid ad hoc projects, with shifting project team membership. Quinn, Anderson et al. (1998) note that at Merrill Lynch, employees readily use ad hoc networks for projects, because their compensation is tied to peer review of team behavior. The Merrill Lynch portals include databases, analytic models, and communication power beyond what employees can easily find elsewhere. While this level of KM application does not attempt to achieve the total “learning organization,” it may reveal information that can support other efforts toward building such an organization. Brown (1998) and Quinn, Anderson et al. (1998) show that the success factors for project-level KM are usability studies and user incentives. Brown maintains corporate research should create not just new product and manufacturing process knowledge, but also new knowledge about the workings of the organization. He articulates Xerox’s new (as of 1991) principles: Research on new work practices is as important as research on new products. Modernism is all over; the difficulty is educating from it. Research can’t just produce innovation; it must “co-produce” it. The research department’s final novelty associate is the customer. Data mining procedures can find variant relationships in a customer database. These relationships may be ephemeral, as well as undecidable in the sense of Fisherian hypothesis testing, which was the basis for scientific epistemology throughout the twentieth century. Nonetheless, a short-lived and uncertain pattern may be commercially exploitable if a supply-chain command or a direct-mail marketing piece is issued immediately—and the computer may do this without human intervention. For example, “noticing” that for the past few days red widgets have been selling much better in the east, while western buyers are going for the blue ones, the computer can change shipping orders and manifests on the fly, better satisfying the market and increasing profit margins. It does not take much whimsy to wonder, when a database detects a variant relationship and there is no one there to apprehend it, whether it makes knowledge. HRM Strategies That Could Be Adopted To Encourage Employees To Share Their Knowledge Team leadership and organisational maintenance are very central in reducing knowledge gaps. Training team leaders to be first-class facilitators and to be talented to promote information sharing, beside with providing a suitable stage of support, is a keystone of achievement as observed by most researchers (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Also, creation of knowledge emerges to be chiefly important for ratings of scheme success. So actions such as trialing, prototyping and tapping exterior experts tend to smooth the progress of goal achievement. A skilled leader will identify indicators to knowledge break and will improve the change from business dispensation to knowledge dispensation. This change should be faultless and It is improved through an open and clear organisation. As the organisational culture identifies that leadership receives a knowledge-processing atmosphere, tacit knowledge container will become more concerned in the recognition and corroboration of knowledge claims. There is sufficient research prospect in identifying and authorising the necessary dimensions of the knowledge life cycle atmosphere. The knowledge-creating latent of a firm is dependent upon how the corporation and its management express the usage of its knowledge-based possessions. Interested managers should bear the following in mind when developing their own knowledge workers’ cognitive capabilities: Adopt a capability mindset. At the basic level, HR must clearly cuddle individual employee knowledge as a vital organisational component. Company training behaviors should include objects and experiences that will increase the creative ability of every knowledge employee. For example, Hewlett-Packard knowledge workers went through a premeditated change from within alert, goal leaning R&D strategy to their more new capability oriented strategy. Today, HP knowledge workers aggressively communicate with clients, associates and a host of interior stakeholders in an attempt to develop the subsequent generation of yields and services. They are probable to look for the knowledge of others while at the same time being obvious in developing their own knowledge reserve. Achieving an ability mindset needs managers to help their theoretical strategy with realistic actions. Particularly, knowledge-boosting actions should be explicitly appreciated and recognized, while stoppage to contribute in knowledge sharing should be depressed and in few examples, detained. Cutting tour and conference supporting for knowledge workers when finances get rigid is an all-too-common performance that propels an alluring note to people about the factual role of knowledge and imagination in the firm. Promote Cross-Pollination Managers should think revolving knowledge workers to a variety of duties by the time. This depicts them to a width of information and skills while making them create some stage of strength at each fresh situation. Wal-Mart, for example, has a durable strategy of revolving top managers to partition outer their center level of skill. It was not uncommon that a vice president of HR currently got himself CEO for a world obtaining unit. Other firms, particularly Japanese, have revolved scientists and engineers for many years transversely teams and product appearance as a subject of practice. With lots of firms using groups to deal business objectives, revolving individuals transversely groups or to fresh duties inside a group is a better way to increase exclusive and original cognitive abilities. Sueh eross- pollination increases the ability of people knowledge workers and also broadened the company's total knowledge reserve. The input is to develop objective rotations and permit workers enough time in every fresh post to achieve new knowledge and abilities (i.e., balancing depth and breadth). Reduce Pyramid Barriers To gain their knowledge workers should communicate with other groups outside their firm’s circle of communication. It is a fact that not all applicable knowledge is established to firm walls. While communicating with people outside the company is dangerous, managers should carefully motivate information and skill allocating that increases new knowledge development. Informal obstacles also present between useful areas within a firm. Thus, managers require smashing down functional silos and developing communication across company departments. Providing messages channels, abolishing or reform reporting links, and developing cross-functional meeting are three ways to decrease internal and external obstacles. As a supporter of the unwrapped novelty movement, Idea Crossing is a firm that supports clients break down obstacles to imagination by scheming and creating "idea competitions." These cautiously designed, friendly contests leverage the communal knowledge of workers, customers, and external associates. Merck, Sprint, DuPont and others have also operated idea competitions to valve latent originality. Reward Knowledge Sharing Activity An organisation's spirited advantage rests inside the exceptional and original knowledge reserve of its workers. Yet, mostly, workers basically draw upon usually seized knowledge when communicating with others. It seems without saying that workers will perform in a way reliable with their reward constitution. Therefore, it is vital that employee knowledge-promoting activities be not only motivated but also rewarded openly and well exposed. For some knowledge employees, sharing knowledge means getting busy in actions out of their present functional duties; consequently, they require an inducement to contribute. Some firms, such as General Electrie and BP Amoco, involve peer analyses of an workers’ cross-functional teamwork attempts as part of general performance analysis, and even change reporting construction from a customary vertical strategy to a more communicative structure, developing bigger prospects for knowledge teamwork. Many firms reward idea generation or charge lessening ideas shaped by collaborative efforts. Mind The Bottom Line When companies hold the idea of knowledge management and start to encourage it, senior managers are possible to look a mixture of restlessness and thrill amongst knowledge workers. The restlessness received is conquered with education, inducements and even abrasion. Enthusiasm, though, from time to time needs to be raged. While communication and knowledge sharing should clearly be confident, over-zealous workers can become so enchanted with the new knowledge sharing/structure surfaces of their careers that they permit these actions to outshine other shorter-term, revenue-making duties. Because the base line for any capitalistic enterprise is to make capital, knowledge partnership should ever be focused and within the firm’s business task. As the competitive setting raises increasingly unsure and impulsive, the classic business strategy of tapering controls and confining resources become less successful. Enhance the cognitive ability of individual knowledge personnel creates an organisational impression where even organically detached individuals are rationally linked in a way that makes them a network of knowledge developers. Such an organisational system binds each individual's excitement, pledge and wish to learn; thereby making an organisational group that can manage and innovate quickly. How Employee Learning And Development Strategies Could Be Implemented An inducement and reward arrangement for producing and sharing knowledge may be a division of some organisations' culture. There are contrasting views on inducements and reward policies. Reward structures are important to motivate employees to donate to knowledge Management. However, reward systems are at times difficult to activate even if there is a performance appraisal policy in position. It is measured to be harsh because many things are dependent on teamwork and it is hard to differentiate between personal team members' assistance to shared knowledge. In addition, financial enticements for knowledge sharing could effect in encouraging staff to falsely manufacture knowledge that is neither pertinent nor helpful {Snowden, 2002). There are vibrant within the business processing atmosphere that is worthy of further study. The role of management expands ahead of seeking answers to knowledge gaps. Effective leadership constantly dares the business-processing setting and generates knowledge gaps as a tool of continuously fine changing the organisation. Essentially, the function of the leader is to inquire "why?" By doing this, imminent knowledge cracks are identified and resolute before disaster situation emerge. Organisational management and control can also pressure the result of a KM policy by controlling the nature of knowledge resources in the organisation, their operation and their utilization (Sunassee & Sewry, 2002). To ensure the successful implementation of a KM strategy, management should ideally create the conditions at cultivate employee acquisition and use of KM skills by enabling convenient access to the needed knowledge resources in the organisation. Managers are also responsible for the proper co-ordination of an organisation’s activities by aligning employees’ knowledge with the organisational strategy; allocation the appropriate financial resources and assigning staff to infrastructural roles. Management can influence the outcome of a KM strategy by installing the mechanisms necessary for measuring and evaluating organisational resources and KM activities. In this instance, the HRM function must act an active role in making KMPs by developing and sustaining an organisational weather favorable to these situations. According to Currie and Kerrin (2003: 1030) these networks of associations make a vital form of social wealth, which is important to successful knowledge sharing in companies. Likewise, Scarborough and Carter (2000:66) suggest that HRM strategies can greatest add to managing knowledge by controlling behavioural replies from workers and the reserve of human and social wealth that is offered to the firm. Through practices such as performance management, career structuring, recruitment and selection, career management and organisational development an environment conducive to knowledge acquisition, utilization and sharing can be created. Although technology has long been recognized as an important facilitator of knowledge sharing (Liebowitz, 1999), practitioners have also identified the importance of behavioral issues. For example, Robert Buckman, CEO of Buckman Laboratories, remarked, “How do you change your culture to share knowledge?” (Information Week, 1999: 6 ER). Our study indicates an empowering leader is an important facilitator of knowledge sharing. Although empowering leadership did not have a direct effect on performance, it is likely its presence leads to higher team efficacy and knowledge sharing, both of which are desirable for team effectiveness. Thus, organisations may find it useful to emphasize leader selection and development so that empowering behaviors are exhibited by team leaders. It must be borne in mind, though, that a transition from a manager-directed set-up to an empowered one involves several challenges (Manz, Keating, & Donnellon, 1990). Also, empowering behaviors may not be suited to crisis situations or situations with incompetent and disinterested employees (Yukl, 2002). Conclusion Future research might struggle to carry out more rigorous examinations among industries to tackle an industry level of investigation as means to consideration how firms tactically manage diverse knowledge. Second, this study observed the communication of KM strategy and organisation arrangement. It is rather possible that other mediators such as information technology and HRM influence this KM strategy-innovation association as well. Accordingly, future possible studies using other mediators are required to increase further approaches into the KM strategy advancing relationship. Achieving a clearer perception of the relationships between KM strategy, organisation formation, and innovation will need longitudinal study. The realistic accusation of this learning dishonesty in the judgment that organisations should plan an appropriate amalgamation of organisation structure. Firms should be aware of numerous incidents that may lead their selection among diverse strategies to KM strategy as well as the belongings these options have on the modernism of their firms. The value of any approach to KM strategy can be augmented or diminished by simultaneously managing the organisation structure. Key Points • A culture of co-operation, collaboration and trust is a necessary precursor to knowledge sharing. • Trainee HR professionals need managers willing to devote time to knowledge sharing. • Informal knowledge sharing practices can be just as, if not more, effective. References Allee, V. (2003), `Evolving Business Forms for the Knowledge Economy', in: Handbook on Knowledge Management (ed. Holsapple, C. W.), Knowledge Directions, pp. 605-622. Ancori, B., Bureth A. and Cohendet, P. (2000), `The Economics of Knowledge: The Debate About Codification and Tacit Knowledge', Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp. 255-288. Argote, L. and Epple D. (1990). “Learning Curves in Manufacturing,” Science, 247, 920-924. Baskerville, R. and Dulipovici, A. (2006), `The Theoretical Foundations of Knowledge Management', Knowledge Management Research and Practice, Vol. 4, pp. 83±105 Brown, J.S. (1998). “Research That Re-Invents the Corporation. 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