Organizations Approaches to Knowledge Management - Essay Example

Organisations' approaches to Knowledge Management have been given various labels, including 'Cognitive' and 'Community' approaches. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of at least two different approaches, and how relevant they would be to the problems facing NASA's JPL. Introduction The phrase 'Knowledge management'(KM) is widely acknowledged now-a-days as many organizations have started realizing that knowledge is one of the precious assets in organizations, which need to create real competitive advantage over its rivals. Knowledge is the intellectual capital of a firm that can contribute growth and development to the organisation. Knowledge management implies any activity regarding the capture and the diffusion of knowledge within the organization. A key component of KM is to provide access to stored knowledge components in order to improve decision-making and facilitate knowledge acquisition by the user. The present essay is an attempt to introduce this innovative capital of modern organisations in a simple and lucid style. In the essay, the writer first, tries to distinguish the related concepts in the area of knowledge such as data, information etc, which are often misunderstood (used interchangeably with) as knowledge. In addition, an attempt is made to introduce the two approaches to knowledge management that capture and utilize knowledge. The essay prepared to examine the different of these two approaches. Specifically, it attempts to narrate the definition of these approaches and portrays both advantages and disadvantages of these two approaches. Finally, rather most importantly the report demonstrates how to apply theoretical concepts of knowledge management to NASA's JPL case study. Data, Information and Knowledge One of the essentials of an effective knowledge management system is that the system must be able to distinguish knowledge from data and information so that information overload can be reduced/eliminated and its efficiency can be improved. An efficient knowledge management system accepts only those data that are relevant, timely, reliable and accurate. In the words of Liew (2002) data means the collection of facts or events and it is comprised of the basic, unrefined and unfiltered information, which are mostly useless. But, information is more refined data that is useful and meaningful for an analysis and decision making. In contrast, knowledge resides in the human brain and it happens when human experience is applied to data and information, therefore, knowledge is internalized which absorbed and understood by the human mind. In the modern business context, knowledge management can have a lot to perform to attain a competitive edge and thereby create value to the organisation. Knowledge management There are many interpretations as to what exactly knowledge management is all about. The definition put forward by Quintas P., Lefrere P. and Jones is worth notable in this context. They define knowledge management as "a continuously process of managing knowledge in order to ensure that knowledge is available when and where needed and can be acquired both from external sources and internal sources" (Quintas et al, 1997). It is worthwhile here to mention the definition developed by NASA for knowledge management. NASA defines "knowledge management as getting the right information to the right people at the right time and helping people create knowledge and share and act upon information in ways that will measurably improve the performance of an organization and its partners" (NASA, 2009). The procedures by which the objectives of KM can be accomplished include the following: As far as possible, everyone connected with knowledge management system should disclose what he/she knows and thereby facilitates knowledge sharing and its reuse. This will allow others to know when and where knowledge is available. Knowledge is made available at the time of decision making and it is the duty of the concerned personnel in an organisation that knowledge is available to support decision making at the precise location and times. Knowledge sharing enhances the development of new knowledge and innovation. So the system should be designed and developed in such as manner that knowledge is dispersed to people who need the knowledge to perform their tasks and everybody knows where knowledge is located in the organization. Approach to Knowledge Management The authorities have developed two types of approaches to mange knowledge, namely cognitive approach and community approach. Both of them have their own advantages and disadvantageous. The use of a particular approach depends on the organizations where knowledge management is to be implemented. Cognitive Approach Cognitive approach involves identification and capturing of knowledge that rest in people's heads or in organizational practices. The captured knowledge is, then transferred to knowledge management system. Information Technology (IT) plays an important role in this respect because knowledge is stored in the system and people can easily access via a searchable application. The purpose of this approach is to widely distribute the knowledge across the organization (Newell et al., 2002). Examples of tools which help the organization to gather and disseminate massive amounts of information across the enterprise are groupware, intranet, data warehouse, Lotus Notes, electronic mail, information repositories, videoconferencing, and other collaborative software (Alavi, 1999). Therefore, knowledge management system seems to be composed of three areas which are database, communication and retrieval. The organization needs to integrate these various tools in order to utilize the knowledge in the most effective ways. The advantageous of this approach include the following: Advantages Individual knowledge is transformed into organizational knowledge which is found valuable for the organization as a whole (Nonaka, 1991). Moreover, Clusters of knowledge are collectively stored in one database and then make them available to others via a central system. People in the organization can easily find knowledge via searchable function. The organizations can reuse existing knowledge and avoid 're-inventing the wheel' situation where duplicate activities or basic methods occurred. The success of cognitive approach is easier to be evaluated and measured since it focuses on developing and using IT system. Examples of measurement are: Number of users contribute the knowledge into KMS Number of problem solved Time to find expert Implementation of KMS such as collaborative software, group ware, data warehouse, data mining, etc. Cognitive approach is suitable for explicit knowledge where knowledge can be easily communicated and shared. When knowledge is shared through the system, it is possible to see opinions of staffs and thus it improves and accelerates the pace of communication between staffs in the organization. Airbus 380 is a perfect example for the successful story of using knowledge management system. The airbus itself can fly 100% by auto-pilot system which means the airplane can fly automatically throughout the route without a single pilot. It flies from one airport to another with an efficient knowledge management system and software on board. It is shown that the company successfully captures the individual tacit knowledge of driving the airplane and transfers it into the system as an explicit form. Disadvantage There is a constraint on the use of knowledge management system because knowledge is embedded in social networks (Scarbrough, 2003). It is generally believed that groupware will increase the communication and collaboration within the organization but one of the studies in the area by Vandenbosch and Ginzberg (1996) observe certain evidences for the likely impact of collaboration on the use of groupware. The study observes that the impact of collaboration on the use of groupware is somewhat different from what is expected. Even though the organization successfully implements the popular groupware product such as Lotus Notes, they found that Lotus Notes has no impact on the degree of collaboration among people in the organization. The system did not change the communication patterns among existing social network groups because people who are in the same social network continuously communicate each other through new system while people who did not have communication one another is found not to continue to use the new system. Sharing information and knowledge depends on individual's willingness and the system itself neither motivates other people in other social network to join and communicate nor automatically enhance the collaboration among organization members. Apart from the above, cognitive approach aims to capture explicit knowledge where knowledge can be codify in the form of text and record in the system. Conversely, tacit knowledge internalizes in the mind of an individual and difficult to communicate through texts, hence it is hard for KMS to capture and retain this type of knowledge. Another constraint of the KM system is that it needs to be fit not only to the technology, but the technology should also be compatible with people, structure and tasks. The main problem in this respect is that it is difficult to find an exact suitability and the absence of which will lead to ineffective operation of KMS. In addition to that, it is time consuming to search for the relevant information that are useful for decision making as too much information are kept in the knowledge management system. Last, but not the least users might not want to share their information or knowledge through the system especially confidentially information since the information is distributed across the whole organization and might go to the hand of its competitors. Community approach In contrast to cognitive approach, community approach is occurred when knowledge is embedded and generated from social relationships and interactions. In this case, knowledge is continuously reorganized and reconstructed through dynamic, interactive and social networking activity. Shared trust and understanding are crucial factors for success since people with same interest and belief are more willing to share their knowledge amongst the groups (Scarbrough, 2003). One of the well-known community approaches is termed as 'Communities of practices' (CmP). CmP is a group of people who shares common interest and goals forming informal communities so as to exchange their information and knowledge. (Wenger et al, 2000). It is opposite from knowledge management system because knowledge is not defined as an object that can keep in the system but knowledge is continuously created and shared through social interaction. Information technology is just a facilitating tool that keep people connected but trust is a critical success factor of this approach to encourage people sharing their knowledge(Scarbrough, 2003). Advantages The first and foremost advantage of this approach is that tacit knowledge can be shared because tacit knowledge is transferred by socialization (Nonaka, 1995). People are more actively sharing knowledge because they are part of the group and the community needs more participation than sharing knowledge through the system. It's better to learn from human, not from the system because they can deeply understand what they want by explaining from others. It helps to create the relationship amongst member and increasing the willingness to share information and knowledge. Through a community, people can share knowledge informally everyday (Ernst and Young). Moreover, this approach needs an involvement of employees so that utilisation of knowledge can be ensured as they need to participate in the programme. It facilitates problem solving because people share their tactic and experience. People are socializing talking to each other and building the knowledge as well. They can get the advice of the problem they are encountering; consequently, they can do their job more effectively. Disadvantages Despite community approach has many advantages; it is not free from limitations. It is difficult to manage this approach because it is free from directive management structure (Scarbrough, 2003). The organization can control neither the direction nor the result of sharing knowledge. The communities were formed informally and sharing knowledge is based on voluntary of the members in the communities. It is more costly to adopt this approach because it needs cultural change, not just implementing the knowledge management system. This approach is not suitable for temporary project where people from different background work on a specific task during a period of time because it is hard to establish trust and common understanding within a short span of time and therefore the knowledge does not flow freely within the group. NASA Case NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, is one of the most innovative organization. The nature of works in NASA is very complex and diverse and as such learning and managing knowledge within the organization are the key factors which drive this organisation. In 2000, knowledge management was introduced in NASA (Leonard and Kiron, 2002) because top managements had realized that half of its experienced employee was going to retire and so they were afraid of knowledge also going along with them. NASA needs to preserve the knowledge which was deemed to be the powerful asset in the organization. In the beginning, the management adopted cognitive approach to manage knowledge in NASA. Accordingly, many knowledge management systems were implemented such as LLIS (The lessons learned information system), Internet-based database or Web-based portal (Holm, 2007). In fact, NASA was trying to capture tacit knowledge from their employee. NASA tried to keep this in the systems, made it available throughout the organization, but contrary to the expectations, unfortunately, there found some limitations, which made NASA to think about alternatives. The limitations found in the system involve many things. First, tacit knowledge cannot be transferred easily. What experts know and see things cannot translate in the way that makes other people comprehend it in the same way. Also, only interviewing and extracting the record from experts are not enough, extensive writing skills to make them usable also necessary (Linde, 2006). Moreover, small number of managers contribute to LLIS because they don't want to share negative lesson learn. Put it another word, people don't want to tell others what mistake they have done because it may affect their reputation and reliability. The LLIS system is not appropriate to capture the positive lessons .The system was for documenting mistakes, causes and lesson learnt from that mistake but it missed the opportunity to learn from the successful missions. (Maccormack,2004). Vast amount of data was put into the knowledge management system. People in NASA are very busy and they do not want to take lots of time finding a few useful lessons out of tons of irrelevant data. Once NASA realized that KMS was not effective to encourage people to learn and innovate, they were encouraged to deploy another strategy which emphasize on social network. NASA developed APPL (Academy of Program and Project Leadership) which brings managers from different units sharing knowledge and their story in organized workshops. Not only tacit knowledge can be shared, but it also promotes collaboration and networking across the organization (Leonard and Kiron, 2002). Later on, many communities of practice was created and supported by NASA helping the information and knowledge flow freely in the organization. There is no best way to manage knowledge within organization and therefore NASA used the combination of both two approaches helping to increase the learning process within organization. Nevertheless, the effective of knowledge management is not depends only on whether the KMS is properly in place or the CmP is developed, the most important thing is the organization needs to motivate their employee to learn new things, making them think that new things are interesting and challenging. When people have insight motivation to learn, it is not hard to transmit knowledge into people's mind and then create the innovative things for the organization in return. Conclusion Knowledge based organisations are not novel in the modern economy. Organisations have realized that knowledge is an inevitable factor that promotes success in organisation through initiation for better decision by knowledge sharing and dissemination. Regardless of the approach used by organisation for knowledge management, employees, works and jobs are to be adapted to the new system that may otherwise create hardships for the smooth functioning of knowledge management. The micro-econometric analysis of the firms from the EU countries confirms that KM contributes significantly to the innovative performance of the firm as well as to its productivity. This paper mainly focuses on two approaches to manage knowledge; cognitive and community approach. Cognitive approach view the knowledge as an object that can be extracted from human's head and stored in the system while community approach believe that knowledge occurs continuously and be transferred through social network. Main benefit of cognitive approach is that knowledge can be distributed across different sections/departments of an organization and knowledge can be disseminated to next generation. But, at the same time, it is hard to capture the tacit knowledge which happens to occur and can be described in words. As regards community approach is concerned, the main advantage is that tacit knowledge can be transferred by socialization; however, it is more difficult to manage the community than the system. However, there is no one-size-fit all; both approaches have their positive and negative sides. It is recommended that the organization should focus on one approach rather than following both approaches since it is more likely to success and give more benefit when an appropriate approach for the organisation is deployed. References Alavi, M., Smith, R. (1999) 'Knowledge management systems: Issues, challenges, and benefits', Communications of the Association for Information System, Vol.1, No.7 Holm,J. (2007), 'Knowledge Management at NASA: Supporting Missions and Collaboration', [Online] Available at: http://km.nasa.gov/home/index.html [Accessed 24 February 2009] Leonard, D. and D. Kiron (2002), 'Managing Knowledge and Learning at NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)', Harvard Business Review, October 2002, pp.1-29 Liew, A. (2007) 'Understanding Data, Information, Knowledge And Their Inter-Relationships', Journal of knowledge Management Practice, Vol 8 , no.2. Linde, C. (2006), 'Learning from the mars rover mission: Scientific discovery, learning and memory', Journal of knowledge management, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp.90 - 102 Lindkvist, L. (2005) 'Knowledge Communities and Knowledge Collectivities: A Typology of knowledge Work in Groups', Journal of Management Studies, Vol.42, No.6 Maccormack, A. (2004), 'Management Lessons from Mars', Harvard Business Review, Vol.82, No. 5, pp. 18-19 National Aeronautics and Space Administration. 2009. What is knowledge management[Online] Available at : http://km.nasa.gov/whatis/index.html [Accessed 4 February 2009] Newell, S., Robertson, M., Scarbrough, H and Swan, J. (2002) Managing knowledge work,Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Nonaka, I. (1991) 'The knowledge-Creating Company', Harvard Business Review,No.69, November - December 1991, pp.96-104. Quintas, P.,Lefrere, P and Jones, G. (1997) 'Knowledge Management : a Strategic Agenda', Long Range Planning, Vol.30, no.3, pp.385-391. Scarbrough, H. (2003) The New Workplace: A guide to the Human Impact of Modern Working Practices, Coventry: John Wiley & Sons. Vandenbosch, B., and M.J. Ginzberg (1996), 'Lotus notes and collaboration', 29th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS), Volume 3, pp.61 - 71 Read More