A common theme flowing through the various definitions I have found is summarized well by Avery(2008) which defines KM as :
“Practices deployed by organizations to identify, create, represent, classify, and disseminate knowledge for reuse, awareness, and learning to the benefit of information users”[1]
From an academic perspective this all sounds wonderful, but after further investigation people in the workplace seem to have differing viewpoints influenced by several factors: the size of the organization; organizational culture; business sector; management perception of KM and worker perception of the knowledge they can or are willing to share. Understanding the concepts of KM and actually implementing it can potentially be worlds apart due to the potential misuse of the term when compared to the definition I referred to above.
An interesting study [2] on KM in SME’s which identifies the difficulties in constructing sustainable KM initiatives and suggests that the main obstacle to KM is usually the culture of the organization and the realization of the time and effort needed to make it successful. This clash can come from both the perspective of the management and the worker and if neither have a clear KM definition, or understanding of the benefits to the organization, within their own organizational boundary (and that’s a contested issue!! see previous post) then the development of KM will be disjointed and difficult to manage.
[1] Avery, J P (2008). A Different Kind of Web-Based Knowledge Management, Defense & AT-L; Vol. 37 Issue 3, p30-33
[2] Chan,I,.Chao C (2008), Knowledge Management In Small Medium Enterprises, Communications of the ACM ,Vol. 51 Issue 4, p83-88
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Helo Francis, I agree to 'can or are willing to share'. Reason for this I have visualised this in the financial accounts banking in comparison with the healthcare. They both manage knowledge but the type's of people in these cultural environment are of different breed.
ReplyDeleteHappy posting! :)
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ReplyDeleteTaking on from Manchie's comment, my view is that having ascertained the issue of willingness or not of individuals in an organisation to share knowledge, an Organisation would do best to apply a KM model that encourages knowledge sharing such as providing incentives. As such the management of any Organisation has a huge role in terms of its KM Model.
ReplyDeleteFrancis... excellent concise definition that clearly shows the process of KM... :-)
ReplyDeleteI would like to put this to real life example which you might agree... for me it would have to involve incentives (reward or something) to share knowledge... else I don’t really bother... for example: the discussion board on BIS4430, I found it hassle, but I saw you posting a lot of information, which helped to improve others... for BIS4410 its must to have a blog (if you really want to pass.. debateable)...
Sharing knowledge involves people, time, incentives, etc; but the best way to do this is to use the personalisation approach (face-to-face), including storytelling workshops, team meeting, etc; I don’t mind doing this... its only when machines (IT) codification approach... it feels like a barrier... but this is also the process to capture and store the knowledge...!
Organisations need to consider certain KM Strategies....
(if you want more, i can comment again)
;-)