Defining KM

Introduction

Before we can start with what, we must understand why? Why do we need KM or what factors in the technology space led us to the KM domain? Here we will briefly look at a few pivotal events in Information Technology (IT) to reflect on their influence towards a KM domain.

Lessons learned that lead to KM

By looking at trends in the IT industry we can see how the need for KM was created:

1. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR)

   • Companies tried to become as lean as possible, leading to retrenchments of staff who held critical knowledge, which had a direct and adverse impact on the effectiveness and efficiency of business operations as know-how, know-why, care-why and know-what knowledge are lost.

   • This resulted in the need for companies to recognize that KM is required to retain knowledge and the need to convert Tacit Knowledge to Explicit Knowledge

2. Year 2000 (Y2K)

   • The Y2K crisis lead to the need to improve processing power and storage capabilities

   • This lead to IT enabling the ability to process and store large amounts of data which is one of the fundamental processes in KM

3. Increase in Content/data

   • With the vast increase in data creation and processing, valuable content became difficult to access in a timely manner, this had repercussions on decision makers who required the information to make informed decisions faster

   • This problem lead to the solution of Content Management which is also another key attribute to KM

4. Service- Based Economy

   • With the shift of companies towards a service- based economy, maintaining business value and reducing the risk of litigation from poor service delivery became crucial.

   • The problem companies faced was to sustain capabilities and retain high - value employees

   • This lead to the need to improve the management of Human Capital and Intellectual Capital and implement a KM Model.

Objectives of KM

The objectives of Knowledge Management (KM) are as follows:

1. Convert Tacit Knowledge to Explicit Knowledge

2. Protection of critical knowledge (i.e. minimizing the loss of corporate memory) within the company to ensure business continuity due to attrition and retirement

3. Increasing operational efficiencies by reusing knowledge

4. Supporting employee learning and development

5. Serving our clients better through the use of knowledge on product, processes, customer and/or market information to improve product/service offerings

6. Identifying critical resources and areas of knowledge so that the company knows what it knows.

7. Creating a toolkit of methods to reduce the potential loss of intellectual capital that can be used by individuals, groups and the organization.

What is KM?

As a result of a lack in consensus amongst researchers there are many definitions of KM. The author of the website has a predilection to the following definition:

Knowledge Management is the process of creating, sharing, using and managing the knowledge and information of an organization. John Girard

The background of how the definition was compiled was through a frequency analysis of one hundred KM definitions, and their most common words. The above resultant definition of KM was thus proposed.

Below is a list of multiple definitions extracted from Dalkir (2017) pg. 16-17 through the lens of various perspectives where one can ascertain that consensus on the definition of KM has not yet been reached.

Business Perspective

• Knowledge management is a business activity with two primary aspects: treating the knowledge component of business activities as an explicit concern of business reflected in strategy, policy, and practice at all levels of the organization; and, making a direct connection between an organization’s intellectual assets—both explicit (recorded) and tacit (personal know-how)—and positive business results. (Barclay & Murray, 1997)

• Knowledge management is a collaborative and integrated approach to the creation, capture, organization, access, and use of an enterprise’s intellectual assets. (Grey, 1996)

• Knowledge management is the process by which we manage human centered assets … the function of knowledge management is to guard and grow knowledge owned by individuals, and where possible, transfer the asset into a form where it can be more readily shared by other employees in the company. (Brooking, 1999, p. 154)

• The knowledge management focus is on obtaining and synthesizing intellectual capital to maximize decision making and innovation across diverse functions and disparate locations, thus enabling the clients to become high-performance businesses and governments. Far more than a cluster of simple processes, the KM program is also about developing and rewarding a culture of knowledge-sharing—encouraging collaboration among their people to problem solve and build capabilities, regardless of their location. (Accenture)

Intellectual or knowledge asset perspective

• Knowledge management consists of “leveraging intellectual assets to enhance organizational performance.” (Stankosky, 2008)

• “Knowledge management develops systems and processes to acquire and share intellectual assets. It increases the generation of useful, actionable, and meaningful information and seeks to increase both individual and team learning. In addition, it can maximize the value of an organization’s intellectual base across diverse functions and disparate locations. Knowledge management maintains that successful businesses are a collection not of products but of distinctive knowledge bases. This intellectual capital is the key that will give the company a competitive advantage with its targeted customers. Knowledge management seeks to accumulate intellectual capital that will create unique core competencies and lead to superior results.” (Bain & Company, 2011)

Cognitive science or knowledge science perspective

• Knowledge—the insights, understandings, and practical know-how that we all possess—is the fundamental resource that allows us to function intelligently. Over time, considerable knowledge is also transformed to other manifestations—such as books, technology, practices, and traditions—within organizations of all kinds and in society in general. These transformations result in cumulated [sic] expertise and, when used appropriately, increased effectiveness. Knowledge is one, if not THE, principal factor that makes personal, organizational, and societal intelligent behavior possible. (Wiig, 1993)

Library and information science perspective

Here there are two opposing views within this perspective

1. The view that there is very little distinction between information management and knowledge management

• KM is predominantly seen as information management by another name (semantic drift). (Davenport & Cronin, 2000, p. 1)

• Knowledge management is one of those concepts that librarians take time to assimilate, only to reflect ultimately “on why other communities try to colonize our domains.” (Hobohm, 2004, p.7)

2. The view that does make a distinction between the management of information resources and the management of knowledge resources

• Knowledge management “is understanding the organization’s information flows and implementing organizational learning practices which make explicit key aspects of its knowledge base … It is about enhancing the use of organizational knowledge through sound practices of information management and organizational learning. (Broadbent, 1997, pp. 8–9).

• Knowledge relates to all the capital owned by people and staff of a company: know-how and expertise, competencies, market experiences, etc. Knowledge management helps companies turn this human capital into intellectual capital by creating value. Unlike content management, knowledge management is not only about storing documents. It is about increasing people skills and expertise thanks to sharing. Knowledge management enables people collaboration and connects them to expertise. The ability to quickly find a subject matter expert and get the answer to a question or assistance in solving a problem is a priority in knowledge management. Knowledge management prevents companies from constantly reinventing the wheel, hence the decreasing supply of talent, the retiring boomers, the staff turnover etc. (Deloitte)

Process/technology perspective

• Knowledge management is the concept under which information is turned into actionable knowledge and made available effortlessly in a usable form to the people who can apply it. (Patel & Harty, 1998)

• Leveraging collective wisdom to increase responsiveness and innovation. (Frappaolo, 2006)

• A systematic approach to manage the use of information in order to provide a continuous flow of knowledge to the right people at the right time enabling efficient and effective decision making in their everyday business. (Payne & Britton, 2010)

• The tools, techniques, and strategies to retain, analyze, organize, improve, and share business expertise. (Groff & Jones, 2003, p. 2)

• A capability to create, enhance, and share intellectual capital across the organization … a shorthand covering all the things that must be put into place, for example, processes, systems, culture, and roles to build and enhance this capability. (Lank, 1997)

• The creation and subsequent management of an environment that encourages knowledge to be created, shared, learnt, enhanced, organized, and utilized for the benefit of the organization and its customers. (Abell & Oxbrow, 2001)