Wiig's KM Model

Introduction

The KM Model was proposed by Karl Wiig in 1993 with a primary focus on the principle: in order for knowledge to be useful and valuable, it must be organized.

When to use?

Designed Explicitly for Knowledge Building Scenarios

Dimensions

Dimensions of Wiigs Model are as follows:

Completeness

• • how much of relevant knowledge is available from a given source.

  • Sources can be

    • Human minds

    • Knowledge bases (inclusive of both Tacit and Explicit Knowledge)

  • Knowledge on the topic may be complete, (i.e. everything is known about the topic) however, if this knowledge is not known or made available then the knowledge cannot be consumed.

Connectedness

• • How well are the knowledge objects understood and whether these have defined relations between them

  • Rarely are knowledge objects completely disconnected

  • The greater the number of interconnections between knowledge objects, the more coherent the content will be and the greater its value will become.

Congruency

• • Occurs when all the facts, concepts, perspectives, values, judgments, and associative and relational links between the knowledge objects are consistent.

  • No logical inconsistencies, no internal conflicts, and no misunderstandings - this is what should be aimed for, however, this is difficult to achieve. concept definitions should be consistent at a minimum

  • Knowledge base as a whole needs to be constantly finetuned to maintain congruency.

Perspective and purpose

• • refers to where we know something but often from a particular point of view or for a specific purpose we have in mind.

  • Humans organize most of our knowledge using dual dimensions of perspective and purpose

Internalization of Knowledge

• Wiggs KM Model further defines Internalization of Knowledge which can be seen as a refinement of Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI Model

• The Degree of internalization can be seen in the following table (Dalkir (2017),p.80)

Forms of Knowledge

Wiig (1993) also defines three forms of knowledge in the research as (Dalkir (2017), p.81):

1. public knowledge,

   • "explicit, taught, and routinely shared knowledge that is generally available in the public domain."

   • Examples:

     1. books in a library

     2. information on public websites

2. shared expertise, and

   • "proprietary knowledge assets that are exclusively held by knowledge workers and shared in their work or embedded in technology."

   • usually communicated via specialized languages and representations

   • Examples:

     1. Communities of practice

     2. Informal networks of professionals in the field that share knowledge to improve their respective practice

3. personal knowledge

   • least accessible but most complete form of knowledge.

   • typically more tacit than explicit and used unconsciously in work, play, and daily life.

   • Examples:

     1. Your daily routine process to get ready for work

     2. Knowledge of oneself

     3. Skills and abilities one has obtained through practice such as playing sports and musical instruments

Types of Knowledge

For the Wiig's Model, there are 4 types of knowledge namely;

1. Facts

   • data, causal links, measures and readings

   • Example

     1. Telephone directory

     2. Client profile list

2. Conceptual knowledge,

   • implies systems, concepts and perspectives

   • see Declarative knowledge

   • Example

     1. Equations

     2. Definitions such as a Dictionary

3. Expectation knowledge

   • refers to judgments, hypothesis and expectations of the persons that possess them.

   • Examples

     1. Thesis-Antithesis dialectic

     2. Intuition, hunches, preferences, and heuristics that we make use of in our decision making

4. methodological knowledge and

   • used by strategies, methods for decision refining and other techniques.

   • Example

     1. Learning from past mistakes

     2. Forecasting based on events analysis

Combining the Forms and Types of Knowledge concepts creates a matrix that forms the basis of the Wiig KM Model as show below (Dalkir (2017), p.81):

Model

The Wiigs model is illustrated in the below diagram from Tutorials Point (n.d):

Stages

The 4 stages of WIIG’s model are:

Building knowledge:

From external and internal knowledge sources covering both tacit and explicit knowledge.

Holding knowledge:

Storing the information in specific and easily retrievable physical formats and in people through training.

Pooling knowledge:

Using appropriate KM systems to ensure cross-talk between pools or groups of experts.

Applying knowledge:

Here the use of knowledge is in changing or improving the work processes so that new knowledge is automatically embedded.

Conclusion

• Wiggs KM Model further defines Internalization of Knowledge which can be seen as a refinement of Nonaka and Takeuchi's SECI Model

• There is a continuum of internalization ranked from low to high with Novice being low and Master being the highest

• Drawbacks

  • Scarce published research and practical experience in implementing this model

• Strengths

  • a detailed and refined approach to KM based off knowledge types above and beyond the Tacit vs Explicit dichotomy.