Transcript what is knowledge management?

WELCOME!
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
RESEARCH SEMINAR
Meiho
Institute of
Technology
11th December 2006
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A little bit about me ……
• Academic & Professional background:
BSc MBA DBA ADipC EurIng CEng
MCMI MILT FCIOB FICE FRSA
• International KM expert – working
closely with United Nations, Astra
Zeneca, Unilever etc
• Published first integrated book on
Knowledge Management
• Senior Lecturer in Knowledge
Management
• Trustee of the Joseph Rowntree
Foundation
• Love playing the saxophone and
enjoy the pub.
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WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?
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DIMENSIONS OF
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
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TACIT & EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
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Kolb’s (1984) Learning Cycle
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TEAM LEARNING (Senge, 1990)
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SUCCESS & FAILURE:
WHAT DRIVES OL?
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ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE:
ONTOLOGY & TAXONOMY
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CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE
• Cognitive mapping tools
such as oval mapping
• Information retrieval
tools – desire for
precision and recall
• Search engines
• Personalisation tools
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EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE
• Case based
reasoning
• OLAP
• Datamining
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SHARING KNOWLEDGE
• Internet, Intranet,
Extranet and E-mail
• Groupware tools
• Text based
conferencing
• Yellow Pages
• Computer based
training/e-learning
• Security
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STORING KNOWLEDGE:
Data Warehouse
• Database with query and
reporting tools
• Stores current and historical
data from internal and
external sources
• Data mart – subset of data
warehouse which contains
summarized or highly
focused data for certain
users
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PRESENTING KNOWLEDGE:
Visualisation
• Modelling – way of
representing objects e.g.
journal covers, weather
maps, flows of citations
• Rendering – makes
computer generated
image look like
photograph e.g texture
mapping
• Virtual reality
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STRATEGY AS PLAN OR
PATTERN
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WHAT DO THEY TEACH ON
MBA PROGRAMMES?
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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
STRATEGY
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CLIMATE & CULTURE
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IMPORTANCE OF
STORYTELLING
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KNOWLEDGE CREATING COMPANY
Nonaka, 1991
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Frameworks of
Intellectual
Capital
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Moving beyond tacit and explicit
distinctions : A realist theory of
organisational knowledge
Working Paper
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Introduction
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Knowledge and competitive success
Economic role to promote innovation
RBV to KBV of firm
Is knowledge a football?
Is knowledge an ongoing social
accomplishment?
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Gilbert Ryle (1949)
• Tacit (knowing how) & Explicit (knowing what)
• Polanyi(1967) – continuum
• Nonaka (1994) – neat conversion processes from
one form to another: socialization, combination,
externalization and internalization
• All-encompassing but little revealing concept
• Logical behaviourist perspective
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What’s your philosophy?
Functionalism or Idealism?
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Naturalism debate ignoring social relations
Closed rather than open systems
Any universal laws or theories?
Idealists assert reality constituted by our
perceptions
• Reality answerable to our representations rather
independent reality
• No scope for causal explanation only meanings
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Fancy postmodernism or
feminism?
• Postmodernists emphasise diversity of world,
plurality of perspectives
• Knowledge divided into discrete systems of thought
• Invoke problem of incommensurability
• ‘Situated knowledge’ in terms of power relations
forwarded by feminists
• Problems of white, western, heterosexual male in
research
• Certain positions are advantageous over others
• Research by white males as distorted but not black
women?
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What’s your philosophy of
knowledge? Realism?
• Real world exists independent of us
• Seek to penetrate surface phenomena to
reveal mechanisms and structures
• Explanation is not ‘billiard-ball’ but
identifying mechanisms and structures
• Theory is conceptualisation
• Observations are theory laden
• Critical theory
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Problems with Ryle!
• All mental states are ignored
• Consciousness reduced to behaviour or
disposition to behaviour
• Problem you may be in pain but refuse to
show behaviour linked to it
• Pretend to be in pain?
• Purely look at surface level behaviours
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Realist Theory of Organizational
Knowledge
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Consciousness
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Consciousness primary character of mind
Inner, subjective, first-person ontology
Experiences in the present
Collective consciousness not Hegelian spirit
but shared meanings and representations
through social interactions in context of power
relations and culture
• Cognitive, relational and cultural
• Social Capital
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Intentionality
• Mental process that represents objects,
events and states in the world
• Can be conscious, unconscious, semiconscious in terms of hopes, desires,
beliefs, fears.
• Intention leads to action in locus of control
• Some intentions go unrealised
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Organizational Memory
• Past experiences stored in organizational
memory influences consciousness
• Foucault’s genealogy
• Absorptive capacity linked to past
experience
• Remembering and forgetting
• Unlearning
• Organizational & Human Capital
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Spark: Organisational Routines &
Sensemaking
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Gunpowder analogy
Dispersed knowledge in organisations
Allow coordination and integration
Allow improvisation
Dynamic capabilities in volatile environments
Create plausible stories for diagnosis and solutions
Sensemaking not accuracy but plausability in terms
of observations and past experiences
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Conclusions
• Problem of no recourse to philosophy in
literature but themes and patterns
• Consciousness and memory primary
knowledge mechanisms and structures
• Tensions between figurative stories and
literal memories in orgs
• Contribution to intellectual capital
• Methodological implications
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TIME FOR REFLECTION
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