Knowledge management

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Definition

Knowledge management is the problem of capturing, organizing, and retrieving information in an organization.

“Knowledge Management is a new branch of management for achieving breakthrough business performance through the synergy of people, processes, and technology. Its focus is on the management of change, uncertainty, and complexity.” (WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management)

“Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change.... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings.” (WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management)

“Knowledge management systems (KMS) are tools geared to supportknowledge management (KM) processes, as knowledge creation, storage and retrieval, knowledge share, knowledge application, and the flows between them. These systems provide an environment that facilitates the creation and usage of knowledge, and also the communication and collaboration among the organization workers.” (Pinto, 2001:1).

Related issues:

Typologies

Views

Here is quote from Dave Pollard []

A big problem with KM is that, like the six blind men feeling different parts of the elephant, the term has come to mean many different things to different people, and hence nothing at all:

Academics: KM is anything that allows us to do something better in business than we can do without it
Consultants: KM is an aspect of business process improvement
IT People: KM is any software that concerns itself at least vaguely with databases or content management systems
Librarians: KM is the new name for what special librarians have always done
HR People: KM is the process surrounding non-classroom learning curricula

“When defining knowledge management some people emphasize intellectual capital, others think of supporting technologies, whereas others put community building first.” (Ritsko and Birman)

Roles

In Jahnke's (2009) study of a Socio-Technical Community (STC) 9 types of informal posting roles based on Herrmann (2004) have been identified. The observed portal was created for large computer science schools, i.e. InPUD stands for Informatics Portal University of Dortmund.

Informal role	Description of informal posting activities	Typical InPUD examples
Author	A member who contributes information and communicates own ideas by writing short statements. InPUD-members add their own contributions and ideas	“It would be nice, if the department had a central website with all information about the computer science courses. InPUD is a good idea. Unfortunately some people in the department do not work sufficiently with InPUD”
Scaffolding	A member who provides structure to the discussion	“Please, look at the thread of study management, before you ask the same questions as the others” x201c;This question was already answered in thread 19”
Reading as visitor	Someone who reads contributions of other users and is primarily interested in getting an orientation without making own contributions (gets inspiration)	“I am not a member of this university”
Conflict-mediator	A member who acts as a mediator in emotional conflicts (e.g., when two or more members have a dispute) and intervenes in emotional discussions (to enable the discussion to continue)	“I understand your problem, and it is good that you want to change something, but this thread is not the right way to solve your problem. Would you mind talking with the professor face-to-face?”
Technical-support	A member who explains the use of the technical system	“Why is the board so often offline at the weekend?” The answer of the technical-supporter: “A person told me they are upgrading the software. The new version should work in 2 weeks. Hopefully, they are right”
Conclusion-making	A member who adds comments to postings and has an essential influence on the content of the discussion	“From my point of view, it looks like…” or “Summarised…”
Promoter of the procedure	Someone who makes the current procedure more transparent, supports task completion, positively promotes the discussion or activities and motivates to participate	“Yes, I could explain the seven answers of the exam after the exam – when there are enough students who will participate. I suggest Wednesday, 14 February, I am in room E28. I will not do this if there are just 3 or 4 people, so, come on, and all come to the meeting”
Organisational-supporter	A member who provides another view of the activities (meta-level: communication about the communication), support to think about organisational conventions (e.g., how to communicate)	“Why have you written this posting three times? Please, wait a moment before you write it again”. >“You say that someone says the script would be online, but where is it and who said this?”
Decision-initiator	Someone who combines diverging contributions by relating them to a summarising statement; if the discussion diverges, the person calls for an informal vote to reach consensus	“Do we share this view of the problem?”

What is knowledge management ?

Knowledge management is the synergy of people's knowledge, processes, and technology and therefore it makes sense to discuss knowledge management in terms of knowledge management systems (KMS). Gallupe (2001) introduces four frameworks to study and discuss these systems.

“Knowledge management systems are the tools and techniques that support knowledge-management practices in organizations .... In summary, KMSs can be thought of as systems composed of people, tools and technologies.” (Gallupe, 2001).

In his General Systems Framework for Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), Gallupe (2001:66) defines three components of a knowledge management system.

Inputs: Knowledge, people, tools
Process: Interaction of Knowledge, People and tools
Outputs: Useful Knowledge

These three components interact through feedback loops.

His second framework is the Four component Model of KMS, based on an earlier model of Group Decision Support Systems. A KMS is

A Knowledge base (or repository) subsystem
A Group support (or knowledge transfer) subsystem
A User-Interface subsystem
Knowledge users / knowledge generators (so each user has a double role)

The third framework of Gallupe (2001) is a Knowledge Life Cycle that follows knowledge through the stages of its life cycle form creation to disposition.

Knowledge creation or acquisition
Knowledge codification and storage
Knowledge transfer or dissemination
Knowledge use

Daniel K. Schneider has the impression that this kind of heavy waterfall model may one of the reason why knowledge management seem to fail ....

The fourth and final Framework focuses on KMSs to support knowledge management practices. “This framework incorporates the process and structures inherent in the 'General Systems' and the 'Four Components' models, respectively. In addition, it implicitly uses the 'Knowledge Life Cycle Model' to help categorise knowledge-management practices and uses of KMSs. The 'Knowledge Management Practice' framework is based on the work of Gray and Chan (1999). This framework examines knowledge-management practices along two dimensions. The first dimension is the process to be supported (problem recognition or problem solving). The second dimension is the class of problem being solved (new or unique, previously solved). The integration of these dimensions results in four types of knowledge-management practices that may be supported by KMSs.” (Gallupe, 2001:67)

The Gallupe Knowledge Practices Framework for Knowledge Management Systems:

		New/Unique	Previously Solved
		Class of Problem
Problem Process	Problem Recognition	Encouraging Serendipity (1)	Mentoring & Training (4)
Problem Process	Problem Solving	Knowledge Creation (2)	Knowledge Acquisition (3)