Individual Assignment

Knowledge Management for Innovation - MM5016

Created by:

William Michael Mathew Chellizto Simanjuntak 29323089

Business Leadership Executive (BLEMBA 34)

Institut Teknologi Bandung
2024
Summary of "A Theoretical and Practical Guide" by Emil Hajric (2018)

Introduction

The book, "A Theoretical and Practical Guide for Knowledge Management in Your
Organization" by Emil Hajric function as a comprehensive guide on knowledge management
(KM) aims to provide a detailed overview of KM, covering its objectives, scope, strategy, best
practices, tools, and supporting disciplines.

Introduction on Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is essentially about delivering the right knowledge to the right
person at the right time. This involves aligning with corporate strategy, understanding where
and in what forms knowledge exists, creating processes that span organizational functions, and
ensuring initiatives are accepted and supported by organizational members. KM may also
include new knowledge creation or focus solely on knowledge sharing, storage, and refinement.
The overall objective of KM is to create value by leveraging and refining the firm's knowledge
assets to meet organizational goals. Implementing KM involves several dimensions:

1. Strategy: KM strategy must align with corporate strategy to manage, share, and create
relevant knowledge assets that meet tactical and strategic requirements.
2. Organizational Culture: Influences how people interact, the context for knowledge
creation, resistance to changes, and knowledge sharing.
3. Organizational Processes: Right processes, environments, and systems enable KM
implementation.
4. Management & Leadership: Competent leadership is required at all levels, with roles
like CKO, knowledge managers, and knowledge brokers.
5. Technology: Systems, tools, and technologies must fit the organization's requirements
and be properly designed and implemented.
6. Politics: Long-term support to implement and sustain initiatives that involve virtually
all organizational functions.

In the past, KM initiatives often failed due to an excessive focus on primitive KM tools and
systems at the expense of other areas. However, modern KM systems have evolved and are
now critical components of KM, allowing for the capture of unstructured thoughts and ideas,
virtual conferencing, and more.

Throughout the book, theories and frameworks are explained and discussed, with
occasional contributions from the author's own frameworks. The book also discusses the
potential role of KM systems from a broad perspective, providing specific advice on tools in
the KM tools section. It is organized logically, moving from a general introduction to
knowledge and KM to introducing key subjects like organizational memory, learning, and
culture, before discussing models, frameworks, KM initiatives, strategy, systems, and tools.

Knowledge, Information, and Data

 Before delving into knowledge management (KM), it is essential to define the terms
"knowledge," "information," and "data." These terms often have varied meanings in everyday
language, specific fields, and even within the same disciplines, making it challenging to
establish clear definitions.

Defining Knowledge, Information, and Data

• Data: Data consists of unstructured facts and figures. It is the lowest level and provides
no further information regarding patterns or context. Thierauf (1999) defines data as
"unstructured facts and figures that have the least impact on the typical manager."
• Information: For data to become information, it must be contextualized, categorized,
calculated, and condensed (Davenport & Prusak, 2000). Information is data with
relevance and purpose, conveying a trend or pattern. Ackoff (1999) describes
information as being found in answers to questions like who, what, where, when, and
how many.
• Knowledge: Knowledge implies know-how and understanding. It is a fluid mix of
framed experience, values, contextual information, expert insight, and grounded
intuition. Knowledge is a product of an individual's experience and is applied in the
mind of the knowers. It becomes embedded in documents, repositories, organizational
routines, practices, and norms.

Perspectives on Knowledge, Information, and Data

In more technologically oriented disciplines, knowledge is often treated similarly to

information. IT systems play a pivotal role in knowledge sharing, and some KM systems are
little more than information management systems using knowledge as a virtual synonym for
information.

The Different Types of Knowledge

Understanding the different forms of knowledge is crucial for KM. Knowledge is

typically classified into three types:

1. Explicit Knowledge: Formalized and codified knowledge, often found in documents.

It is easy to identify, store, and retrieve, making it suitable for KM systems.
2. Tacit Knowledge: Intuitive, hard-to-define knowledge that is largely experience-
based. It is context-dependent and personal, making it challenging to communicate and
codify.
3. Embedded Knowledge: Knowledge locked in processes, products, culture, routines,
and structures. Managing embedded knowledge varies and often differs from tacit
knowledge.

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management (KM) is about making the right knowledge available to the
right people at the right time. It ensures that an organization can learn, retrieve, and use its
knowledge assets as needed. According to Peter Drucker, KM is "the coordination and
exploitation of organizational knowledge resources, in order to create benefit and competitive
advantage" (Drucker 1999). There is some disagreement on whether KM includes the creation
of new knowledge or if it should be limited to managing existing knowledge.
 Wellman (2009) argues that KM should focus on lessons learned and the management
of known knowledge, while knowledge creation is part of innovation management. Bukowitz
and Williams (1999) link KM directly to tactical and strategic requirements, emphasizing the
use and enhancement of knowledge-based assets to meet these needs. Davenport & Prusak
(2000) offer a broader definition, stating that KM is about acquiring, organizing, sustaining,
applying, sharing, and renewing both tacit and explicit knowledge to enhance organizational
performance and create value.

Knowledge Management Definition

Based on these discussions, the author defines KM as follows:

"Knowledge management is the systematic management of an organization's knowledge assets

for the purpose of creating value and meeting tactical and strategic requirements. It consists of
the initiatives, processes, strategies, and systems that sustain and enhance the storage,
assessment, sharing, refinement, and creation of knowledge."

KM involves managing knowledge that is useful for a specific purpose and creates
value for the organization. It includes understanding where knowledge exists, what the
organization needs to know, promoting a culture conducive to learning and sharing, making
knowledge available to the right people at the right time, generating or acquiring new relevant
knowledge, and managing all these factors to enhance performance in line with organizational
goals and opportunities.

Why is Knowledge Management Useful?

KM is useful because it focuses on knowledge as an actual asset rather than something

intangible. It helps firms:

• Learn from past mistakes and successes.

• Exploit existing knowledge assets by redeploying them in areas where the firm can
benefit.
• Promote a long-term focus on developing the right competencies and skills and
removing obsolete knowledge.
• Enhance the firm's ability to innovate.
• Protect key knowledge and competencies from being lost or copied.

KM helps organizations understand what they know, where this knowledge is located,
and in what form it is stored. It enables the transfer of knowledge to relevant people, ensuring
it is not lost, and assesses the organization's know-how against its needs.

Information Management vs. Knowledge Management

Information and knowledge are often used interchangeably, but they are different.
Information management (IM) focuses on data and information, dealing with structured and
unstructured facts and figures, and benefiting greatly from technology. It involves organizing,
analysing, and retrieving codified information.

KM, on the other hand, focuses on knowledge, understanding, and wisdom, dealing
with both codified and uncodified knowledge. Uncodified knowledge, the most valuable type,
is found in the minds of practitioners and is context-based and experience-based. KM
emphasizes people and processes, creating environments where knowledge is shared and
created. KM is largely about know-how, know-why, and know-who and is harder to copy due
to its connection to experience and context.

Organizational Knowledge

In earlier sections, the book identified three types of knowledge: explicit, tacit, and
embedded. The focus now shifts to understanding organizational knowledge and its
significance in the knowledge management (KM) process.

Introducing Organizational Knowledge

Organizational knowledge refers to all the knowledge resources within an organization that can
be realistically tapped. It encompasses various levels:

• Individual: Personal, often tacit knowledge or know-how that can also be explicit but
individual in nature, like a private notebook.
• Groups/Community: Knowledge held within groups but not shared with the entire
organization. These groups, known as communities of practice, share common values,
language, procedures, and know-how.
• Structural: Embedded knowledge found in processes, culture, etc. It can be known by
many or a few members of the organization, like routines in the army known only by
following soldiers.
• Organizational: Collective knowledge resulting from the combination of group
knowledge from various subunits. It can be defined broadly as all knowledge resources
within an organization.
• Extra-organizational: Knowledge resources outside the organization that can enhance
its performance, including explicit elements like publications and tacit elements in
external communities of practice.

Implications for KM

To enhance organizational knowledge, KM must be involved across the entire

knowledge spectrum, promoting knowledge development at all levels and facilitating its
diffusion to individuals, groups, and across the entire firm. KM must manage organizational
knowledge storage and retrieval capabilities and create an environment conducive to learning
and knowledge sharing. Additionally, it should tap into external sources of knowledge when
necessary for organizational development.

The SECI Model and Knowledge Conversion

Ikujiro Nonaka introduced the SECI model, a cornerstone of knowledge creation and
transfer theory, which shows how knowledge types can be combined and converted within an
organization. The model is based on explicit and tacit knowledge and includes four conversion
processes:

1. Socialization (Tacit to Tacit): Knowledge is passed on through practice, guidance,

imitation, and observation.
 2. Externalization (Tacit to Explicit): Tacit knowledge is codified into documents or
manuals for easier dissemination.
3. Combination (Explicit to Explicit): Codified knowledge sources are combined to
create new knowledge.
4. Internalization (Explicit to Tacit): As explicit knowledge is used and learned, it
becomes internalized, modifying the user's existing tacit knowledge.

The SECI Model Knowledge Creation Spiral

Knowledge is continuously converted and created as users practice, collaborate,

interact, and learn. The model represents a dynamic, continuous process rather than a static
one, emphasizing the ongoing nature of knowledge conversion and creation within an
organization.

Organizational Memory and Knowledge Repositories

Organizational memory extends beyond individual memory to include the collective

ability to store and retrieve knowledge and information. It encompasses various repositories
where knowledge can be stored, including formal records, tacit and embedded knowledge in
people, culture, and processes.

Stages in the Organizational Memory Process

1. Acquisition: Accumulated information regarding past decisions split across different

retention facilities.
2. Retention: Knowledge is retained in individuals, culture, processes, structures, and
external activities.
3. Retrieval: Accessing organizational memory, either intuitively or through deliberate
attempts.

Organizational Learning

Organizational learning is about creating new knowledge and improving the

organization. It involves applying knowledge for a purpose and learning from the process and
outcome. Brown and Duguid (1991) describe it as "the bridge between working and
innovating," linking learning to action and useful improvement.

Implications for Knowledge Management

Organizational learning has three main implications for KM:

1. Creating an ideal learning environment.

2. Understanding how and why learning occurs.
3. Ensuring that learning is useful to the organization.

Organizational Learning Pitfalls

• Failure as a Learning Opportunity: Senge (1990) argues that failure provides the
richest learning experiences, and organizations should use it effectively rather than
stigmatizing it.
 • Superstitious Learning: Levitt and March (1996) discuss how organizations may learn
the wrong lessons from success or failure, leading to incorrect associations between
actions and outcomes. This can result in reinforced routines that are not necessarily
beneficial.

Different Approaches to Organizational Learning

There are two primary approaches:

1. Cognitive Perspective: Treats the firm as a large brain composed of individual

members, focusing on collective learning.
2. Community-Based Learning: Emphasizes learning within networks called
communities of practice, where practitioners create knowledge through social
interactions.

Organizational Learning Theory: Company Perspective

Chris Argyris and Donald Schon contributed significantly to organizational learning

theory. They proposed that organizational learning results from organizational inquiry, where
individuals or groups engage in inquiry to understand and solve inconsistencies between
expected and actual outcomes. Learning is a product of this interaction.

• Espoused Theory vs. Theory-in-Use: Espoused theory refers to formal rules and
procedures, while theory-in-use is the actual way things are done, often involving
informal interactions and problem-solving.
• Levitt and March's View: Organizations are routine-based, history-dependent, and
target-oriented. Past lessons are captured in routines, but the actual events may be lost,
leading to interpretations rather than precise knowledge being stored.

Organizational Learning Theory: The Three Types of Learning

Argyris and Schon identify three levels of learning:

1. Single-Loop Learning: One feedback loop where strategy is modified in response to

unexpected results (error correction).
2. Double-Loop Learning: Changes in theory-in-use, where values, strategies, and
assumptions governing actions are altered to create a more efficient environment.
3. Deuterolearning: Learning about improving the learning system itself, involving
structural and behavioural components that determine how learning takes place
("learning how to learn").

Organizational Culture and Leadership

Significance of Organizational Culture

Organizational culture plays a crucial role in knowledge management processes. It

includes shared values, beliefs, and perceptions that determine how knowledge is absorbed
and shared within the organization. Community and group culture also influence knowledge
sharing among organizational members.
Organizational Culture

Wellman (2009) describes culture as "the way it is around here." He uses an allegory
of apes in a cage to illustrate how cultural learning can persist even when the original reasons
for behaviours are forgotten. This kind of learning can be beneficial by prompting quick
reactions to perceived threats, but it can also be detrimental if inappropriate responses are
triggered by outdated cultural norms.

Levels of Organizational Culture (Schein 1992)

1. Artifacts: Visible elements such as processes, structures, goals, climate, dress codes,
and furniture. Outsiders can see them but may not understand the underlying reasons.
2. Espoused Values: Values espoused by leaders, grounded in shared assumptions of
how the organization should be run. Misalignment between these values and actual
organizational assumptions can cause problems.
3. Assumptions: The actual values of the culture, often tacit, which include views of the
world, human nature, and how things should be.

Organizational Culture and Knowledge Sharing

A knowledge-sharing culture is essential for successful KM initiatives. Employees

must be willing to share their knowledge with others. Leaders need to understand the culture
on both organizational and community levels, as each community may have its own norms
and perspectives influencing knowledge sharing.

Reciprocity and Internal Competition

Reciprocity, or the expectation of a return on shared knowledge, plays a significant

role in knowledge sharing. Individuals may share knowledge for direct compensation,
enhanced reputation, or the expectation of future assistance. Internal competition can also
affect knowledge sharing and creation processes.

Leadership and "The Learning Organization"

Learning Organization

The term "learning organization," popularized by Peter Senge, describes an

organization with an ideal learning environment aligned with its goals. Senge defines a
learning organization as a place where people continually expand their capacity to create
desired results, nurture new thinking patterns, set free collective aspirations, and learn to see
the whole reality together.

Five Disciplines of a Learning Organization

1. Systems Thinking: Understanding the organization as a complex system composed

of smaller systems, recognizing its complexity, and maintaining a long-term focus.
2. Personal Mastery: Continuous learning and enhancing one's vision and focus.
3. Mental Models: Recognizing and challenging deeply ingrained assumptions and
generalizations.
 4. Building Shared Vision: Creating a shared vision that motivates and aligns the
organization, using dialogue, commitment, and enthusiasm rather than dictation.
5. Team Learning: Collaborative thinking and achieving common goals through shared
vision and collaboration.

The Role of Leadership

Senge emphasizes three leadership roles in a learning organization:

1. Leader as Designer: Creating a common vision, determining policies and strategies,

and establishing effective learning processes for continuous improvement.
2. Leader as Teacher: Acting as a coach to work with the organization's mental models,
restructuring views to address underlying causes of problems.
3. Leader as Steward: Serving a greater purpose, building better organizations, and
reshaping business operations with a sense of stewardship.

Knowledge Management Models

Knowledge management (KM) models are frameworks that help organizations

understand and implement KM processes. They offer a structured approach to managing
knowledge and can be presented in various ways to address different aspects of KM.

Building Knowledge Management Frameworks and Models

KM consists of the following basic steps:

1. Identification of Needs: Understanding what knowledge is required.

2. Identification of Knowledge Resources: Locating where knowledge resides.
3. Acquisition, Creation, or Elimination: Managing the relevant knowledge-related
resources, processes, and environments.
4. Retrieval, Application, and Sharing: Ensuring knowledge is accessible and usable.
5. Storage of Knowledge: Keeping knowledge in a retrievable and manageable form.

Three Knowledge Management Models

1. The KM Process Framework by Bukowitz and Williams (1999)

o Focus: Emphasizes the strategic perspective, addressing "why" and "when"
aspects.
o Stages:
▪ Get: Acquire knowledge to address needs.
▪ Use: Apply knowledge to create value.
▪ Learn: Reflect on the knowledge used and outcomes.
▪ Contribute: Share knowledge within the organization.
▪ Assess: Evaluate the knowledge and its impact.
▪ Build/Sustain: Develop knowledge assets for future use.
▪ Divest: Eliminate obsolete knowledge.
2. The KM Matrix by Gamble and Blackwell (2001)
o Focus: A general theoretical framework with specific guidelines for
implementation, addressing "what" and "how."
o Stages:
 ▪Locate: Identify knowledge sources.
▪Organize: Categorize and assess knowledge.
▪Socialize: Share and disseminate knowledge.
▪Internalize: Embed knowledge through use.
3. The Knowledge Management Process Model by Botha et al. (2008)
o Focus: Provides a realistic overview of the KM process with overlapping
categories, addressing "what" and "how."
o Categories:
▪ Knowledge Discovery: Exploring, researching, and creating
knowledge.
▪ Knowledge Repository: Storing and managing knowledge assets.
▪ Knowledge Sharing and Transfer: Facilitating the flow of
knowledge within the organization.

My Integrated Model

The author presents an integrated knowledge management model combining elements

from the above models and incorporating key aspects discussed throughout the book. The
model focuses on linking process and strategy while offering specific initiatives at different
stages. It includes:

• Detect & Discover: Search for existing and hidden knowledge.

• Organize & Assess: Categorize and evaluate knowledge assets.
• KM Tactical Initiatives:
o Act - Reuse: Identify and make knowledge available for current needs.
o Act - Create/Acquire: Develop or obtain new knowledge when existing
resources are insufficient.
o Failure to Act: Learn from inaction to inform future strategies.
• KM Strategic Initiatives:
o Invest: Support organizational structures, culture, knowledge retention,
competencies, external networks, and systems to enable KM.

Knowledge Management Processes

KM processes encompass various activities essential for effective KM. These include
knowledge discovery, organization, sharing, reuse, and creation.

1. Knowledge Discovery and Detection

o Facilitating knowledge discovery and detection involves identifying where
knowledge exists and how it can be accessed and used.
2. Knowledge Organization & Assessment
o Organizing and assessing knowledge ensures it is categorized, evaluated, and
made accessible for those who need it.
3. Knowledge Sharing
o Sharing knowledge involves both explicit (codified) and tacit (experience-
based) knowledge. Explicit knowledge is easier to manage with IT systems,
while tacit knowledge requires fostering environments conducive to
knowledge sharing and collaboration.
4. Knowledge Reuse
 o
Managing knowledge reuse involves identifying situations where existing
knowledge can be applied, ensuring it is available to relevant parties.
5. Knowledge Creation
o Knowledge creation involves developing new knowledge through internal
processes and external sources.

Knowledge Management Strategy

A successful KM strategy aligns with the organization's goals and addresses the
various dimensions of KM. It involves:

• Managing Organizational Structures: Developing structures that support KM.

• Corporate Culture Change: Promoting a culture conducive to knowledge sharing
and learning.
• Knowledge Retention: Implementing strategies to retain critical knowledge within
the organization.
• Managing External Knowledge Network: Tapping into external knowledge sources
to enhance organizational knowledge.
• Knowledge Management Systems: Implementing systems that facilitate KM
processes, ensuring they fit the organization's needs and are properly designed and
implemented.