Q1. Browse MAKE’s websites and acquire the details of the organizations (identify the nature of the organizations, what are the company’s major assets, the knowledge processes).
Toyota is the one of the largest company in the world in the automobiles industry with many production facilities in 28 nations around the world. Toyota has been established on 1937 and was founded by Kiichiro Toyoda. Since that, there are more than 50 cars were sold at different country and different model that made Toyota as the most success automobiles company and won many awards. One of the recent awards that were won by Toyota is through its latest model that is Toyota Prius which has been awarded as the Market Green Car of the Year by United States. This model also reflect that how innovative Toyota in inventing and create new technology in their product. Toyota 2010 Prius hybrid has a combined engine/battery.
The major asset of Toyota is the knowledge that was shared among the workers in Toyota. This is because Toyota was recognized as one of the world’s best knowledge enterprises and they were a three time winner of Global Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) survey, (Knowledge Management Practices at Toyota Motors). According to Rory Chase (Chase), Managing Director, Teleos, "Toyota does not have a separate Knowledge Management philosophy and strategy; managing and sharing knowledge are a part of everyday life at Toyota.” Therefore, this showed that the major asset of Toyota is the knowledge which leads to their success since the establishment of the company.
In order to see the knowledge process as were practice at Toyota, we should refer it to the level of knowledge that are acquisition, sharing and, utilization. Through this level we can see the knowledge flow in Toyota. Many people believed that KM had given Toyota a keen competitive advantage. Even most of big automakers company who joined Toyota like General Motors agreed that they can see the system and learn but they could not match their standards. Therefore this proved that Toyota had implemented a successful knowledge management at their organization.
Q2. Ask the students to look for the various definitions and terms for KM. See how the terms are differ from each other and see the extent of the students understanding towards the concept.
The term knowledge management was first introduced in a 1986 keynote address to a European management conference (American Productivity and Quality Center 1996).
There are various definitions of the term knowledge management. Some might say that it is about people and learning organization. Some also said that it is about managing knowledge assets. We chose five different perspectives of KM as listed below:
1. A set of processes directed at “creating-capturing-storing-sharing-applying-reusing” knowledge, (Sydanmaanlakka, 2000).
2. The identification, optimization, and active management of intellectual assets, either in the form of explicit knowledge held in artifacts or as tacit knowledge possessed by individuals or communities, (Snowden, 2000).
3. Knowledge Management is the discipline of enabling individuals, teams and entire organisations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge, to better achieve their objectives, (Ron Young, CEO/CKO Knowledge Associates International)
4. Knowledge Management (KM) is the set of professional practices which improves the capabilities of the organization’s human resources and enhances their ability to share what they know.
5. Knowledge management is developing and managing integrated, well-configured knowledge systems and increasingly embedding work systems within these knowledge systems, (Kathryn A. Baker and Ghuzal M. Badamshina)
The first definition by Sydanmaanlakka tends to define knowledge management as somewhat mechanistic and sequential process steps. This definition also focuses on explicit knowledge artifacts as opposed to tacit knowledge.
Meanwhile, definition by Snowden has recognizes that knowledge management must address both explicit and tacit knowledge, as well as the interaction between the two. This definition also addresses some of mechanisms for doing this.
The third definition by Ron Young saying that everyone in the organization should held responsible to create, share and apply knowledge to achieve their objectives.
On the other hand, the forth definition emphasize about knowledge management as a practices which can improves the human resources capabilities in an organization. This definition also stress on the knowledge sharing which become a part of knowledge management process.
Finally, the last definition by Kathryn A. Baker and Ghuzal M. Badamshina highlighted about knowledge management as a system and its relationship with work system in the organizations.
Basically, every definition hold to more or less the same principle which is knowledge management is a set of system that consist of interrelated process that can contribute to the better performance of an organization. They also realizes the important of human factors in knowledge management and proposed mechanism to ensure that knowledge; either tacit or explicit, are well-managed in organization and fulfill the basic process in knowledge management that is knowledge acquisition, knowledge sharing, and knowledge utilization.
Q3. What is knowledge and how does knowledge function as the source of wealth in the knowledge-based economy.
Knowledge can be defined as something which is a mixture of structured experience, values, relative information, expert insights and grounded intuition which is productive and also environment and framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information (Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak). It originates and applied in the minds of whom it belonged to. Knowledge is something which could be said as something which belongs to a person and it cannot be stolen or given, but something which can be shared. In organizations, knowledge is something which is often become embedded not only in the documents and repositories but also in the organizational routines, processes, practices, norms and the culture of the organization. For an example, in organization such as Mc Donald, the knowledge of the terms that they use belongs to the workers, but it can be shared through training the new comers in the organization. For an example, the senior staffs will teach the new comer on their policies and what they usually do such as the CAYG which stand for ‘clean as you go’ which means the counter staff or the other stuff will have to clean after themselves in the sense that they clean up the service counter when there are no customers there.
Knowledge is regarded as the source of wealth in knowledge-based economy as the knowledge of a person or organization is valuable and how it can be contributed to the economy. This means that the knowledge that a person or the organization has could be transformed and used as in the work system at all levels by embedding them within appropriate and effective knowledge system. By infusing these knowledge into products, the organization would be able to produce better products and they will also at the same time come up with new and innovative services which in turn will be more profitable hence this will make the organization to contribute more to the economy.
Knowledge also helps the economy of the country as knowledge will help the country in coping with the ever changing technological advancement. This means that if the country has advance knowledge of the technology, they will be able to produce new technology and they will able to market this new technology globally, hence resulting in higher income for the country. For an example, many communication companies are racing between one another in producing new technologies and see who can come out with the latest technology. For an example, hand phones nowadays are not only used to make phone calls but are something which is multi functional as a person can now have video conference from across the globe by just using the hand phones. The hand phones are also equipped with other functions such as taking pictures, recording videos and audios, playing games, listening to music, as navigator and many more. The company which is able to produce latest technology will gain more profit as more people are looking to buy all these new technologies; without knowledge, these efforts will prove to be just futile efforts.
Knowledge is also important in terms of helping the country in coping and overcoming the increase in competitiveness and the rapid growth of innovation in the marketplace. This is because by having the knowledge, a country will be at advantage and could take advantage of others by being the one coming out will all these latest innovations and be the first one to reach the finishing line. In other words the country will be the one leading the rest. This is why having knowledge is crucial or as the source of wealth in the knowledge-based economy.
Q4. How does the organization of your choice could become K-Company and what kind of K-Worker that they require?
There are many reasons why Toyota can be a K-company. This is because instead of making profits through the technological advancement, they also used knowledge as their source of profit. Toyota knows the importance of knowledge in order to boost up the quality of the product by creating a knowledge environment. This could be seen through their level of knowledge of the top management and lower management, whereby most of their employees acquire and shared the knowledge until it become as their culture that is they reach level “care – why” where by in this stage, Toyota not only depends on the technology itself but how they can sustain competitive advantage and the knowledge were adapt by all employees and even their top level management as it become their culture.
Moreover, in order to become a k-company, a company must have the effort to find valuable data and process it becoming their own tacit and explicit knowledge, so that the new knowledge can be shared and used throughout the organization. For example Toyota, since the establishment of its organization, Toyota continually find and do many research on how they can improve they product from time to time. Most of the Toyota’s products are well known and won many awards such as their new hybrid car won as Green Car of the year compared to the other well known car model such as Nissan, Mazda, Honda and Ford. All these are very successful automakers and their product were sold at almost many countries in this world. Through this success, Toyota has proven that, the research that they made give a big success.
To become a knowledge company, an organization also must have knowledge worker. To choose a knowledge worker is not easy. Not all of the employees have the criteria of knowledge worker. Firstly is continuously learning workers. Knowledge and skilled can only be learn by those workers who continuously learning because through that they can learn and gain many knowledge. For example at Toyota, they have this kind of worker, in fact it is their requirement in order to become a worker there. Toyota possesses this type of employees. This can be seen through the success that were gained by Toyota and this is the reason why Toyota still stand still as the most admired automakers internationally at almost 73 years since its establishment. Toyota has the workers which are continuously learn how to improve themselves and how they can improve the organization. By referring to the example of Toyota Prius which was won many awards, in order to gain the success, the engineers of Toyota ad Honda, struggled to engineer electric vehicle that could offer practical driving range and zero emission vehicle, which is the key goal of electric vehicle and this would appeal the mass market. The study of this technology is costly and the results as we can see show an impressive feedback.
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