Tutorial 9 - Knowledge Management

QUESTION 1(a)

What are the TWO strategies of KM? Describe any TWO differences of the strategies.

There are two types of strategy in knowledge management which are codification and personalization. Both are the approaches are important for knowledge management in mapping the business strategy so that the organization can align their business goal and the knowledge management functions.

Personalization is an approach or strategy which focus on connecting the workers through networks and is better suited companies that face “one – off” problems that depend more on tacit knowledge and expertise. In other words it can be explained that personalization is a strategy which concentrate on people to people. According to Hanson, personalization approach provides creative, analytically accurate advice on high level strategic problems by channeling individual experience. This tacit knowledge owns can be shared or transfer through brainstorming, teams projects, storytelling and so on. This practice can be used when the knowledge are hardly codified into explicit.

Codification is another strategy in knowledge management. Codification different from personalization because this strategy requires the usage of technology which enables storage, indexing and retrieval. This strategy can be used by company that repeatedly deals with similar problems and decisions. Codification typically includes databases of information, previous reports and presentations. The knowledge workers’ experiences and knowledge are stored in documents, either in hard copy or electronic soft copy. The knowledge is not connected to a specific person and reused for multiple projects. This idea of reuse economies is critical to codification strategy and its role in creating large revenues.

There are several differences between these both strategies. Firstly is in terms of role of IT in the company work process. As been mentioned, personalization strategy did not require much usage of IT in the process because it requires more the expertise’s tacit knowledge which can be shared by only few people who are needed by the process. Some of the knowledge or the idea or expertise cannot be easily shared because it contains of valuable information that only can be use by certain people in the company. Therefore, the usage of IT is not requiring. However, some of the basic function of IT such as email, Lotus notes and so on are needed to encourage communication among the people within the organization. Codification is different with personalization which it require more IT usage rather than personalization. IT is the primary enabler and this can be relate with the objective of this strategy which is to connect people distributed across the enterprise with codified knowledge such as report and documentation that can be reuse. The usage of IT in this strategy will enable the people to retrieve the knowledge and at the same time they can learn new knowledge through IT as an enabler of the knowledge management function in the organization.

Secondly is in terms of the knowledge exchanged and transferred. In the personalization strategy, the function of knowledge can be transferred through person to person that are within the organization. This encourages the sharing of tacit knowledge. For example in MARDI, the senior researcher will have a session that is called “tutor” session with the junior researcher so that the senior can share their tacit knowledge especially their valuable experiences that they gain. This is how they transfer and share the knowledge. However in the perspective of codification strategy, since IT is the based function in this strategy, therefore, the people in the organization will use the tools used by technology in transferring the knowledge. This including refer to a document that is best practice included in the databases that can store the data and in the database, the data will be stored and collects the codified knowledge and all people in the organization can use it and sharing.

QUESTION 1(b)

Explain briefly with examples of company that you are familiar with: Exploration and Exploitation strategies.

Exploration and exploitation are the two level of assessing knowledge gap in the company. In order to balance personalization and codification, the company must balance the level of exploration and exploitation. Exploitation and exploration must be undertaken simultaneously in order to achieve success.

Exploration is the intent of the company to develop knowledge that will help to create new niches for its product or services. Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery and innovation. For example Toyota, as we know Toyota is one of the automobile companies which implemented successfully knowledge management system in the organization. As been mention, exploration is an intent for the company to develop knowledge for its product and services. In the context of Toyota, this company develops its own researcher’s team which will study and do research on new technology regarding automobile, new innovation, idea and so on. They are the risk taker. For an instance the idea of hybrid car technology was first initiated by Toyota and later joined by other company such as Honda. They search the technology and create it as a new innovation.

Secondly is exploitation. Exploitation is the intent which to focus on delivering financial and productivity gains from knowledge that are already exist both inside and outside of the organization. The organization must achieve simultaneously exploitation which can result in short term benefit and exploration which accumulates to a long term benefit. Another way is through integrating external knowledge into the KM strategy. . Exploitation includes such things as modification, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, and execution. Through the same example, Toyota implements this in their organization. For example, the performance of Toyota has been increased through the concept of Toyotaism which encourages more teamwork in the organization. As a result the members of the group are self disciplines, the production constraints ser by management are internalized in each worker as share of the total work for that group.the group exercises pressure on each of its members; if a member's work falls below standards the group forces them to increase their contribution by threatening isolation or even rejection from it.

QUESTION 2(a)

Search in the internet any TWO examples of metrics which is commonly used in KM project.

In order to measure whether the organization able to meet the objectives or not, KM effort need to be evaluated. The objectives can be in term of financial (ROI) or competitive position. KM evaluation is synonym to metrics. Metrics is a mechanism to measure something and in this case, it is KM activities. The two most common metrics being used in organizations is benchmarking and balance scorecard.

Benchmarking is a measurement of the quality of a firm’s activities including policies, products, etc., and their comparison with the best-in-class firms. The objectives are to determine what and where improvements are called for, how other firms achieve their high performance levels and use this information to improve the firm’s performance. As in knowledge management, benchmarking is an undertaking of companies that aim to emulate the way things are done best anywhere, within or outside the firm, industry or sector. Benchmarking is seen as an important aspect in Knowledge Management. It helps in understanding where the organization features in comparison with other organization's in the industry with respect to knowledge, competency and capability which helps in the growth of the organization.

Balance scorecard is a technique to maintain a balance between long-term and short-term objectives, financial and non-financial measures, and leading indicators and between internal and external perspectives. Basically balance scorecard is used for translating vision and strategy into actual goals. It is also can be used to evaluate the impact of KM system on four complimentary criteria that are translating the KM vision, communicate and link, business planning, and learning and feedback.


QUESTION 2(b)

Identify any TWO advantages of having metrics in KM implementation

In evaluating the KM system, it is important for organization to select the right metrics as wrong selection of metrics can bring negative effect to organization. Metric, when applied to knowledge work or in general, are vulnerable to some common traps such as the consequences of delayed rewards. However, metrics also bring advantages to the KM implementation to some extend.

The good metrics will help organization to define the KM success. As we know, metrics are measurement being used by organization to evaluate their past performance. It will tell whether the organization is able to achieve its goals or not. By doing so, the KM implementation will going smoothly and organization may able to define the success of its KM implementation.

Metrics also can serve as early warning signals for future problems. It also can signal any future opportunities of an organization. This is because, metrics will measure the current situation of the organization and therefore it can detect anything which is not align with the objectives of the organization. It also can detect anything which may give threats to the organization. Moreover, metrics can signal any opportunities that organization may take advantage on. By doing this, they can increase their performance and ensure that their KM implementation is on track and benefits everyone in the organization.