Knowledge Management Systems in Organization:

Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) in Organization:
A Collaborative Model For Decision Makers
By: Ruzaif Adli Md. Daud

Introduction

Knowledge management is the name given to the set of systematic and disciplined actions that an organization can take to obtain the greatest value from the knowledge available to it. “Knowledge” in this context includes both the experience and understanding of the people in the organization and the information artifacts, such as documents and reports, available within the organization and in the world outside. Effective knowledge management typically requires an appropriate combination of organizational, social, and managerial initiatives along with, in many cases, deployment of appropriate technology.

Today, almost all business data are digital and stored in databases, whereas decision-making still relies upon a fraction of these data. KMS are built around the concept of a decision-maker presuming well-defined decision-making roles within the company. Changes in organization through the 1980s and 1990s have invested decision-making powers in cross-functional teams and ad hoc working parties, reflecting increased attention to the business environment and technological opportunities.

Knowledge Management (KM) and Knowledge Management System (KMS)

Enterprises are realizing how important it is to “know what they know” and be able to make maximum use of the knowledge. This knowledge resides in many different places such as database, knowledge bases, filing cabinets and people’ head and is distributed right across the enterprise.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management focuses on understanding how knowledge is acquired, created, stored and utilized within an organization. Successful companies are able to acquire, codify, and transfer knowledge more effectively and with greater speed than the competition (Myers, 1996). KM is the name given to the set of systematic actions that an organization can take to obtain the greatest value from the knowledge available to it (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Systematic means that KM projects are intentional actions in an organizational context. Value means that KM project are measured according to how KM projects contribute to increased organizational ability (Prieto and Gutierrez 2001; Goldkuhl and Braf 2002). KM as an intentional and value-adding action is not easy to accomplish in practise (Scarbrough and Swan 1999).

Scarbrough and Swan present several case studies in KM, successful and unsuccessful in their respective KM project. A major point and lessons form the case studies is that prevalent approaches in KM overstate technology and understate how technology is implemented and applied. The scope of KM encompasses individual competence and organization memory, knowledge creation from tacit to explicit knowledge, including the role of organization in facilitating the creation of knowledge.

Knowledge Management Systems

Knowledge management systems (KMS) refer to a class of Information systems applied to managing organizational knowledge. That is, they are IT-based systems developed to support and enhance the organizational processes of knowledge creation, storage/retrieval, transfer and application. While not all KM initiatives involve an implementation of IT and admonitions against an emphasis on IT at the expense of the social and cultural facets of KM are not uncommon (Davenport and Prusak 1998; Malhotra 1999; O’Dell and Grayson 1998).

Many KM initiatives rely on IT as an important enabler, while IT does not apply to all of the issues of knowledge management. It can support KM in sundry ways. Reviewing the literature discussing applications of IT to organization as knowledge management initiatives reveals three common applications: (1) the coding and sharing of best practices (2) the creation of corporate knowledge directories, and (3) the creation of knowledge networks. One of the most common application is internal benchmarking with the aim of transferring internal best practices (KPMG 1998; O’Dell and Grayson 1996).

Providing online forums for communication and discussion may form knowledge networks. Buckman Laboratories uses an online interactive forum where user comments are threaded in conversational sequence and indexed by topic, author and date. This has reportedly enabled Buckman to respond to the changing basis of competition that has evolved form merely selling product to solving customer’ chemical treatment problems (Zack, 2000).

In another case, Ford found that just by sharing knowledge, the development time for cars was reduced from 36 to 24 months and through knowledge sharing with dealers the delivery delay reduced from 50 to 15 day (Gazeau, 1998). Information systems designed to support and augment organizational knowledge management need to complement and enhance the knowledge management activities of individuals and the collectivity. To achieve this, the design of KMS should be rooted in and guided by an understanding of the nature and types of organizational knowledge so that it can tell us what works, what will matters, what we should trust, where things can go wrong and how we can fix them.

Nonaka’s Model of Knowledge Creation in Organization

To glow the discussion of technologies, it is useful to classify the technologies by reference to the notions of tacit and explicit knowledge used by Nonaka to formulate a theory of organizational learning that focuses on the conversion of knowledge between tacit and explicit forms. Tacit knowledge is what the knower knows, which is derived from experience and embodies beliefs and values. Tacit knowledge is actionable, and therefore the most valuable. Both forms of knowledge are important for organizational effectiveness.

Socialization (tacit to tacit): Socialization includes the shared formation and communication of tacit knowledge between people. A typical activity in which tacit knowledge sharing can take place is a team meeting during which experience are described and discussed.

Externalization (tacit to explicit): By its nature, tacit knowledge is difficult to convert into explicit knowledge. Through conceptualization, elicitation and articulation, typically collaboration with others, some proportion of a person’s tacit knowledge may be captured in explicit form.

Combination (eplicit to explicit): Explicit knowledge can be shared in meetings, via documents, emails, education and training. The use of technology to manage and search collections of explicit knowledge is well established. A typical activity here might be to put a document into shared database.

Internalization (explicit to tacit): The process of embodying explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. By reading documents from many sources individual can to some extend re-experience what others previously learned. However, this process is becoming more challenging because individuals have to deal with information overloads.

Knowledge Management Systems Model for Decision Maker

Every organization throughout the world interprets and approaches KM differently. There is no specific model or standard that can be considered as tools for a successful implementation of KMS. However, some basic considerations are discussed in this paper. To succeed with a KMS projects, comprising the development of information in a technology based information system; some requirements have to be fulfilled.

The first step in the proposed model is originated from Babita (2000) that knowledge capture is a process converting tacit knowledge (e.g. what one learned at workshop) into explicit knowledge (e.g. written report) in organization. Knowledge capture is one of the parts in corporate knowledge and knowledge can captured inside and outside the organization. Form this statement, we concluded that any organization must capture internal and external knowledge to remain competitive. After that knowledge succeeded to capture they will be integrated within one system in organization as a resources.

The second step in the proposed model is the knowledge classification. Once the captured knowledge becomes as resources to the organization the knowledge must be classified. This is proved by Wally (2000), that knowledge is classified and modified. The classification can be the addition of indexing keywords. Whereas modification can be add context, background or other things that make it easier to re-use later. The test of this step is how easily people in the organization will be able find and use the knowledge when they need it.

The classification of the knowledge could be considered as corporate knowledge as corporate well involved in process of knowledge creation. It is process how organization gathers internal and external information in one system. Internal information refer to information can be gained from workers in organization. Whereas external information refer to information can be gained from outside organization.

The third step of this proposed model is integration of corporate knowledge using KM tools to win competitive advantage and, to cope with environmental changes both within and outside the organization, to solve existing problem as well as innovate for business expansion as proposed by Jon-Chao Hong (1999) that the purpose of knowledge management is to integrate internal and external knowledge at all time in order to cope with environmental changes both within and outside the organization, to solve existing problem as well as to innovate for business expansion.

Competitive advantage organization is organization able to compete with their rival and know whatever situation requirement. They also know to place themselves in market. Knowledge management provides competitive advantage to organization if they how to exploit it effectively. According to modern approaches, knowledge management is already considered as a key factor in the organization’s performance, because it deals with different resources that can aid decision makers in many ways (Keen 1991).

Technology Acceptance

Before we discuss further on the KMS Technology, it is worth to anticipate on Technology acceptance issue first. In brief, technology acceptance has been the subject of researchers such as Davis, Bagozzi and Warshaw (1989) developed the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

TAM is an explanative model explaining user behavior of computer technologies by focusing on perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards use, and behavioral intentions as determination of user behavior. The workers, who are to use the system, have to perceive the knowledge management system as relevant. Since it is possible for workers to work without using the system, it has to be obvious that usage of the system implies adding value to the work result. An additional aspect of relevance related to perceived relevance is how the system should be integrated in running work, that is to make the system an integrated part of the worker’s work practices.

Perceived relevance is about workers who are to use the system, perceiving the system as adding value to the work results and being integrated in running work. Since it is possible for workers to work without using the system, it has to be obvious that usage of the system implies adding value to the work result. In addition, the system should be integrated in running work, that is to make the system an integrated part of the workers’ work practice. If the knowledge management system is to be accepted, systems accessibility has to be satisfactory.

Systems accessibility is about knowing who the user is, systematizing the actions workers perform in their daily work that the system us to support, determining the system’s physical location, securing a certain degree of usage before the system is put into operation and ensuring that the system’s design meets the goals of the system. Lastly, the management support is vital according not just in this model but many models on information systems development, especially when the system is a directive decision support system (Yourdon 1989).

KMS Technology

Tacit to Tacit

Tacit knowledge is built and shared typically by having face-to-face meetings in which IT plays a minimal role. However, an increasing proportion of meetings use online tools known a groupware. Groupware is a fairly a broad category of application software that helps individuals to work together in groups or teams. An example of current groupware is Lotus Notes which facilitate the sharing of document and discussions and allow various application for sharing information. Another approach to tact knowledge sharing is Expertise Location systems which to find persons with common interest. Expertise location systems have the goal of suggesting the names of persons who have knowledge in a particular area (i.e. a profile or form filled in by user, Questions answered and an existing Human Resources database)

Tacit To Explicit

According to Nonaka, the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge involves forming shared mental model, then articulation through dialog. Collaboration systems and other groupware can support this kind of interaction to some extent. Online discussion databases, newsgroups and similar forums are another potential tool to capture tacit knowledge. The archive of the forum becomes a repository of useful knowledge. Once the knowledge is made explict, persons with similar can find the solution by consulting the archive.

Explicit to Explicit

Once tacit knowledge has been conceptualized and articulated, thus converting to explicit knowledge, capturing it in a persistent form as a report, an e-mail, a presentation, or a web page makes it available to the rest of the organization. Technology already contributes to knowledge capture through the use of word processing, which generates electronic documents can be shared easily via web and document management systems. Portals also provide a convenient location for the storage of metadata about documents in their domain and such examples are search indexes and knowledge taxonomy. Improving knowledge capture is a goal of many KMS.

Explicit to Tacit

A knowledge management system should facilitate the understanding and use of information. For example, the system might through document analysis and classification generate meta-data to support rapid browsing and exploration of the available information. A quite different set of technologies applies to the information of tacit knowledge through learning such as on-line education or distance learning. Modules of Web based courseware; self-directed learning and training will be parts of the KMS.

Conclusion

In conclusion, in today’s exigency and competition, decision-making, which is based on justified scientific way, may be crucial to organizations. From layman up to top management, the awareness of applying KMS in supporting them in making decision is becoming apparent. By understanding the organizational knowledge creation using Nonaka’s model it is hoped that we can integrate technologies that can, to some extent, foster the use of tacit knowledge.

Apart from understanding the organizational knowledge creation, technology acceptance issue of user behavior of computer technologies by focusing on perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude towards use, and behavioral intentions as determinants of user behavior should be well taken care of so that KMS deployment can be can be accepted throughout the organization. The design of KMS should be rooted in and guided by an understanding of the nature and types of organizational knowledge so that it can tell us what works, what will matters, what we should trust, where things can go wrong and how we can fix them.

“Coordinating the distribution and transmission of information and knowledge in large organization is a painstaking challenge. It pays to think about fitting the information and knowledge you have to an appropriate ICT channel, to the right person, at the right time and at the minimal cost” (Ruzaif, 2005).


Author
Ruzaif Adli Bin Md Daud is the principal consultant with Sigma Rectrix System (M) Sdn Bhd

Sponsor
Why Blog? The Purpose of Blogging