Wednesday 11 February 2009

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT


Knowledge management is a process through which organisations generates value from their intelluctual and knowledge - based assets like employes, partners, customers.Knowledge management is of two types:

1. Tacit knowledge
2. Explicit knowledge



Tacit knowledge

Tacit knowledge cannot be described easily as it is unwritten, it is eventually held by every normal human being based on their emotions, insights, experiences etc.Tacit knowledge approach gives the understanding of knowledge that individuals have and how they transfer their knowledge within an organisation.

Tacit knowledge is very personal in nature and it is not easy to extract knowledge from the individuals head. This approach believes thattransfer of knowledge from one individual (knowledge carriers) to other individuals which leads to the sharing of the knowledge within the organisation, which leads to the creation of new knowledge.


EXAMPLE


When the Toyota company wanted to transfer knowledge of its production sustem to new employes in a new factory site. So they sent these employes to the existing companies for the training and work alongside the experienced employees. After the training they are sent to the new factory and work along with the experienced workers ane these workers assure that the knowledge of Toyota's finely tuned production process is fully planted in their new site.



EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE


Explicit kowledge can be expressed in the form of paper or words etc, its very easy to communicate, store and distribute this kind of knowledge.Explicit is like improvising the individuals knowledge to create new knowledge and the development of the systems.


Explicit knowledge approach believes that useful knowledge of the individuals in an organisaton can be articulated and made inti explicit, they also believe that formal organisations processess can be used to help individulas articulate the knowledge they have to create knowledge assets.


EXAMPLE


In 19990's Motorola was the global leader in in providing the best pagers in the market. To maintian theie leadership in the market they have decided to upgrade their products every 12 to 15 months. Whenever the new team designers were upgrading the product they were given the details of their last model, like design of the product so that they can make the better product from the last product. So this manual is passed to the next new team and this go on. Inthis way, motorola sought to make explicit and capture the knowledge developed by its enginers during each project.





IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMNT


For example think of a golf caddie, they do more than carry clubs and track down the golf balls, they also advice to the golfers. Accurate advice may lead to the good play by the golfer at the end of the day,this leads to a bigger tip for the caddie. If the caddie is willing to share his advice with the other caddies, then eventually all the caddies may earn good tips, here the question arises how could knowledge management work to make this happen? The sponsor or the event manager may decide to reward caddies for sharing their tips with ither caddies, once the best advice is collected, the course manager would publish the information in notebooks and distirbute the information to all the caddies. The end result of a well designes knowledge management program is that everyone wins, as caddies get bigger tips, golfers play betterbecause they benefit from the collective experience of caddies and the course owner wins because better scores lead to better business.



DATA, INFORMATION, KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM


Majority of people are not sure about the meanings of the above terms, they think that these terms have the same meaning, so i think it would be better we would discuss these terms and come to one conclusion.


DATA:


Data is set of records, it represents the statement of the event, its a raw data with no knowledge of relationship, it does'nt have meaning by itself. for example: records of the company.


INFORMATION:

Information is like the next step of the term data, where the information covers the understanding if relationship in the context of subject. For example, information about the current cstomers or employees of the company, information about the new customers or employees of the company.


KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge is the improvised version of information or we can say it it the attachment of intelligence to the information, so we can get the specific details of the information. For example: How many employees left the company?


WISDOM:

Wisdom is like the best usage of the available knowledge, wisdom gives more understanding of fundamental principles.


So i can say that , as we move from data to wisdom, we can go up a level of maturity, we can get more intelligence from the raw data to make it more useful.



REFERENCES

1. MERIDITH LEVINSON, (2001), KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMNET DEFINATION AND SOLUTIONS. (WWW.C10.COM)

2. SANCHEZ, RON (2004), "CREATING MODULAR PLATFORMS FOR STRATEGIC FLEXIBILITY" DESIGN MANAGEMENT, 58-67.

3. SACHEZ, RON (2001). "MANAGING KNOWLEDGE INTO COMPETENCES. THE FIVE LEARNING CYCLES OF THE COMPETENT ORGANISATION".

4. SPEAR, STEVEN AND H.KINT BOWEN (1999)." DECODING THE DNA OF THE TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM", HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW, SEPTEMBER - OCTOBER 1999,

5. STEIN, JOHAN AND JONES RIDDLESTRALE(2001).2managing the dissementation of competences".

8 comments:

  1. ragul;
    good but u have to analyse more about these topics with your real life examples

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ragul;
    Acutually very good real life example you given to explicit,KM....

    ReplyDelete
  3. but u have to explain little bit more about DIK with real examples..

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi rahul,
    you have well stated about every thing and i really would appreciate this effort, however you could include some refferences in between the explanations that you have given and also i would like to state one thing that you have state "Wisdom is like the best usage of the available knowledge, wisdom gives more understanding of fundamental principles" does it mean only the available knowledge is being used and would like to add that cant a new or further knowledge be created by analysing the existing knowledge as the whole,,,,

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  5. HI GOWRY

    I HAVE WITH AN LIVE EXAMPLE YOU CAN HAVE A LOOK AT IT

    ReplyDelete
  6. HI MADHU

    I MEAN THAT AS KNOWLEDGE FLOWS FROM DATA TO WISDOM THE QUALITY OF KNOWLEDGE INCRESES AND I THINK THAT IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN HAVING KNOWLEDGE

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi RAhul,
    A good start is all what I can say. Explanations regarding the tacit and explicit knowledge was good and even the examples given were nice. Those examples clearly state how the tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge can be used in an organisation in real life as it was implemented in companies said by you. And examples for KID stuff were also provided. It would be better if you prolonged those examples and explain in detail about each of them.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi

    I think you can change the way you present like data, information, knowledge and knowledge management, i think it sound good. You need have a eye on your referencing by using Harvest style.

    ReplyDelete