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# Please I need this assignment within 24 hours,

# Should not have a plagiarism,

# Follow the “General Instructions” in the Assignment

‫المملكة العربية السعودية‬
‫وزارة التعليم‬
‫الجامعة السعودية اإللكترونية‬

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Ministry of Education
Saudi Electronic University

College of Administrative and Financial Sciences

Assignment 2
Knowledge Management (MGT 403)
Due Date: 02/11/2024 @ 23:59
Course Name: Knowledge Management

Student’s Name:

Course Code: MGT403

Student’s ID Number:

Semester: First

CRN:
Academic Year:2024-25-1st

For Instructor’s Use only
Instructor’s Name:
Students’ Grade:
Marks Obtained/Out of 10

Level of Marks: High/Middle/Low

General Instructions – PLEASE READ THEM CAREFULLY
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

The Assignment must be submitted on Blackboard (WORD format only) via allocated
folder.
Assignments submitted through email will not be accepted.
Students are advised to make their work clear and well presented, marks may be reduced
for poor presentation. This includes filling your information on the cover page.
Students must mention question number clearly in their answer.
Late submission will NOT be accepted.
Avoid plagiarism, the work should be in your own words, copying from students or other
resources without proper referencing will result in ZERO marks. No exceptions.
All answered must be typed using Times New Roman (size 12, double-spaced) font. No
pictures containing text will be accepted and will be considered plagiarism).
Submissions without this cover page will NOT be accepted.

ASSIGNMENT-2
Knowledge Management (MGT-403)
First Semester (2024-2025)

Course Learning Outcomes-Covered
Define the different Knowledge types and explain how they are addressed by knowledge
management in different business environments.
Identify and analyse role of communities of practice in knowledge management and the challenges
and issues pertaining to community of practice.
Demonstrate effective knowledge management skills to utilize knowledge management tools for the
benefits of the organization.
The focus of the assignment is to evaluate the understanding level of students related to communities
of Practice, learning organization, and various techniques used to capture tacit and explicit knowledge.

Please read chapter 3, chapter 4, and chapter 5.
Assignment Questions
Q.1: “The Wiig KM model is based on the principle that in order for knowledge to be
useful and valuable, it must be organized through a form of semantic network that is
connected, congruent, and complete and has perspective and purpose.” Explain in
detail. (Chapter 3 Wiig’s KM Model) (2 Marks)
Q.2: In what ways is the Choo and Weick KM model like the Nonaka and Takeuchi KM
model? In what ways do they differ? (Chapter 3 Choo and Weick and Nonaka and Takeuchi KM Models)
(2 Marks)
Q.3: Discuss in detail any two techniques of capturing tacit Knowledge? (Chapter 4
Knowledge Capture and Codification) (2 Marks)
Q. 4: Read chapter 5 (Knowledge Sharing and Communities of Practice) and answer the
following questions.
a). Explain the concept of communities of practice. (1 mark)
b). Will it be fruitful for the organization to cultivate the communities of practice? If
yes, What steps must be taken by the organization to cultivate them. (1 mark)
c). Discuss the concept of skill mining, social network analysis, and Knowledge support
office. (2 Marks)

Answers
1. Answer2. Answer3. Answer-

Knowledge Management in
Theory and Practice

Week 1: Introduction

Course Information
 Textbook: Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Second
Edition. MIT Press
 General format of the course





Refer to course outlines
Three assignments
Lectures and small group activities (roughly 50/50)
Each lecture corresponds to a chapter in the text (e.g. lecture 1 – chapter 1)

 To contact me: [email protected]

Week 1: Introduction to
Knowledge Management (KM)
 Key KM concepts and their definitions
Tacit and explicit knowledge
 Knowledge in action
 Knowledge to create value


Write down your definition of knowledge managementthis will not be collected but you will refer back to your
definition in later classes
3

Introduction
 When asked, most
company executives
say their greatest asset
is knowledge held by
their employees
 They also state they
have no idea how to
manage this knowledge
4

From physical assets to
knowledge assets
 Knowledge has now become more valuable
that physical “things”
SABRE reservation system vs. airplanes
 Now – customer bill of rights, vouchers for
delayed flights – customer satisfaction (and
revenues) at an all-time low


Interdisciplinary Nature of KM

The 3 Generations of KM


1st Generation:
 “if we only knew what we know”



2nd Generation:
 “if we only knew who knows about….”



PEOPLE

3rd Generation:
 “if we could only organize our knowledge….”

CONTENT
7

Today’s Working Environment
Multi-lingual
Multi-site

Multi-cultural

More &
Faster

More
Global

KM
PC

More
Mobile

More
Connected
PC

Internet

Increasing Complexity
 Today’s work environment is more complex due to an
increase in the number of subjective knowledge items
we need to attend to everyday
Filtering over 200 emails, faxes, voicemail messages on a
daily basis – how to prioritize?
 Having to “think on our feet” as expected response time has
greatly decreased as well
 KM is a response to the challenge of trying to manage this
complexity amidst information overload


 A “science of complexity”

 Knowledge and entropy production have an inverse relationship

Hiring Scenario
 You have been asked to hire an assistant
 What sorts of things would you require from
human resources?
What questions would you ask HR?
 What would you require from all applicants?


Applicant Information
 Curriculum vitae (resume)
 References
 Test results (e.g. language, aptitude)
 …..

Hiring Scenario Continued
 You have selected 3 of the applicants to go
to the next stage – the interview.
 Write down 3-4 questions that you would ask
of the candidate during the interview.

Applicant Information
 Previous experience
 Reason why they are applying
 Role-playing or decision simulation
 Request they demonstrate bilingualism
 ……

Explicit vs. Tacit Knowledge
Tacit Knowledge
Explicit Knowledge

files

80-85%

15-20%

active

passive

The ubiquitous “shared drive”
 All organizations have them


They tend to be chaotically organized, if at all
 Organizing principles tacit
 Organize for me but what about others?

Shared Drive Organization:
Which one would you choose?

Folders:
•Sarah
•Peter
•Robert … one for
each employee

OR:

Folders:
•Project Apollo
•Task force on KM
•Proposal … one for
each collaborative
project

B
17

Next challenge: Preserving
valuable knowledge
 Organizational “amnesia” or forgetting
The cost of lost knowledge:
Once upon a time we put a man
on the moon – today we can no
longer do so. The blueprints for the
Saturn booster are no longer at
NASA – the only rocket with enough
thrust to send a manned payload on
its way. The original Apollo workforce is long since retired … some
documents endure but they are
devoid of meaning (Petch, 1998)

NASA loses film of first moon
landing:
The original film of man’s first steps
on the moon have been lost. The
original tapes, although nowhere
near the standard of normal tv
transmission, would still be of far
better quality than the video we have.
NASA simply filed them away. And
as personnel retired or died, the
location of the tapes was forgotten.
18

Concept Analysis
A method to better understand (and
ultimately define) complex, subjective
and value-laden concepts

What is Knowledge
Management?
•

KM is the systematic, explicit and deliberate building, renewal and
application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise’s knowledge-related
effectiveness and returns from knowledge assets (K. Wiig)

•

KM is the process of capturing a company’s collective expertise wherever
it resides: in databases, on paper, in people’s heads – and distributing it to
wherever it can help produce the biggest payoff. (Hibbard)

•

KM is getting the right knowledge to the right people at the right time so
they can make the best decision (Petrash)

More KM Definitions


It is the attempt to recognize what is essentially a human asset buried in the
minds of individuals, and leverage it into an organizational asset that can be
accessed and used by a broader set of individuals on whose decisions the firm
depends. —Larry Prusak



KM applies systematic approaches to find, understand and use knowledge to
create value (O’Dell)



KM is the explicit control and management of knowledge within an
organization aimed at achieving the company’s objectives (van der Spek)



KM is the formalization of and access to experience, knowledge, and
expertise that create new capabilities, enable superior performance,
encourage innovation and enhance customer value (Beckman)
21

A Concept Analysis Exercise
 What key attributes need to be present in a
definition of Knowledge Management?
 What are some good examples?
 What are some good “non” examples?

KM: Concept Definition
Key Attributes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

KM is…examples
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

KM is not…ex
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

KM is:
 A management philosophy that takes systematic
and explicit advantage of knowledge to make the
organization act more intelligently
 Knowledge is used/applied for both operational and
strategic purposes
 Ways to find, analyze, categorize critical
knowledge areas to make sure appropriate
knowledge is available when and where needed
24

KM is NOT….
 KM is NOT power, it is how you use it that
matters!
 KM is not archiving all existing explicit
knowledge
 A set of isolated techniques without a common
framework
 a different label for IT, HR or training
 A command and control system for knowledge
25

Some examples
 Here are some examples of concepts
analyzed by previous classes
 Today – we will divide into smaller groups
and try out the concept analysis technique

The concept “digital library”
 Synonyms, antonyms (not just a website, nor a webcast, nor
a database, nor a…)
 Perspective of:






An organization that provides resources – – people
A collection of digital objects – – content
A technology – – container
Information-seeking different? (location-independent)
Subset of a traditional library? (electronic extension of a library)

(1) an organized collection of digital information.
(2) supports creation, maintenance, management, access to and
preservation of digital content
(3) information stored in digital format available over a network

The concept “being green”
 Examples










Recycling
Composting
Carpooling
Bicycles
Carpooling
Conservation of resources
Pollution control
Political action
Decrease carbon footprint

 Examples










Awareness
Regulations
Acting locally
Using alternative energy
sources
Sustainable transportation
Develop green technologies
Kyoto protocol
Recycle reduce reuse slogan
28

The concept “being green”
 Negative Examples










Companies claiming to be
green fraudulently
waste
Excessive consumption
Short-term oriented
Laissez-faire attitude
Carbon tax credits
Carbon offsets
SUVs

 Negative Examples










Ethanol gas
Paperless offices
Promotion campaign
Getting mileage out of
claiming to be green
Plastic bags
One-time use only
Climate change
Greenhouse effect
29

The concept “being green”
 Attributes













Reduce the use of non-renewable resources
A lifestyle or state of mind that involves making a choice to act towards
sustainability
Local vs. global and individual vs. group
Communal resources and consumption
Attitude of an individual, organization or community that is conscientious
of the environment and dictates their choices and actions
Way of thinking about waste reduction, awareness of consumption at the
individual, corporate and community level – scalable anywhere in between
Collaboration
Social phenomenon
Social and political components

Try a Concept Definition
in groups of 4-5
Key Attributes
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

Topic is…examples

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

Topic is not…ex

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….
………….

Possible topics: “team player” or “user-friendly” or “professional” or “Web 2.0

Next:
 Next: The KM Cycle

Knowledge Management in Theory
and Practice
Lecture 2: The Knowledge
Management Cycle

Overview
 Major KM Cycles
Knowledge-Information Cycle (ACIIC
Knowledge Economy)
 Meyer and Zack KM Cycle
 Bukowitz and Wiliams
 McElroy KM Cycle
 Wiig KM Cycle


KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation
 Knowledge Codification
 Knowledge Sharing
 Knowledge Access
 Knowledge Application
 Knowledge Re-Use
3

Knowledge-Information Cycle*
 The ability to manage knowledge is
becoming ever more crucial in the
knowledge economy
Where creation and diffusion of knowledge are
increasingly important factors in competitiveness
 Knowledge is a commodity now


 Embedded in products, especially hi-tech products
 Embedded in the tacit knowledge of highly mobile

employees

* Australian Centre for Innovation and International Competitiveness www.aciic.org.au

Knowledge Economy & the
Knowledge- Information Cycle
 Some paradoxes of knowledge:
Using knowledge does not consume it
 Transferring knowledge does not lose it
 Knowledge is abundant, but the ability to use it
is scarce
 Producing knowledge resists organization
 Much of knowledge walks out the door at the
end of the day


Knowledge -Information Cycle/2
 Need to systematically identify, generate, acquire,
diffuse, and capture the benefits of knowledge that
provide a strategic advantage
 Clear distinction must be made between
information – which is digitizable, and knowledge –
which exists only in intelligent systems


Knowledge-information cycle looks at how information
is transformed into knowledge and vice versa via
creation and application processes

Knowledge-Information Cycle/3

Knowledge-Information Cycle
Processes
 Establish appropriate information management systems and
processes
 Identify and locate knowledge and knowledge sources within
the organization
 Code knowledge (translate knowledge into explicit
information) to allow re-use economies to operate
 Create networks, practices, and incentives to facilitate personto-person knowledge transfer where the focus is on the unique
solution
 Add personal knowledge management to the organizational
repertoire (“corporate memory”)
8

M. Zack KM Cycle

Zack KM Cycle/2

Zack KM Cycle/3
 The Meyers Zack model is an informationprocessing model
Adapted to knowledge content
 Refinement step is a crucial one
 Also – the notion of renewal
 Based on notion of an information asset


KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation
 Knowledge Codification and refinement
 Knowledge Sharing
 Knowledge Access
 Knowledge Application
 Knowledge Re-Use
12

McElroy KM Cycle

Formulate
Knowledge
Claim

Individual &
Group
Learning
Knowledge
Claim
Formulation

Codified
Knowledge
Claim

Knowledge
Claim
Evaluation

Information
Acquisition
13

McElroy KM Cycle/2
Information about:
•Surviving knowledge claim
•Falsified knowledge claim
•Undecided knowledge claim
Knowledge
Production

Organizational
Knowledge

McElroy KM Cycle/3
 Organizational knowledge is held collectively in
both individuals and groups
 Knowledge use either meets or fails to meet
business expectations
 Matches lead to reuse
 Mis-matches lead to adjustments in business
processing behaviour (learning)
 Clear step where knowledge is evaluated and a
conscious decision is made as to whether or not it
should be incorporated into organizational memory
15

KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation
 Knowledge Codification & Refinement
 Knowledge Sharing
 Knowledge Access
 Knowledge Application
 Knowledge Evaluation & Re-Use
16

Bukowitz and Williams
ASSESS
GET
USE

LEARN

Knowledge
CONTRIBUTE

BUILD/SUSTAIN

OR: DIVEST
17

Bukowitz and Williams /2
 Get: seeking out information
Tacit and explicit
 Being selective when faced with information
overload


 Use: combine content in new and interesting
ways to foster innovation in the organization
 Learn: learning from experiences


Creation of an organizational memory
18

Bukowitz and Williams/3
 Contribute: motivate employees to post
what they have learned to a knowledge base


Link individual learning and knowledge to
organizational memory

 Assess: evaluation of intellectual capital


Identify assets, metrics to assess them and link
these directly to business objectives
19

Bukowitz and Williams/4
 Build and Sustain: allocate resources to
maintain knowledge base


Contribute to viability, competitiveness

 Divest: should not keep assets that are no
longer of any business value
Transfer outside the organization e.g.
outsourcing
 Patent, spin off companies etc.


KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation & Contribution
 Selectively filter contributions
 Knowledge Codification & Refinement
 Knowledge Sharing
 Knowledge Access
 Knowledge Learning &Application
 Knowledge Evaluation & Re-Use OR Divest
21

Wiig KM Cycle
 Processes by which we build and use knowledge
As individuals
 As teams (communities)
 As organizations


 How we:

Build knowledge
 Hold knowledge
 Pool knowledge
 Apply knowledge


 Discrete tasks yet often interdependent & parallel
22

Wiig KM Cycle/2
Build Knowledge
Hold Knowledge
Pool Knowledge
Use Knowledge

•Personal experience
•Formal education and training
•Intelligence sources
•Media, books, peers
•In people
•In tangible forms (e.g. books)
•KM systems (intranet, dbase)
•Groups of people- brainstorm
•In work context
•Embedded in work processes
23

Wiig KM Cycle/3
Build Knowledge
Hold Knowledge
Pool Knowledge
Use Knowledge

Building Knowledge
 Learning from all kinds of sources to:
Obtain Knowledge
 Analyze Knowledge
 Reconstruct (Synthesize) Knowledge
 Codify and Model Knowledge
 Organize Knowledge


Obtaining Knowledge
 Create new knowledge
Research and development projects
 Innovations, experimentation, trial and error
 Reasoning with existing knowledge
 Hire new people


 Import knowledge from existing sources

Elicit knowledge from experts
 Acquire from manuals, books, other documents
 Transfer people between departments


 Observe the real world

Analyzing Knowledge
 Extract what appears to be knowledge from obtained
materials
Analyze transcripts, reports about new concepts
 Listen to explanation and select key concepts


 Abstract extracted material
 Identify patterns to describe, estimate
 Create explicit relations between knowledge elements
(e.g. causal, correlation, contribution nets)
 Verify that extracted content is correct through
observation
27

Reconstruct (Synthesize)
Knowledge
 Generalize analyzed materials to obtain broader
principles
 Generate hypotheses to explain observed behaviour
in terms of causal factors
 Establish conformance between new and existing
knowledge (validity, coherence)
 Update total knowledge pool by incorporating new
knowledge


Discard old, false, outdated, no longer relevant knowledge
28

Codify and Model Knowledge
 Represent knowledge in our minds by building
mental models
 Model knowledge by assembling declarations and
relational statements into a coherent whole
 Document knowledge in books and manuals
 Encode knowledge into knowledge bases
(computerized KBS tools)

Organize Knowledge
 Organize new knowledge for specific uses


E.g. sequence for diagnostics, help desk, FAQs

 Organize new knowledge according to an
established framework
Categorize according to organizational standards
 Taxonomy, ontology, official list of key words,
attributes, linguistic/translation guidelines….


Building Knowledge Examples
 Market research
Focus groups
 Surveys
 Competitive intelligence
 Data mining on customer preferences


 Synthesis of lessons learned (what worked, what didn’t) –
generate hypotheses
Validate using customer satisfaction questionnaire and interviews
 Document as training manual for marketing to this specific target
market


Wiig KM Cycle/4
Build Knowledge
Hold Knowledge
Pool Knowledge
Use Knowledge

Holding Knowledge
 In people’s minds, books, computerized knowledge
bases, etc.
Remember knowledge – internalize it
 Cumulate knowledge in repositories (encode it)
 Embed knowledge in repositories (within procedures)

Archive knowledge


 Create scientific library, subscriptions
 Retire older knowledge from active status in repository (e.g. store

in another medium for potential future retrieval – cd roms, etc.)

Holding Knowledge Examples
 Company owns a number of proprietary methods and
recipes for making products
 Some knowledge documented in the form of research
reports, technical papers, patents
 Other tacit knowledge can be elicited and embedded in
the knowledge base in the form of know-how, tips,
tricks of the trade
Videotapes of specialized experts explaining various
procedures
 Task support systems


Wiig KM Cycle/5
Build Knowledge
Hold Knowledge
Pool Knowledge
Use Knowledge

Pooling Knowledge
 Can take many forms such as discussions, expert networks and
formal work teams
 Pooling knowledge consists of:
 Coordinating knowledge of collaborative teams
 Creating expert networks to identify who knows what
 Assembling knowledge – background references from
libraries and other knowledge sources
 Accessing and retrieving knowledge
 Consult with knowledgeable people about a difficult problem, peer

reviews, second opinions
 Obtain knowledge directly from a repository – advice, explanations
36

Pooling Knowledge Examples
 An employee realizes he or she does not have the
necessary knowledge and know-how to solve a
particular problem
 She contact others in the company who have had
similar problems to solve, consults the knowledge
repository and makes use of an expert advisory
system to help her out
 She organizes all this information and has subject
matter experts validate the content
37

Wiig KM Cycle/6
Build Knowledge
Hold Knowledge
Pool Knowledge
Use Knowledge

Using Knowledge
 Use established knowledge to perform routine tasks, make
standard products, provide standard services
 Use general knowledge to survey exceptional situations, identify
problem, consequences
 Use knowledge to describe situation and scope problem
 Select relevant special knowledge to handle situation, identify
knowledge sources
 Observe and characterize the situation, collect and organize
information
 Analyze situation, determine patterns, compare with others,
judge what needs to be done
39

Using Knowledge (con’t)
 Synthesize alternative solutions, identify options, create new
solutions
 Evaluate potential alternatives, appraise advantages and
disadvantages of each, determine risks and benefits of each
 Use knowledge to decide what to do, which alternative to
select


Rank alternatives & test that each is feasible, acceptable

 Implement selected alternative



Choose and assemble tools needed
Prepare implementation plan, distribute it, authorize team to proceed
with this solution
40

Using Knowledge – Examples
 Expert mechanic encounters a new problem
 Gathers info to diagnose and analyze
 Synthesizes a list of possible solutions with the
tools he knows are available to him
 Decides on the best option and uses it to fix the part
 Non-routine tasks are approached in a different way
than familiar, standard ones
41

KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation & Contribution
 Knowledge Codification & Refinement (inc. Sanitize) &
Reconstruction (e.g. synthesis)
 Selectively filter contributions
 Knowledge Modeling
 Knowledge Sharing & Pooling
 Knowledge Organization &Access
 Knowledge Learning &Application
 Knowledge Evaluation & Re-Use OR Divest
42

Five Critical Knowledge
Functions for each KM Cycle Step
 Type of knowledge or skill involved


Securities trading expertise

 Business use of that knowledge


Increase the value of a retirement fund portfolio

 Constraint that prevents knowledge from being fully utilized


Expert will retire at the end of the year with no successor

 Opportunities, alternatives to manage that knowledge


Elicit and codify knowledge before person retires

 Expected value-added of improving the situation


Valuable knowledge is not lost to organization

Group activity
 In small groups, discuss the following:
What knowledge object would you want next
year’s class to have? To re-use?
 Go through the KM processes and see how you
would capture and make available to them
 What would you have liked to have known
before coming to our program? Anything
unexpected? Surprises? Things you had to
discover….?


Can continue discussion online…

Some topics from previous
classes….
 Workload
 Student life in a new city
 State of the profession – – wiki
 Alumni, recent graduates, job statistics
 Course information – satisfied with information that was
mailed out, that is on the website
 Specific course information




tailored so students coming from diverse background (work, undergrad
degree, technological know needed for course, theoretical content etc.
provide demographic info on the incoming class

Next:
 Selected knowledge management models

Knowledge Management in Theory
and Practice
Lecture 3: Selected Knowledge
Management Models

Week 3: Knowledge
Management Models
 KM Models
Choo, Weick
 Nonaka and Takeuchi
 K. Wiig
 Boisot
 Beer and Bennet & Bennet

EFQM – European Foundation for Quality Model

Inukshuk Model


Choo and Weick KM Model
 Knowing Organization Framework (Choo, C.W.
1998) – 2nd edition 2006
Model of KM that stresses sense making, knowledge
creation and decision making
 How to select information elements that could feed into
the organizational actions
 Organizational action results from the concentration and
absorption of information from the external environment
into each successive circle.
 Each circle has an outside stimulus or trigger


Choo’s KM Model
Streams of
experience

Sense
Making

Shared meanings

Knowledge
Creating
2
External
Information
& Knowledge

New knowledge,
new capabilities

Decision
Making

Goal-directed adaptive
behavior
Next
knowing
cycle
4

Choo’s KM Model/2
1. Meaning is socially constructed as information is filtered through
the sense making behaviour
2. Individuals create new knowledge about the external world
through the transformation of their individual knowledge into
shareable knowledge and information
3. A threshold is reached at some specific point when the
organization as a whole is prepared to act in a rational manner and
choose an alternative based upon the organizations goals,
objectives & strategy
4. Start the next cycle when the action chosen changes the external
environment and impacts ongoing decisions related to the original
choice
5

Choo’s KM Model/3
Streams of
experience

Sense
Making

Shared meanings

Knowledge
Creating
2
External
Information
& Knowledge

New knowledge,
new capabilities

Decision
Making

Goal-directed adaptive
behavior
Next
knowing
cycle
6

Sense Making
 Attempts to make sense of the information
streaming in from the external environment
 Priorities are identified and used to filter the
information
 Common interpretation is constructed by
individuals from the exchange and
negotiation of information fragments
combined with their previous experiences
7

Sense Making (con’t)
 Karl Weick: theory of sense making to
describe how chaos is transformed into
sensible and orderly processes in an
organization through the shared
interpretation of individuals
 Loosely coupled systems where individuals
construct their own representation of reality
 Compare current with past events
8

Weick Theory of Sense Making
 Sense making process in an organization
consists of four tightly integrated processes:
Ecological change
 Enactment
 Selection
 Retention


Ecological Change
 A change in the environment external to the
organization disturbs the flow of information
to the participants
 This triggers an ecological change in the
organization
 Organizational actors enact their
environment by attempting to closely
examine elements of the environment
10

Enactment
 People try to:
Construct
 Rearrange
 Single out
 Demolish


 Many of the objective features of their surroundings,
make it less random, more orderly, by literally creating
their own constraints or rules
 This clarifies the data & issues to be used for the
selection process
11

Selection & Retention
 Individuals attempt to interpret the rationale for the
observed and enacted changes by making selections
 The retention process furnishes the organization
with an organizational memory of successful sense
making experiences
Can be reused in the future to interpret new changes &
stabilize individual interpretations into an organizational
view of events and actions
 Reduces uncertainty and ambiguity associated with
unclear, poorly defined info


Choo’s KM Model/4
Streams of
experience

Sense
Making

Shared meanings

Knowledge
Creating
2
External
Information
& Knowledge

New knowledge,
new capabilities

Decision
Making

Goal-directed adaptive
behavior
Next
knowing
cycle
13

Knowledge Creating
 Transformation of personal knowledge
between individuals
Dialogue
 Discourse
 Sharing
 Storytelling


Knowledge Creating (con’t)
 Directed by a knowledge vision of AS IS (current) and
TO BE (future)
 Widens the spectrum of potential choices in decision
making through new knowledge and new competences
 The result feeds the decision making process with
innovative strategies that extend the organization’s
capability to make informed, rational decisions
 Choo draws upon the Nonaka & Takeuchi model for a
theory of knowledge creation
15

Choo’s KM Model/5
Streams of
experience

Sense
Making

Shared meanings

Knowledge
Creating
2
External
Information
& Knowledge

New knowledge,
new capabilities

Decision
Making

Goal-directed adaptive
behavior
Next
knowing
cycle
16

Decision Making
 Rational decision making models used to identify
and evaluate alternatives by processing the
information and knowledge collected to date
 Variety of decision making theories
Theory of games and economic behaviour
 Chaos theory, complexity theory, emergent theory
 Bounded rationality theory
 Garbage can theory


Bounded Rationality Theory
 First proposed by H. Simon a limited or
constrained rationality:


The capacity of the human mind for formulating
and solving complex problems is very small
compared with the size of the problems whose
solution is required for objectively rational
behaviour in the real world – – or even for a
reasonable approximation to such objective
rationality (Simon, H.A 1957, p. 198)
18

Bounded Rationality Theory/2
 When confronted with a highly complex world, the
mind constructs a simple mental model of reality
and tries to work within that model
 Even though the model may have weaknesses, the
individual tries to behave rationally within it
 Individuals can be bound in a decisional process by:
Limited in intelligence, skills, habits and responsiveness
 Availability of personal information and knowledge
 Values and norms which may be different from the org.


Bounded Rationality Theory/3
 This theory has long been accepted in
organizational and management sciences
 Characterized by individuals’ uses of:
Limited information analysis, evaluation, and
processing
 Shortcuts and rules of thumb (heuristics)
 “Satisficing” (good enough, 80/20 rule, not
necessarily optimization)


The Nonaka-Takeuchi Model
of Knowledge Management
“In an economy where the only certainty is
uncertainty, the one sure source of lasting
competitive advantage is knowledge.”
I. Nonaka

The problem is that few managers understand how to
manage the knowledge-creating company
Focus on ‘hard’ or quantifiable knowledge
See KM as information processing machine
21

Nonaka & Takeuchi/2
 The authors studied successful Japanese companies
to try to identify how they achieved creativity and
innovation
Found it was more than mechanistically processing
objective information
 Depending on highly subjective insights


 Slogans, metaphors, symbols



Holistic model of knowledge creation and management
of “serendipity”
22

Nonaka & Takeuchi:
The Spiral of Knowledge
 Knowledge creation always begins with the individual
Brilliant researcher has an insight that leads to a new patent
 Middle manager has intuition of market trends and becomes
the catalyst for an important new product concept
 Shop floor worker draws on years of experience to come up
with a process innovation that saves $$$$


 In each case, an individual’s personal knowledge is
translated into valuable organizational knowledge

The Basis for the Nonaka –
Takeuchi Model
 Making personal knowledge available to others in
the company is at the core of this model of KM
It takes place continuously
 It takes place at all levels of the organization


 Individual
 Groups
 Company-wide



Can be unexpected
 E.g. home bread-making machine innovation

Explicit vs. Tacit Knowledge
Explicit Knowledge
Tacit Knowledge

files

80-85%

15-20%

active

passive

Nonaka and Takeuchi Model
Tacit

Explicit

Tacit

Explicit

..
26

Nonaka & Takeuchi – the
Knowledge Spiral Model

Tacit

Explicit

Tacit
Socialization
Brainstorming
Coaching

Explicit
Externalization
Capturing
Sharing

Internalization:
Internalization
Understanding
Learning

Combination:
Systemizing
Classifying
27

Tacit to Tacit Transformation
 Individual to individual(s)
Apprenticeship
 Mentoring
 Observation
 Shadowing


Imitation
 Practice
 Brainstorming
 Coaching


Apprentice may learn from the master, but the knowledge
remains tacit & is not leveraged across the organization
28

Tacit to Explicit
Transformation
 Able to articulate the knowledge, know-how
 Can be written, videotape, audiotape format
 Often need intermediary to capture this
knowledge – a journalist, a workshop…
It now exists in a tangible form
 It can now be more easily shared with others and
leveraged throughout the organization


Explicit to Explicit
Transformation
 Can combine discrete pieces of tangible
knowledge into a new form
E.g. a synthesis in the form of a report, a
comparative evaluation, a new database
 Simply a new combination of existing
knowledge – no new knowledge is created


It is easiest to convert from the same type of knowledge – tacit
to tacit and explicit to explicit – harder to change the type
30

Explicit to Tacit
Transformation
 As new knowledge is shared throughout the
organization, employees now begin to
internalize it
They use it, broaden it, extend it and reframe
their own existing tacit knowledge base
 They learn – they do their jobs differently now


The KM Spiral
 First we learn something through socialization (e.g. being
apprenticed to a master)
 Next we translate this into a tangible format that can be
more easily communicated to others (externalization)
 This knowledge is then standardized using templates, coding
rules etc (new combination)
 Finally, team members enrich their own tacit knowledge
bases by adding new knowledge and skills (internalization)
 They then share this new knowledge tacitly (back to
socialization and the spiral continues)
Tacit to Explicit and Explicit to Tacit are the key steps
32

From Metaphor to Model
 Externalization (tacit to explicit) and Internalization (explicit to
tacit) both require a high degree of personal commitment
 Involves




Mental models
Personal beliefs and values
Re-inventing yourself as well as the organization

 Metaphor is a good way of expressing the “inexpressible”






Slogans, symbols
Fables, stories, allegories
analogies
Models – final step, no contradictions, consistent, systematic, logical
“two ideas in a single phrase”
33

From Chaos to Concept
 How to structure metaphors, models and analogies in an
organizational KM design
 1st principle:


Built-in redundancy – make sure there is shared overlapping
information
 Easier to articulate
 Easier to share
 Easier to internalize



Can be done with internal competing groups, built-in
rotational strategy and free access to company information
via single integrated database or k-base
34

From Chaos to Concept (con’t)
 Need to orient ensuring chaos created by the
inevitable discrepancies in meaning that occur
Provide a conceptual framework that helps them make
sense of their experiences
 Conceptual umbrella for key concepts
 Domain ontology – categorization of the organization’s
knowledge base
 Standards set by the company re. strategic value of
knowledge


Recommended Solutions
Tacit
Tacit

Explicit

Recommendations
1.
2.
3.

Recommendations
1.
2.
3.
36

K. Wiig KM Model
 For knowledge to be useful and organized it
must be organized
 Organize knowledge differently depending
on what knowledge will be used for
 In our minds, we store knowledge as a
semantic network with multiple links


We choose the appropriate perspective
depending on the cognitive task at hand
37

Semantic Network Example:
Four Perspectives on a Car

Commute

Maintain

Vacation

Driving

K. Wiig KM Model/2
 Organize knowledge so that it can be
accessed and retrieved using multiple paths
 Useful dimensions to consider:
Completeness
 Connectedness
 Congruency
 Perspective and purpose


Completeness
 How much of the relevant knowledge is available
from this source?
Human mind
 Knowledge base


 We need to know that it is there


May be complete in the sense that all that is available
about the subject is there but no one knows it is there &
therefore cannot make use of it

Connectedness
 There are well-understood and defined
relations between the different knowledge
sections
 There are very few knowledge items that are
totally disconnected from the others
 The more connected the knowledge base, the
greater its value
45

Congruency
 A knowledge base is congruent when all facts,
concepts, perspectives, values, judgments and
associative and relational links between the mental
objects are consistent
There are no logical inconsistencies, no internal
conflicts, no misunderstandings
 Consistency in concept definitions
 Needs to be constantly ‘fine-tuned’


Perspective and Purpose
 When we ‘know’ something, we often know
it from a particular perspective or for a
specific use in mind
 We organize much of our knowledge using
perspective and purpose
Just-in-time knowledge retrieval
 Just-enough – on-demand basis


Degrees of Internalization
1.

NOVICE: Ignorant or barely aware:

BEGINNER: Know that the knowledge exists:

COMPETENT: Knows about the knowledge:

4.
5.

aware of what the know or how it an be used

Not

Aware of
where the knowledge is and where to get it but cannot reason with it
Can use
and reason with the knowledge, given external knowledge bases such as
books, people to help
EXPERT: Knows the knowledge:
Holds the
knowledge in memory, understands where it applies, reasons with it without
outside help
MASTER: Internalizes knowledge fully:
Has deep
understanding with full integration into values, judgments, & consequences
of using that knowledge

Hierarchy of Knowledge
Knowledge
Explicit

Embedded

Coded, accessible

Coded, inaccessible

Un-coded, inaccessible

Passive Active

Library
books,
manuals

Products Info systems
Technols. Services

Isolated
facts,
recent
memory

Experts
KBs

Tacit

Habits
Skills
Proced.
knowledge

Three Forms of Knowledge
 Public Knowledge


Explicit, taught and shared routinely, generally available in the
public domain

 Shared Expertise


Proprietary knowledge assets exclusively held by knowledge
workers and shared in their work or embedded in technology,
often communicated by specialized languages & representations.

 Personal Knowledge


Least accessible but most complete, tacit knowledge in people’s
minds, used non-consciously in work, play and daily life.

Four Types of Knowledge
 Factual


Facts, data, causal chains

 Conceptual


Perspectives, concepts, gestalt e.g. social constructivist
view of learning

 Expectational


Judgments, hypotheses, predictions

 Methodological


Reasoning, strategies, methods, techniques
51

Wiig’s KM Matrix
Knowledge Type
Knowledge Factual
Form

Conceptual Expectat.

Methodol.

Public

measure
reading

stability
balance

When supply
> demand,
price drops

Look for
temperatures
outside norm

Shared

forecast
analysis

Market is hot

A little water
in the mix is
ok

Check for
past failures

Personal

‘right’
texture, color

Company
track record

Hunch that
the analyst is
wrong

What is the
recent trend?
52

Boisot KM Model
 The more easily data can be structured and
converted into information, the more
diffusible it becomes
 The less data that has been so structured
requires a shared context for its diffusion, the
more diffusible it becomes

Boisot KM Cycle/2

explicit

codified

tacit

uncodified
abstract
concrete

undiffused

diffused
54

Complex Adaptive System KM
Models
 Key processes include:
Understanding
 Creating new ideas
 Solving problems
 Making decisions
 Taking actions to achieve desired results


Complex Adaptive System KM
Models/2


Based on 8 emergent properties:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Organizational intelligence
Shared purpose
Selectivity
Optimum complexity
Permeable boundaries
Knowledge centricity
Flow
Multidimensionality
56

Complex Adaptive System KM
Models/3
Organizational
Intelligence
Shared
Purpose

Multidimensionality

Flow

Knowledge
Centricity

Optimum
Complexity
Flow

Selectivity
Permeable Barriers
creativity

complexity

change
57

EFQM overview
 How can KM be used to achieve
organizational goals?
KM is positioned as an organizational enabler
 KM is used to achieve organizational goals and
not KM-oriented goals


 Never a good idea to do KM for KM’s sake!

EFQM components

People

Leadership

Policy &
Stategy
Partnerships
& Resources

Enablers

Processes

Key
Performance
Results
(people,
customer,
society)

Results

Inukshuk model
 Developed to help Canadian government
departments manage their knowledge better
An Inukshuk is used to mark paths by First National
people
 Derived from quantitative research and a review of
existing models

Uses the SECI (Nonaka and Takeuchi) model for the
process piece and emphasizes the role played by people


Inukshuk components
Measurement
Tacit Knowledge

Explicit Knowledge

Socialization

Externalization

Internalization

Combination

CULTUR
E

TECHNOLOGY

Leadership

Recap: Knowledge
Management Models
 Choo, Weick – – sensemaking of external, knowledge
creation, decision making
 Nonaka and Takeuchi – – internal knowledge spiral –
knowledge transformations
 Wiig – knowledge organized as a semantic network for
multiple perspectives – typology
 Boisot – – degree of abstractness of knowledge, extent to
which knowledge has been/can be diffused
 Beer and Bennet & Bennet – – organization as a viable
system, organizational intelligence, extent to which
organization is permeable to knowledge flows
 Inukshuk model:
62

Next:
 Knowledge Capture and Codification

Knowledge Management in Theory
and Practice
Lecture 4: Knowledge Capture and
Codification

Overview
 Knowledge Capture


For tacit knowledge

 Knowledge Codification
For explicit knowledge
 Organizing knowledge in a knowledge taxonomy


KM Cycle Step 1:Knowledge
Capture and Codification
Tacit Knowledge Capture & Codification
Ad Hoc Sessions,

Roadmaps,
 Learning History

Action Learning,
 Storytelling
 Learn from Others, Guest Speakers,
 Best Practice Capture

Interviewing to elicit tacit knowledge


Approaches to Knowledge
Capture and Codification
 How to describe and represent knowledge
Depending on the type of knowledge
 E.g. explicit knowledge is already well described but may
need to abstract/summarize it
 Tacit knowledge on the other hand may require
significant analysis and organization before it can be
suitably described and represented


 Tools range from linguistic descriptions and
categories to mathematical formulations and
graphical representations

Tacit Knowledge Capture
Techniques
 Tacit Knowledge Capture


Ad Hoc Sessions, Roadmap, Learning History,
Storytelling, Interviews, Action Learning, Learn from
Others, Guest Speakers, Relationship Building, Systems
Thinking

 Tacit Knowledge Codification

Proficiency Levels and Knowledge Profiles
 Abstract Concept Representation (mental models)
 Concept hierarchies (associative or semantic networks)


Learning History
 Useful to capture tacit knowledge
 A retrospective history of significant events in an
organization’s recent past, described in the voices
of people who took part in them
 Researched through a series of reflective
interviews, transcribed in Q&A format
 Systematic review of successes and failures
“Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to repeat it”

George Santanya

Learning History Questions
 What was your role in the project/initiative?
 How would you judge its success?
 What would you do differently if you could?
 What recommendations do you have for other
people who might go through a similar process?
 What innovative things were done or could have
been done?

Learning History
Documentation
 Record and transcribe interviews
 Analyze data to identify like themes and subthemes as well as quotes to be used
 Document key themes and validate quotes
(e.g. make sure they are not anonymous nor
taken out of context)
 Summarize and publish
8

Learning History Template
Theme Title
Part 1

Overview of the Theme

_________________________________________________
Part 2
Commentary, conclusions and
potential questions to be asked
that relate to the adjacent quotes

quotes representing
key responses to
interview questions

__________________________________________________
Part 3

Brief summary of quotes, additional questions to provide more clarity to theme

Storytelling
 An organizational story is a detailed narrative of
management actions, employee interactions and other
intra-organizational events that are communicated
informally within the organization
 Conveying information in a story provides a rich
context, remaining in the conscious memory longer and
creating more memory traces than information not in
context
 Can increase organizational learning, communicate
common values and rule sets
10

What’s the Moral of the Story?
 Fables are short fictional folk tales used to
indirectly tell truths about life
They have a level of meaning beyond the surface
story
 They are an excellent example of what organizational
stories should be like – except they would tell truths
about life working in company X…


 Some examples:
11

The Chicken and the Jewel
 A chicken, scratching for food for herself and her chicks,
found a precious stone and exclaimed, “If your owner had
found you and not I, he would have taken you up and put
you in your first jewelry. But I have found you for no
purpose. I would rather have one kernel of corn rather than
all the jewels in the world.”
The ignorant despise what is precious
only because they cannot understand it
12

The Crow and the Pitcher
 A crow, perishing with thirst, saw a pitcher, and hoping to find water, he
flew to it with delight. When he reached it, he discovered to his grief
that it contained so little water he could not possibly get at it. He tried
everything he could think of to get to the water, but all his efforts were
in vain. At last, he collected as many stones as he could carry and
dropped them one by one into the pitcher, until the brought the water
within his reach and saved his life.

Necessity is the mother of invention

The Donkey and His Shadow
 A traveler hired a donkey to convey him to a distant place. The day being
intensely hot, and the sun shining in its strength, the traveler stopped to
rest, and sought shelter from the heat under the shadow of the donkey. As
this afforded protection for one, and as the traveler and the owner of the
donkey both claimed it, a violent dispute arose between them as to which
of them had the right to the shadow. The owner maintained that he had let
the donkey only, not his shadow. The traveler asserted that he had, with
the hire of the donkey, hired his shadow also. The quarrel proceeded from
words to blows, and while the men fought, the donkey galloped off.

In quarrelling about the shadow,
we often lose the substance.
14

Try it out….
 Form groups of 3-5
 Try to write the moral of the story from one
of the three fables handed out
 Write these down and read out your results
when it is your group’s turn
NOTE TO INSTRUCTORS: provide students with paper or
electronic versions of any fable from Aesop – you can an use the
following – remove the morals from the slides you provide to students
15

The Man & His 2 Sweethearts
 A middle-aged man, whose hair had begun to turn gray,
courted two women at the same time. One of them was
young, and the other well advanced in years. The elder
woman, ashamed to be courted by a man younger than
herself, made a point, whenever her admirer visited her, to
pull out some portion of his black hairs. The younger, on
the contrary, not wishing to become the wife of an old man,
was equally zealous in removing every gray hair she could
find. Thus it came to pass that between them both he very
soon found that he had not a hair left on his head.
Those who seek to please everybody please nobody.

The Farmer & the Stork
 A farmer placed nets on his newly-sown land and caught a
number of cranes, which came to pick up his seed. With
them he trapped a stork that had fractured his leg in the net
and was earnestly beseeching the farmer to spare his life. “I
am no crane but a stork, a bird of excellent character – look
at my feathers – they are not the least like those of a crane!”
The farmer laughed aloud and said, “It may be all you say, I
only know this: I have taken you with these robbers, the
cranes, and you must die in their company.”
Birds of a feather flock together
17

The Oak & the Reeds
 A very large oak was uprooted by the wind and
thrown across a stream. It fell among some reeds,
which it thus addressed: “I wonder how you, who
are so light and weak, are not entirely crushed by
these strong winds.” They replied, “ You fight and
contend with the wind, and consequently, you are
destroyed; while we on the contrary bend before the
least breath of air, and therefore remain unbroken
and escape.”
Stoop to conquer
18

The Hawk, the Falcon and the
Pigeons
 The pigeons, terrified by the appearance of a
falcon, called upon the hawk to defend them.
He at once consented. When they had
admitted him into their shelter, they found
that he made more havoc and slew a larger
number of them in one day than the falcon
could pounce upon in one whole year.
Avoid a remedy that is worse than the disease
19

The Fox and the Goat
 One day, a fox fell into a deep well and could find no means
of escape. A goat, overcome with thirst, came to the same
well and seeing the fox, inquired if the water was good. The
fox lavishly praised the water as excellent beyond measure
and encouraged the goat to descend. Thinking only of his
thirst the goat jumped in. The fox then informed him of the
difficulty they were both in and suggested they could escape
if he ran up the goat’s back to escape and then help the goat
out afterwards. The goat agreed. The fox got out and ran off
as fast as he could, leaving the goat behind in the well.
Look before you leap
20

Best Practice Capture
 Best practices and lessons learned can be said to be two different
sides of the same coin: BPs look at successes and LLs look at
failures


They are both described in the same manner using metadata such as:
 Date prepared
 Point of contact : Name, organization, contact information
 Members who participated in the development of the best practice
 Problem statement
 Background

(Note any research that was conducted, summary of
significant findings, root cause identification)
 Best Practice Description (Models, business rules, use graphics
whenever possible)

Lessons Learned & Best
Practices Capture
Situation
Observer
Date
What went wrong?
Lessons Learned
What went right?
Best practices
22

CIDA: Example of a Best
Practice in Forestry
Best Practice: Bolivia:
Emerging best practices for combating illegal activities in the forest sector
B2: Simplifying norms and reducing their number

The Bolivian government in reforming its timber concession policies decreed
that the concession fee would be $ 1 per hectare per year. This contrasted
sharply with previous complex norms that mandated timber concession fees
based on species types, volumes and quality of timber, which left much room to
interpretation, misclassification and disguised measurement errors. The new
rule is singular, simple and clear: a concession covering 100,000 hectares must
pay $ 100,000 in concession fees per year. There is no room for interpretation
or modification based on doubtful criteria. Monitoring compliance and
prosecution is extremely easy, as the evidence is transparent. While the
economic soundness of charging a uniform fee for timber concessions of
differing commercial value is questionable, the new norm has the undeniable
advantage of diminishing the incidence of corruption or arbitrariness in
determining concession fees
23

CIDA: Example of KM
Lessons Learned
Appoint a DG of KM and Change Management.
Use existing web and intranet infrastructures to support KM and
communities.
Most communities of practice already exist – increase their exposure,
help them get set up and give them the required resources.
Identify short, mid-term and long-term business (not KM) goals for each
community.
Biggest obstacle encountered was lack of senior management support.
Need to create awareness and shared understanding so employees
clearly see the benefits of KM
Supervisors can be good role models to help all CIDA realize that
knowledge sharing is expected of everyone.

Knowledge taxonomies
 Concepts are the building blocks of knowledge
and expertise.
Once key concepts have been identified and captured,
they can be arranged in a hierarchy – a knowledge
taxonomy
 graphically represent knowledge in a way that reflects
the logical organization of concepts within a particular
field of expertise or for the organization at large


Knowledge taxonomies – con’t
 A taxonomy is a classification scheme that
groups related items together
 names the types of relationships concepts have to
one another
 Is developed through a consensus of key
stakeholders
 Is often multifaceted to represent the complexity
of organizational knowledge


Example – Facets

Tacit Knowledge Capture Activity
 Form pairs
 Take on role of knowledge journalist or subject matter
expert and then switch
 Topic suggestions: How did you decide on what to do for
your undergraduate degree? Whose advice did you seek?
How would you advise someone to make this decision?
 Write down 3-4 key interview questions you used
 Try to identify at least one best practice or lessons learned
from the experience using the BP/LL template handout
28

Interviews
 With subject matter experts, stakeholders,
process performers, customers – anybody
that can shed new light on a topic or issue
 Used to gather knowledge for the community
and its knowledge base
Gather good stories!!
29

Interview Plan
 Initial contact (phone, email, face-to-face)
 Explanation of interview purpose, format,
duration, confidentiality of information
 Establishing credibility and rapport
 Ice-breaking
 Professionalism (boundaries)
30

Types of Interview Questions
 Closed questions
Can be answered with a yes or no
 Used to validate (sometimes to “provoke” a
reaction)


 Open questions
Require explanations as answers
 Used to elicit knowledge


Group Activity: How to interview
 Form pairs
 Take on the role of knowledge manager or subject
matter expert and then switch


What are some of your best practices or lessons you
learned (easy or hard way) on writing a good resume
when seeking a job?

 Write down some questions you asked
 What was easy about interviewing/being
interviewed? What was hard?

Interview Questions
Interviewer #1

Interviewer #2

Q1:

Q2:

Q3:

Summary: Tacit Knowledge
Capture and Codification
 Tacit Knowledge Capture Techniques
Ad Hoc Sessions, Roadmap, Learning History
 Storytelling, Interviews, Action Learning,
 Learn from Others, Guest Speakers,
 Best Practice capture


 Tacit Knowledge Codification Techniques
Mental models
 Concept hierarchies, semantic networks
 Best practices, lessons learned


Next week:
 Knowledge Sharing and Communities of
Practice

Knowledge Management in Theory
and Practice
Lecture 5: Knowledge Sharing and
Communities of Practice

Recap: KM Cycle Processes
 Knowledge Capture
 Knowledge Creation & Contribution
 Knowledge Codification & Refinement (inc. Sanitize) &
Reconstruction (e.g. synthesis)
 Selectively filter contributions
 Knowledge Modeling
 Knowledge Sharing & Pooling
 Knowledge Organization &Access
 Knowledge Learning &Application
 Knowledge Evaluation & Re-Use OR Divest
2

Overview
Knowledge Sharing


Communities of Practice
 Building blocks

 Types of communities

 Roles and Responsibilities



Directories of Experts
 Yellow pages
 Skill mining



Mapping the Flow of Knowledge

 Organizational networks and Sociograms

What is a Community of
Practice (CoP)?




Traditionally, we have shared
knowledge through ‘word of
mouth’ (e.g. master to apprentice)
While socializing comes ‘naturally’
to us, there are fewer opportunities
in today’s much larger, much more
global companies

It was easy to do in the past:
coffee/smoker cliques, water cooler conversations…..

But:
In Today’s Working Environment
Multi-lingual
Multi-site

Multi-cultural

More &
Faster

More
Global

KM
PC

More
Mobile

More
Connected
PC

Internet

What is a Community of
Practice (CoP)?
 Definition of “Community”
“A group of people having common interests:
the scientific community, the international
business community”
 Similarity or identity: a community of interests
 Sharing, participation, fellowship


American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 3rd Ed. 1996.
6

Community Definition
(continued)
 “The body of people in a learned occupation:
“the news spread rapidly through the
medical community”
Common interests
 Agreement as to goals


Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Community Definition
(continued)
 The word has been in the English language since
the 14th century
Comes from the Latin
 “The quality of holding something in common”

A sense of common identity and characteristics

More direct, more immediate and more significant
relationships than in formal organized societies

Sharing of common goals, values, identities;
participatory decision-making


What is a virtual community?
 “social aggregations that emerge from the
Net when people carry on those public
discussions long enough, with sufficient
human feeling, to form webs of personal
relationships”
Knowledge is social
as well as individual

(The Virtual Community, Howard
Rheingold, 1993)

What is a Practice?
 A customary way of operation or
behaviour
 Translating an idea into action
 The exercise of a profession
 Knowledge of how something is
customarily done
Merriam-Webster Dictionary
“There can be no knowledge
without a knower”

Knowledge is dynamic
in nature
10

What is a Community of
Practice in the KM World?
 “A group of individuals informally bound together by
shared expertise and passion for a joint enterprise” (Snyder
and Wenger)

 Peers in the execution of real work. What holds them
together is a common sense of purpose and a real need to
know what each other knows” (John Seely Brown)
 “Focused on the more professional nature of work. It’s
trying to find a better way of doing work” (From the field….)

Putting the pieces together
 The term “community” suggests that CoPs are
not constrained by typical geographic, business
unit or functional boundaries but rather by
common tasks, contexts and interests.
 The word “practice” implies knowledge in
action – how individuals actually perform
their jobs on a day-to-day basis as opposed to
more formal policies and procedures that
reflect how work should be performed.
Lesser & Prusak, IBM Institute for KM
12

Community of Practice

A group of people
 informally bound together
 by shared expertise
 and passion for a joint enterprise

13
Source: Etienne Wenger

Dimensions of Practice as the
property of a community
Joint enterprise

Mutual engagement

Shared repertoire

Dimensions of Practice as the
property of a community
Joint enterprise

Mutual engagement

Shared repertoire

What is the “work” of community members?
e.g. KM practitioners
Heterogeneous
Complementary

Dimensions of Practice as the
property of a community
What are the accepted objectives
of the community?
Joint enterprise

Mutual engagement

Negotiated consensus
Mutual accountability

Shared repertoire

What is the “work” of community members?
e.g. KM practitioners
Heterogeneous
Complementary

Dimensions of Practice as the
property of a community
What are the accepted objectives
of the community?

‘Knowledge is local,
sticky and contextual”
Joint enterprise

Mutual engagement
What is the “work” of community members?
e.g. KM practitioners
Heterogeneous
Complementary

Negotiated consensus
Mutual accountability

Shared repertoire
Artifacts: routines, tools, stories,
ways of doing things, language,
concepts, history, discourse
Shared virtual space

How are Communities of
Practice Different?

(excerpt from “Communities of Practice: The Organizational Frontier, by Etienne Wenger)
18

A Community of Practice

Experts,
Mentors

*LPP – Legitimate peripheral participant

Members

Lurkers*

Multiple Communities
Lurker in
one, mentor
in another
Overlappin
g
Communiti
es

A
community
waiting to
happen

Knowledge brokers

Multiple Communities

Boundary objects

Artifacts: tools, documents, models shared by CoP’s.
Discourses: a common language that can be shared across CoPs
Processes: shared processes, routines, procedures that
facilitate coordination of and between CoPs
21

The Value Added by
Communities of Practice
The help drive strategy
They start new lines of business
They solve problems quickly
They transfer best practices
They develop professional skills
They help companies recruit and retain talent
22
Source: Etienne Wenger

Benefits of
Communities of Practice
 For the organization
Help drive strategy
 Solve problems quickly
 Diffuse best practices
 Cross-fertilize ideas, increase opportunities for
innovation
 Build organizational memory


CoP Benefits (continued)
 For the community
Develop professional skills
 Develop a common language
 Improve continuously
 LEARN


CoP Benefits (continued)
• For the individual

• Help people do their jobs & save time
• Building a sense of community bonds
within organization
• Helps people to keep up to date
• Provides challenges and
opportunities to contribute

Why are CoPs important now?
 Knowledge increasingly recognized as a strategic
intellectual asset
 Cannot be left to chance – need to actively,
systematically organize, and disseminate
knowledge
 CoPs are a good way of doing this
 CoPs need librarians, archivists,
taxonomists….”knowledge stewards”
26

A Paradox of Management
Although communities of practice are fundamentally
informal and self-organizing, they benefit from
cultivation.
How to cultivate them:
identify potential communities of practice that will enhance
the company’s strategic capabilities

provide the infrastructure that will support them and enable
them to apply their expertise effectively

use nontraditional methods to assess their value


Community Building Blocks
 Collective identity
 Community type
 Community roles and responsibilities
 Community membership
 Collaborative work environment

Community Types
 Helping Communities


Provide a forum for community members to help each other solve
everyday work problems

 Best Practice Communities


Develop and disseminate best practices, guidelines and procedures
for members’ use

 Knowledge Stewarding Communities


Organize, manage, and steward a body of knowledge from which
members can draw

 Innovation Communities


Create breakthrough ideas, knowledge & practices
29

Community Roles and
Responsibilities
 Functional sponsor


Believes in and promotes the value of knowledge
sharing and community membership

 Core team
 Community Leader
 Community Facilitator
 Logistics Coordinator
30

Community Core Team
 Use their knowledge of the discipline to
judge what is important, groundbreaking and
useful
 Enrich information by summarizing,
combining, contrasting and integrating
information into the knowledgebase
 Establish a taxonomy for the knowledgebase
31

How Knowledge Workers Spend their Time
Other

22 %
18 %
Production

60%

Research &
Validation
EDS 1996
32

How do we find information
online?
Phase I : on-line search

Phase II : off-line search

Succeed
5%

Fail
10%

Fail
95%

45 minutes spent on-line:
Searching:
Surfing:

5 min.
40 min.

Succeed
90%
After phoning for help, they
find what they are looking
for 90% of the time in less
than 5 min
33

Directories of Experts
 Research shows that even in companies with welldeveloped KM infrastructures, people still turn first
to other people as they seek solutions to problems
and knowledge
Knowledge flows are primarily through people
 What knowledge flows?


 Direct answer to question
 Metaknowledge
 Help in reformulating the problem…..

Skill Mining
 Similar to data mining
 Purpose is to identify who within an
enterprise has the expertise required to help a
knowledge worker with a specific issue
Manual – Knowledge Support Offices
 Automated – Abuzz, Autonomy, Dataware


 Tends to be better suited to ‘hard’ or
technical skills

Yellow Pages – Expert
Network Example
Trading strategy

Intelligence analysis

Investment strategy

Economic forecasting

Portfolio theory

Technical analysis

Portfolio selection

Company analysis

Securities selection

Industry and competitive
analysis
36

Yellow Pages Activity
 See handout
FOR INSTRUCTORS: you can develop a list of about
20 items such as: “knows how to fix a lawnmower”,
“can name 3 types of potatoes”, “has run a marathon.”
Draw a line next to each item. Ask students to find
someone in the class who has this type of “expertise”.
This is a method of developing yellow pages.

Social Network Analysis
(SNA)
 SNA is a diagnostic method for collecting and
analyzing data about patterns of relationships among
people in groups
Can identify patterns of interaction such as average number of
links between people in an organization or community, the
number of subgroups, information bottlenecks, knowledge
brokers
 Can help to improve knowledge flow, identify key brokers
and hoarders
 E.g. 6 degrees of separation


SNA (continued)
 Example: if your goal is to build a more cohesive
knowledge network so people can access and interact
with one another more quickly, more easily:
How well do you know and understand the skills and
experiences of other members?

Is the type of knowledge held by this other person
important to the work that you do?

Do you find it easy to access other people when you need
help?


Knowledge Flow Analysis Example: Finding Hidden Experts

Rosa and Thomas are
`hidden` experts

Orphaned database

SNA (continued)
 Based on the results of the analysis, you may decide to:
Reorganize
 Introduce new specific roles e.g. moderator to assist in
knowledge transfer
 Technologies to support expertise location, virtual meetings,
as well as face-to-face meetings
 Introduce a shared goal they can work towards or theme of
interest for discussion
 Self-awareness may be enough (“yikes – I am a knowledge
black hole!)


Mapping the Flow of
Knowledge
Portal

Jack

Sue
Knowledge request
Knowledge response
42

Sociogram Example
 Draw a sociogram of a community you belong to:
Family
 Friends
 Peers – e.g. have you exchanged knowledge with anyone in this


class? How? (email, conversation, phone) for what purpose?
(assignment) with anyone outside the class on the topic of
CoPs/KM? Who?

Hobby groups
 Interest groups


Next:
 Knowledge Acquisition and Application

Knowledge Management in Theory
and Practice
Lecture 6: Knowledge Acquisition and
Application

Overview
 Personal (Individual) knowledge acquisition and
application
Personalization and Profiling
 Cognitive Styles and MBTI
 Bloom Taxonomy of Learning Objectives


 Group profiling – segmentation

 Organizational knowledge acquisition and
application (OL) – knowledge repositories

Overview
 Personal (Individual) knowledge acquisition and
application
Personalization and Profiling
 Cognitive Styles and MBTI
 Bloom Taxonomy of Learning Objectives


 Group profiling – segmentation

 Organizational knowledge acquisition and
application (OL) – knowledge repositories

What does “personalization”
mean??
 Opposite of personalization = generic
one-size fits all
 mass communications


 Beyond (“trivial”) customization
segmentation
 manual adjustments e.g. desktop
 use of personal names instead of ‘addressee’


Personalization and Profiling
new technologies of internet, intranet, extranet,
groupware, CBT and so on greatly facilitate the
capture of user profiles – their actions leave behind
digital artifacts or footprints
it is thus easier to observe what they do and track, scan, model
“push technologies” – e.g. personalized email
alerts based on your interests
5

Keeping Track in the Networked
World: Footprints and Breadcrumbs
 ALL online transactions – and actions – leave behind digital
traces (footprints) which we can see, collect, analyze and act on
 ATM banking transactions
 Web browsing

 Communicating with wireline and wireless telephones….

 We leave breadcrumbs so we can find out way back to places of
interest (e.g. bookmarks)

User Profiling Approaches
Sign up or subscription – ask users
Approaches based on observation and

deduction

Content Affinity Groups
Data Mining
User Modeling


Real-time
 Usage history
 Model of online behaviour


Affinity Groups
 Group together based on characteristics of
content (e.g. document mapping based on
key words) ….OR:
 Affinity groups: group together based on
similarities between users accessing that
content


e.g. Amazon.com
8

OnLine Behaviour
In a store (such as a supermarket) studies
show that 90% of people turn right instead of
going straight or left
What is the equivalent behaviour(s) in
cyberspace?
Similar to GPS systems that show where you
have been, in what sequence, how often, how
long you stayed
9

Overview
 Personal (Individual) knowledge acquisition and
application
Personalization and Profiling
 Cognitive Styles and MBTI
 Bloom Taxonomy of Learning Objectives


 Group profiling – segmentation

 Organizational knowledge acquisition and
application (OL) – knowledge repositories

Group profiling methods
Segmentation
Categorize users based on easily obtained information
A good compromise between individual personalization
and mass customization
Default profiles can be used as a starting point and later,
personalization used to refine these profiles further


E.g. demographic profiling
E.g. Cognitive styles and MBTI

Demographic profiling
 Based on where you live – your postal code
Derive segments

Develop a profile

You have a lot in common with your neighbours!

Ex : Polk Data, CompuSearch


 Integrate other data e.g. Statistics Canada
 Do you provide your postal code at the checkout

counter???

Cognitive Styles and MBTI
 Cognitive differences
We all have preferred habits of thought that influence how we
make decisions, how we interact with others and how we prefer
to learn
 These are neither good nor bad
 They emerge early in our lives and tend to remain fairly stable
through the years
 People tend to choose professions that reward or correspond to
their preferred cognitive styles


 Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is an example of a widely
used tool to assess cognitive styles

Managing Diversity
 Generally, managers have two responses:
Comfortable clone syndrome – hire, work with,
talk to people like themselves
 Creative abrasion – value a variety of thinking
styles and deliberately designs a full spectrum of
approaches into the organization and work teams
 Understand yourself
 Create whole-brained teams


CAVEAT: do not take labeling too far!

Some Issues
Privacy
Amount of elapsed time, number of actions before
stable pattern is established
Level of detail required (cost-effectiveness)
How much personalization?
 One way if to look at a hierarchy of learning objectives
(Bloom)


Bloom’s Hierarchy of Learning
Objectives
 Conceptual systems theory that describes
progressively complex levels of learning
achievement – as evidenced by learner behaviours
 Prerequisite structure
Need to master lower level before moving up to the next
level
 E.g. your course objectives


 Good model for knowledge acquisition
B. Bloom (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain
16

Bloom: Cognitive Learning
Objectives (continued)
Evaluation
Synthesis
Analysis
Application
Comprehension
Knowledge
17