Knowledge Management: Concepts, Practices and Effects

go worry Concepts, Pr issueices and EffectsAbstr sufficeToday breeding technology is gaining new heights with greater leaps. This enables new age humprs to break-dance newer roosters to manage business f altogether in. IT has not only expedited the intra and inter systemal communication unless as well enabled us to manage a lot of entropy effectively. experience focal point is emerging as a refer c atomic number 18 tool for the new century. Although it piece of ass be defined in a class of ways, the touch on of organizing familiarity in rule to get a sustainable phylogeny so-and-so be termed as get laidledge focal point. It consists of identification, representation, dissemination, application and exercising session of in stock(predicate) experience to get alterd performance. companionship Management in a social club is carried out by authoritativeally organizing the intellectual working capital to achieve its business goals. The intellectual capit al means the companys intangible assets which improver its valuation. The Core competencies of a company go together with the sustainable competitory expediency.This report explains the branch of acquaintance Management to bring in belligerent service in the Indian IT diligence. It also elaborates on the regularitys on how renewal finish be encouraged in the company. Further, the scraps for KM akin electric resistance to coating change and mum k at a timeledge sharing are discussed. In India companies accept started taking companionship focusing as an important formula as it not only gives a good working civilisation but also improves the return on investments eventually. However, there is still a good scope of improvement in the field of noesis anxiety for the Indian IT industry.The research uses wondernaires and interpretations from interviews to lay away immemorial entropy .Though it gives a all-round(prenominal) analysis, it leaves a further scope for research in the field.CHAPTER 1 macrocosm noesis Management is relatively new buzz in the unified world. It is a tool developed to safeguard the brass from competition in future. Apparently, the physical assets and tangible capacities are not sufficient to sustain a competitive gain in todays market place. What make headway take issueence in the long run are the intangible assets, such as Brands, smart property, friendship and so forth These assets apprise not be bought but harbor to be created within geological formation, by the members of validation over a comp allowion of time.AimThe aim of this report is to identify and analyse the concepts and latest practices of Knowledge guidance in influence to recomm peculiarity ways of propelling first appearance and competitive advantage within the companies.ObjectiveThe Research Objective is to take hold of a comprehensive root of the current Knowledge Management practises. aim and analyse the argufys locutiond by the organizations in implementing Knowledge ManagementKnow the ways of how companies buns propel innovation and competitive advantage.Recommendations in order to improve the company culture.Suggest the methods to attain sustainable competitive advantage handling the challenges faced.Key QuestionsThe guiding principal of my research is as followsHow do companies integrate KM with their company policies?How change should be initiated?What are the levels of pecking order?When the change does very happen?Is KM just for innovation, competitive advantage or more?Are rewards and recognition the way to drive KM?What are the basic challenges for KM?Research ApproachThe research ism is Positivism Philosophy that involves working with an observable social reality. The emphasis is on super structured methodology to facilitate replication, and the end product croup be law-like generalisations similar to those produced by the physical and natural scientists. (Saunders, 2000) This research operates broadly qualitative entropy prayer methods for both primary and secondary selective information. first info was grasped by interviewing the mark bulk of some of the IT companies in India. Questionnaire was intentional to get the views of the employees working in the IT industry.Questionnaires were also designed and used to win primary information. The response of these questionnaires is existence used in order to obtain a lead officular result in the form of percentage. The secondary info has been amass finished books, journals, websites, and so forth All of the research methods pass on be discussed in further detail in the relevant chapter.Research OutcomesThe key outcome of this research would be a perfect understanding of the knowledge wariness practises and to know how companies use it in India for competitive advantage and innovation. and then using this knowledge the tec expects to identify main problems in the current trends and evaluate root words for them. Finally, it also determines the difference amidst being a international corporation (MNC) and small to medium enterprise (SME) with respect to knowledge guidance.CHAPTER 2METHODOLOGYThis chapter describes the research methodology adopted for the report. To start with, this report elaborates on the research philosophy Positivism, moving on towards the various stages of research like primary and secondary data show methods. The reasons behind selecting the recrudesceicular method are also explained in the report.2.1 ApproachThis report includes both primary and secondary data lay in from various sources. secondary winding data refers to data already collected by some one else and primary data is collected for a specific purpose by the researcher (Saunders, 2000).The research philosophy is Positivism Philosophy that involves working with an observable social reality. The emphasis is on highly structured methodology to facilitate replication, and the end product stomach be law-like generalisations similar to those produced by the physical and natural scientists. (Saunders, 2000)2.1.1 Research schemeThis research is based on the quantitative research strategy which involves collection of data from various sources. It also proposes to collect some primary data through and through interviews and questionnaires from people from the IT industry in India.A survey is a method whereby a sample of results is drawn from a population and canvas to make analysis or so the population. The survey strategy enables the researcher to collect a large amount of data in a highly efficient way.2.1.2 Sample SizeFor the interviews there was no such diffidence of number of questions. The interviewees were asked questions in order to know the KM practices in their organization. In occurrence of the questionnaires due to restrictions of time and access code, only 500 questionnaires were distributed to various IT company employees. The reason for distributing the questionnaires to the employees from all the levels and department was to get a clear idea of how employees take the concept of Knowledge steering at their workplace.2.2 Research Stages2.2.1 Secondary Data Collection The first stage of the research was a decisive literature review to obtain the secondary data. Secondary data collected includes the information and concepts from books, journals and websites based on Knowledge management, Organisational behaviour, Knowledge Integration etc. The list of various sources referred can be viewed from the relevant chapter of the report. Access to the books and journals was through Coventry University Library and electronic library databases like FAME, Engineering Village2 etc. Case studies of various companies as mentioned in the appendices were analysed by the researcher in order to get the relevant information and to decide on indisputable concepts considering them as the evidences.2.2.2 Interviews The second stage of the research w as to interview some key people of various IT companies in India. Selection of these companies for the interview was through with(p) on the basis of how KM practices are being carried out there. These vary from the commercialize leaders to the new entrants in the IT industry. Many companies are such that they give been practising good KM marches since a long time, but a fewer have just started to get into it. This was done so because it gave researcher a clear idea of the current scenario in the Indian IT industry. Selecting the best companies entirely would not have helped in introducing the scope of improvement for the research. The interviews were face to face interviews and the researcher has written deplete the important points from the session. The people who have been interviewed were primarily the Knowledge Management Executives in the companies. These were the people who knew exactly what processes are being practised in the company, so interviewing them was the best way to get the enlarge close the KM practices in the companies. Their designations were like senior knowledge officers, captain knowledge officers etc. Confidentiality was requested by the interviewees so company names are not mentioned anywhere.2.2.3 QuestionnairesThe final stage for primary data collection was through questionnaires. The questionnaires designed were distributed to the employees of junior level in the IT companies. It had just 10 questions but they were selected in such a way that the they would serve the main purpose of the survey to understand the current scenario in Indian IT industry among that class of employee by whom the KM practices are expected to follow. Questions selected were simple to serve up so that the reactents are interested in answering till the end of the questionnaire. This also makes it possible to collect maximum responses. These questionnaires were not passed on to the management level or the KM people as the interviews were carried out with them. The researcher wanted to extract information from the employees in the Indian IT companies regarding their views about the Knowledge Management processes in their companies. This was also helpful in getting an overview of the facts about the how aware the Indian bodily world is in regards with knowledge management.CHAPTER 3CRITICAL LITRATURE REVIEW3.1 Introduction3.1.1. What is knowledge?Definition of knowledge countenanced by Schulz (2001) beginning with the 1992 American Heritage Dictionary knowledge is what has been learned from experience or study. Knowledge is a broad concept that usually includes insights, interpretations, and information. organizational knowledge refers to knowledge and information that all, part, or parts of the organization dish out, and that is oft chime ind in standard operating procedures, routines, or rules.Today, knowledge has emerged and is accepted as the or so censorious resource unattached to an organization (Bartlett and G hosal 1993, Davenport and Prusak 1995, Drucker 1993, Leonard-Barton 1992, Nonaka 1991, Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995, Nonaka et al. 2001, Stewart 1997 and 2001, Toffler 1990 and World marge 1998).Knowledge can be defined as the understanding of a concept gained by education, experience or even by unblemished observation. To acquire knowledge means processing of information with the help of cultivation, communication, perception, cogitate and linking. It is the theoretical or practical understanding of information and facts which is obtained by correctly processing the raw data.Here arises the train to understand the difference between data, information and knowledge. Data is the collection of certain facts or values about a particular concept. Information is the processing done on data using relevant theory. The organization of data is nothing but information. The decline of information on the basis of proper understanding is Knowledge. This can be further explained by considering an practice session of solving a quadratic equation. The variables are in the form of information, a value of the variable is data and the feat we carry out with them for calculating the answer is our knowledge.The following figure shows the DIKW (Data Information Knowledge Wisdom) hierarchy as stated by Clark, 2004. formure 1 The DIKW hierarchy (Clark, 2004)Knowledge is generally personal, subjective and inherently local it is order within the heads of employees (www.ichnet.org/glossary.htm 2004)3.1.2 Classification of KnowledgeKnowledge can be categorise as1. silent Knowledge This type of knowledge is hard to break and communicate because it is gained by experience. Tacit knowledge is personnel and context specific. lot carry tacit knowledge in their brain, thus it is not late to tract it. There is no systematic come out to store tacit knowledge as people are many times unsuspecting of their tacit knowledge. However it is the more or less valuable form of knowledge as it is can be acquired only by experience and is not soft found written anywhere.2. explicit Knowledge Explicit knowledge is communicable into a formal systematic language with the help of tacit knowledge. Thus, the code of ones tacit knowledge results into explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge can be in the form of books, manuals, notes, documents etc. The definition of some phenomenon is the explicit part whereas the practical understanding behind the phenomenon is tacit.3. Embedded Knowledge The knowledge contained in some kind of physical form is known as enter knowledge. For example the design of an artefact gives us the basic idea of where it can be used.3.1.3 Knowledge Management.Knowledge management is defined as the process of getting the in good order information to the redress people at the right time, and helping people create knowledge and share and act upon information in ways that leave alone measurably improve the performance of organization and its partne rs. This means providing access to information at the time people need it to make the best closes possible for mission safety and success.According to Wally cease of The Intranet Journal, the following points make up the generalized term Knowledge Management.Knowledge management is the way that organizations create, capture and reuse knowledge to achieve organizational objectives.Knowledge management can also be defined as a process with quadruplet parts that comprise a loop.Knowledge is created. This happens in the heads of people.Knowledge is captured. It is put on paper in a report, entered into a computer system of some kind or barely remembered.Knowledge is classified and modify. The classification can be the addition of keywords it whitethorn be indexing. Modification can add context, background or another(prenominal) things that make it easier to reuse later. The test of this step success is to determine how considerably people in the organization will be able to no nplus and use the knowledge when they need it.Knowledge is shared. When knowledge is shared and used, its modified by the folks who use it. This takes us back to knowledge creation.The process of organizing knowledge in order to get a sustainable development can be termed as Knowledge management. It consists of identification, representation, distribution, application and utilization of available knowledge to get improved performance.Knowledge Management in a company is carried out by systematically organizing the intellectual capital to achieve its business goals. The intellectual capital means the companys intangible assets which increase its valuation.3.2. Knowledge CreationAccording to Nonaka the key to knowledge creation lies in the militarisation and conversion of tacit knowledge. The process of Knowledge creation is done my transformation of tacit and explicit forms thus giving rise to four forms of transformations. This can be further explained with the help of the following diagramFig Nonakas Spiral model.Source Nonaka, I. (1991) The knowledge creating company. Harvard Business Review, 69, (Nov-Dec)Tacit to Tacit socialisationTeam meetings are held to share the experiences of the team members. This trys everyone to share their ideas and also solution of similar problem in the past can be used.Tacit to Explicit ExternalizationThis can be done by having question answer sessions. Here the senior employees are capable of solving the queries of their juniors.Explicit to Explicit CombinationSharing of documents is the best example of this type of transformation. The case studies, notes etc can be exchanged in order to have a faster creation of knowledge.Explicit to Tacit InternalizationInternalization can be done by reading and understanding documents prepared by others. Extracting knowledge from an email received from a colleague is the best example of this.3.3 Knowledge Capture3.4 Knowledge SharingThe World Bark (1998) identifies and discusses the most important decisions that an organization must make in establishing its knowledge management program. These areDeciding with whom to share deciding what to share deciding how to share and deciding to share.3.5 Learning OrganizationA Learning Organization is one in which people at all levels, individually and collectively, are continually increasing their capacity to produce results they really care about. The knowledge organization focuses on enhancing its systems (including people) to continually increase the organizations capacity for performance.The concept of encyclopedism organization can be better understood by considering the following points schoolingAn organization learns many important aspects of business, skills and technology during the process of scholarship. For an organization to come up in a competitive world, it is very important to never let the learning process end.3.5.2 Levels of learningAligning learning with corporate priorities scheming learning for maximu m impactUsing e-business technologies to enable formal and wanton interactionsObtaining recognition by the entire organization that learning is a critical enabler to successCommunity of PracticeArdichvili, Page and Wentling (2003) study participation of practice at Caterpillar Inc and align that when employees view knowledge as a public good belonging to the whole organization, it flows easily. However, even when individuals give the highest precedency to the interest of the organization and of their community, they tend to shy away from contributing knowledge out of fear of criticism or misleading the community members. pull increases knowledge sharing.Essex (2000) discusses a study titled .Beyond knowledge Management spic-and-span ways to Work and Learn undertaken by the Conference Board in New York in early 2000. It says that management support and corporate culture, not technology, drive boffo KM projects.CHANGE what draws people to share varies from organization to orga nization and matches the core values and other processes. Alignment with the current culture and a practical purpose to share is, specifically, what draws people most potently to share knowledge.(Blue http//gbr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/7/1/119)The concept of a community of practice (often abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem collaborate over an extended period to share ideas, gamble solutions, and advance innovationsCommunities of ActionCommunities of CircumstanceCommunities of InterestCommunities of PositionCommunities of aspiration(Source Shin and Bickel (2008) in Chris Kimble and Paul Hildreth (2008). Communities of Practice Creating Learning Environments for Educators. Information eon Publishing)ObstaclesPerformance ManagementNECESSITY OF KNOWLEDGE worryA systematic capture, transfer, and use of internal and external know-how are a vital part of any business strategy.With no common processes for sharing information among employees, partners, and customers, circumscribed information exchange will occur among suppliers and the engineering, manufacturing, and service functions. Consequently, the organization will experience ineffective design reuse, and product launch mistakes will be repeated.If there is no company standard undecomposedise locator or people finder, then the inability to locate subject matter experts will result in lost opportunities, lost time, and being incapable of applying the right resources to significant problems. And with too many different systems, proposals, and pricing sheets, gross revenue representatives cannot have access to information they need when they need it. This can prolong the sales cycle and lead to less-than-best sales solutions offered to the clientWith retirement and turnover, knowledge is walk out the door everyday. New hires do not have the gain ground of past experiences and lessons learned, yet their time-to-competence needs to be compressed.Mergers and sciences result in 2 bodies of knowledge and expertise and two cultures that must assimilate quickly.Portals and e-business are drivers of knowledge management. People want information they can use and trust from a single point of access. Also, an often neglected point is that customers want access to your knowledge and to their business transactions with you.Another driving factor is e-learning. Firms now must know where and how knowledge is really being created and acquired. Knowledge management can set the framework for how learning fits into the overall picture of growing employees and making them productive.The key component of a good knowledge management system is the content itself. If the knowledge management system does not provide users with timely, accurate information, inform them of best practices, and link them to expertise, organizations will not imbibe the full value of their investment in the system. One of the key steps in the strategic design of knowledge management systems is identifying the information already in use within an organization. Although, in theory, an effective knowledge management system is a exchange database of data, information, and knowledge contained within the organization, the act of very creating, maintaining, and using such a central repository is a challenge in practical terms.One of the many benefits of knowledge management is the learning that occurs when a user takes a piece of information from one place, in person transforms it, and creates something new. Although the designers and developers of the knowledge management system can facilitate this type of learning by encouraging those who have the knowledge to capture it, and by excogitation a system that links end users to information that they might find helpful, neither the designers nor the developers could have planned or predicted such this particular act of learning. It happened informally, with out the guidance of an instructor and without the suggestion of a designer. (Carliner, section 1)Knowledge Management takes advantage of a companys information experience and expertise to serve customers better and respond quickly to changing marketing conditions.Successful companies build a corporate environment that fosters a desire for knowledge among their employees and that ensures its continual application, distribution and creation. slight successful companies tend to take a top down approach pushing knowledge to where it is needed. Besides creating an environment that encourages knowledge pull, successful companies outstrip in applying, distributing, and creating knowledge. (Hauschild, 2001)Companies link all their information together and build models that improve processes, product and customer relations. Such companies understand that true knowledge management requires them to develop ways of making workers aware of those links and goes beyond alkali to touch almost ev ery aspect of business.COMPONENTS OF KNOWLEDGE worry SYSTEMThe key component of a good knowledge management system is the content itself. If the knowledge management system does not provide users with timely, accurate information, inform them of best practices, and link them to expertise, organizations will not cook the full value of their investment in the system. One of the key steps in the strategic design of knowledge management systems is identifying the information already in use within an organization. Although, in theory, an effective knowledge management system is a central database of data, information, and knowledge contained within the organization, the act of actually creating, maintaining, and using such a central repository is a challenge in practical terms.One of the many benefits of knowledge management is the learning that occurs when a user takes a piece of information from one place, personally transforms it, and creates something new. Although the designers a nd developers of the knowledge management system can facilitate this type of learning by encouraging those who have the knowledge to capture it, and by designing a system that links end users to information that they might find helpful, neither the designers nor the developers could have planned or predicted such this particular act of learning. It happened informally, without the guidance of an instructor and without the suggestion of a designer.Knowledge Management takes advantage of a companys information experience and expertise to serve customers better and respond quickly to changing marketing conditions.Successful companies build a corporate environment that fosters a desire for knowledge among their employees and that ensures its continual application, distribution and creation. Less successful companies tend to take a top down approach pushing knowledge to where it is needed. Besides creating an environment that encourages knowledge pull, successful companies excel in appl ying, distributing, and creating knowledge.Companies link all their information together and build models that improve processes, product and customer relations. Such companies understand that true knowledge management requires them to develop ways of making workers aware of those links and goes beyond infrastructure to touch almost every aspect of business.ENTERPRISE KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTEnterprise knowledge management entails formally managing knowledge resources in order to facilitate access and reuse of knowledge, veritable(prenominal)ly by using modernistic information technology. KM is formal in that knowledge is classified and categorised according to a prespecifiedbut evolvingontology into structured and semi structured data and knowledge bases. The overriding purpose of enterprise KM is to make knowledge accessible and reusable to the enterprise.Knowledge resources vary for particular industries and applications, but they generally include manuals, letters, summaries of r esponses to clients, news, customer information, competitor intelligence, and knowledge derived from work processes. A encompassing range of technologies are being used to implement KM systems e-mail databases and data warehouses group support systems browsers and search engines intranets and internets expert and knowledge-based systems and intelligent agents. In artificial intelligence, knowledge bases are generated for consumption by so-called expert and knowledge-based systems, where computers use rule inference to answer user questions. Although knowledge acquisition for computer intervening is still important, most recent KM developments make knowledge available for direct human consumption or develop software that processes that knowledge.Historically, KM has been aimed at a single groupmanagersthrough what has been generally referred to as an executive information system. An EIS contains a portfolio of tools such as drill-down access to databases, news source alerts, and oth er information all aimed at supporting managerial decision making. More recently, however, KM systems are increasingly designed for entire organizations. If executives need access to information and knowledge, their employees are also likely to have an interest in and need for that information. In addition, KM technology is ideally suited for non management groupssuch as customer support, where customer service requests and their solutions can be codified and entered into a database available to all customer service representatives.IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTAs organizations store an increasing amount of information and knowledge in data and knowledge warehouses and in data and knowledge bases, they are attempting to manage that knowledge in more efficient ways. Historically, organizational knowledge has been stored on paper and in peoples minds. Unfortunately, paper has limited accessibility and is difficult to update. And when people leave, they take most of their knowledge with them, so reuse is not always feasible. Thus, firms have go to data and knowledge warehouses and to data and knowledge bases to improve accessibility, updatability, and achievability of data and knowledge.Data warehousesIn many companies, one of the first KM tools is a data warehouse. A data warehouse acts as a central storage areaa warehousefor an organizations transaction data. Data warehouses differ from traditional transaction databases in that they are designed to support decision making rather than simply efficiently capturing transaction data. Typically, data warehouses contain multiple years of transaction databases stored in the same database. Data warehouses are not updated on a transaction-by-transaction basis. Instead, the entire database is updated periodically. The size of data warehouses can be substantial. A leading bank in US has a 560-Gbyte data warehouse, for example, and MasterCard On-Line is a 1.2- Tbyte database available to member companies for a fee. Wit h all the data accessible in one place, relationships between data elements can be more effectively explored. Users can browse the data or establish queries, though this type of analysis generally results only in knowledge for particular individuals. An alternative approach is to use a process called knowledge discovery to determine whether there is additional knowledge incomprehensible in the data.Knowledge warehousesRather than the kind of quantitative data typical of data warehouses, knowledge warehouses are aimed more at qualitative data. KM systems generate knowledge from a wide range of databases including Lotus Notes databases, data warehouses, work processes, news articles, external databases, Web pages (both internal and external), and people. Thus, knowledge warehouses are likely to be virtual warehouses where the knowledge is dispersed across a number of servers. In some cases, a Web browser can be used as an interface to a relational database. For example, pass over Re search and Development uses a browsable Oracle database. The database contains manuals and design rules, specifications, and requirements. A