Chapter 6: Knowledge Management in Practice

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          In the context of KM, CoPs are generally understood to mean electronically linked communities. Electronic linkage is not essential of course, but since KM arose in the consulting community from the awareness of the potential of Intranets to link geographically dispersed organizations, this orientation is understandable and inevitable. The organization and maintenance of CoPs is not a simple and easy undertaking. As Durham, M. [2004] points out, there are several key roles to be filled, which she describes as manager, moderator, and thought leader. They need not necessarily be three separate people, but in some cases they will need to be.


  If we create a matrix in which the rows are KM Processes and the columns KM Procedures and Practices, and in which the ordering, top to bottom and left to right is roughly in chronological or developmental order, and we check which process a practice or procedure is primarily designed to serve, the matrix looks like


That matrix reveals several interesting things. Almost everything one does in KM is designed
to help find information and knowledge.However, if we assume that the main goal ofKMis to share knowledge and even more importantly to develop new knowledge, then the Knowledge Audit and the Tags, Taxonomies and Content Management stages are the underpinnings and the tools. It is the knowledge sharing and knowledge creation of one on one communications enabled by expertise locators, and the communal sharing and creation of knowledge enabled by communities of practice toward which KM development should be aimed.


than this figure show us about process and practices matrix

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Chapter 5 : Knowledge Acts

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First, You must find how and what the knowledge we have and we must have. then you can  post the content of the knowledge,after that, you can keep your knowledge growth with Reusing the knowledge you have described before it.

There are many philosophers and Scientist opinion about "What is Knowledge Acts?" :


-Searle, J., 1969] : Question asking and answering is a foundational process by which what people know tacitly becomes expressed, and hence, externalized as knowledge. To support such a view, we borrow from speech acts theory.


-Hirschheim et al. [1995] : that amongst others categorizes question asking as a form of a speech act. In adapting the theory


-Boahene and Ditsa [2003] : describe types of speech acts that pertain to aspects of either Knowledge Management (KM), or Information Management (IM). For example.-


Quigley and Debons [1999] : suggest that Information Management systems target a base of expressive speech acts by mainly supporting the recall of meaning-attribution while Knowledge Management systems target regulative and constantive speech acts primarily to support the organization and management of dynamic complexity. They reason that IM addresses questions such as ‘Where,’ ‘Who,’ ‘When,’ and ‘What,’ while KM targets problems involving dynamic complexity, addressing solutions to questions such as ‘How’ and ‘Why.


-O’Dell and Jackson [1998] : Contributing content such as lessons-learned, project experiences, and success stories is another approach to knowledge sharing. The capturing of best practice has often been highlighted as a form of externalized knowledge.




     Information used in one activity that results in new knowledge will, in turn, be used to guide selection of alternatives in future tasks that involve decision making. Codified rules and routines would be relied on to support evaluation of alternatives and selection of action decisions. Choice of alternatives, and decision outcomes then provide the backdrop upon which sense making, or justification, of decision rationale occurs. Such decision rationale, and its associated sense making can then be codified for (re)use in other contexts, applied to future activities that draw on it to create new instances of knowledge.


 In such decision oriented activity, we have proposed that “what-if ” questions are the dominant type of speech act performed.Support for such scenario predicting questions will demand rich context upon which to apply knowledge of the past and the present to bear on the problem or situation at
hand.We would like to refocus the discussion of knowledge management strategy to the demands of complex, dynamic, contextual, and emergent decision processes. The next section of the paper gives an overview of knowledge management processes, procedures, and practices. Chapter 8 discusses how they are related to decision making.

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Chapter 4: Conceptualizing Knowledge Emergence

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4.1 GATEKEEPERS, INFORMATION, STARS,AND BOUNDARY SPANNERS

The seminal work was that of Thomas J. Allen of MIT [Allen and Cohen, 1969, Allen,T.,1977] who conducted a number of studies relating to information flow in industrial and corporate R&Dlaboratories. Allen coined the term ‘Gatekeeper’ to describe the information flow stars that he discovered, the heavily connected nodes in the information flow pattern.

Another finding was that the information flow structure was not at all closely related to the formal organizational structure, and that the information stars did not map onto any consistent pattern of organizational placement or level.

In the context of KM, this tradition relates very directly to the development of Communities of Practice(CoP). Given the relative non-alignment of organizational structure and information flowand sharing,CoPs can be seen as the setting up of an alternative structure to facilitate information flow and sharing.

4.2 RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AND KNOWLEDGE

The ‘Gatekeepers, Information Stars & Boundary Spanner’ tradition is very consistent with a substantial body of work studying research productivity. Koenig,M. [1992a], for example, in the context of the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, studied the relationship between research productivity and the information environment in which that research was conducted.

Note the relationship with with research or project success and corporate culture that relatively egalitarian and enjoys relatively unobtrusive status indicators

There are also, in this overall tradition, two books in recent years that have been very well received and that offer valuable insights about information flow and information use in amodern organizational environment,Davenport and Prusak [1998a] WorkingKnowledge, andBrown and Duguid [2000a] The Social Life of Information.

4.3 LACK OF RECOGNITION OF THESE FINDINGS IN THE BUSINESS COMUNITY

As Allen pointed out in his study, there is a surprising lack of recognition of these findings about the importance of information stars in the business community. This is, in fact, a subset of an even larger problem – the lack of recognition of or even obtuseness to the importance of information and information related managerial actions in the business community. For example, one major study that reviewed a large corpus of work on R&D innovation, [Goldhar et al., 1976], concluded that there are six characteristics of environments that are conducive to technological innovations.

Another similarly rigorous study (Orpen,C.1985) examined productivity in R&D intensive electronics/instrumentation organizations

4.4 COMUNITY BASED MODEL

The idea of Community of Practice [Wenger and Snyder, 1999], which descends logically from the “Gatekeepers, Information Stars, Boundary Spanners” stream of development has been cited frequently as an important knowledge sharing model. Theres many system that no doubt, where systems will be replaced by others as technology advances, and their capabilities and functionality will increase. The system such as ComputerMediated Communication (CMC), GroupDecision Support Systems (GDSSs), and Decision Support Systems (DSS).

4.5 REPOSITORY MODEL

Markus,M. [2001] argues that the purpose and content of knowledge records in repositories often differ depending on who needs the documentation: the content producer, similar others, or dissimilar others. Those in the education and training fields may also see great potential in repository and reuse applications. For example, an entire course can be broken down into chunks with the smaller segments presented as just-in-time training on request.

Financial firms,IT departments,law firms,and other who depend on frequently updated information and new legislative materials are just a few types of organizations that can make good use of the repository and re-use model

4.6 ACTIVITY-BASED MODEL

Engeström, Y. [1999] research, using activity systems as cycles of expansive learning in work practices, also points to the importance of activities as providing the necessary context for grounding organizational knowledge. Hasan, H. [2003] proposed rudiments of a KM system influenced by activity-based models that would link work activities with people and content.Kwan and Balasubramanian(2003) take the notion a step further,they propose the design of a KM system they call Knowledge Scope that provides integrated workflow support to capture a knowledge as an organizational process within the context it is created and used.

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