Thursday 2 April 2009

Implementing KM in Organizations

In recent rsearch, knowledge-based theory of firms suggests that knowledge is the organizational asset that enables sustainable competitive advantage in hypercompetive environments. Many organizations are developing information systems desigined specifically to facilitate the sharing and integration of knowledge, these systems are referred to as Knowledge Management Systems (KMS).

Wiig (1997) coined KM as the systematic, explicit, and deliberate building, renewal, and application of knowledge to maximize an enterprise's knowledge-related effectiveness and returns from its knowledge assets. It can be seen as a way to improve performance, value, productivity, and competitiveness, a way to capture best practices, a way to increase speed and meet customer needs, and a way to become a more innovative organization.
Barney (1995) opines that before KM is formally implemented, an organization needs to solve four questions:


  • Where is the value of knowledge?
  • How does the organization develop and exploit the special characteristics of knowledge and again greater competitiveness?
  • How does the organization avoid being imitated by other organizations of its special characteristics of KM
  • How does the organization organize the exploitation of resources in order to implement KM?
In the implementation of KM in organizations five factors are been considered according to Barney (2005) and Nesbitt (2002) which are business strategy, organizational structure, K team, K audit and K map.

Business strategy

This Strategy expresses in what direction the company will be heading towards in the future, which is the organization business goal . The efforts to link KM programs to business strategy have become a vital source of competitiveness for all organizations. ( Cook,1999) states that “knowledge drives strategy and strategy drives KM.” A study done by the America Productivity and Quality Center (1999) concludes that organizations pursuing different KM strategies tend to be more successful when the strategy employed is aligned to their business goal or strategy. It is important for the organizations that wish to implement KM to ensure that their knowledge strategy and knowledge program are consistent with their corporate ambitions or goals.



Organizational structure

Ebert and Griffin (2005) states that organizational structure can be defined as the specification of jobs to be done within an organization and the ways in which those jobs relate to one another. The hierarchical structure of an organization affects the people with whom individuals frequently interact, and to or from whom they are consequently likely to transfer knowledge. Knowledge sharing is likely to occur within a larger group of individuals in more decentralized organizations. The matrix structures and an emphasis on leadership instead of management also facilitate greater knowledge sharing primarily by cutting across traditional departmental boundaries . Organizational structure based on traditional command and control, also but this kind of structure will be quite inflexible in distributing and sharing knowledge laterally and across the teams with the organization. Therefore, to facilitate effective knowledge transfer in organizations, it is suggested that a decentralized and matrix structure is vital to ensure the organizations ability to adapt with the rapidly changing environment.

K team

Teams are groups of two or more people who interact and influence each other, are mutually accountable for achieving common objectives, and perceive themselves as a social entity within an organization (Cohen and Bailey, 1997). It allows organizations to apply diverse skills and experiences toward their processes and problem solving within and outside the organization. Soliman and Spooner (2000) found that K teams are required not only to improve the performance of the enterprise but also to ensure the effectiveness of the KM program. The major responsibility of a K team is to build, implement, focus, and deploy the knowledge management system (KMS). As KMS is built on expertise, knowledge, understanding, skills, and insights by a variety of stakeholders who might have little in common from a functional standpoint. The quality of collaborative relationship among these stakeholders determines the ultimate success of the system. Since KM is essential in organizations, it is important that a strong and capable K team that is formed by different functional departments is important to ensure a smooth and effective implementation of KM in organizations.

K audit

Knowledge of knowledge assets is critical to the proper planning of a KMS and is a rich source of information about the strengths of an organization. Therefore, organizations should begin their KM practices by taking responsibility for and appraising what knowledge is already available by benchmarking successful acquisition or best practices or by maintaining a curriculum vitae file of the personnel or by organizing experience swapping sessions Beijersr (2000). Knowledge assets must be exploited internally in order for its full value to be realized by the owner.Therefore, every organization needs to identify where knowledge resides in the organization. This is very important when designing strategies to ensure that knowledge is being created, transferred, and protected in the right way and with the right individuals. Therefore, it is vital for organizations to carry out K audit so as to examine what knowledge assets they have in their organizations prior to KM implementation. If this is not done,organizations would have no focus and may waste their time and effort in investing in something from the beginning again which had already been owned by them. With the adequate consideration of these factor in an organizations, knowledge management will be implemented through understanding the organization problems and relating it to organizational goals and culture.


References


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