knowledge management resource chapter 1

1. Knowledge Capture and
Codification

2. Tacit Knowledge Capture
• Major approaches to knowledge acquisition
from individuals and groups:
– 1. Interviewing experts.
– 2. Stories.
– Or combinations!!!

3. Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d
• The major tasks carried out by knowledge
engineers in capturing tacit knowledge:
– Analyzing information and knowledge flow.
– Working with experts to obtain information.
– designing and implementing a knowledge
management system or knowledge repository

4. Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d
On the other side are the subject matter experts,
and they had to be able to:
– Explain important knowledge and know-how.
– Be introspective and patient.
– Have effective communication skills.

5. Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d
• Multiple experts are often participants in
knowledge engineering sessions
– cover the range of expertise they represented,
– validate the content,
– provide different perspective, etc.
• Group knowledge acquisition techniques can
also be adopted - for knowledge acquisition at
the community of practice level

6. Interviewing Experts
• To render key tacit knowledge of an individual
into more explicit forms.
– Structured interviewing of subject matter experts
is the most often used technique
• In many organizations, structured interviewing
is performed through exit interviews - held
with knowledgeable staff near retirement age.
• Content management systems are well suited
to publishing their lessons learned and best
practices accumulated over their years of
experience at the organization.

7. Interviewing experts …cont’d
• Structured interviewing techniques require
– strong communication and conceptualization
skills.
– a good grasp of the subject matter at hand.
• Structured interviewing yield specific data that
is often declarative in response to focused
questions.
• Structured interviews may also be used to
clarify or refine knowledge originally elicited
during unstructured interactions.

8. Two types of structured interview
• Open ended
– How does that work?”
– “What do you need to know before you decide?”
– “Why did you choose this one rather than that
one?”
– “What do you know about . . .”?
– “How could . . . be improved?”
– “What is your general reaction to . . . ?”
• Closed

9. Reflective listening
• Four major techniques used in reflective
listening include
– paraphrasing,
– clarifying,
– summarizing, and
– reflecting feelings.

10. Paraphrasing
• Paraphrasing
– the restating of the perceived meaning of the
speaker’s message but using your own words.
– the goal is to check the accuracy with which the
message was conveyed and understood.
• Examples of paraphrasing
– “What I believe you said was . . .”
– “If I am wrong, please correct me but I understood
you to say . . .”
– “In other words, . . .”
– “As I think I understand it . . .”

11. Clarifying
• Clarifying
– lets the expert know that the message was not
immediately understandable.
– responses encourage the expert to elaborate or
clarify the original message so that the interviewer
gets a better idea of the intended message.
– The interviewer should focus on the content not on
the expert’s ability to communicate,
– the expert should be encouraged to elaborate or
explain by using open questions wherever possible

12. Summarizing
• Summarizing
– helps the interviewer compile discrete pieces of
information
– Helps to form a knowledge acquisition session
into a meaningful whole.
– It helps to confirm that the expert’s message was
heard and understood correctly.
The summary should be expressed in the words
of the interviewer.

13. Examples
• Example of clarifying
– “I don’t understand . . .”
– “Could you please explain . . .”
– “Please repeat that last part again . . .”
– “Could you give me an example of that . . .”
• Example of summarizing
– “To sum up what you have been saying . . .”
– “What I have heard you say so far . . .”
– “I believe that we are in agreement that . . .”

14. Reflecting feelings
• Mirrors back to the speaker the feelings that
seem to have been communicated.
• The main focus is on emotions, attitudes, and
reactions, and not on the content itself.
• The purpose is to clear the air of some
emotional reaction or negative impact of the
message.

15. Reflecting feelings
• Some examples are:
– “You seem frustrated about . . .”
– “You seem to feel that you were put on the spot . . .”
– “I sense that you are uncomfortable with . . .”

16. Transcription of interviews
• Transcripts of interviews are analyzed in order to identify key
concepts, common themes, and major methods or techniques
that were mentioned.
– If multiple experts were interviewed for the same
procedure or subject, then conflict resolution might be
needed.
• Usually, each individual will be interviewed more than
once so that interviewers can validate their
understanding of the knowledge that has been elicited,
– Each interview will raise additional questions, whether
these are aimed at clarifying, correcting, or expanding
upon critical elements.
• Subsequent interviews are more focused and target a more
detailed level.

17. Stories
• Stories are another excellent vehicle for both capturing and coding
tacit knowledge.
• An organizational story is a detailed narrative of management
actions, employee interactions, and other intra organizational
events that are communicated informally within the organization.
• A story can be defined as the telling of a happening or a connected
series of happenings,
• An organizational story can be defined as a detailed narrative of
– past management actions,
– employee interactions,
– or other key events that have occurred and that have been
communicated informally

18. Stories …cont’d
• Conveying information in a story provides a rich
context,
• It causing the story to remain in the conscious
memory longer and creating more memory traces
than is possible with information not in context.
• Stories can greatly increase organizational learning,
communicate common values and rule sets, and serve
as an excellent vehicle for capturing, coding, and
transmitting valuable tacit knowledge.

19. Stories …cont’d
• Stories need to evoke some type of response,
– the moral of the story
– The organizational lesson to be learned
should be easily understood, remembered, and acted
upon.
• Organizational stories should have an impact.
• Stories should prevent similar mistakes from being
repeated, or they should promote organizational
learning and adoption of best practices stemming from
the collective organizational memory.

20. • Key elements required to use stories to
encapsulate valuable knowledge
– The story should spring the listener to a new level of
understanding;
– The story should have a happy ending
– The story must be brief and detailed
– Listeners should be encouraged
– True is better than invented

21. Other methods of tacit knowledge
capture
• Learning by doing
• Learning by observations
• Ad hoc sessions.
• Action learning.
• E-learning.
• Learning from others through business guest
speakers and benchmarking

22. Tacit knowledge capture at
organizational level
• Organizational knowledge acquisition is a
qualitatively different process from that which
occurs at individual and group levels.
• At the group level we are primarily concerned
with identifying and coding valuable
knowledge, which is mostly tacit in nature,
• organizational knowledge capture takes place
on a more macro level.

23. Tacit knowledge capture ……..
• Malhotra (2000) proposed and outlined an
approach for knowledge capture at
organizational level.
• Four major organizational knowledge acquisition
processes:
– (1) grafting,
– (2) vicarious learning,
– (3) experiential learning, and
– (4) inferential processes.

24. Grafting
• Involves the migration of knowledge between
firms.
• It is a learning process whereby the firm gains
access to task- or process-specific knowledge
that was not previously available within the
firm.
• Typically achieved through mergers,
acquisitions, or alliances in that there is a
direct passing of knowledge between firms
– An example would be technology transfer or other
forms of explicit knowledge.

25. Vicarious learning
• Vicarious  indirect, mediated, remote
• processes occur through one firm observing
other firms’ demonstrations of techniques or
procedures.
– Examples are benchmarking studies where
companies can adopt the best practices of other
industry leaders.
• This knowledge is more tacit than that
obtained through grafting as it involves
learning how to do something or know-how.

26. Experiential Learning
• Experiential knowledge acquisition involves knowledge
acquisition within a given firm—that is, knowledge
created by doing and practicing.
• Repetition based experience relies on the learning
curve to establish routines and procedures.
• This type of knowledge is initially tacit but can be easily
codified and transferred
• Authors also refer to the processes of single- and
double-loop learning.
– Single-loop learning involves the refinement and
improvement of existing procedures and technologies as
opposed to developing new ones (adaptivity for
efficiency).

27. Inferential Processes
• Learning is within the firm and occurs by doing.
• Knowledge acquisition occurs primarily through
interpretation of events, states, changes, and outcomes
relative to the activities undertaken and decisions made.
• Learning is experimental, deductive learning that seeks
to make sense of occurrences and to establish causal
links between actions and outcomes.
• This type of learning is sometimes called double-loop
learning because it involves changing underlying
assumptions and frameworks (adaptivity for
effectiveness).

28. Tacit knowledge capture ……..
• The results of all four types of organizational
knowledge capture
– will ultimately reside in some type of knowledge
repository.
– is the recipient of organizational memory, and
containers are usually some form of database on
an intranet or extranet.
– Once the capture of such knowledge ocurres – we
can proceed more directly to the codification of
this content.

29. knowledge codification
• Knowledge codification is the next stage of
leverageing knowledge.
• Codification 
– organization, collection, arrangement;
– the creation of content categories;
– Organization of knowledge and making it external
• A formalized procedure is required for the receipt
and codification of individual and group
innovations.

30. Knowledge Codification ….
• converting knowledge into a tangible, explicit form such as a
document,
• Knowledge can be communicated much more widely and with
less cost.
• Documents can be disseminated widely over a corporate
intranet, which makes them available for reference as and
when they are needed, both by existing and by future staff.
• There are, of course, costs and difficulties associated with
knowledge codification.
• The first issue is that of quality, which encompasses
– (1) accuracy, (2) readability/understandability,
– (3) accessibility, (4) currency, and (5) authority/ credibility.

31. Knowledge Codification ….
• Knowledge must be codified in order to be
understood, maintained, and improved upon
as part of corporate memory.