3. Why a social, sharing approach failed to
withstand major change
• Compared with the developed countries in the world, china
approached knowledge management relatively late- it wasn’t until
the late 1990s that the concept of KM was properly introduced in the
country. But just as in other countries, KM was soon well accepted by
practioners and academics especially when some transnational
corporations promoted KM in their subsidiaries.
4. Why a social, sharing approach failed to
withstand major change
• In general, most of these KM Pioners started their practices by
following their headquarters outside china. Such a top-down
approach usually requires employees to rely on IT system for KM
processes. This explain why a recent survey by a Chinese consulting
company, landray, revealed that 37 percent of the managers regarded
KKM merely as the use of information technology systems.
5. Failure or forerunner?
• As a member of the first group of foreign companies entering
mainland china, HP has been a trend setter not only for its
technological edge but also for its management practices.
6. Failure or forerunner?
• The next 18 month saw a series of KM practices organized by this
committee, including:
1. Knowledge Documentation
2. Standardization
3. Book-reading association
4. Formal and informal learning institutions
5. The mentoring system
7. When the KM programs stalled
• In early 2003, Compaq employees began integrating into HP china
offices and several issues became apparent. Gao was responsible for
the integration project at that time and it was highly demanding. He
quickly found himself fully engaged in activities beyond HM and some
of the KM practices that had been running for over a year in HP china
were suspended because of personnel movement.
8. Difficulties in KM implementation
• When HP China formally appointed gao jianhua as CKO, few
organizations had established systematic KM system – there was no
practical experience to refer to in mainland China.
• Three years have now passed since HP China’s attempt and
indigenous organizations including tsingtao beer company and Lenovo
have begun to emphasize the importance of knowledge in enchancing
competitive advantage and they tentatively carry out some practices
of cultivate KM in the organization
9. Chinese culture and knowledge sharing
• Four patterns of knowledge transfer between explicit and tacit
1. Explicit to explicit
• Internal website for self, study book, reading association
2. Explicit to tacit
• Frequent seminars among employees internal website for self learning
3. Tacit to explicit
• Standardized working process documentation of knowledge
4. Tacit to tacit
• Mentoring system encouraging communication and coordination
10. Task-related and leader-initiated KM practices
• One of the criticisms of HP china’s KM practices is that these practices
were not closely aligned with job related activities. Most practices
were designed to nurture people’s willingness of sharing knowledge.
• Another concern when integrating KM into the business Operations is
the seniority of the executive involved. It’s noticeable that during the
whole process of KM implementation in HP cina, Gal Jianhua played a
critical role. As a CKO at a senior level, Gao guaranted the intensiry of
KM in the organization. Taking a top-down approach, Gao Jianhua was
successful in getting the KM practices running with sufficient
organizational support.
11. KM environment and IT support
• Four types of approaches emerge from different combinations of
these tow emphases:
1. Strong environment development + strong IT support: its ideal if a
adequate it system is introduced into an organization where the
concept of KM has been instilled into the mind of individual employees
where formal KM machanisms have been existing side by side with
business operations and effective KM practices have been set up to
stimulate knowledge creation, knowledge sharing and knowledge
application
12. KM environment and IT support
2. Strong environment development + week IT support: Gao Jianhua
began with KM elimate cultivation and intentionally avoided the use of
IT for sharing knowledge
13. KM environment and IT support
3. Weak environment development + strong IT support: taking a
technological approach, the use of it becomes the spring board of KM
projects.
14. KM environment and IT support
4. Weak environment development + weak IT support: not all
organizations need to surf the wave of KM. some organizations are
indifferent to developing a KM environment or upgrading their IT
systems to promote KM
