1. Amity Business School
ABS KM ABS
• What is Knowledge?
• Need for KM.
Amity Business School • Importance of Knowledge sharing.
Knowledge Management
• Understanding the difference between
MBA, Semester-2 knowledge, data and information
Teena Bagga • Managing Knowledge for organizational
effectiveness
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Data, Information, ABS What is Knowledge? ABS
Knowledge and Wisdom • Knowledge is information with decision-making and action-directed
utility and purpose.
• Knowledge is defined by some as “a justified true belief”
• (Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995)
• Different from data & information, Knowledge is at the higher level in a
hierarchy with information at the middle level, and data to be at the
lowest level.
• Knowledge can be defined as the “understanding obtained through the
process of experience or appropriate study.”
• Knowledge can also be an accumulation of facts, procedural rules, or
heuristics.
– A fact is generally a statement representing truth about a subject matter or
domain.
– A procedural rule is a rule that describes a sequence of actions.
– A heuristic is a rule of thumb based on years of experience.
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What is Knowledge? ABS What is Knowledge? ABS
• Intelligence implies the capability to acquire and apply • By knowledge we mean human understanding of a
appropriate knowledge. subject matter that has been acquired through proper
– Memory indicates the ability to store and retrieve relevant study and experience.
experience according to will. • Knowledge is usually based on learning, thinking, and
– Learning represents the skill of acquiring knowledge using the proper understanding of the problem area.
method of instruction/study.
• Knowledge is not information and information is not data.
• Experience relates to the understanding that we
develop through our past actions. • Knowledge is derived from information in the same way
information is derived from data.
• Knowledge can develop over time through successful
experience, and experience can lead to expertise. • We can view it as an understanding of information based
on its perceived importance or relevance to a problem
• Common sense refers to the natural and mostly
area.
unreflective opinions of humans.
• It can be considered as the integration of human
perceptive processes that helps them to draw
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meaningful conclusions. 6
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2. Amity Business School
KM ABS Need for KM? ABS
• Most vital resource of today’s enterprise is Knowledge
• Knowledge management (KM) may simply be • Collective knowledge residing in the minds of the
defined as doing what is needed to get the most organization’s employees, customers, and vendors
out of knowledge resources. • Many benefits to learning how to effectively manage
• In general, KM focuses on organizing and organizational knowledge
making available important knowledge, Leveraging core business competencies
Accelerating innovation and time to market
wherever and whenever it is needed.
Improving cycle times and decision making
• KM is also related to the concept of intellectual Strengthening organizational commitment
capital. Building sustainable competitive advantage
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Intellectual Capital: ABS Need for KM? ABS
Human vs. Structural Capital
• Increasing Domain Complexity
Human capital
– Intricacy of internal and external processes, increased competition,
• The body of knowledge the company possesses and the rapid advancement of technology all contribute to increasing
• Knowledge in the minds of Microsoft and Yahoo’s software domain complexity.
developers, researchers, academic collaborators, business – Example: New product development now typically requires not only
managers, … brainstorming sessions by freethinking product designers but also
• Also, knowledge in the minds of vendors and customers partnership of interorganizational teams representing many various
Structural capital functional subunits (finance, marketing, engineering, …)
• Everything that remains after the employees go home • Accelerating Market Volatility
• Copyrights, customer files, business process software, databases, – The pace of change, or volatility, within each market domain has
software manuals, trademarks, organizational structures, … increased rapidly in the past decade.
• In other words, organizational capability – Market and environmental influences can result in overnight changes
• Intellectual capital is abundant – but there are still no standard tools in an organization.
to manage it as an asset!
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Need for KM? ABS So, what does this mean? ABS
• Intensified Speed of Responsiveness
– The time required to take action based upon subtle changes within • Faced with increased complexity, market volatility and
and across domains is decreasing. Rapid advances in technology is accelerated responsiveness, today’s younger manager
continually changing the decision-making landscape. Decisions must feels less adequate to make the difficult decisions faced
be made and implemented quickly – otherwise the window of
each day.
– opportunity closes.
• Diminishing Individual Experience • KM is important for organizations that continually face
– Because trends change so rapidly, a decision-maker’s experience downsizing or a high turnover percentage due to the
may not be relevant to the decision that needs to be made (even nature of the industry.
when the individual has been with the organization for years).
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3. Amity Business School
KM ABS Knowledge Management Systems ABS
• Knowledge is first created in the people’s minds. KM practices • Information technology facilitates sharing as well as
must first identify ways to encourage and stimulate the ability accelerated growth of knowledge.
of employees to develop new knowledge.
• Information technology allows the movement of information
• KM methodologies and technologies must enable effective at increasing speeds and efficiencies.
ways to elicit, represent, organize, re-use, and renew this
knowledge. • “Today, knowledge is accumulating at an ever increasing
• KM should not distance itself from the knowledge owners, but
rate. It is estimated that knowledge is currently doubling
instead celebrate and recognize their position as experts in every 18 months and, of course, the pace is increasing...
the organization. Technology facilitates the speed at which knowledge and
• KM ideas proliferate” Bradley [1996]
– 80% - Organizational culture & human factors • Knowledge management mechanisms are organizational
– 20% - Technology or structural means used to promote KM.
• To effectively apply Artificial Intelligence, we must understand • The use of leading-edge information technologies (e.g.,
Human Intelligence and Human-Computer Interaction… Web-based conferencing) to support KM mechanisms
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KMS ABS Types of Knowledge ABS
• Knowledge management systems (KMS): the synergy • e·pis·te·mol·o·gy n. The branch of philosophy that
between latest technologies and social/structural studies the nature of knowledge, its presuppositions and
mechanisms. foundations, and its extent and validity.
• Latest Technology+ Social/Structural Mechanisms=KMS • Epistemology is a very old field with a long history.
• KM systems classification are based on observations • There are many classifications and characterizations of
on the KM systems implementations: types of knowledge, e.g.: individual, social, causal,
– Knowledge Discovery Systems. conditional, relational and pragmatic; embodied,
– Knowledge Capture Systems. encoded and procedural etc.
– Knowledge Sharing Systems. • We must know what knowledge is, if we wish to manage
– Knowledge Application Systems. it effectively!
• One of the primary differences between traditional
information systems and KM systems is the active role
that users of KM systems play on building the content of
such systems. 15 16
Subjective/Objective View of ABS Procedural vs. Declarative ABS
Knowledge Knowledge
• According to the subjective view, reality is entirely dependent on 1. Declarative knowledge (or substantive knowledge) focuses on
human perception, and is socially constructed through interactions beliefs about relationships among variables.
with individuals. • e.g., “all other things being equal, greater price charged for a
– Knowledge has no existence independently of social practices and human product would cause some reduction in its number of sales”
experiences.
• Can be stated in the form of logical propositions, expected
– Knowledge is not an independent object.
correlations, or formulas relating concepts represented as logical
– Knowledge has no single location.
symbols and/or mathematical variables.
– Knowledge is viewed as an ongoing accomplishment, which continuously affects
and is influenced by social practices. • Often characterized in KM circles as “know-what”.
– Knowledge is State of Mind 2. Procedural knowledge focuses on beliefs relating procedures or
– Knowledge is Practice processes: sequences of steps or actions to desired (or undesired)
outcomes.
– e.g., the procedure that should be followed in a government
organization in deciding on whom to ward the contract for a
particular area (e.g., information system development
– Often characterized in KM circles as “know-how”.
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4. Amity Business School
Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge ABS Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge ABS
• Explicit knowledge refers to knowledge that has been • We often convert explicit knowledge to tacit
expressed into words and numbers
knowledge
– e.g., basic principles for stock market analysis as in a textbook
– Such knowledge can be used by investors to make buy/sell – e.g., when an individual reads a book and learns from
decisions it (but not by rote memorization, which would still be
– Can be shared formally and systematically in the form of data, explicit knowledge)
specifications, manuals, drawings, audio or videotapes, computer
programs, patents, etc.
• We can sometimes convert tacit knowledge to
• Tacit knowledge includes insights, intuitions, and hunches, explicit knowledge
that are not verbalized or documented – e.g., when an individual with lots of tacit knowledge
– e.g., stock market analysts who make recommendations to writes a book formalizing that knowledge
investors concerning likely short-term and long-term market trends – Often a difficult conversion that requires hard efforts !
within some industry, based on years of observation
– Difficult to express and formalize, Therefore often difficult to share
(can’t tell somehow how to do it!)
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General vs. Specific ABS Technically vs. Contextually ABS
Knowledge Specific Knowledge
• General knowledge is possessed by a large number of • Technically specific knowledge is deep knowledge about
individuals and can be transferred easily across a specific area.
individuals – Includes tools and techniques for solving problems in that area.
– e.g., headache is one symptom of brain hemorrhage – Often acquired via formal training + experience in the field.
• Specific knowledge, or “idiosyncratic knowledge”, is – e.g., knowledge about computer hardware possessed by an
possessed by a very limited number of individuals, and is engineer
expensive to transfer • Contextually specific knowledge refers to the knowledge
• e.g., how to operate on a patient suffering a stroke of particular circumstances of time and place in which
work is to be performed.
– e.g., the detailed knowledge that design engineers possess
about the characteristics of the particular design group in which
they are working
– Cannot be acquired through formal training.
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ABS
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