Knowledge management and organizational learning are important for organizations to improve performance over time. Knowledge management is the process of creating, acquiring, capturing, sharing and using knowledge, while organizational learning focuses on improving the organization through experience. There are three types of knowledge - tacit knowledge which is personal and difficult to share, implicit knowledge gained from experience, and explicit knowledge which can be easily transmitted. For an organization to learn, individuals must first learn through interpretation of information, then share knowledge in groups to develop new approaches, and finally the organization institutionalizes lessons through experimentation.

1. Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning

2. Introduction
• Knowledge is often defined as a “justified personal belief.”
• Knowledge refers to understanding of a specific subject or things in
general.
• More precisely, knowledge refers to data, information and wisdom.

3. Data Information Knowledge
It represents Facts, Observations, Values
of Results, Quantitative, Has not been
processed.
It relates to, structured data. meaningful
data describe a particular situation or
condition
It consists of know-how, truths,
perspectives, concepts, judgements,
methodologies.
It is obtained from Observations (input). It gives us definitions. (what, who, when,
where)
It is about action and decision-making
capability.
• Data refer to statistical details which are in raw stage.
• When processed, data become information. Information gives meaning to the data.
• Wisdom enables an individual to temper the information to distinguish between good and
bad and right and wrong.

5. Three Components of Knowledge

6. Types of Knowledge(1)
• Knowledge is intangible, dynamic, and difficult to measure, but without it no
organization can survive.

7. Types of Knowledge (2)
• Tacit knowledge is characterized by the fact that it is personal, context-specific and
obviously difficult to formalize and communicate.
• Tacit knowledge inhabits the minds of people and is (depending on one’s interpretation
of Polanyi’s (1966) definition) either impossible, or difficult, to articulate.
• Implicit knowledge is acquired through observation and direct experience.
• A truck driver, for instance, does not learn the art of driving by listening to lectures
alone. He masters the necessary skills by watching the subtle details as others perform
the task, and by directly experiencing this complex interaction of actions with machine’s
response.
• Similarly, organizations acquire tacit knowledge when employees experiment with new
technology or work on unique projects for clients. Most knowledge in organization is
tacit and one of the challenges in KM is to make implicit understanding explicit so that it
may be stored and shared easily.

8. Types of Knowledge (3)
• Explicit knowledge is transmittable through any systematic language.
• Explicit knowledge exists in the form of words, sentences, documents, organized
data, computer programs and in other explicit forms.
• The information a student receives in a class room is mainly an explicit
knowledge because the professor packages and consciously transfers it to
students. Explicit knowledge is codified, written down and is made available
through printed media.

10. Source of Knowledge
1. People
2. Books
3. Experience
4. Experimentation and
observation
5. Thinking and pondering

12. Knowledge Management (KM)
• Knowledge Management (KM) in simple terms is managing knowledge in
organizations.
• KM may be understood as any process or practice of creating, acquiring,
capturing, sharing and using knowledge in organizations.
• Knowledge Management (KM) refers to a multidisciplined approach to achieve
organizational objectives by making the best use of knowledge.
• The purpose of Knowledge Management is to provide the right information to
the right people at the right time to enable informed decision making which
enables service providers to be more efficient and improve the quality of service
delivered.

13. Knowledge Management (KM)
Definition
• “KM can be defined as a systematic process that creates, captures, shares, and analyzes knowledge in ways that
directly improve performance. It is about helping people to communicate and share information.”
-Parlby, D. 1998
• “Knowledge management is the art of creating value from an organization’s intangible assets.”
- Saviby 2000
• “KM is a newly emerging , interdisciplinary business model dealing with all aspects of knowledge within the
context of the firm, including knowledge creation , codification, sharing and how these activities promote learning
and innovation.”
-Berkeley, 2001
• “The systematic process of creating, maintaining and nurturing an organization to make the best use of knowledge
to create business value and generate competitive advantage.”
-Nancy C. Shaw 2004.
• “The aim of Knowledge Management is to support Organizational Learning.
-Lehner and Maier, 2000

14. Components of KM
• Collaboration is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together
to realize shared goals.
• Content Management is the set of processes and technologies that support the collection,
managing, and publishing of information in any form or medium.
• Search: To make a careful examination or investigation of problem, search one's conscience for
the right solution to the problem.
• Taxonomy management is the science which deals with the study of identifying, grouping, and
naming organisms according to their established natural relationship.
• Business Process Management: is a holistic management approach focused on aligning all
aspects of an organization with the wants and needs of clients. It promotes business
effectiveness and efficiency while striving for innovation, flexibility, and integration with
technology.
• Business Intelligence: refers to computer-based techniques used in identifying, extracting, and
analyzing business data, such as sales revenue by products and/or departments, or by
associated costs and incomes.

15. Central concept of KM
• Putting individuals in touch with one another to share their tacit knowledge.
• Transforming individuals’ tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, which can be
used by the entire organization.
• So, Knowledge Management can be interpreted as the ability to get the right
information to the right people at the right time, and in the right place.

17. Why KM?
 It creates value, and gain and sustain competitive advantage.
 Saves money by not reinventing the wheel for each new project.
 Reduces costs by decreasing and achieving economies of scale in obtaining information
from external providers.
 Increases productivity by making knowledge available more quickly and easily.
 Provides workers with a more democratic place to work by allowing everyone access to
knowledge. Learning faster to stay competitive.

18. Benefits of KM
1. Competitive advantage
2. Attraction and retention of talent
3. Innovation through free-flow of ideas
4. Enhanced customer satisfaction through streamlined response time
5. Reduced cost, improved performance, improved productivity and increased revenues
6. improve quality of service to users
7. increase adoption of self service
8. Reduce time to diagnose incidents and problems
9. Reduction in training time and costs
10. faster adoption of new or changed services
11. increase responsiveness to changing business demands.

19. Knowledge Generation Strategies

20. KM strategies in Organization
► Rewards (as a means of motivating for knowledge sharing)
► Storytelling (as a means of transferring tacit knowledge)
► Cross-project learning
► After action reviews
► Knowledge mapping (a map of knowledge repositories within a company
accessible by all)
► Expert directories (to enable knowledge seeker to reach to the experts)
► specific subject

21. In Successful KM Programs
► Information is widely disseminated throughout the organization.
Wherever it is needed, it is accessible.
►Accessible at a fast rate of speed.
►Virtual communities of practice share what is known in a global
fashion, independent of time zones and other geographic limitations.
►Business boundaries are broad, and often virtual in nature.
►Collaboration to support continuous innovation and new knowledge
creation.

22. Symptoms of KM diffusion challenges
• No internal learning communities
• Lack of psychological safety
• Lack of workplace trust
• Arrogance of people who believe they know everything, so why try?
• Lack of communication within an organization made evident by
continually reinventing the same wheel
• Negativity and unrealistic expectations

23. Roots of Knowledge Management

24. Organizational Learning
• Learning is the process of acquiring new understanding, knowledge, behaviors,
skills, values, attitudes, and preferences.
• Organizational learning is the process by which an organization improves itself
over time through gaining experience and using that experience to create
knowledge. The knowledge created is then transferred within the organization.
• Organizational learning is important for all companies, as the creation, retention
and transfer of knowledge within the organization will strengthen the
organization as a whole.

25. Organizational Learning
1. Dodgson (1993) explains OL as
o the way firms build,
o supplement,
o organize knowledge,
o routines around their activities, within their cultures,
o adapt and develop organizational efficiency by improving the use of the broad skills of their
workforces.
2. Kullunga (2001) defined OL as “encouraging a learning curve within an
organization such that employees at all levels, individually and collectively,
continually increase their capacity to improve their level of performance.”
From these definitions, OL can be summarized as the set of actions to acquire, share
and interpret knowledge among the members whose main objective is to increase
company performance through improved quality of decision-making in the
organization.

26. What is organizational learning theory?
• The theory of organizational learning focuses on the creation of knowledge
and the use of that knowledge within an organization.
• Key aspects of organizational learning theory are that learning happens when
people interact while finding and solving problems.
• Organizational learning theory stresses the importance of developing a
learning culture within an organization.
• According to this theory, organizations should:
Develop a culture that prizes knowledge sharing
Take time to learn the lessons that failure can teach
Encourage employees of all levels to continue their education on a regular basis
Allow individuals and teams to challenge the status quo of the organization

27. Why is organizational learning important?
• The importance of organizational learning is shown by the various benefits that occur in
organizations that develop a learning culture:
1. Increased employee job satisfaction
2. Lower turnover rates
3. Increased productivity, profits and efficiency
4. Developing leaders at all levels
5. Enhanced adaptability throughout the organization
• When organizations dedicate time and resources to developing a learning culture and
implementing organizational learning, they are more competitive.
• This increased ability to react quickly to fast-changing market conditions is just one of the
reasons why organizational learning is important.
• An organization that embraces the lessons that can be learned from failure and studies its
own processes will be an organization that contains more knowledge about best practices,
and will be much more able to adapt.
• By creating an environment where all employees are teachers and students, there is an
equal exchange of information that allows each person to contribute in a substantial
manner.

28. Level of Learning
• Jeffries et al. (2003) developed a perspective by defining the levels of OL as
three phases beginning at the individual level by interpreting and reflection,
maturing at group level by integration and conceptualization and finally
reaching the organization level by institutionalizing and experimentation.
• Individual Learning is the foundation for the existence of organization’s
learning and it should be enhanced to lead to more effective OL.
• Group/Team Learning is an inseparable step of OL since teams provide new
approaches to the learning process, cause fundamental organizational
changes by functioning as a bridge between the individuals and the
organization (Marquardt,1996).
• Organizational Learning requires the crucial step of the transformation of
individual learning into OL.

29. Types of Learning
• Single-loop learning involves an organization to respond to changes in its
environment by detecting errors and correcting them, but maintaining its
existing organizational norms.
• Double –loop learning, on the other hand, involves the revision of
organizational culture, assumptions, guidelines, objectives, strategies and
structure of an organization. It is a process of creative renewal and rediscovery
of an organization to remain competitive (Senge 1990).

31. Organizational Learning Process (1)
Organizational
Memory
Information
Interpretation
Information
Distribution
Knowledge
Acquisition

32. Organizational Learning Process(2)
• Knowledge Acquisition
External
• monitoring the environment
 Internal
• information systems
• manage and retrieve information
• research development
• education
• training
• Information Distribution
Informal
• Tacit know-how
• Letters Memos
• Conversations Stories by employees
Formal
• Seminar Reports
• Information systems

33. Organizational Learning Process(3)
• Interpretation
Huber (1991) states that
individuals and groups have
prior belief structures that shape
their interpretation of
information and thus the
formation of meaning.
So, to share the information
firstly, it should be interpreted.
• Organizational Memory
Hard information
Data Intranet/internet systems
Warehousing
Soft information
Experiences
Tacit know-how
List of contacts

34. • It is important that the organization ensures that the knowledge
gained from this process is retained within the organization and
is transferable.
• Knowledge retained by individuals cannot be properly retained,
as individuals can leave, taking their knowledge with them.
Embedded knowledge can be kept within the organization and
shared with all individuals.
• To define organizational learning is to understand the importance
of creating a learning culture within an organization.
• This type of learning benefits both individuals, teams, and the
organization as a whole.
Organizational Learning Process(4)