Dear Sir,

You ask a pertinent question related to knowledge management

Since knowledge management involves multiples processes, then it would make sense to include knowledge transfer processes as an integral part. Which reminds me of the works of Winter and Szulanski (2001) where they develop and propose two dsitinct theoretical notions: Arrow Core and Template to explain knowledge transfer in a replication strategy context.

Hello Kedebe

If you are after practical methods that are known to work and have value in the business environment then look to Knowledge Centred Support (KCS) by the Consortium for Service Innovation http://www.serviceinnovation.org/kcs/ 

In addition, a favourite source of information on KM for me is David Gurteen:  http://www.gurteen.com 

I hope that this assists you.

Kind regards

Simone Moore

 Dear Leslie Sikos

Thank you so much for the very useful reference list (links). I truly appreciate your quick action in response to my questions on KM.

Regards

Kebede

Hi Kebede,

I'm not as well versed in theories of KM, but I can provide guidance on some of the challenges facing knowledge consumption, which may help guide Knowledge Capture and perhaps provide insight on how we may want to "manage it".  If we examine the jobs that consumers of knowledge are trying to get done, we can work backwards to determine how best to deliver knowledge services. This is an outcome-driven approach, which I've used in a number of organizations. Let me know if this resonates, and I can provide more detail and cite scenarios that may be useful for your office.  

Regards,

Jeffrey

Dear Jeff

Many thanks for your valuable advice. It is highly appreciated. Indeed, this is a most welcome service and I would love to get more from your side. 

I look forward to hearing from again.

Kebede

Hi Kebede,

Here's my email info. Reach out and let me know a good time to conference and I can walk you through some pragmatic examples.  

Regards

Jeffrey

([email protected])

Hi Kebede,

 I am pursuing my PhD degree in knowledge management. There are many theories related to knowledge management  but there is no universally accepted definition of knowledge management and even knowledge sharing as knowledge is not some constant which can be explored in one direction rather is diverse and context specific.

I think you should also explore the knowledge strategies  in parallel to knowledge management and sharing.

Regards

Rafique 

Dear Kebede,

You may find this article useful as it highlights some knowledge management frameworks.

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/kmrp/journal/v4/n2/full/8500090a.html

Here is another link to a KM framework by Pawlowski & Bick (2012), which you may find useful to organise your activities. www.ejkm.com/issue/download.html?idArticle=314

Hope these help...

Regards,

Ritesh

For a reference text, you could do worse than dip in and out of Knowledge management in theory and practice (Kimiz Dalkir). The ISBN of the hardback second edition (2011) is 978-0-262-01508-0. At the very least, this will give a list of journals worth searching.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Knowledge-Management-Theory-Practice-Dalkir/dp/0262015080

 Dear colleagues (Ritesh and Bruce)

Thank you very much for your pertinent suggestions and for the useful links. I will go through the sources and will see what is in them. 

Best

Kebede:

I'm curious to know more about the office you are running. Is it an office that disseminates university research? (I'm guessing based on your question, the info you shared and your affiliation.)

The reason I ask is that, in my experience, knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing (KS) don't exist in a vacuum; they are usually part of a domain. So, you can have KM/KS in software development, KM/KS in software engineering, KM/KS in software project management, KM/KS in software support, KM/KS in software maintenance and evolution, etc. You get the idea. The theories you are looking for might be more relevant and/or applicable to a domain than as an abstraction or overall umbrella term.

Kebede,

One of the best websites I have found that aggregates a lot of KM/KS information is by Alan Frost at http://www.knowledge-management-tools.net/ 

Hope this can help.

Thanks Steve for your queries and suggestions. Your guess is right: my Office is one that coordinates research, facilitates knowledge generation/production through academic research (basic and applied) and shares knowledge through conferences, publications and the media. As you rightly noted, the Office is part of an expanding program of one of the youngest, but very dynamic, private universities in Ethiopia, called St. Mary's University.

The theories I am interested in knowing, therefore, are or should be related to 'knowledge production, storage (accumulation), consumption and transfer (sharing). I know these are broad areas of speculation, each having or requiring its own distinct set of theories. Be that as it may, I want to know the major and contemporary paradigms on KM, maybe, embracing all the four dimensions of knowledge.

If you like, my question is philosophical, sociological or anthropological. I have not raised it for the sake of asking or in search of a pure technical answer as to how I can organize the work of my Office alone. I want to engage us in a meaningful debate about the what and how of knowledge. 

I hope I have answered your questions about my questions. 

Best regards

Kebede

Hi Kebede,

A very effective methodology for generating effective *use* of (applied) knowledge is Training Within Industry (TWI). This was developed in the United States in World War II, as a means of efficiently training a massive and inexperienced workforce of (typically) women who replaced the normal factory workers who had just gone off to fight in the war. After WWII, the TWI team went to Japan, where they helped train Japanese companies in TWI. Notable among these is Toyota, which incorporated TWI as a foundational element of Lean.

I hope this helps! Please feel free to contact me ([email protected]) if it will help you.

Best regards,

Rich

Dear Prof Rich Mauritz-Mille

Thank you for your suggestion about TWI, which I believe, very useful for a number of institutions.

Kebede

Hello Kebede

There exist many approaches of KM that are relevant depending of the context of their applications.

In that way, I wrote a paper named 'Three Postulates That Change Knowledge Management Paradigm" , which opens on a KM vision that is not often shared. I hope you  will be interested in reading it.

Best regards,

Michel

http://www.intechopen.com/books/howtoreference/new-research-on-knowledge-management-models-and-methods/three-postulates-that-change-knowledge-management-paradigm

Hi Kebede,

I find the Potsdam Knowledge Management Framework (Gronau 2009) quite helpful to integrate and oversee all the different aspects of knowledge management.

I hope you'll find the framework helpful, best regards, Anna

http://wi.uni-potsdam.de/hp.nsf?Open&ID=2FC16F24998A5C2FC1257AFC005097ED&Key=5F8E3U&Sel=5F8E3U&Lang=de

Hi there

please see  various applicable frameworks/models --- http://www.sosyalarastirmalar.com/cilt2/sayi9pdf/haslinda_sarinah.pdf 

sincerely

SS

Hello Kebede, 

To get your debate on 'what is knowledge'  going, and wether knowledge management is even possible, please try the article by prof.em. Wilson on http://www.informationr.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html. It is not as negative as it sounds! 

On the net, I found some interesting stuff of http://wikibon.org/. 

I wish you all the best in your endaevours! 

Kind regards, 

Marjolein de Gruijter 

Dear Marjolein de Gruijter

Thanks for the article and the link on KM. I appreciate your effort in assisting and I look forward to interacting with you and other professionals on the subject.

Regards

Kebede

Hello Kebede,

You may want to check out some of the papers regarding knowledge management on my ResearchGate web page. They are too numerous to list here and I think you would be the best judge of what is useful to you.

Good luck with your project.

Marion

Dear Marion G Ceruti

Thanks and your advice very much appreciated.

Kebede

Dear Kebede,

I used the Information Foraging theory in my dissertation study. You may also check out the Theory of Planned Behavior, Social Capital and Social Exchange theories. See some of my papers for further references.

Good luck,

Simon Cleveland

Dear Kebede,

I used the Information Foraging theory in my dissertation study. You may also check out the Theory of Planned Behavior, Social Capital and Social Exchange theories. See some of my papers for further references.

Good luck,

Simon Cleveland

Dear Simon

Great to have your inputs to my question. I surely will use the information and the papers. 

Best regards

kebede

Dear Kebede,

You might want to take a look at my paper;

“Taxonomies of Knowledge.” Encyclopedia of Knowledge Management. David Schwartz (ed.). Hershey, PA: Idea Group Publishing (2006):848-854.

Reprinted in Knowledge Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Application.  Murray E. Jennex (ed.); Hershey, New York: Information Science Reference (2008):162-170.

Dear Dr Ein-Dor

Thank you for your article. I will be glad to read and learn from it.

Best regards

Kebede

actually the KM based on the Tacit and Explicit Knowledge. But the big problem in KM (as i know) is on how to integrate Tacit in with KM in simple way so it can be adopted in many sides of life.

Dear Herison,

You are right that the integration of tacit and explicit knowledge is a great challenge. Here are some of the reasons why:

1. Difficulty in deciding the dividing line between tacit and explicit knowledge. What seems tacit to some can be made explicit if someone can articulate it well.

2. Difficulty in getting a clear definition of tacit knowledge and in mapping its boundaries, not only with respect to explicit knowledge but also in deciding how to characterize tacit knowledge when by definition it is not explicit.

3. Explicit knowledge in one knowledge base is not always easily integrated with explicit knowledge in another knowledge base, especially when the knowledge bases are built on different ontologies. Integrating with tacit knowledge becomes problematic  - where to insert tacit knowledge into the ontology constructed to handle explicit knowledge?

4. Variables that pertain to tacit knowledge are not easily measured.

5. Difficulty in using tacit knowledge as input into inference engines.

Best regards,

Marion

Thanks Marion for your comprehensive answers. I appreciate your effort.

Kebede

Have you tried looking into Murray E. Jennex 's 'Current issues in Knowledge Management'?

Sincerely,

Geoffrey

Kebebe,

Been traveling so just had time to respond ... Did a recent paper: "Knowledge, Theory and Practice in KM: Between Associative Patterning and Context-Rich Action" that holistically looks at the field. Appeared in KM Special Issue: Connecting Theory and practice of the Journal of ENTREPRENEURSHIP, MANAGEMENT and INNOVATION (Vol 10, Issue 1, 2014) which is downloadable from the Internet (or I can email you a copy). Also, re your questions on "knowledge", take a look at The Course of Knowledge: A 21st Century Theory that is downloadable from this site.

You will enjoy the treatment of tacit knowledge. Building on the excellent response from Marion, by definition, tacit is that which cannot be voiced ... however, there is no real dividing line between tacit and explicit. Since the term is highly dependent on who is expressing, what is tacit for one may be explicit for another, etc. Nonetheless the terms are useful. We use the term "implicit" (often used instead of tacit before "tacit" became the term of choice in the KM field) to represent that sliding window of stuff that may appear to be tacit, but can be triggered by incoming information, that is, indeed pulled up and expressed (becoming explicit). We also use the concept of "levels of knowledge" (surface, shallow, deep, following the nautical theme), with the focus from the viewpoint of the knowledge itself and how easily it can be understood. While there is some dependency always on the sender and the receiver (and recognizing that all knowledge is context sensitive and situation dependent), this model helps us understand the powerful role of "social knowledge" (shallow knowledge) which requires back and forth exchange (conversation, Q&A) to provide the context needed to understand this level.

Would enjoy your feedback on the knowledge book and always available for questions: [email protected] Also, since I've carried the role you currently have, more than happy to bang around any questions you have in that regard. Can't guarantee the answers, but certainly have a great many ideas to share.

Hello everyone,

Alex's very interesting post got me thinking about the knowledge capture part of knowledge management. By definition, it is difficult to manage tacit knowledge. However, what about novel ways to capture it? Explicit knowledge can be captured with traditional knowledge engineering, interviewing experts, codifying their responses into an appropriate ontology, axioms, etc. Has anyone tried to capture tacit or implicit knowledge using pictorial representations, such as video, visual language, or audio files, etc., in such a way that this knowledge was available via query? Note that tacit knowledge includes but does not necessarily mean only non-verbal knowledge. An audio demonstration of foreign language pronunciation could be considered "verbal" but the main information is in the sounds of the voice, not in the meaning of the text itself. Another example of tacit knowledge capture could be a video of an expert musician, with emphasis on the instrumental technique. It might be very difficult to describe verbally where to put the fingers on an instrument or how to switch from one position to another, but this knowledge is captured better with a demonstration.

Perhaps tacit knowledge is easier to "capture" in the case of language and music but it would be much more difficult to capture from an admiral or a general making decisions about how to allocate forces, where so much of the expertise is mental and experiential. This kind of expertise is not easily demonstrated in specific examples that can be recorded quickly. A battle plan may take a long time to execute and with so many variables that an admiral or a general may not be able to explain why a decision was the right one - but it was.

For some reason, only the first part of my post was included. Here is the rest of it:

This may be an example of the deep knowledge to which Alex referred. Does anyone think that deep knowledge is more likely to be tacit than shallow knowledge? Could it be that shallow knowledge, e.g. regarding social situations, also involves substantial tacit knowledge? I am not sure whether deep knowledge or shallow knowledge should contain more tacit knowledge. Maybe the depth of knowledge is independent of the percentage of tacit knowledge.

Marion,

Wow I love your thinking!!!  

Not sure "capture" is the way to think about it, but certainly storytelling (providing context and tapping into emotions), even short exchanges such as Sufi tales, share a larger, deeper meaning than what is conveyed.  

We think of this in terms of "engaging" tacit knowledge, that is, having greater access to and making better use of our tacit knowledge. there are four aspects to this:  Surfacing tacit kn (what we would refer to as implicit kn), that is, moving kn from the unconscious to conscious awareness. Three approaches to doing this are external triggering, self-collaboration and nurturing.  The second way to engage is Embedding tacit kn. We do this unconsciously all the time; the intent here is to consciously choose what we are embedding through exposure or immersion. Examples include travel, learning experiences, reading, practice, etc. The third way to engage is Sharing tacit kn. It is not necessary to make kn explicit in order to share it.  Much of this happens through mentoring and shadowing programs to facilitate imitation and mimicry, or on an assembly line working beside someone with tried and true experience (this is specifically the sharing of embodied tacit knowledge).  The fourth way of engaging is through Inducing resonance. This happens through exposure to diverse, and specifically opposing, concepts that are well-grounded; this resonance amplifies the meaning of the incoming information, increasing its emotional content and receptivity, even when the individual has no previous knowledge in a specific domain of kn. An example is the use of debates. Different types of tacit kn, of course, would require different approaches for effective engagement (we talk about tacit kn. in terms of embodied, affective, intuitive and spiritual). For deeper information on these four areas of engagement (and four types of tacit kn) see Chapters 1 and 2 and Chapters 4 and 5 of The Course of Knowledge, an eBook downloadable from Research Gate.

There is one further way of thinking that helps understanding some of the issues re the "capture"/sharing of tacit knowledge, that is, the idea of knowledge (informing) and knowledge (proceeding). In the literature there are many different terms for these concepts; for example Ryle (1949) referred to "knowing that" and "knowing how"; Desouza & Paquette (2011) refer to these concepts as objects and human constructions; and Lewin et al. (2011) and Salvato & Rerup (2011) use the terms ostensive and performative for these two aspects of knowledge. Knowledge (informing) is the information (or content) part of kn. Much of this would be explicit, but not all. Part of the content resides within the mind/brain/body of the decision-maker (people) which may remain tacit while unconsciously influencing the decision-maker. This is, of course, information, which when used to take effective action is knowledge.  Knowledge (proceeding) represents the process and action part of knowledge. It is the process of selecting and associating or applying the relevant information, or Knowledge (informing), from which specific actions can be identified and implemented, that is, actions that result in some level of anticipated outcome. This builds on precedence from Kolb (1984), engaging kn as a process not a product, and Bohm (198) who refers to knowledge as a living process taking place "right now".  It is knowledge (proceeding) that is unique to each decision-maker, and which is the most difficult to attempt to "capture", developed through "lived experience", which is how deep knowledge is earned.

One more point ... the relationship between the tacit/explicit domains and the levels of knowledge is shown in the attached file.  This was developed over several years of recorded observations. We also spent a couple of years (almost 20 years ago) looking at the level of decisions made in organizations.  Then, in 2010 we relooked at this based on Tapscott's (2009) extensive research and our own observations, and were quite surprised at the shift in focus from surface to shallow kn in the younger generation of decision-makers.  (See the eBook Decision-Making in The New Reality.)

One insight that is NOT in any material referenced or downloadable, is reflection on the concept of knowledge as "justified true belief" credited to Plato or Nonaka and Takeuchi (a bit of humor in some recent KM texts!)  In reality, Plato dismissed the concept in his Dialogues, so more recently it is credited to Socrates. Nonetheless, whichever philosopher, it was really quite a remarkable definition of knowledge!  "Belief" is what is believed to be true and "justified true" means that some action was taken to which demonstrated by its outcome the truth of the belief!  Amazing. This before there was an understanding of exactly how the mind/brain worked, which of course we are just beginning to learn about.  This idea of "justified true belief" is a very important part of knowledge (informing). Our beliefs (and values, culture, experience, education, etc.) strongly affect our decisions and actions, and if the result of the action we take is what is expected then the truth of our belief is demonstrated.  Now, consider the definition:  knowledge is the capacity (potential or actual) to take effective action.  It's a capacity because it is created in the moment at hand through the process of associative patterning (another note if anyone is interested, or read any of our books); potential or actual means now or in the future (why hopefully we get a college education or learn a trade); and effective action is the "justified true" part, that is, from our frame of reference, our true, our expectation, we have the expected outcome (or something near it). 

Enough of this for now ... fascinating stuff, and still learning.