Building knowledge management infrastructure in an organization is essential to get many required benefits. How/what factors/issues should be considered to do so? Your respected answers and experiences are so welcomed and needed.
Dear Ra'ed - your question needs a very detailed answer!
To start with, an academic / business organization may plan a Digital Library with content available to all employees/faculty/students of the organization. This Digital Library may include all videos of the guest lectures along with powerpoint presentations, theses / dissertations of the students (in soft copy), e-journals subscribed by the organization, weekly/monthly newsletters, annual reports, papers published by faculty, etc.
With best wishes, Sundar
The knowledge management (KM) framework is very important for the organizations that intend to implement the KM system in their organization. The most generally recognized four organizational knowledge management strategies are culture, leadership, technology, and measurement.
Examples of culture strategies in industry include staff development and training, communities of practice, and promotion of learning organizations.
Since knowledge stored throughout an organization is usually distributed on several different applications and platforms, various technologies are needed in order to retrieve the information and present it to the user.
- Intranets: The Web browser and the Web server play a central role in KMS.
- Groupware: This provides a medium for participants to communicate in a non real-time manner. Examples are the many discussion groups that exist on the Internet.
- Agent Technology: This is software that monitors knowledge resources and alerts the user when new information is added or information is changed.
'Knowledge management (KM) is the process of capturing, developing, sharing, and effectively using knowledge in an organization.' Strategies are used to allow these benefits: improved performance, competitive advantage, innovation, the sharing of lessons learned, integration and continuous improvement of the organisation.
Factors/ issues or challenges need to be considered are on 2nd pic. They affect the management of knowledge as a strategic asset and the sharing of knowledge.
My Dear Friend following links may be useful to you. Thanks
http://mesharpe.metapress.com/index/971NQUC7MW9LER4X.pdf
http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=323909
Knowledge management infrastructure refers to the enablers and environment to develop knowledge and stimulate the creation and sharing of knowledge within the organization.
Knowledge management infrastructure includes organizational culture, organizational structure, individuals, and information technology.
I would like to start with a view on: What kind of infrastructure is necessary to build effective and efficient knowledge management in an organization?
According to my experience, the following is required:
- KM organization with budget
- KM processes and methods
- KM specific IT infrastructure
The KM organization usually is a small central team with responsibility for KM strategy, goals and implementation throughout the organisation. It is advisable to include one or more knowledge brokers who ensure that urgent requests find a timely and satisfying answer.
KM processes and methods incorporate best practices in knowledge management and make them accessible throughout the organization. Processes include systematic approaches to the identification of knowledge assets, codification, documentation, storage and retrieval. Methods may include blue prints for lessons learned workshops or building ontologies.
Special skills may be needed to properly execute the processes and methods, e.g. facilitating a lessons learned workshop, interviewing techniques, etc. These skills may be held centrally or distributed throughout the organization.
IT infrastructure needs to be designed to support the specific KM strategy and the business of the organization.
- The core IT infrastructure of a project business organization may be a DMS (document management system) specifically configured to support a structured project base, cooperation of the project team including versioning, check-in/-out, review and approval workflows.
- The core for a service business may be a knowledge based call center, a knowledge base that is accessible to customers for self service or a Q&A questions & answers catalog generated from the knowledge base.
- The core for a consulting business may be a knowledge base together with an internal social network enabling consultant profiles, building of personal networks, provision of knowledge items via blogs or other features, domain specific groups, rating of content, appreciation, cooperation e.g. via shared project rooms, communication features.
Important aspects with respect to IT infrastructure are:
integration with existing IT landscape, dimensioning, performance parameters/ service level agreements, selection of standard software like DMS, search engine, web 2.0, social media/ networking platform, proper roll-out including training, support.
Knowledge management infrastructure in an organization can be achieved by direct face-to-face sharing of information. The persons who spent longer years ought to teach & train the newcomers. Telling the amateurs to consult references or see videos or attend seminars will not be an efficient way for producing knowledgeable staff.
There has to be a way in which the experience is transferred from one generation to the next one by good lengthy contact.
No person is eternal, so to encourage knowledge transfer the older staff ought to prepare the young, but the organization needs to reward the older for such activity.
Articulating a department-wide knowledge framework allows executive management to assess the alignment of existing initiatives and activities; re-align or abandon them if they do not add value; establish priorities and assign often scare resources between competing new initiatives; and conduct a meaningful gap analysis to identify future knowledge activities. In other words, the framework allows the application of a rigorous, “engineering model” type approach to knowledge management activities within the department
http://conf.tac-atc.ca/english/resourcecentre/readingroom/conference/conf2006/docs/s019/humphries.pdf
The following is taken from a Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Technology, structure, and culture can be considered as three key building blocks of knowledge infrastructure capability. In addition, because knowledge management processes often require a certain amount of time and effort, it is important that an organization rewards properly those who support efforts towards knowledge management
Incentives are an effective motivator to encourage people to participate in the knowledge management processes and therefore can be included as the fourth aspect of knowledge infrastructure capability.
Cho, T. (2011). Knowledge management capabilities and organizational performance: An investigation into the effects of knowledge infrastructure and processes on organizational performance (Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign).
I ever built a KM system in ITRI in 2001. It is not an easy work. But it failed finally. If the members in your organization do not intend to share knowledge, you don’t need to manage any knowledge. So, I agree that the organization’s culture is the most important key factor. Build the learning group or community in your organization, and encourage them. Some kinds of files or notes sharing with access control can be implemented for exchanging ideal, information or knowledge. You can find the best way for sharing ideal, information or knowledge. Every organization has its culture. Therefore, the way for sharing ideal, information or knowledge is different for each organization.
Start from each member and then extend to group or community. And then extend to all organization.
Yuan-jen Chang made some good points. I fully agree that the organization's work-culture is most important factor in bringing up a successful knowledge management system. Knowledge management system has been successfully implemented in many "small-size" organizations, and I described the practice of Digital Library in one such small organization. It takes great skills, cooperation, work-culture and administration for successful implementation of knowledge management system in a big university or a corporation.
A presentation on building a knowledge-centric organization is at http://www.scribd.com/doc/86041460/building-a-knowledge-centric-organization-for-print. A wide-ranging article on the same subject is at http://www.adb.org/publications/knowledge-culture.
It will be nice to have TQM and KM systems implemented in all organizations..
Total quality management and knowledge management systems are both important indeed for quality assurance and collective innovation.
Best wishes, Sundar
As can be noticed from above comments, it is not easy to build a knowledge management system. I think that the basic problem is related to the power that emerges from the possesed knowledge. Therefore, most employees are unwilling to openly share their knowledge. In addition, we have to consider many deficiencies in our memories and assessment procedures (see pages 22-26) in my recent book (attached below). However, there are some promising new applications (see www.digitalliving.fi) using big linked data technology.
Book Missing a Decent Living for Everyone: Success and Failure in...
Dear Veli, thank you for your valuable contribution. Congratulations for your new book as attached. Best Regards.
Agree whole heartedly about the requirement to formally address and manage the culture within an organization if there are plans to implement a new knowledge management strategy. Power imbalances often act as barriers to knowledge sharing and this is probably far more common than initially realised as mentioned to by @Veli.
It is always illuminating to hear about cases where KM has not worked as outllined by @Yuan-Jen of his experience with one organization.
On top of useful comments, I would say, first the data to be collected should be requested by the upper management, and reviewed. Otherwise it would be useless data and if people don't believe it is useful it will not last long to stay up to date.
First of all, corporate internal portal is a good start, you may use open source nice CMS software - wordpress, joomla, drupal as such... Then more structured data collection is needed, such as Jira Confluance ... CM tools.
We did and we succeed ...
All the best
Thank you so much dear Murat. May I ask you to elaborate further, if possible.
Knowledge management infrastructure consists of 4 processes.
1. Knowledge acquisition: it consists of acquiring relevant knowledge from various sources including experts.
2. Knowledge storage: building knowledge bases to store the acquired knowledge. It also involves classification of knowledge for managing the complexity.
3. Knowledge assimilation: Assimilation of new knowledge with the existing knowledge
4. Knowledge dissemination: Distribution of knowledge to users as and when required.
KM should include tacit and explicit knowledge. So formal knowledge sharing is equally important as informal knowledge sharing.
I think if you want to manager knowledge, you will have to manager people. From my point of view the knowledge is within people. So, as some comments registered before, organization culture is one of most important steps. It´s a system, of course, but without organization culture to sharing knowledge, your information tools, for example, will not be used for anybody.
Knowledge management (KM) in the traditional sense has been confined to narrow and individual organizational settings since knowledge has been viewed as a proprietary resource that could enhance an organization’s competitive advantage. However, in this situation, the endemic failure to facilitate the flow of knowledge through organizational boundaries is causing risks of patient injuries and deaths. As an example, in one high-profile incident at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, two patients may have died from exposure to contaminated that were part of an ongoing product recall. A recall notice had been sent to customers by the product’s manufacturer. Unfortunately the recall was delivered to a receiving dock at Johns Hopkins and was not passed on the relevant users of the products in the department. Since healthcare is in the realm of public good and as much as possible the risk of future incidents like the one at Johns Hopkins should be minimized, the traditional proprietary approach to KM, which primarily sought competitive advantage of individual organizations, should be rethought.
http://www.nedsi.org/proc/2011/proc/p101210051.pdf
No manager at all (still problems to manage myself...example: the whole day....in my Lab), so it might be I have an other understanding of the matter than most of you.
dear all,
let me ask one question: who definitely in this thread has participated/participates in a =functioning= knowledge management in his company/firm/employer? How was/is this really implemented? And if yes: were you allowed to access the knowledge [IT-Data?base ALL] without explicit permission to do so? I ask because I made experience on several attempts from any (colleagues in administration of my employer) stating from me. When asking "who" did request such(?), I was informed ".... my boss/our overhead managers". So in my honest opinion: if the knowledge only will be used to in order to managers' data files for "better navigation" = means "control" (e. g. how long you need for a certain work which is done on a routine base) such knowledge managing/management systems make no sense at all. In my branch I see at least a kind of knowledge management system in the Form of "written" S.O.P.'s (because acting people are forced by EU legislation to do so...and it is a prerequisite for certification). Today's working environment/working world seems to offer NO time (and personal resources) left to educate new staff or to teach them in some way (narrative and practical learning knowledge...so one needs a knowlegde management....(I know this might be a critical statement). .....my two cents...best regards, Wolfgang
Apreciado Ra'ed,
Te envío un link del artículo que escribí sobre el tema, allí se expone cuales deberían ser los módulos a tener en cuenta. Los límites de la imaginación y de la creatividad: El ingenio y la innovación en la gestión del conocimiento, el modelo de la Inteligencia Organizacional
http://publicaciones.eafit.edu.co/index.php/revista-universidad-eafit/article/view/784
Knowledge Infrastructure varies with
People, Processes and Managing Data (McLaughlin)
http://irp.utep.edu/Portals/1108/Recent%20Presentations/NASPA2012-Stu%20Success%20Knowledge%20&%20Collaborations.pdf
5. SEVOCAB (2014) Software and systems engineering vocabulary (See ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765, 2010) http://pascal.computer.org/sev_display/index.action
7. Avizienis, A, J-C. Laprie, B. Randell, C. Landwehr (2004). Basic Concepts and Taxonomy of Dependable and Secure Computing. IEEE transactions on dependable and secure com-puting, Vol. 1, No. 1, January–March 2004, pp. 11–33. (60b7d5185576aa22f6.pdf) https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~ransford/srg/papers/avizienis--dependable-secure.pdf
Hi Ra'ed,
In answering your question "How can One Build KM Infra in an Organization?", I would like to share my personal experience which includes also how to maintain the KM infra after the build phase.
1) Conceptual / Planning Phase:
1.1 Determine Purpose of the Knowledge - ascertain why the organization needs the knowledge for and what are the values / benefits of the knowledge to business. E.g. a consulting service firm's need for knowledge & KM is different from another product company that try to manufacture, market & sell its products as well as universities / R&D firm that try to contribute patents / retain knowledge & hence KM etc. Envisaged values / benefits also vary from one organization to the others.
1.2 Develop Business Case - consider & develop all the ROI, Total Cost of Ownership which includes planning, designing, implementing, maintaining, continuous improvement etc to justify funding & approval from management.
1.3 Seek Help from KM Consultant - if the organization is new to KM / KM infra implementation / roll out, it might seek help from external KM consultant if the internal organization doesn't have the skill.
2) Implementation Phase:
2.1 Design & POC - business to technical design & architecture of the web interfaces (if required), business logic apps (standalone or cloud based if justifiable), repositories, databases, other apps integration, server, storage, backup / archive / restore, network connectivity, security & privacy, disaster recovery, high availability & SLA etc. Older version of KM was labor intensive that need Knowledge Manager, Analyst & its team to create, sanitize, deposit, maintain the tacit & explicit knowledge in various repositories. Newer KM should consider various automated IT processes as well as Big Data Analytics to collect various types of data (structured, semi-structured, unstructured), map-reduce (breakdown analysis & synthesis) to develop new insights / knowledge / predictions for better decision making. If the KM infrastructure implementation is new to the organization, perhaps Proof Of Concept (POC) / prototype project can be initiated first to test the water.
2.2 Actual Implementation - ensure a good project team is in place to plan (big bang, phase approach etc) & manage the actual implementation. Not only internal but various suppliers be it hardware, software, 3rd party services. Mindful also the various teams working in different time zones & cultural differences. The project team also need to nimble in managing various risks, delay, in-compatibility of various components not discovered during the design stage. Note: sometimes management required the old knowledge-bases & their knowledge converted into certain format & upload into the new repositories / archived etc.
2.3 Testing / Soft Launch - develop test plan (System, Integration & UAT etc.) earlier & complete all the testing meticulously before sign-off. Soft launch the KM infra if required to evaluate any early short-comings, unforeseen issues & provide needed resolution before formal launch.
3) Maintenance Phase
3.1 Develop KM Organization Structure - this is the KM team that needs to be structured / develop their R&R / on-board as early as possible i.e. before testing / soft / formal launch so that they can involve in testing, launching, developing operational documentation & receive knowledge transfer from the KM infra implementation team. Implementation team should perform shadowing to support the KM team for initial period before their actual implementation is completed / handover.
3.2 Develop Scheme to Encourage Knowledge Contribution - this needs to involve KM stakeholders & management how to encourage required knowledge contributors e.g. auditor / consultants in consulting firm, developer / researcher in IT product companies / R&D / universities etc. to contribute / deposit / share their knowledge. For example, knowledge contribution can be part of their performance KPI or using "stick" approach if the "carrot" approach is not working. The KM team also needs to contribute by adhering to the KM processes as well as generate more new insights / knowledge through the Big Data Analytic tools.
3.3 Continuous Evaluation & Improvement - this stage requires KM stakeholders to continuously evaluate how the knowledge / KM infra contribute to the business objectives as planned initially. KM stakeholders / KM team also need to continuously lookout for new cost effective KM / Internet of Things / Big Data Analytcs technologies available in the marketplace to improve the KM infra.
Regards,
Fung
To my mind a very good and detailed information about KM (the concept, characteristics, principles, etc.) presents Eva Semertzaki in her book "Special Libraries as Knowledge Management Centres".
ISO/IEC TR 24748-1:2010
Systems and software engineering -- Life cycle management -- Part 1: Guide for life cycle management
http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/index.html
Clark Borst, John M. Flach, Joost Ellerbroek (2014), Beyond Ecological Interface Design: Lessons from Concerns and Misconceptions. DOI:10.1109/THMS.2014.2364984
Organizations implementing knowledge strategies generally go through 5 stages: Pre-Implementation, Implementation, Reinvigoration, Inculcation, and Holistic. A Knowledge Primer detailing steps ADB took in 2009–2011 to initiate, develop, standardize, optimize, and innovate knowledge management and learning is at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/266797946_Building_a_Knowledge-Centric_Organization.
Presentation Building a Knowledge-Centric Organization
A good presentation enclosed
http://www.powershow.com/view/175a7c-NmU3O/The_Knowledge_Management_Infrastructure_powerpoint_ppt_presentation
Benefits
http://www.itinfo.am/eng/information-technology-infrastructure-library-guide/
Dear Krishnan - Thank you for a very useful reply and link! -
Thank you all for your valuable comments. I got so much benefits from them. I appreciated Yours
ICT is used in many Universities also.. India maintains NPTEL - very useful for Engineering Education..
On page 3 of this thread, dear Dr. Wolfgang H. Muss raised important questions, which are worth discussing, since November 2014. Since I just know only the theoretical side of knowledge management, I did not answer by saying (Not me!). I waited other RG colleagues, who have practical working knowledge of (KM), but, unfortunately, I did not see any answers. The issue is very important since there are many organizations/companies/firms/institutions that live in total chaos or mess as far as (KM) is concerned, especially in 3rd world countries. In some places, there are simply no concerted efforts towards (KM) because the top managers do not think that it is needed. There is, of course, no free access to any database & I bet that 99.99% of the staff does not know the "exact" total number of the students in their institutions [I don't trust what is announced]. As for the finances, the matter is a top secret known only by 2-3 persons. In such situation, how come there will be a scientifically sound & reasonable basis for building (KM)?
Totally agree with you Professor Nizar, thus am not happy of what am noticing as such!
Management principles and organizational frames should be recognized for resource development process and focus was turned towards competences, commitment and tacit knowledge of the Management Cadre employees as important intangible assets for the firm in relation to strategies of flexibility and innovation. Management Cadre in a HPWS experience requires greater autonomy over their job tasks and methods of work and have higher levels of communication about work matters with other employees, functional specialists, managers, and in some instances with vendors of customers.
Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/261294162_STUDY_ON_OCCUPATION_FACTORS_AND_ORGANIZATION_DEVELOPMENT_ON_QUALITY_OF_WORK_LIFE_AMONG_MANAGEMENT_CADRE_OF_SELECTED_IT_AND_MANUFACTURING_ORGANIZATIONS_THESIS
Thesis STUDY ON OCCUPATION FACTORS AND ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT ON ...
Dear Nizar,
thank you really so much to point again to my re ( #28 ) and questions on "practical" living with KM's.
We'll see whether there are some colleagues out there having similar or same "adventures".
All have a great and successful week !
Wolfgang
Some scholars underestimate the importance of (KM) while some of them know but they may be scared to speak out. This fear is destructive and this example proves that: For successful (KM), there has to be free access to a key database (electronic or may be written on papers or both). Assume that free access was denied (which is the normal case in 3rd world countries plus other "secretive" countries), then the no freedom means that they can play with the figures & steal enormous amounts of money. If a university's administration claims that the number of students is 25,000 while they are actually 27,000, then it is easy to see that the money paid by the 2000 students (which could be say,3 million $/year ) will be hidden & eventually stolen. There are many money stories that ===> corruption.
I guess we all have some size/type of knowledge. How would we promote such knowledge? The issue of socialization is more common in literature still, some times policies are needed to promote knowledge transfer.
The second issue is the organization and storage of knowledge. Accessibility is an issue...
Dear Ra´ed
The best guide are the KM maturity models. Please check our last publications about it.
Good luck
Article Construcción de un modelo de madurez de gestión del conocimi...
Article Linking knowledge management maturity and innovation in lead...
Hi Ra'Ed Masa'deh , I'll remark this part: " knowledge management infrastructure" :
I think that the challenge there isn't infraestructure, but the knowledge information qualification really do so.
Once you have an detailed level of the structure and use you'll give to that information, then you can start the infrastructure planning and the management systems associated to that purpose.
Perhaps, another big challenge you have to count on, could be the organization resistance to change, and the high board strategies associated to that knowledge management system.
Remember that, behind information there's a system, behind a system there's a user and behind them there's the organization strategic objectives to accomplish.
If you can master the alignment of all parts together, you will surely have a sucessfull implementation.
Saludos,
Eduardo.
Thank you dear Eduardo Perez I totally do agree with you...Thank you
I believe that the big challenge is educating people about the concept of knowledge and managing it , and illustrate the benefits behind it.
Most of the organization use quality circle to improve knowledge infrastructure
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