WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY IN KMS

WEB 2.0 TECHNOLOGY IN KMS

PURPOSE OF THE ARTICLE:

This article tells about how web 2.0 technologies support KMS adopted by a political party.

INTRODUCTION:

Blog’s, Wiki’s, multimedia sharing, pod casting, RSS and social networking are used by the Socialist party’s KMS. The usage of these technologies are discussed one by one as follows

BLOGS:

The blog used by the party consists of brief information about the day to day or weekly activities of the party and personal dairy entries of the leaders that what they have done in the particular days.

The party followers or workers who follow this blog can make comments on the party activities, leader’s work and they may tell the overall feelings of the party workers and the public. They can also give suggestions to their leaders to improve the party’s image in the public

The term web blog or blog refers to a simple web page consists of brief paragraphs of opinion, information,……………..(Anderson 2007)

WIKI’S:

This is a web page in which a large number of part followers can put information about the history of the party, previous activities done by the party and the followers perspectives on the present society and they can even edit this content.

It facilitates the production of group work to enhance the development in the party. The extreme flexibility and open access as some of the many reasons why this wiki is useful for group work.

A wiki is a web page or set of web pages that can be easily edited by any one who is allowed………….(Eberbach 2006)

MULTIMEDIA SHARING:

This serves as storage and sharing of multimedia content like videos of party meetings, video clippings on the problems of people in different areas, video clips of leaders speech etc..,

This makes the followers allover from the country watch online videos from this multimedia sharing.

One of the biggest growth areas has been…….(Anderson 2007)

PODCASTING:

The audio recordings such as talks, interviews and lectures of the party leaders given to the public is recorded in MP3 format sudden announcements to followers can be recorded and the followers who have subscribed to the RSS feeds can immediately give response to the announcements.

In this way podcasting helps the followers to listen the speeches of the leaders any from the country. Originally audio blogs they their roots…..(Felix 2006)

RSS:

The party followers who have subscribed to the RSS feeds allow to find out about updates to the content of RSS- enabled websites, blogs, podcasts with out actually having to go and visit the site.

RSS is a family of formats…….(Anderson 2007)

Here the socialist party can be configured to send an RSS feed about its current status and announcements. If any issue is detected by the party an update about the issue and its solution is sent to the followers.

(7 thing you should know about RSS 2007)

SOCIAL NETWORKING:

Socialist party uses a social network, My social space, which makes large number of followers from different areas to meet, find like minds and share contents with others.

It creates a friendly environment among the followers that ultimately results the organizational benefit.

Professional and social networking sites that facilitate meeting people…….(Anderson 2007)

Recently, Barak Obama , President of U.S.A also used these web 2.0 technologies to interact with the public as well as with his followers.

REFERENCES:

1.Anderson, P 2007, What is web 2.0? Ideas, technologies and implications for education, JISC publishing, Retrieved March 29, 2009, from google data base.

2. 7 things you should know about …RSS 2007. Retrieved March 29, 2009, from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7024.pdf

3. Felix, L, Stolarz, D 2006, Hands-on guide to video blogging and podcasting: Emerging tools for business communication, focal press, U.S.A

SUCCESFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN AN ORGANISATION

SUCCESFUL IMPLEMENTATION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS IN AN ORGANISATION

ABSTRACT:

For any organisation, it is easy to introduce a KM system, but the problem is with “ how to make the employees in that organisation to follow it? ” for better organisation performance. The answer for the above question is the 100% commitment and motivation of knowledge workers in that organisation. This paper is about how the role of knowledge workers commitment and motivation affects in implementing KMS and resulting organisational performance of KMS. For better understanding, this paper starts with the introduction to KMS, the benefits of KMS and ends with an example, Municipal Corporation of a city, which adopts a new KMS.

INTRODUCTION:

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS:

A system is a collection of components together with their interrelations. Therefore, a system is not sum of its parts, but rather the product of interactions.Khosrow (cited in kaldi, Aghaie & Khoshalhan 2008). Thus knowledge management system is defined by various researchers as:

1.KMS are information systems designed to support individuals in performing KM-related activities in the context of their work. Bals, Smolnik & Riempp(cited in kaldi, Aghaie & Khoshalhan 2008)

2.kmss are the information technology based systems developed to support and enhance the
organizational processes of knowledge creation, storage, retrieval, transfer and application in organizations. Khosrow (cited in Kaldi, Aghaie & Khoshalhan 2008)

3.KMS are the systems which may be IT or non IT, used to share, capture, distribute and apply knowledge in its organization for better performance.

BENEFITS OF KMS:

The implementation of KMS in an organization can results the following benefits
1. An organization can fully realize the potentials of its knowledge assets.
2. Organizations can respond more quickly to the changing market conditions.
3. Organizations can increase the ability to be more innovative as well as improve decision making and productivity

WHAT PLAYS A KEY ROLE IN IMPLEMENTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM?

The common attributes of different KM systems indicates that most KMS:
1. Are based on the combination of information enabled communication, coordination and collaboration capabilities. 2. Provides a critical bridge between the information and technology resource inputs and organizations performance 3. Mainly depends on active participation and involvement of knowledge workers to transform the above inputs into organizational performance.

Despite the availability of the best technology or access to the richest warehouses of relevant information, knowledge workers commitment and motivation often determines the success or failure of KMS. Dyer &McDonough (cited in Yogesh&Galletta 2003)
In an organization the executive board and senior management drive the development of KMS but they often fail to motivate the rest of the organization to adopt these systems. The reasons for this failure include insufficient communication, failure to integrate KMS in everyday activities, lack of time to share knowledge, failure to use knowledge effectively and difficulties of capturing tacit knowledge.

Many forces are at work in KMS acceptance when implementation is driven from top: some workers wish to please their managers, some conform to demands imposed by performance criteria and some conform to peer pressures. All these together play an important role in the failure of KMS. Alavi &Leidner (cited in Yogesh&Galletta 2003)

THE CONTINUUM OF COMMITMENT:

‘‘Commitment by compliance, commitment by identification, commitment by internalization…………..(yogesh & Galletta 2003)

THE CONTINUUM OF MOTIVATION:

“Intrinsic motivation, external regulation, introjected regulation, identified regulation, integrated regulation…(yogesh&Galletta 2003)

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE:

Let me support the above topics by considering a governmental organization, Municipal Corporation of a city (MCC) .MCC is mainly divided into two sections. The Executive Board (Mayor and corporaters ) and the senior management (municipal commissioner and chief engineers) comes under the first section. While the rest of the organization (drainage department, road maintenance, tax department workers, staff) comes under the second section. This MCC wants to adopt a new KM system, the executive board and senior management drive development of KMS but they fail to motivate the rest of the organization because of insufficient communication between the management and the workers, some workers wish to please their superiors and many other reasons. Ultimately this result in the failure in adopting KMS.The main reasons for this failure is the lack of commitment and motivation in the workers. If the commitment in the worker is a result of incentives, rewards or punishment , the user emphasis is more on maximizing incentives not on value added by ones own contribution. If the commitment in the worker is a result of some identification ie.., if he compares himself with a role model he does the work if his character matches with his role model. So the management of MCC enhanced Commitment and motivation in its organization by giving respect to their staff, chance giving to the people who become panic, praising the workers who have done the work and by telling their work to others.

As a result workers in the organization pleased to adopt new KMS, which results in effective organizational performance.

REFERENCES:

1. Malhotra, Y &Galleta, D 2003, ‘Role of Commitment and Motivation in Knowledge
Management Systems Implementation: Theory, Conceptualization, and Measurement of Antecedents of Success’, System Sciences

2. Kaldi, A ,Aghaie, A & Khoshalhan, F 2008, ‘KMS Adoption in organizations’, industrial engineering & engineering management, pp. 37-41

3. Mostafa, F, Peyman, A, Mehdi, N & Mohammad, F 2007, ‘Iran aerospace industries’ KM approach based on a comparative study: a bench marking on successful practices’, Aircraft engineering and aerospace technology, vol. 79, pp. 69-79

ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

ORGANIZATIONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

PURPOSE OF THIS ARTICLE:
This article tells about the way how organization knowledge can be managed. Firstly it discusses about knowledge management and then how KMS supports to manage knowledge in an organization.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

Knowledge management is a systematic process of capturing, creating, storing and applying knowledge in an organization. The knowledge can be effectively shared if only if there is a proper communication exists between the employees.

Knowledge management refers to a systematic and organizationally specified process of acquiring, organizing and communicating both tacit and explicit knowledge of employees so that other employees may make use of it to be more effective and productive in their work. As mentioned by Mryam & Dorothy (1999,p.2)

KMS SUPPORTING KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

The value for organizational knowledge is limited, if it is not properly shared. Any organizations ability to sustain in a competitive world depends on the ability to integrate and apply its knowledge assets of organizational members.

Traditionally, the creation and transfer of knowledge has occurred through various means like face to face communications, mentoring and staff development. As now a day’s markets are becoming global and organizations are moving to virtual forms, these traditional means prove to be slow and less effective. So, more efficient electronic means is necessary to support knowledge management in the organizations. Only computer systems can have a random effect at best to facilitate communication and information sharing.

As a result organizations are beginning to implement information systems which supports and enhance the organizational process of knowledge creation, storage, retrieval, transfer and application in organizations. Maier (cited in Kaldi, Aghaie & Khoshalan 2008)

These systems are referred as Knowledge management systems which help in managing knowledge in organizations. It creates a new working environment where knowledge and experience can be easily shared and also enables information and knowledge to emerge and flow to the right people at the right time so they can act more efficiently and effectively. Smith ( cited in Mostafa, Peyman, Mehdi & Mohammad 2007)

The following section can provide a clear idea on managing knowledge in NHS pharmacy department through KMS.

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE:

In NHS two approaches personalisation and codification are used to manage knowledge in it. In personalisation approach, workshop presentations, conferences, telecommunications and face to face interactions are used to share tacit and explicit knowledge among the organisational members. Where as in codification approach web 2.0 technologies such as RSS, WIKI’s, pharmacy space , podcasting and along with this meta data and tagging are used. The people who lacks IT skills use personalisation approach and others use the codification process.

This KM system acts as bridge for creating and sharing knowledge among the organisational members. During the conferences and workshop presentations people can know about new thing related to pharmacy sector and will share with fellow members through face to face interactions. They can put this information in wikis, podcasts through which others can connect to it. Pharmacy department can be configured to send an RSS feed about its current status and announcement. If any trouble is detected in the department, an update about the problem is sent to the users. In this way the knowledge is managed in NHS pharmacy department.

REFERENCES:

1. Maryam, A & Dorothy, L 1999, ‘Knowledge Management Systems: Emerging Views and Practices from the field’, system sciences, vol.7, pp. 1-8

2. Kaldi, A ,Aghaie, A & Khoshalhan, F 2008, ‘KMS Adoption in organizations’, industrial engineering & engineering management, pp. 37-41

3. Mostafa, F, Peyman, A, Mehdi, N & Mohammad, F 2007, ‘Iran aerospace industries’ KM approach based on a comparative study: a bench marking on successful practices’, Aircraft engineering and aerospace technology, vol. 79, pp. 69-79

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

I believe that many organisations achieved their goals by depending on the creation of an innovative knowledge system based on COP. From communities of practice organisations can acquire more knowledge through connecting people, overcoming difficulties and by creating business opportunities.

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE-WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Wenger,E and W.M. Snyder says ‘’Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic , and who depend their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis’’.

For example, Artists congregate in cafes and studios to debate the merits of a new style or technique. Gang members learn to survive on the street and deal with an unfriendly world. Engineers who design a certain kind of electronic circuits find it useful to compare designs regularly and to discuss the logics. (Wenger,E and W.M. Snyder, 2000)
It is not necessary to these people, work together but they meet because they find value in their interaction. They help each other solve problems. Over time, they develop a unique perspective on their topic as well as a body of common knowledge, practices and approach.

WHY COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE:

Knowledge plays a key role in contributing success to the organisations. Cultivating communities of practice in strategic areas is the best way to manage knowledge. Communities of practice can connect people not only from multinational organisations but also from independent business units. In this process, they join the whole system together around core knowledge requirements. Success in global markets depends on communities sharing knowledge across the globe. (W.M. Snyder and R. Dermott, 2002)

In globalised world, companies are not only competing for market share but also for talent.Talent in the sense, people with experience and innovative thinking. Finding and keeping the right people can make a big difference in a company’s ability to become a market leader and to gain access to venture capital. In some industries, recruiting, developing and retaining talent is a greater challenge than competing in commercial markets. (E .Wenger, 2002)

MY UNDERSTANDING:

Communities of practice are not new to us. In early human life also we can find cop’s. People came to know how to make tools to kill their prey through communities of practice. Communities of practice are everywhere. Even in our lives we have faced many of them- in families, schools, work etc.., .

The purpose of communities of practice is to maximise the knowledge within an organisation by connecting people from different organisations. At first, I had a doubt, do knowledge management and community of practice have same definitions? Yes, but with a slight variation. Knowledge management involves in capturing, sharing and distributing knowledge among the employees of an individual organisation. Where as in communities of practice, the knowledge sharing does not belong to any single organisation. Here, knowledge is shared and maximised from different people belonging to different organisations.

With my personal experience I got a clear idea about communities of practice. In my school days, my teacher gave us a task to write a document about how to increase literacy rate in India. We people formed as groups to do the task. We have four sections of a class. Each section was given the same task to do. My group in my section began to meet other groups in other sections. My group listed many ways to increase the literacy rate by discussing with different students about their views. We people used to meet at the corridors in the school itself. Where ever there is a necessity to correct we used to rectify our mistakes in our meetings. Actually this is not an organised process but it happened like that. Finally, my group stood in first place in doing the task. Now I came to know about the importance of community of practice.

CONCLUSION:

In some communities of practices people used to hide their information. In such cases it doesn’t give a meaning to communities of practice. For example, in my Msc , in of my modules we create blogs to form communities of practice to improve our knowledge on the subject we have, but some of us haven’t published their articles.

REFERENCES:

1. Wenger, E and W.M.Snyder.’’Communities of practice: The organisational frontier.’’ Harvard Business Review,(2000)

2. Cultivating Communities Of Practice-Wenger,E .., Dermott, R and Snyder ,W.M,(2002),Harvard business school press, Boston

WEEK 3

What is Model?

A Model is abstract representation of an item or a concept. It comes in many shapes sizes, and styles.

A Model is important to emphasize that a model is not the real world but a human construct that help us in understanding the system better.

How a Model can easily be made :

Simplifying assumptions must be made
Boundary conditions must be identified
Range of applicability of model should be understood

'Y' Model..?

The reason for model is to quickly improve the design, implementation and management experience and complex distributed applications.
Model is used as a part of reality to influence, control, guide or direct what happens in the real world.

Creating a Model:

Model starts with a description and ends with an execution.

primarily used model of knowledge management is SECI put forth by Nonala and Takeuchi in 1995 which can be expanded in forms of Socialisation, Externalisation, Combination and Internalisation.

blog under construction.......

Week 2 - Knowledge Management

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT THEORY AND CONCEPTS

After referring many books I came to know that it is very difficult to give a specific definition to knowledge. I didn’t get any information about the evolution of knowledge. Many writer's have their own definitions on knowledge management . I to gave my own definition by having a look at different definitions. To get into the concept of knowledge management we need to know about the basics like data, information, knowledge.

DATA: It is a collection of raw facts and figures which are useful to provide information.
Ex:dates , numbers etc..,

INFORMATION: Data which is expressed or arranged in a meaningful pattern
Ex: progress reports, patients report etc..,

KNOWLEDGE:

Here I am giving some definitions offered by writers and researchers in knowledge management.

Knowledge is:

‘’justified true belief’’: This is the venerable definition of many philosophers, especially of empiricists who believe knowledge claims can be justified by facts (Goldman 1991)

‘’Knowledge is understanding based on experience’’ .(James 1907)

‘’Knowledge is experience or information that can be communicated or shared’’ (Allee 1997)

‘’Knowledge is the capacity for effective action’’. (Argyris 1993)

MY COMMENTS:

I strongly agree with the definition of Knowledge given by Argyris because if any threat comes from an external or internal source to an organization ,any individual in the organization who reacts to it in an efficient manner to solve it is the person who possess knowledge. Knowledge is obviously gained by experience its not just believing in justified facts because judgement changes from person to person. I don’t agree with Goldman’s view. Gained information with out experience do not give a meaningful sense to knowledge.

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT:

DEFINITIONS:

According to Davenport (1994) knowledge management is the Processes of capturing, distributing and effectively using knowledge. capturing in the sense , collecting the information from every individual and using it in a fruitful manner to get higher benefits to the organisation.

Ellen knapp (1998) said that the art of transforming information and intellectual assets into enduring value for an organization’s clients and its people is knowledge management. I think

Ellen Knapp is considering only the intellectuals knowledge in the organisation but not giving priority to the lower level people. He is just transforming the intellectual assets but he is not distributing the knowledge to others in the organization. I don’t support his definition.

For KTI(knowledge tranfer international), knowledge management is a strategy that turns an organisation’s intellectual assets –both recorded information and the talents of its members- into greater productivity, new value , and competitiveness. Yes, I do agree with this because here KM is totally considered as a strategy instead of looking it as a process as Dave port (1994). I think the word strategy suits best rather than using process but here also only intellectual assets came into consideration but there is no discussion about distributing knowledge .At this point I don’t agree with this.

MY DEFINITION:

‘’Knowledge management is a strategy in which the process of capturing ,distributing knowledge (from and) to each and every individual in the organization and effectively using it to get more profits to the organization’’. This is what my definition on knowledge management.

SUPPORTING MY VIEWS:

Let me support the above topics with an example. When we came to do my masters in BISM , we people of six formed into a group with a strategy to get distinction in our respective module. At that time of formation we just have a raw data on the module and its references. Then each and every individual in our group gathered information from the references. After that we shared that information to one another we gained knowledge from that. When ever we met the other groups in the class we came to know about our mistakes and corrected it through experience. Here we acquired knowledge by communicating with other teams. Here we captured and distributed the knowledge among ourselves and effectively used it for doing our group and individual course work to get distinction in the module. That is how knowledge management helped our team to reach our goal. I also think that ‘’we can store information but, not knowledge’’

REFERENCES:

1) James, S (1907), pragmatism, New York, NY: Longmans.

2) Goldman, A. (1991), Empirical Knowledge, Berkely, CA: University of California, 1991.

3) Argyris, C. (1993), Knowledge for action, San Fransisco, CA: Jossey Bass.

4) Oxford Dictionary.

5) Joseph M. (2002),’’Information Management and Knowledge Management’’, key issues in the new knowledge management

Week 1 - Organisations & Strategy

ORGANISATION:

A group of people brought together for the purpose of achieving certain objectives. As the basic unit of an organisation is the ‘’ROLE’’ rather than the person in it, the organisation is maintained in existence, some times over along period of time, despite many changes of members.(David .A 1991)

The organisation is that which has: a)a clearly defined hierarchy with top-down authoritarian management. b)highly specialised responsibilities, roles and tasks for its members and c)a heavy emphasis on rules and procedures. ( Max Weber )

The action of organising something in a systematic arrangement or approach. An organised group of people with a particular purpose.Example:Business (oxford dictionary)

As we go further extent to know about an organisation, environment becomes a key concept. An organisation’s environment is every thing that lies outside the organizational boundary. That is ,other organisations, the society in which it operates ,governmental agencies and institutions ,the economic system, the labour marketing ,financial systems and so on. These factors make up what is known as the ‘’the general environment’’.Organizations generally do not have to deal with the whole environment in its totality, particular parts of the environment will have special importance. These make up the ‘’task environment’’ and include the organizations own customers,suppliers,shareholders,bankers, and so on. With in the organization, individual subunits will develop relations with particular parts of this task environment.so,for example, the finance department will deal with external financial institutions and specific governmental agencies such as the Inland Revenue, while the purchasing department will deal with suppliers and their agents .Each department will therefore manage the interface between themselves and a segment of the total task environment, acting on behalf of the organization as a whole.(Aldrich 1979 )

STRATEGY:

Meaning of strategy: A plan designed to achieve a particular task. (Oxford dic)

In broad strategy can be defined as the match an organization makes between its own resources and the threats or risks and opportunities created by the external environment in which it operates. So strategy can be seen as a key link between what the organization wants to achieve-its objectives-and the policies adopted to guide its activities. We need to recognise that an organization can have a single strategy or many strategies and that strategies are likely to exist at a number of levels in an organization. To explain this we explore the different levels of strategy: 1.corporate strategy 2.Business strategy 3.Operational strategy ( Hofer and Schendel 1978)

1. Corporate strategy: It is concerned with the type of business the firm, as a whole is in or should be in. It addresses such issues as the balance in the organization’s portfolio by directing attention to questions like the attractiveness of entire business, with reference to important strategic criteria, such as markets, contribution to corporate profits and growth in a particular industry.

2. Business strategy: The key strategic issue at business level is determining competitive strategy. This involves addressing the following questions:
· What markets should we be trying to compete in?
· What competences or capabilities do we need to compete successfully?
· How can we move forward? (Cliff and David Ash 1996)

3. Operational strategy: At this level the focus is likely to be on the maximisation of resource
productivity. It is concerned with how the various functions- finance, marketing, operations, research and development etc.., contribute to both business and corporate strategy.
I think that these variables and their influences may vary from organization to organization.

My Perspective:

I think an organisation should have a perfect structure, functioning and its relationships to the people who comprise . The work of business is divided into a series of tasks or operations by the people in an organization.

Let me give an example to support the above topics. Here I am going to establish a power plant. I am considering the power plant as an organisation. In my organization I have1.Chairman ,2.board of directors,3.Engineer and Manager (C.E.O) ,4.ITI workers. The role of my organization is to produce electricity at least 300 days per year. who ever in this organisation changes , the role should not be changed. So that only I can earn more profits. In my organization the hierarchy is given from 1->2->3->4.Each and every level of members have their roles and responsibilities in the organization to generate electricity with out creating any problem to organizations role. Coming to the environment ,the chairman and board of directors have the relations with governmental agencies and the economic system to get license for the plant and to sell generated electricity in the market. Here the engineer and the ITI workers do not have relations with the task environment.

My organizations strategy is to produce more kilo watts of power, high profits and to become the top power generating power plant in India. Coming to the different levels of strategy chairman and board of directors comes under corporate strategy. The administration wing completely belongs to this team. They involves in investing the profits coming out of the industry into the same field to extend the power plant. The C.E.O and manager comes under business level who involves in competing with other power generating units so that at what price can the organization can sell its power at a makeable rate . Actually they deals with finance and marketing department . The ITI workers comes under the operational level who plays a key role to produce maximum electricity. Here these workers are not concerned with the functions-finance, marketing, research and development .They only deals with the operation sector(as they operate the electricity generating machines).As I discussed earlier that these variables can vary from one organization to the other.

REFERENCES:

1. Aldrich, H.(1979).organizations and environments. Englewood cliffs, NJ: prentice hall
2. David , A.(2004).The routledge dictionary of business management
3. Hofer, C.W and Schendel, D. (1978) strategy formulation: Analytical concepts(st Paul, Minnesota: west)
4. Ansoff, H.I.(1965) corporate strategy(New York: MC Hill)
5. Cliff, B and David, A.(1996)''the contents of strategy'', Management Strategy
6. Maxweber.(20th centaury ) sociology
7. Oxford dictionary
8. Cary ,C and Argyris,C.(1998).''Organisation and environment'',Encyclopedia of management



community of purpose

me n deepak

our presentation


discussin abt our presentation

our goals,objectives...

SWOT analysis

its abt stratagy

rough work on 'organisation'

our team wid out man chi

our opponents
hamza

this thursday i have discussed with my team members about stratagy and organisation... we have shared our views ..... we presented our work in the seminar

week 0 - introduction

i just came to london this week.this place is awesome ..... in this week end i saw westminister, canary wharf, london bridge,london eye etc.., ..... i have created this blog too in this week

knowledge management

hello this is abhinay