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