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The Malaysian Ministry of Education wanted to improve Malaysia’s higher education system and turn Malaysia into a country known for its excellent higher education especially in the South East Asian region. The Ministry identified Knowledge Management (KM) as one of the key requirements to achieve its goal.
The main theme of this study was to identify the core component of Knowledge Management. The study concluded that the main areas of KM includes the creation/generation of knowledge by faculty and students, the sources or channels that they use to acquire knowledge, the process of storing the acquired knowledge, and finally the dissemination or sharing of the knowledge in their respective universities. Furthermore, the Ministry also wanted to find out the level of the aforementioned practices in Malaysian Universities. The second stage of this study was to identify and analyze the social and technical aspects of knowledge management. The technical aspects are as follows:
Infrastructure: This deals with the technical component of KM such as software and hardware.
Info-culture: Which deals with predominant attitudes and behaviour whereby a set of rules and guidance are established for members of a group or an organization to follow.
Info-structure: This deals with people’s views and reactions towards different organizational infrastructures such as IT, infrastructure policy, and organizational hierarchy.
The last part of this process was to analyze the different factors that affect the implication of Knowledge Management.
In order to accumulate data for their study, the Ministry formulated a survey and had eight universities participate in it. The Ministry used different statistical techniques e.g. descriptive analysis, factor analysis, and multiple regressions in order to analyse the data. After analysing the data, the Ministry found that the participant universities have a high level of KM practices; such that the students and faculties generate knowledge through class discussion, discussion with peers, observation, and experimentation. They acquired knowledge through researches, the internet, intranets, conferences, bulletin boards, and workshops. The knowledge acquired was stored as both hard and soft copies, and was also properly filed in databases. Finally, they shared their knowledge extensively through publications, conferences, workshops, dialogues, forums, informal discussions, teaching and trainings, and consultancies. Based on the survey, the Ministry concluded that the first four components of KM did not need any readjustments or new implementations because the results from the survey were satisfactory.
After analyzing the data for social and technical components of KM, the Ministry found out that most of the participants were satisfied with organizational culture and structure but some of the participants were moderately satisfy with IT infrastructure such as IT maintenance, data security, and adequate IT support. Based on these findings, the Ministry found out that the socio-technical components were the key factors in enhancing the performance of the universities. Thus the implementation of an IT infrastructure or knowledge management system which utilized human capital with best practice and procedures was found to be the most efficient way of enhancing the performance of the universities.
The following articles compose the research for my literature presentation on knowledge management and its influence on E-Business. I believe that this is a very important subject of knowledge management due to its increasing make-up of the overall business being done in the world today. As more and more business begins to take place over the Internet, we will need new forms of knowledge management that aren’t just extensions of current knowledge management models, but rather models that apply specifically to knowledge being used in the Internet world.
My primary article is:
Malhotra, Y. (2000). Knowledge Management for E-Business Performance: Advancing Information Strategy to “Internet Time”. Information Strategy, The Executive’s Journal, 16 (4), 5-16.
While a lot of knowledge management focuses on the management of knowledge within corporations, little emphasis seems to be placed on the e-business and its management of knowledge. This article considers the main assumptions of any information management strategy and refreshes them for modern business in an Internet embracing world. I felt this would be an interesting topic to choose considering e-business is an enormous part of business being done today and knowledge management is just as important for this sector of business as well.
My secondary article is:
Fahey, L., Srivastava, R., Sharon, J.S., Smith, D.E. (2001). Linking E-Business and Operating Processes: The Role of Knowledge Management. IBM Systems Journal, 40 (4), 889-907.
E-business has made great strides in creating new methods in which business is accomplished, but has not yet completely incorporated into the knowledge management landscape. This article focuses on how e-business knowledge management contributes to customer relationship management, supply chain management, and product development management.
The most important difference I see between traditional knowledge management and the kind associated with e-businesses is the human relationship factor. While even though sometimes limited in a traditional business setting, in-person human interaction is the decisive difference between traditional business models and their e-business counterparts. Because of this knowledge management systems must be designed to take this factor into account. Additionally, on-line accessibility plays an even larger role when dealing with e-businesses due to the fact that there is no physical place to turn to for help when on-line communication fails. Overall, these and several other factors constitute specific elements of the knowledge management design that need restructuring when considering an e-business.
Blog for Sunday:
KM on the road: mobile applications
Judith Lamont wrote an article called “KM on the road: mobile applications” which was posted on kmworld.com. She opens the article by showing how even though a laptop is light, it is still not convenient enough for people. She points out that email is now easily accessible by phones such as Blackberry, iPhone, and other smartphones. Smartphones take less time to pull out, log on, and gain access. Although email is easy to access, what about other business applications? Businesses are starting to take a more mobile approach. The article says, “According to a study by In-Stat, growth in revenue for mobile business applications will increase 44 percent from 2007 to 2008.” 500 companies of various sizes and industry were studied for these statistics. The article also states that. “In 2007, at least one mobile data application was in place in 94 percent of firms in the study, up from 75 percent the previous year.” A third of these applications in place were knowledge management applications, and the numbers are growing. So who uses this and how can it be useful? Field service technicians and sales department staff were the first groups to start using smartphones on the job. An example of mobile devises storing information is BlueService. BlueService stores customer information, service requests, schedules, contracts and other information so that technicians in the field can view it through their smartphones. Emails and text message alerts are sent regarding schedule changes. Warranty checks can also be managed through their phones.
In the case that I have presented the main focus was on communities of practice. Communities of practice have been recognized by Siemens and they have formalized a connection that many times is an informal connection. A community of practice is a group of people who are linked together by a common ability or a shared interest. This connection allows for these informal groups to establish rules, trust, and respect that lay the grounds for knowledge exchange within the group. The common interest and a desire to gain more knowledge on the interest is what drive these communities to exchange knowledge and benefit from one another’s best practices, successes and failures.
Siemens understood and believed in the wealth of knowledge that their lower level employees had about the product they worked on day in and day out. They also believed that through communities of practice this knowledge could be shared in a reverse bottom-up approach. Siemens intended on allowing their employees to establish these connections and then have them recognized by the corporation. The key element to the implementation of communities of practice is the recognition of potential communities. Siemens was successful at recognizing the potential communities and not making someone fit into a community, but instead allowing them to choose to be a part of that group.
The major difficulty of the formalization of communities of practice is that by nature communities of practice are informal. How can you formalize a process that doesn’t have rules? Siemens sought to not force the rules but foster the connections and this is what has made this project successful.
I have attached my presentation for further information.COmmunities of Practice
My literature survey report is on blogging in the workplace and whether it is a good or bad idea. On the post I did on Angel, I mixed up my primary and secondary sources. My primary source is Six Myths and Realities of Blogging and Social Media in the Enterprise from awarenessnetworks.com. This article is on myths and realities of blogging in the workplace and is compiled to help for clarification purposes. It also serves asa guide for any organization seeking to effectively use blogs, wikis andother social media technologies at the corporate level. Awareness, is one of the key companies driving the adoption of enterprise blogging and social media technologies. The website states that, Awareness’s enterprise social media platform is used by companies to build communities that are public-facing to engage customers, prospects, and partners; internal, allowing employees to communicate, capture and share knowledge and information; or a combination of internal and external, where employees, customers, prospects and partners can all communicate in a corporate, borderless community. The company’s customers include enterprises such as Northwestern Mutual, McDonald’s, Kodak, Discovery Communications and Cannondale Bicycles, and largenewspaper publishers such as the New York Times Company. The myths include revealing confidential company information, employee participation, blogs being mainly a PR and marketing tool, a “celebrity” blogger is needed, and blogs are the only tool needed to foster communication with employees. One of my secondary sources is Robert G. Brody and Brian J. Wheelin called, Blogging: The New Computer “Virus” for Employers. It is from the Human Resource Planning; 2005, Vol. 28, Issue 3, p12-12, 1p. and can be found here. This article is about the dangers of blogging in the workplace such as for personal affairs, disclosing company information, and personal and professional attacks on management. Before, employees had to worry about employers wasting time and shopping or looking stuff online that was not work related. Now, employees are spending time during and after work blogging. Problems with this are the disclosure of confidential information, professional and personal, attacks against top management, and allegations that can undermine corporate stock prices. Since these things are usually done anonymously, the situation becomes even more difficult. How do employees control this and solve the problem? If they try to fight back, this could cause a bigger problem. If they do nothing, people will think it is okay. If the employee knew who was creating the problem, actions could be taken, but most of the time they do not have this information. The article suggests the following: Employers should research who had access to confidential information now appearing online, and trace the information through the organization. A user’s screen name can also provide clues if a birthday or hobby or name is included. If an employer can show their reputation has been harmed or there has been a loss in stock prices because of the posted comments then the employee could try to get a subpoena and the website would have to give the information of the profile user. However, the article points out that employees can also file an “anti-SLAPP” (strategic lawsuits against public participation) suit against the employer, which permits an individual to sue for the attempt to quell speech and other rights. The article suggest that the most effective way to fix this problem, may be to practice positive employee relations so such messages are discredited or become unnecessary. Companies can do this by adopting strategies based on an audit conducted by the company on what they want to see or need to strengthen this.
Today, organizational changes are no longer the exception but the rule, the successful management of organizational change has become a key success factor for innovative companies. One important factor in ensuring that a merger-and-acquisition (M&A) transaction enjoys the desired positive results, is the existence of recognizable synergies., as well as the successful exploitation of the planned synergy defects. too often financial aspects dominate corporate thinking, while differences of nationally, corporate cultures and working environments, and the incompatibility of It landscapes, are ignored. The know how needed to ensure the successful implementation of M&A plan is frequently only present in the heads of individuals. Siemens’ intention is to turn this expertise into common, corporate knowledge and thereby build up a dynamic corporate development. Siemens’ single step process for M&A at ICM is as follows: Preparation – analysis and development of co-operations or acquisition/divestment goals and strategies, Evaluation of co-operations or acquisitions/divestment opportunities. Transaction – Execution of co-operation or acquisition/divestment projects, approval process for application and approval of capitol investments. Integration/post closing – integration planning and execution, post closing management.
M&A differ greatly is size, scope, and so on, which makes standardizing the characteristics difficult. However, there are certain general factors that are found in successful M&A and, consequently, it is possible to postulate some reasons for the failure of M&A projects as well: Communication/Buy in, Vision/strategy, integration team, experience/information.
This is why Siemens developed the Mergers and Acquisitions Knowledge Exchange (MAKE). The main goal of the MAKE project is to imple,ent a knowledge management solution that will improve M&A activities at Siemens ICM. The necessity for KM in the field of M&A stems form the intention to collect and share knowledge about M&A processes and thereby multiply experiences. The more efficient handling of knowledge in this field should lead to the realization of synergies and practical use of the knowledge, and should also avoid knowledge loss.
The application of KM to the field of M&A is both promising and challenging. The scientific value for the KM field lied in the expansion of the networking concept (business communities) to a field where some of the usual prerequisites do not apply. The methodology of Business Communities must be developed further and adapted to the specific needs of the M&A context.
The MAKE project has already had a considerable impact on current M&A projects. However, the final success can only be evaluated once the Business Community is fully functional and self-sustaining, and the components of the developed concept have been fully implemented. It is important that at a defined future point, the applicability of the project’s approach to domains with similar furthers and shortcomings is further investigated.
My presentation was on the knowledge strategy process that has been implemented by the Siemens AG conglomerate in association with CIBIT, a Dutch knowledge management company. As you all know Siemens is a group of businesses that specializes in communications, automation, transportation, building and water technologies and etc. Through this presentation I would like to show the reasons behind the implementation of the Knowledge Strategy process, which I will refer to as KSP from here on, by the Siemens AG and CIBIT company.
There are three Key Dimensions of knowledge:
Proficiency- abilities, skills, and expertise which are tied to particular people
Diffusion- degree to which the abilities and expertise are distributed and hwo the process for networking and distribution are working
Codification- how capable are we of converting the tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge so that it can be used by all people who are interested.
What does KSP allow us to do-KSP allows buiness owners to align, design, and monitor knowledge related management activities according to its strategic perspective and business experience. KSP helps to define the relationships between the business development, key business indicators, and the necessary knowledge areas. KSP is used to create an action plan for knowledge management actions. Through the help of a KM team and in some cases a KM consultant, we can achieve state of the art KM solutions
KSP is composed of 6 steps:
Step 1: Organization Transformation? Process innovation? A new product line? What are the time frames for these processes. This helps to find the direction the KS will take. The case: the pending expansion of the service business over the course of 2-3 yrs? Management team came in with department heads and staff. Business owners needed to be convinced of the KSP.
Step 2: Process of brainstorming, structuring, and selecting.
The main knowledge areas are identified and the question is answered by the team.
e.g. Logistics, technology, the product life cycle, market, and customers
Step 3: Innovation Index, Balanced scorecard are different KPI that are identified.
Step 4: Use the results from previous steps and see the current and future impact of key knowledge areas on the PIs.
Step 5: Fitness of the knowledge areas in terms of the three knowledge dimensions described earlier namely proficiency, diffusion, and codification.
Step 6: Conclusions are drawn from the analysis that has been conducted through the group discussions. We group the actions into cross knowledge and area specific actions. We now come up with the actions that have to be carried out inorder for the firm to implement state of the art KM solutions
Results of the pilot project: Domain Manager, development of standard terminology, and revision of the strategy process. Knowledge portfolios from these worshops were significantly different from the business strategy plans. The have to be effectively integrated into one another.
The KSP implemented was very successful for Siemens and today many other companies have used similar processes to help them in their strategy plans.
In preparing for my case to present in class, I must say that i learnt a lot. Being responsible for sharing the information on the case with the entire class was burdensome. However, at the end of my presentation, I felt a certain sense of relief and accomplishment. I was relieved that my presentation was over but I still had my doubts on how capable I was in transferring the information to the class in an effective manner.
A few moments after my presentation, I received feedbacks from my professor and my friends. While they did say good things generally, a problem they noticed was the length of my presentation and the amount of information on the slides. Learning from my own mistakes, I thought that it was a good way to tell people not to make such long presentations. A presentation is a method of engaging the audience and enabling them to participate in the discussion. Although I know that it is always easier to be critical towards others than yourself, I feel that the presentations have pretty much taken the same route as mine. The length of the presentations and the lack of enthusiasm has made it increasing harder for me, personally, to be tuned in to what they are trying to say.
A case should allow us to be intrigued, curious, and excited. I don’t know how much of it has to do with the cases themselves or the presenters presenting the case. Delving further into the situation, I realized that maybe the problem lies in the fact that many people,myself included, aren’t familiar with the way a presentation should be done. The best way to make the best presentation would be learn from your peers on what you should do and what should avoid. Second, it makes a big difference when the presenter is involved and trying to engage you in the presentation. While we all have our drawbacks such as getting nervous when speaking in public(my personal favorite:P), I think we all have to take a step back and evaluate ourselves and others so that we can make the best presentations possible.
