Posted by Howard Cohen on May 09, 2002 at 02:31:22:

In Reply to: Knowledge Management posted by Howard Cohen on May 07, 2002 at 08:22:01:

Dear Mezei

Thanks for your prompt response to my question with regard to the following
question listed below"

"Critically discuss the systems development process for the development of a
new knowledge management process"

I have used your input plus some material from the textbook by Prof Laudon

It would be appreciated if you would go through this and add any comments/suggestions to improve on this.

I have also emailed my solution.

Regards

Howard Cohen

* Solution

Knowledge Management is the management of tacit and explicit knowledge.

In terms of an overall knowledge management system, tacit knowledge is the 'individual'. Individuals are tacit knowledge, and the rules or science that governs tacit knowledge is completely independent of explicit knowledge. Explicit knowledge is the organisation, not the individuals within the organisation, but the knowledge wiring that connects them up.
So logically, for a KM system to be developed, it has to look like an electrical diagram, with the individuals representing the knowledge source or generator, and the wiring representing the knowledge circuit.

The dominant conception of IT enabled knowledge management is constrained by the very nature of the knowledge creation processes. Specifically, the extant mainstream notion of such inquiring systems has given sparse attention to:

 the dynamic and continuously evolving nature of knowledge;
 the tacit and explicit dimensions of knowledge creation;
 the subjective, interpretative and meaning making bases of knowledge creation; and,
 the constructive nature of knowledge creation.

These issues are not meant to be mutually exclusive or comprehensive, however they highlight some of the limitations inherent in the current techno-centric conceptualizations of knowledge management.

The prevailing knowledge management paradigm limits itself by its emphasis on convergence and consensus-oriented processing of information. Strategy experts have underscored that the focus of organizational knowledge management should shift from ‘prediction of future to ‘anticipation of surprise.’ Such systems may be enabled by leveraging the divergent interpretations of information based upon the meaning-making capability of human beings

Knowledge resides in the user and not in the collection. It is how the user reacts to a collection of information that matters.

The current conceptualization of information technology (IT) enabled knowledge management suffers from the fallibility in imposing the traditional information-processing model on the strategic needs of contemporary organizations. The traditional knowledge management model emphasizes convergence and compliance to achieve pre-specified organizational goals. The knowledge management systems were modeled on the same paradigm to ensure adherence to organizational routines built into information technology. Optimization-based routinization of organizational goals with the objective of realizing greater efficiencies was suitable for an era marked by a relatively stable and predictable environment. However, this model is increasingly inadequate for an era characterized by increasing pace of discontinuous environmental change.

The new era requires continual reassessment of routines embedded in organizational decision-making processes to ensure that underlying assumptions are aligned with the changing environment.. The proposed model of knowledge management attempts to achieve simultaneous ‘freezing’ and ‘unfreezing’ of meaning to ensure that effectiveness of decision-making (doing the right things) is not sacrificed at the altar of increased efficiencies (doing things right). It does so by proposing a balance between the optimization-based predictive capacity of information-processing systems and the divergence of meaning (of information) based on innate human sense-making capabilities.
It may be argued that a firm's capacity for knowledge creation may even become unduly impaired by a heavy reliance on IT-based knowledge management .

By considering the meaning of knowledge as "unproblematic, predefined, and prepackaged" they ignore the human dimension of organizational knowledge creation . Such restricted perspective of the IT- enabled organizational knowledge management may even have detrimental influence on the firm's learning and adaptive capabilities . This perspective is increasingly problematic given the dynamically changing organizational environments that demand multiple interpretations of information, as well as their ongoing evaluation.

The mechanistic and rigid nature of the routines embedded in information-processing based knowledge management is incapable of keeping pace with dynamic knowledge-creation needs for poor environments. In contrast, the model of knowledge management is based upon more proactive involvement of human imagination and creativity to facilitate greater internal diversity (of the organization) to match the variety and complexity of the dynamically discontinuous environmental change.

Yours sincerely

Howard Cohen

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Follow Ups:

• Re: Knowledge Management Jack Vinson 13:27:48 05/10/02 (1)
  • Re: Knowledge Management John Tieso 08:07:07 05/18/02 (0)

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