This concept was first put forth by two anthropologists, namely Barbara Rogoff (1985) and Jean Lave. Later Lave along with Etienne Wenger developed this concept furthermore coined the term Communities of Practice. (Wikipedia 2006) and this is not a new concept, most of us are a part of at least one such community or group knowingly or unknowingly. Communities of Practice are a group of people who share common interests and these people come together to achieve common goals. It also helps people to solve problems in their area of expertise. (Hass, et al 2002) they are not a static group but they evolve and adapt continuously. CoP is a way of sharing knowledge. And now CoPs are adapted by most of the organizations as the means of improving the knowledge. Wenger (1998) also considers community of practice as a combination of identity theory, theories of practice, theories of social structure and situated experience (Rohde., et al 2006)
The intension behind starting or joining a community of practice may vary from person to person. Some people join to share the knowledge they have obtained, some want to gain more knowledge or gain better understanding. Staring a community of practice in an organization is a very difficult task. It requires a great amount of motivation and support from the management. It requires leaders or leadership quality in people who can start a learning culture in an organization and motivate others to join and share the knowledge. But usually CoPs in organizations are not very successful for several reasons, either there is a cultural clash or the groups tend to move away from the actual purpose.
Communication in CoP occurs formal and informal, formal in a sense arrange a meeting or conference where members can meet face to face and discusses and share their ideas and this is the best known method because a sense of trust is built when you meet people face to face but unfortunately organization have reduced such meetings or conferences to reduce their expenses and have switched to virtual conferences and informally means using the current technologies like net meeting, audio visual conferencing these means of communication does help to some extent but does not help to build the level of trust required to share knowledge .
Another reason why formal or face to face communication is better over its counterpart is that because this type of communication is more transparent or visible and humans respond better when things are clear (Ackerman., et al 2003) the author explains it a nice example if there are two doors one made of wood and with a caution sign “open slowly” and other one made of glass with no sign boards, its obvious that the second door will have least accidents compared to the other one as it is clearly visible
Social Networks are also considered as Virtual CoP, it can be found in many literatures that humans perform better when they are in groups or in a network of people. (Chung., et al 2007) A Social network from my understanding is a group of people or organizations that are interconnected and they communicate directly or indirectly to share their interests- it can be anything from personal to professional.
One of the best example I came across is of Chrysler group which is basically a vehicle manufacturing company where CoP is put to best use and they call it as Electronic Book Of Knowledge [EBOK] Here they use the concept of "Lessons Learned" or "Best Practices” which is adapted from the ideas put forth by Wenger and snyder in 2000. And the engineers at Chrysler refer to it as tech clubs where they share the knowledge. Chrysler is also well know for its outstanding success story for reusing the lessons learned and best practices and significantly reducing the cost and process simplification. (Ackerman., et al 2003)
When I was working with my previous employer which was a Microsoft technical support organization and I was in MS outlook support and my job was to solve client’s problem related to outlook, me and my colleagues got all kinds of weird calls with weired problems and we managed to solve them and during the coffee break we gathered around and discuss the weird problems faced by the clients and use to have a good laugh, so next time someone receives a same or similar problem we managed to solve very quickly. What we didn’t realize that, this sharing of knowledge in the form of jokes became a routine. Unfortunately none of these solutions where documented.
References:
1. Wikipedia 2006 Website : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice
2. Roland Hass, Wilfried Aulbur and Sunil Thakar and edited by mark Ackerman, Volkmar pipek and Volker Wulf Sharing Expertise - Beyond Knowledge Management 2003
3. Thomas Erickson and Wendy A. Kellogg Knowledge Communities edited by Mark Ackerman, Volkmar pipek, Volker Wulf Sharing Expertise - Beyond Knowledge Management 2003
4. Kon Shing Kenneth Chung, Liaquat Hossain, Joseph Davis Individual Performance in Knowledge Intensive Work
Website: http://library.mdx.ac.uk:2059/10.1145/1240000/1235036/p159-chung.pdf?key1=1235036&key2=4217164321&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=22381609&CFTOKEN=94892644
5. Markus Rohde, Ralf Klamma, Volker Wulf Establishing Communities of Practice among Students and Start-Up Companies
Website: http://library.mdx.ac.uk:2059/10.1145/1150000/1149361/p514-rohde.pdf?key1=1149361&key2=8296164321&coll=ACM&dl=ACM&CFID=22381609&CFTOKEN=94892644
Sunday 15 February 2009
Friday 13 February 2009
KM and Strategy Article [2]
Before i explain Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Strategies [KMS] I'll try to explain what is Knowledge..?
Knowledge Management is a very broad topic and their is no widespread agreement about the definition of KM (Haggie., Kingston., 2002)
Knowledge is nothing but collection of useful information
"Information might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, and models" (Barclay.,Murray., 1997)
Knowledge in simple words is nothing but a definition of some information acquired by any means. Knowledge according to me is nothing but experience in life and it is not restricted to work place.
My initial understanding about knowledge was, Knowledge can be acquired by talking to different people about their experiences in life.
If you Understand the information they said, then you have acquired the knowledge... and if you share that knowledge with others and give them the right information at right time which will in turn help them to take right decision now i consider that as knowledge management.. because you could process right information at right time..
And if you can manage to take right decision on the basis of experiences and do the right thing then that i consider as a KM strategy
But one thing is for sure if you want to make a point or suggest something at your workplace you must have formal experience - to be taken seriously, no matter how knowledgeable you are...
Strategy from a organization's point is making major decisions that will affect the company's progress for a long term. "Major Business Decisions are by their very nature Strategic" (Drummond.,Ensor., 1999) and organizations need to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes . Strategy just reflects the intent of a organization to gain competitive advantage over its peers. One must not confuse strategy to strategic plan as strategic plan involves the selection,sequence,timing and specific objectives to achieve the strategy.
According to the authors bob and ron (Wit.,Meyer., 2004) strategy can be classified into four levels and they are
• Functional Level Strategy
• Business Level Strategy
• Corporate Level Strategy
• Network Level Strategy
Apart from these traditional strategies one must adapt the current new forms of strategies i.e promotional strategy (Engel., et al 2000) and strategic advertising (Percy.,Elliott., 2001) which are other types of strategies and which will give organization an edge or to be recognized in the market. Creating promotion or advertising a product that already exists in the market is much easier in comparison to launching a new product or a new brand in the market because one must analyze the market carefully. The strategies must differ for different cultures; organization must change their strategies according to the local culture where they plan to launch the product.
As I mentioned about VOSAPA Inc in my previous article which is the mobile phone retailer in UK and that we do market research or surveys every quarter to know the people’s requirement and as per this survey we mould our business strategy, if suppose there is a new handset that is in great demand even before its launch, we will bid for that phone and make sure that we alone get the rights to sell that phone in UK. We can also keep track of the prices of handsets and if they are competitive in the market. If any of the handsets are not sold then we would use promotional strategy and tie it with some other popular products in the market like Xbox, play station or slash the prices so that we do not have dead stock.
There was a case/ issue in India against the soft drinks giants coke and Pepsi in mid 2006 (Gentleman 2006) that they had excess pesticide contamination in their drinks and both the companies thought that they can handle the situation like they did earlier in 2003 but to their surprise government started to ban the drinks to be sold in schools and public areas. When they had faced the same issue in 2003 they had used the usual strategy used by most companies i.e sign up some big movie/sport star as their brand ambassadors and ask them to recommend it to the public and in turn gain public confidence, and these companies knew they couldn't use the same strategy as the situation was much worse and none of the stars would come forward to recommend their products so they changed their strategy they stopped all the advertisements and instead they had tie ups with all the multiplexes, KFCs, Pizza Hut/Corner and started promoting their drinks with the respective products i.e popcorns / burgers / pizzas. Initially people refused to take but slowly it changed and they are still recovering and still not gained full confidence. Read more about this issue here.
And this is how Strategies are changed according to the market/environment.I personally stopped drinking coke and Pepsi after this incident.
References:
1. Rebecca O.Barclay, Philip C.Murray., Knowledge Praxis
Website: http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html
2. Knox Haggie, John Kingston., Choosing your Knowledge management strategy
Website: http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/publications/online/0258.pdf
3. Graeme Drummond and John Ensor., Strategic Marketing planning & Control 1999
4. Bob De Wit, Ron Meyer., Strategy - Process, Content, Context 3rd Edition 2004
5. Engel, Warshaw, Kinnear., Promotional Strategy 2000
6. Larry Percy, Richard Elliott., Strategic Advertising Management Oxford University Press 2001
7. Amelia gentleman IHT.com 2006
Website : http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/business/coke.php
Knowledge Management is a very broad topic and their is no widespread agreement about the definition of KM (Haggie., Kingston., 2002)
Knowledge is nothing but collection of useful information
"Information might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, theories, principles, and models" (Barclay.,Murray., 1997)
Knowledge in simple words is nothing but a definition of some information acquired by any means. Knowledge according to me is nothing but experience in life and it is not restricted to work place.
My initial understanding about knowledge was, Knowledge can be acquired by talking to different people about their experiences in life.
If you Understand the information they said, then you have acquired the knowledge... and if you share that knowledge with others and give them the right information at right time which will in turn help them to take right decision now i consider that as knowledge management.. because you could process right information at right time..
And if you can manage to take right decision on the basis of experiences and do the right thing then that i consider as a KM strategy
But one thing is for sure if you want to make a point or suggest something at your workplace you must have formal experience - to be taken seriously, no matter how knowledgeable you are...
Strategy from a organization's point is making major decisions that will affect the company's progress for a long term. "Major Business Decisions are by their very nature Strategic" (Drummond.,Ensor., 1999) and organizations need to anticipate and adapt to environmental changes . Strategy just reflects the intent of a organization to gain competitive advantage over its peers. One must not confuse strategy to strategic plan as strategic plan involves the selection,sequence,timing and specific objectives to achieve the strategy.
According to the authors bob and ron (Wit.,Meyer., 2004) strategy can be classified into four levels and they are
• Functional Level Strategy
• Business Level Strategy
• Corporate Level Strategy
• Network Level Strategy
Apart from these traditional strategies one must adapt the current new forms of strategies i.e promotional strategy (Engel., et al 2000) and strategic advertising (Percy.,Elliott., 2001) which are other types of strategies and which will give organization an edge or to be recognized in the market. Creating promotion or advertising a product that already exists in the market is much easier in comparison to launching a new product or a new brand in the market because one must analyze the market carefully. The strategies must differ for different cultures; organization must change their strategies according to the local culture where they plan to launch the product.
As I mentioned about VOSAPA Inc in my previous article which is the mobile phone retailer in UK and that we do market research or surveys every quarter to know the people’s requirement and as per this survey we mould our business strategy, if suppose there is a new handset that is in great demand even before its launch, we will bid for that phone and make sure that we alone get the rights to sell that phone in UK. We can also keep track of the prices of handsets and if they are competitive in the market. If any of the handsets are not sold then we would use promotional strategy and tie it with some other popular products in the market like Xbox, play station or slash the prices so that we do not have dead stock.
There was a case/ issue in India against the soft drinks giants coke and Pepsi in mid 2006 (Gentleman 2006) that they had excess pesticide contamination in their drinks and both the companies thought that they can handle the situation like they did earlier in 2003 but to their surprise government started to ban the drinks to be sold in schools and public areas. When they had faced the same issue in 2003 they had used the usual strategy used by most companies i.e sign up some big movie/sport star as their brand ambassadors and ask them to recommend it to the public and in turn gain public confidence, and these companies knew they couldn't use the same strategy as the situation was much worse and none of the stars would come forward to recommend their products so they changed their strategy they stopped all the advertisements and instead they had tie ups with all the multiplexes, KFCs, Pizza Hut/Corner and started promoting their drinks with the respective products i.e popcorns / burgers / pizzas. Initially people refused to take but slowly it changed and they are still recovering and still not gained full confidence. Read more about this issue here.
And this is how Strategies are changed according to the market/environment.I personally stopped drinking coke and Pepsi after this incident.
References:
1. Rebecca O.Barclay, Philip C.Murray., Knowledge Praxis
Website: http://www.media-access.com/whatis.html
2. Knox Haggie, John Kingston., Choosing your Knowledge management strategy
Website: http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/publications/online/0258.pdf
3. Graeme Drummond and John Ensor., Strategic Marketing planning & Control 1999
4. Bob De Wit, Ron Meyer., Strategy - Process, Content, Context 3rd Edition 2004
5. Engel, Warshaw, Kinnear., Promotional Strategy 2000
6. Larry Percy, Richard Elliott., Strategic Advertising Management Oxford University Press 2001
7. Amelia gentleman IHT.com 2006
Website : http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/08/22/business/coke.php
KM Definition Article [1]
Knowledge management is a very broad topic and has many views.However statistics shows that 80 percent of KM projects are a failure.This is a interesting pdf about KM Glossary: Click to view
Knowledge is a very important part of every business organization.
To get a good basic understanding about knowledge and managing the knowledge one must read views expressed by Penrose (1959) and Drucker (1993). Penrose considered acquiring knowledge is a "Social Learning Process". Drucker coined the term "Knowledge worker" (Drucker 1959) Knowledge workers are generally people who are involved in planning, acquiring searching, analyizing, organinzing information in an organization.
In an IT field programmers, system analysts, technical writers, academic professionals, researchers are considered as knowledge workers.
Peter Drucker in The Effective Executive(1966) describes each "knowledge worker" as an executive of the organization either by his position or knowledge and that his contribution affects the capacity of the organization to perform and obtain results
The Most commonly accepted view of knowledge Management is the collection of simple facts which is "data" which when processed and structured forms "Information" and this when interpreted in a proper manner becomes "Knowledge", but now KM is also viewed in another dimension i.e reverse knowledge hierarchy (TUOMI, 1999) here the author says information cannot be interpreted without any prior knowledge and data cannot be collected without the knowledge of what information to be collected.
According to Karl Wiig of Knowledge Research Institute says that knowledge management[KM] is a very vast topic of discussion. KM is ability of an organization to make effective use of its human resources, "human capital" or "brainware" (LIEBOWITZ, 1999)
Where as Wilma Abney and Daimler Chrysler of corporate university think KM as "Know what is Known, who knows it, How it has been applied and how it can be further leveraged and shared " and these ideas are reflected in book Sharing Expertise(Ackerman., et al 2003) and I agree with the authors that most organizations never realize the knowledge they have in their organizations so the management should use some technique to tap the potential knowledge and how that knowledge will be benefit to the organization.
"If only HP knew what it knows it would make three times more profit tomorrow"
The above is one of the definitions of knowledge management but has made huge impact around the world. In simple words it describes the importance of knowledge sharing and knowledge management, if they had a proper way to handle and manage the knowledge acquired by the employees and the organization, then the knowledge would remain inside the organization.
As mentioned earlier that 80 percent of the KM projects are failure, the possible reason for this may be that the organizations fail in one of the stages of KM i.e either in knowledge conversion or knowledge dissemination or may their may not have a proper method to discard the obsolete knowledge or which would become a mere data..
But
And to me KM is process of learning new things and have the ability to know when, where and in what situation it can/has to be applied, and finally discarding the old knowledge and make room for new knowledge. Managing the knowledge is some things everyone does right from the young age as mentioned by my friend salis in his blog (Read More..) and nobody teaches us how to manage the knowledge acquired. I will try to explain Knowledge management in our organization VOSAPA Inc which is a mobile phone retailer and with a goal to be the top mobile phone retailer in
References:
1. Penrose, E.(1959), The Theory of The Growth of The Firm,
2. Drucker, P.(1959), Landmarks of Tomorrow
3. Drucker, P.(1993), Managing for Results,
4. Jay Liebowitz :knowledge Management Handbook, CRC Press, 1999 Website:Book Preview 22-01-2009
5. Ron Young Knowledge Management Online Website: http://www.knowledge-management-online.com/Definition-of-Knowledge-Management.html
6. Iikka Tuomi : Data is more than knowledge, ISBN: 0-7695-0001-3,Website: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=772795 , 22-01-2009
The above paper also appears in : System Sciences, 1999. HICSS-32. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Hawaii International Conference
Friday 6 February 2009
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