Knowledge Management

Is there a definition?

So, what is knowledge management? I came to the conclusion that there is no exact definition for this term. I started looking at the internet and found a lot of definitions but no one was quite the same with the any other. In my opinion, when it comes to knowledge management it is not so important to give a definition to it but what is important is the essence of it. During the workshop in knoledge management class an interesting exercise took place to enforce my belief that the definition is not so important but what matters is understanding the essence of knowledge management. The exercise required each group in the class to write a statement within 10 words stating what they believe knowledge management is about. Nobody had the same statement or even a similar one but everybody had keywors like experience, decission-making, benefit, advantage, etc. My point is, an absolut definition for knowledge management is not needed, what really matters is understanding what knowledge management is about, how and where it can be used and what advantages can it produce.

Here you can see some definitions for knowledge management but I would like to share a definition I came across with while reading the preface from the Knowledge Management Handbook (Jay Liebowtz, 1999). According to Jay Liebowitz, knowledge management is all about getting value out of an organization's/company's/firm's/etc intangible assets. I find this statement true and I support it because knowledge is the most important asset in a company and knowledge management is the means by which this asset can be utilized.

The opposing views

This is the other side of the coin. Some people do not believe in knowledge management. Wilson, T.D. (2002) believes that, knowledge management does not really excist but he describes it as an 'umbrella' term for processes that are not focused with managing knowledge but rather with managing work practices. To be honest, Wilson's paper got me thinking if knowledge management is indeed nonsense. To some extend he might be right and he does display some convincing points. I believe that knowledge management does exist but what might be making it look like nonsense is the fact that it is such a hard concept to perceive. It would be a great mistake to believe that knowledge management is only about using information management tools (Richard McDermott, 1999). Tools are only part of knowledge management but without human interaction knowledge management is almost impssible .

Moreover, what is not mentioned so often and I was quite surprise when I came across with it since I never thought about it is the 'dark side' of knowledge management (Steven Alter, 200x). This is not an opposing view to knowledge management but it is a different view as to how knowledge management can be used in a negative way. According to Alter knowledge management can be used to distore, supress and misappropriate knowledge. A lot of examples are mentioned by Alter but I would like to mention one from my own personal experience. While I was working for an organization in Cyprus I was part of an IT support team. A lot of times we were collecting virus infected pcs and a lot of times we found out that those computers were used to access inappropriate websites and most probably that was how they got infected with viruses but while filling our reports we did not mention this to keep our colleques out of trouble so this could be an example of supressing knowledge by making use of the dark side of knowledge management as Steven Alter calls it.

Hard-track and Soft-track knowledge management

I wouldn't like to go on too much about the definitions and concepts of knowledge management as more or less now we have a general picture of what is knowledge management and what are it's targets. I would like to mention something that I think has not been mentioned by my fellow students, at least as far as I know. There are two schools of thought for knowledge management. These groups are the soft-track and the hard-track groups. (Gao Fei, Meng Li, Steve Clarke, 2008)

The hard-track group perceive knowledge management as the method trhough which knowledge is created primarly by pulling out information from data. In conclusion, for the hard-track group, knowledge management is a tool that can be used to create knowledge and make some kind of profit out of it and this process is strongly affiliated with IT.

The soft-track group on the other hand, considers knowledge management to be anthropocentric and it is a means of providing a framework that favors the creation, sharing and application of knowledge.

Of course, not everybody supports the two groups theory. For example, some believe that eventhough IT gave birth to knowledge management, it cannot deliver it (Richard McDermott, 1999) since they believe that knowledge is not shared/expanded/created by electronic systems but by connecting people.

I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. It is true that by using computer systems only it might not be possible to achieve the targets of knowledge management but maybe having a mixture of the soft-track and hard-track groups by using both IT systems and more anthropocentric approaches together is the best way to follow.

Knowledge Management trhough personal experience

Eventhough, I do not have that much experience in the industry I have worked for some lage organizations in my home country. Knowledge management is not a very popular term in Cyprus but some kind of knowledge management excisted at least at some of the organizations I worked for. For example, at a bank I worked for whenever someone was geting a promotion or was moved to a different department before leaving the office he/she would spend a few days working along-side with their replacements to help them get familiar with their duties. The same happened to me when I first got there. My job was mainly to get reports send from other users into the system and then file those reports into a database. I had no knowledge how to do that or what each code was suppose to mean and how to file each report according to the code. But by the end of the week by having the knowledge and personal experience of my colleaques I was able to sort out all the incoming reports without any help. Another example from a different organization is the usage of Lotus notes as a knowledge management tool. Everybody had Lotus notes installed on their computers and they could use the software not only to send e-mails but they could use it to store data in a database of phone numbers that was shared throughout the organization, find addresses and office numbers through another database to reach their colleaques and even use it to report any problems they had to the help desk.

Final thoughts

At the time back then I never realized it but now I see that without knowing I had some knowledge management experience and it is easy to see that knowledge management really made life easier for us the employees and allowed the organizations to run smoothly which at the end of the day, I think that is what knowledge management is all about.

References

Gao Fei, Meng Li, Steve Clarke. (2008). Knowledge, Management and Knowledge Management in business operations
Jay Liebowitz. (1999). Knowledge Management Handbook
Steven Alter. (2006). Goals and Tactics on the Dark Side of Knowledge Management
Richard McDermott. (1999). Why Information Technology Inspired But Cannot Deliver Knowledge Management.
Wilson, T.D. (2002) "The nonsense of 'knowledge management'" Information Research, 8(1), paper no. 144 [Available at http://InformationR.net/ir/8-1/paper144.html]