Part A

1. Explain the types of Knowledge Teams? (4 Marks)

1. Self-managed knowledge teams

2. Virtual knowledge teams
Self-managed knowledge teams
Teams naturally grow into self-managed knowledge teams as they mature. Here, the team members share
the leadership of the team depending on the type of task or problem at hand. This enables the best person
for the job to lead the team rather than the usual scenario whereby one leader leads everything regardless
of his/her expertise. Rotation of the team leadership in this manner enables every team member to learn
about leadership role and subordinate role, which helps bond the team members together.

Generally, knowledge teams have the potential to carry out projects that are much more complex, and
advance within the allocated budget and time. Setting new goals and standards enable team members to
strive for higher performance.

Virtual knowledge teams

Knowledge workers increasingly rely on electronic collaboration to work on important knowledge
projects, even when they are located in the same building. Collaborators are generally separated by time
and space, which requires them to depend on technological collaboration tools such as teleconferencing,
electronic brainstorming, group display screens, discussion threads and net meeting in performing the
jobs. Virtual knowledge teams are established when knowledge workers have to overcome physical
borders in performing their job. Members of virtual teams rely on who are geographically, temporally and
organizationally separated, are highly dependent on information technology to communicate. Virtual
knowledge teams must maintain communication between them through regular meetings to ensure
accountability and to maintain group cohesion. This is important as team members rely on such meetings
to share issues, discuss decisions made and explore emerging concerns.

2. Who is a Chief Knowledge Officer? (4 Marks)

The Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) is a job designation for the person whose main responsibility in an
organization is to be accountable for knowledge creation, transfer, organization, dissemination and overall
management of knowledge in the organization. As the main person in charge of KM in an organization, the
CKOs main responsibility is identifying knowledge within the organization and encouraging employees
to share it among them.

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3. Explain 3 Areas for Knowledge Application? / Example of success stories of using Data Mining
techniques to create new knowledge? (4 Marks)

1. Marketing
2. Retail
3. Insurance

Marketing

Predictive DM techniques, such as artificial neural networks, are used for target marketing including
market segmentation. This allows marketing departments to segment customers according to basic
demographic characteristics, such as gender, age, income and purchasing patterns. These techniques have
also been used to improve direct marketing campaigns, through an understanding of which customers are
likely to respond to new products based on their previous consumer behavior.

Retail

DM methods have been used for sales forecasting by taking into consideration multiple market variables,
such as customer profiling based on purchasing habits. Techniques like market basket analysis also help
uncover which products are likely to be purchased together.

Insurance

DM techniques have been used for segmenting customer groups to determine premium pricing and to
predict claim frequencies. Clustering techniques have also been applied to detect claim fraud and to aid
in customer retention.

4. Explain Knowledge based systems and state the uses of it? (4 Marks)

Knowledge-based systems are computer systems that are used to assist decision making where human
knowledge is represented explicitly as rules in the knowledge base. Knowledge-based systems were
developed for managing codified knowledge. Widely known as expert systems, these were originally
created to emulate the human expert reasoning process, hence the name expert system. It became one
of the most successful inventions to result from AI research and has been successfully implemented in
medical, engineering, business, law, education and other domains.

MYCIN, used to diagnose infectious diseases, and Digital Equipment Corporations XCON for configuring
computer systems are two well-known examples of early (successful) expert systems. This has led to the
birth of knowledge engineering, a domain that supports the development of these systems.

5. Explain Knowledge Sharing? (4 Marks)

Knowledge sharing is the process by which explicit and tacit knowledge is communicated to others.

There are 3 important ways of looking at this process. First, knowledge sharing is related to effective
transfer, so that the person who receives the knowledge can understand it well and carry out actions
based on this knowledge. Second, what is shared is knowledge and not recommendations based on
knowledge. Third, knowledge sharing happens across groups, departments or organizations, as well as
between individuals.

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5. Explain Knowledge Sharing Systems? (4 Marks)

Knowledge sharing system is a system that enables members of an organization to acquire tacit and
explicit knowledge from each other. In a knowledge sharing system, knowledge owners are willing to
share their knowledge with a controllable and trusted group, decide when to share and the conditions for
sharing and expect a fair exchange, or reward, for sharing their knowledge. On the other hand, knowledge
seekers may not be aware of all the possibilities for sharing, thus the knowledge repository typically helps
them through searching and ranking, as well as deciding on the conditions for knowledge acquisition

A knowledge sharing system is said to define a learning organization, supporting the sharing and reuse of
individual and organizational knowledge. ICT tools, such as document management systems, groupware,
and e-mail, database, and workflow management system used for singular unrelated purposes have been
integrated into knowledge sharing systems.

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Part B
Question 1 (20 Marks)
(a) Explain the Stages of organizational knowledge development? / Phases of Knowledge
Development? (10 Marks)
The important stimulus in initiating the knowledge creation process is when there is a knowledge gap
between what is known and what has to be known. In other words, the organization wants to learn new
knowledge.

This learning is done by reviewing existing documents and organizational knowledge sources are called
knowledge sourcing. Sources that can be tapped in getting new knowledge include expert guidance from
consultants, specialized and prior held by employees, organizational records, the companys intranet, case
studies bank and project repositories.

1. Knowledge Sourcing
Knowledge sourcing can be considered as an important stage of knowledge creation. The richness and
accessibility of the knowledge sources would really help the knowledge creation process. For example, to
introduce a new model of Proton would require appropriate sources of guidance such as:
(i) The current market trend for passenger cars;

(ii) Customer feedbacks;

(iii) Sales report according to model type of competitors;

(iv) Contribution from experienced staffs; and

(v) Previous model development reports.

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 2. Knowledge Abstraction

General principles and concepts are developed to guide the construction of the new knowledge after the
knowledge sources were analyzed, and this process is known as knowledge abstraction. This knowledge
abstraction process helps in structuring the insights acquired during the knowledge sourcing process and
in inferring new knowledge from the guidelines, procedures and other emerging issues. Here, the expert
knowledge seekers are depended on their own knowledge, with the other sources helps in validating or
enriching that knowledge. On the other hand, less experienced people are very much depended on
external knowledge sources.

The time taken to complete the process of abstraction can be lengthy depending on whether the acquired
knowledge is politically sensitive, complex or needs approval from certain groups or committees.
However, many organizations fail to provide sufficient time required to reflect and weigh the various
sources before abstraction. Failure to carefully analyses the knowledge sources and develop some useful
framework to guide the knowledge creation process could result in faulty reasoning and undesired
outcomes. The role of knowledge workers here are to recognize the importance of reflection and
consideration in the knowledge creation process.

For example, if Proton wants to gather customers feedbacks regarding its models, the target population
must be identified, i.e. customers using basic model, intermediate model, sport model and luxury model.
Then some new requirements are added such as the car buying patterns and competitors pricing
structure.
3. Knowledge Conversion
During the knowledge conversion stage, knowledge from the abstract foundation is converted into
different forms of useful applications, which can be tested and shared with others. Knowledge conversion
describes the phase during which the different ideas and principles are refined into a specific result.
Knowledge can be in the form of codified or embodied.

Codified knowledge is knowledge that can be preserved in writing or other permanent form, and is
accessible to anyone requiring it. This knowledge can be built into artefacts such as models, equations,
algorithms and guidelines, which help people, understand it better.

Embodied knowledge on the other hand is the tacit knowledge embedded in individuals. This type of
knowledge is difficult to be codified and is shared through stories, metaphors, analogies or personal advice
when it is required. Embodied knowledge is hard to be accessed without continuous involvement with
the knowledge creators.

In the example of Proton discussed earlier, codified knowledge relating to feedback regarding existing
models would be in the form of customer satisfaction reports, customer complaints and sales reports.
Embodied knowledge here would be the experience shared by the model development team members
and marketing experts. Most organizations depend on these two types of knowledge conversion during
the knowledge creation process.

(Compared with our earlier discussion about Nonakas SECI knowledge conversion process, embodied
knowledge is tacit knowledge, while codified knowledge is explicit knowledge.)

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 4. Knowledge Diffusion
Knowledge diffusion is the spread of knowledge when it is codified or embodied to a wider audience.
Diffusion can take place in organization through the use of communications media such as newsletters,
intranet, meeting, seminars and videos, modelling of new practices, and specialized training. The success
of knowledge diffusion relies on the level of previous knowledge by the employee and the effectiveness
of the tools and techniques available to share the knowledge. Knowledge diffusion is considered
successful when the recipients can comprehend and integrate the insights into their own experience.
However, embodied knowledge that is based on experience, judgment and expertise are difficult to be
shared and transferred to others.

For example, Proton can use various media such as internet, intranet, feedback forms, and other to gather
customers knowledge of using the previous model. As such the valuable knowledge from customers can
be shared, and Proton can leverage von this knowledge in designing future knowledge.

5. Knowledge Development and Refinement

Knowledge is regularly updated, refined and enhanced through additional experience and feedback over
time. This gradual development of knowledge development and refinement is considered as one of the
important features of knowledge management. This process ensures that the knowledge remains current
and useful. Therefore, the organizations challenges are on capturing the required knowledge and hold
knowledge for use by others. Organizations also need to ensure that the newly created knowledge is
reviewed and updated constantly to show any new understanding and insights that has been gained. For
example, the knowledge of customers preferences and feedbacks will enable Proton to have the
knowledge of what the customers wants. However, this knowledge has to be regularly updated and
further refined. By doing this

Proton would have generated and diffused new knowledge.

These five phases of knowledge development shows the importance steps of organizational knowledge
creation. Although these stages of knowledge creation contribute to effective organizational knowledge,
but it may not always be complete especially in cases where the expert knowledge is very specialized that
makes it difficult to be communicated and shared. On the other hand, only knowledge sourcing will take
place during the knowledge creation process if the knowledge user has very limited experience.

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 (b) Explain the 5Ps of Strategic Knowledge Management? (10 Marks)

1. Planning
2. People
3. Processes
4. Products
5. Performance

Planning

Strategic knowledge management needs comprehensive planning to ensure proper execution of related
activities. Planning would help clarify the organizations knowledge goals and establish effective values
and processes in supporting those directions. Both long and short term goals should be clearly defined to
ensure that these goals are in line with the organizations mission and vision. Technological infrastructure
planning should also reflect the goals of strategic knowledge management so that these plans can be
carried out effectively. The planning process is time consuming and highly depended on many activities,
requiring in-depth consideration of the whole knowledge context. To ensure the planned strategies are
implemented successful, continuous monitoring and measurement should be carried out periodically.

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People

An important aspect of strategic knowledge management is the recognition that strategic knowledge
depends on people, as they are the one who have the knowledge and manage the systems as well as the
processes in the organization. Therefore, their support to the strategic knowledge process is vital to the
organizations success. A knowledge sharing culture that promotes knowledge diffusion can be built
through effective knowledge hubs, networks, community of practices, and other social community
strategies. Employees need to be convinced that there are social, economic and logistic benefits from
their knowledge partnership with others. This implies that knowledge management is strongly supported
by human resources processes and procedures, and by the management at all levels of the organization.
The organization priorities and perceived values would be a major influence on the way how employees
react to knowledge management initiatives.

Processes

Knowledge management practices need to be practiced using effective workplace techniques. Strategy,
principles, processes, and practices alignment need to well manage so that knowledge management
principles can be implemented without any setbacks. Messages about what is important may be perceived
differently across organization, and employee should consider the rhetoric and the reality of consequences
when deciding how they should work and interact. If there is little tangible commitment to knowledge
principles, they will ignore the public messages in favor of the local reality. Therefore, the actual processes
require to be monitored regularly to make sure that it reflects the organizations knowledge priorities. Failing
to do this would make the overall knowledge management strategy is contradicted by the social context in
which the knowledge operates. The management infrastructure is very important here for ensuring aligned
practices, where managers could influence significantly over the process operation.
To support the knowledge processes and the need of knowledge workers, different types of knowledge
networks, ranging across communities of practice, knowledge hubs and knowledge webs should be built.
Such efforts also require leadership, communication and publicizing of their existence so that new
employees could get connected and gain benefit from it. Therefore, the recognition of the requirement to
be in the knowledge communities should also underlie the development of knowledge processes. As such
the development of new skills and competencies should be encouraged to make best use of these
opportunities.

Products

Organizations develop their own knowledge products that may be provided to clients or used within the
organization as shared knowledge objects. Emphasizing the development of core knowledge helps to
identify the range of knowledge products that should be cultivated, encouraging their definition, capture,
management, distribution and sharing. Different sources of embodied knowledge need to be identified
to encourage their access by other employees. On the other hand, explicit knowledge needs to be
captured and distributed in an efficient and timely manner to make it readily accessible by the employees.
The identification and encouragement of knowledge object sharing must be carefully planned since the
important goal here is in ensuring that all valuable knowledge is preserved and accessed and long and
short term requirements are achieved.

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Performance

Organizational knowledge management must be regularly reviewed to ensure that the financial and social
investment is positively influencing the intellectual and social capital of the organization. Organizations
also must ensure that it balances long and short term priorities to enable effective financial management
and development for future. Many companies strive to find the best solutions for achieving efficient and
cost effective, as well as innovative approaches to their business challenges. Nevertheless, business are
aware that there exist many ways inefficiencies thrive and undermine the effective development of better
and improved processes, and the same is true for knowledge management. Since knowledge management
involves long term strategy that is culturally driven, there are many challenges in measuring its impact and
in determining how effectively the systems and processes are contributing to better knowledge management
practices.
Therefore, knowledge management needs to be evaluated continuously to measure how well it is integrated
into the business context, with the expected outcomes clearly defined.

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Question 2 (20 Marks)
(a) Explain the types of Knowledge Sharing Systems? (10 Marks)
Knowledge sharing systems can be classified according to their functions and the specific types of these
systems are incident report database, alert systems, best practices databases, and lessons-learned (LL)
systems.

Incident report database is used to share knowledge related to incidents or malfunctions, for example, of
field equipment (such as down time of monitoring equipment) or software (such as bug reports). The
incident reports mainly detail out the incident together with explanations about the incident, although
they may not provide any recommendations. Incident reports are typically used in the context of safety
and accident investigations.

The original use of alert system was limited to disseminating information about a negative experience that
has occurred or is expected to occur. However, recent applications also include increasing exposure to
positive experiences. Alert systems could also be used to report problems experienced with a technology,
such as an alert system that issues recalls for consumer products. These systems could operate in a single
organization or a set of related organizations that share the same technology and suppliers.

A best practices database describes successful efforts undertaken by the organization in performing some
processes that could be applicable to other organizational processes. A best practices system is different
from lessons learned systems as they capture and share only successful events, which may not be derived
from experiences. Some of these best practices are expected to represent business practices that can be
adopted by other organizations in the same domain.

The aim of lessons learned (LL) systems is to capture and share lessons that are beneficial to employees
who will face situations that are almost the same as a previous experience in a similar setting. LL systems
could be pure repositories of lessons or sometimes intermixed with other sources of information such as
reports, and usually focus on multi tasks.

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 (b) What is Data Mining and Explain the Characteristics and Objectives of Data Mining?
(10 Marks)
Data mining is a term used to describe knowledge discovery in databases. It is a process that uses
statistical, mathematical, artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to extract and identify
useful information and subsequent knowledge from large databases, including data warehouses. This
information includes patterns usually extracted from large sets of data. These patterns can be rules,
affinities, correlations, trends or prediction models. Data mining offers organizations a sophisticated
decision-enhancing environment to exploit new opportunities by transforming data into a strategic
weapon.

Characteristics and Objectives of Data Mining

(a) Data are often buried deep within very large databases which sometimes contain data from several
years. In many cases, the data are cleaned and consolidated in a data warehouse.

(b) Sophisticated new tools, including advanced visualization tools, help to remove the information buried
in corporate files or archival public records.

Finding it involves massaging and synchronizing these data to get the right results. Latest data miners are
also exploring the usefulness of soft data (unstructured text stored in such places as Lotus Notes
databases, text files on the Internet, or an enterprise wide intranet).

(c) The miner is often an end-user, empowered by data drills and other power query tools to ask ad-hoc
questions and obtain answers quickly with little or no programming skills.

(d) Striking it rich often involves finding an unexpected result and requires end-users to think creatively.

(e) Data mining tools are readily combined with spreadsheets and other software development tools.
Thus, the mined data can be analyzed and processed quickly and easily.

(f) Because of the large amounts of data and massive search efforts, it is sometimes necessary to use
parallel processing or supercomputers to execute data mining.

(g) The data mining environment is usually a client/server architecture or a web-based architecture.

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Question 3 (20 Marks)
(a) Explain the Core Competencies of Knowledge Workers? (10 Marks)
Organizations developing their human capital to become knowledge workers that could work in a
competitive environment should include several important competencies. These competencies include:

1. Thinking skills
2. Continuous learning
3. Innovative teams and teamwork
4. Innovation and creativity
5. Risk taking, decisive action taking
6. A culture of responsibility towards knowledge

Thinking skills

Knowledge workers are expected to have strategic thinking skills that would enable them to improvise
the product, help the organization improve the value-added contributions of its employees, and how the
knowledge worker's career, loyalty, and job satisfaction are affected by continuous learning. Knowledge
workers, regardless whether they are right brain thinkers (people who use intuitive and non-linear
approach in solving problems) or left brain thinkers (people who use logic and facts in making decisions)
should be able to maximize their thinking ability to achieve better results.

Continuous Learning

Knowledge work involves innovation through continuous on-the-job learning, seminars and work setting
that encourages creativity and advancement. This implies unlearning and relearning to be in pace with
the ever-changing business environments. Learning organizations have the responsibility of providing
continuous support and funding for employees lifelong learning that will result in better products or
quality of service.

Innovative teams and teamwork

Organizations are operating in an intense competition environment, which requires innovative teamwork
and joint decision making for solutions.

Teamwork is achieved through collaboration, cooperation, and coordination, in a setting that requires
knowledge-sharing attitude and commitment to knowledge exchange activities. The essential factor for
successful teamwork is strong management commitment and attractive incentives.

Innovation and Creativity

The push factor for innovation and creativity is for knowledge workers to expand their vision for
developing new products or services, which helps improve the organizations competitiveness. To be able
to do this, it requires knowledge workers to have opportunities to conduct research and development
activities and willingness to create knowledge and passion for idea generation. It also requires the
management to provide an environment that cultivates knowledge sharing and brings out the best of their
employees abilities and potential. The main goal is in creating future products and services that would
help increase the organizations revenue and profit.

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Risk taking and potential success

For organizations to be innovative and creative, they need to be risk takers. Maintaining the existing
condition minimizes the organizations risk but at the expense of underutilizing their knowledge workers
and not being able to improve their competitiveness. Higher risks give higher returns, but also result in
greater loss. Management can minimize these risks by working together with the knowledge workers,
sharing and exchanging the knowledge that is available, working together as a team, and making a joint
decision with a calculated risk. The knowledge and experience of senior knowledge workers should be
captured in the employees' knowledge base and shared through KM activities.

A culture of responsibility towards knowledge

This competency requires knowledge workers to be loyal and committed to their managers and leaders
as well as support their peers and the organization as a whole. When knowledge workers have problems,
they are expected to address these problems by discussing them with the relevant parties, working on
the best means to overcome the problem, and solving the problem efficiently rather than griping about
these problems.

Organizations should play their role in promoting a knowledge sharing culture by encouraging knowledge
exchange through referral or expert seeking activity. This requires the organization to seek knowledge
workers who are specialized and competent in addressing certain problems and have the willingness to
provide such knowledge if they are required by the organization. Creating a network of knowledge sources
and knowledge availability, and encouraging expert seeking activities is often a vital component in
learning organizations.

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 (b) Explain the Roles of Chief Knowledge Officer? (10 Marks)
The main job functions of the CKO are as follows:

1. Increase the returns on investment on knowledge People, processes and technology.

2. Share best practices, reinforce the importance of knowledge sharing among employee on a
regular basis.
3. Promote and improve company innovations and commercialize ideas or products that can
contribute to the companys revenue.
4. Minimize brain drain and human turnover at various levels in the
5. Organization and identify counter measures to address this problem.

Roles of Chief Knowledge Officer:

1. Agent of change
2. Investigator
3. Liaison
4. Listener
5. Politician

1. Agent of change: This requires the CKO to change the rather usual culture of knowledge hiding to
adopting the culture of knowledge sharing among employees in the organization. This requires
the CKO to be the champion of change among knowledge workers and management.
2. Investigator: This requires the CKO to identify the problems associated with knowledge sharing,
and outline the procedures for implementing alternative solutions.
3. Liaison: The CKO is the liaison officer between employees expectations and how the KM
processes in the organization functions to meet these expectations.
4. Listener: This role requires the CKO to reach out to employees, interpreting their ideas and
thoughts, and making conclusions out of these interactions. Listening helps the CKO in
understanding the problems faced by the employees and management with regard to KM
processes.
5. Politician: The CKO should solve problems by not creating problems. A respectable CKO has good
contacts, well-mannered, excellent diplomacy skills, and knowledge about the organization.
These skills will help the CKO in persuading employees and the management in engaging in KM
processes and improving the acceptance of a new KM environment.

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Part C
Question 1 (20 Marks)
Explain the Roles of Artificial Intelligence in Knowledge Management and
Describe Uses of Artificial Intelligence Tools in Knowledge management systems?
Roles of AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a branch of computer science that allows computers to represent and
manipulate symbols, thus enabling them to solve problems that could not be solved through algorithmic
models. Computers are designed to perform repetitive tasks such as complex arithmetic calculations or
database storage and retrieval. The common aspect in these repetitive tasks is that they are algorithmic
in nature, as these are based on a precise and logically designed set of instructions that produce a single
correct output, which is the basis of conventional computer programs. However, human problem solving
involves using symbols to which meaning can be attached such as when deciding on a sequence of tasks,
and the manipulation of these symbols is considered as the basis of AI.

Uses of AI

AI methods and tools are widely used to assist in finding expertise, eliciting knowledge automatically and
semi-automatically, interfacing through natural language processing, and intelligent search through
intelligent agents. AI methods such as knowledge-based systems, neural networks, fuzzy logic,
evolutionary algorithms and intelligent agents, are used in knowledge management systems to do the
following:

1. Enhance knowledge search through the use of intelligent agents in web searches;
2. Help establish knowledge profiles of individuals and groups;
3. Help determine the relative importance of knowledge when it is contributed to and
accessed;
4. Scan e-mail, documents and databases to perform knowledge discovery, find new
meaningful relationships or induce rules for knowledge-based systems;
5. Identify patterns in data (through neural networks);
6. Forecast future results using existing knowledge;
7. Provide advice directly from knowledge using neural networks or knowledge-based
systems; and
8. Provide a natural language or voice command driven user interface for knowledge
management systems.

Question 2 (20 Marks)

(NO IDEA)

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