Microsoft

Knowledge Management
Overview
Madhuri

2011

CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

PROBLEM STATEMENT
Analysis of different practices of Knowledge Management and its implementation methodology.

ABSTRACT
The Study Area Knowledge Management is the set of processes that seeks to change the Organizations present pattern of knowledge processing to enhance both it and its outcomes. A discrete Knowledge Management activity is one that has the same goal as above or that is meant to contribute to that set of processes. The discipline of KM is the study of such processes and their impact on knowledge and operational processing and outcomes. The foregoing implies that KM doesn't directly manage, create or integrate most knowledge outcomes in organizations, but only impacts knowledge processes.

Thought Process This area KM is not only important with respect to IT industry but also equally important in other non IT fields as well. Hence the research would be drilling down what are other industry practices of KM, Aviation industry. Air India has recently planned to implement DMS (Document Management System). Learning and finding different tools for KM. Analysis and comparison of direct KM tool with packaged with other ERP systems.

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 OBJECTIVE
To understand the KM area. Research and find out different ways of implementing KM Spread awareness across industries which are not in KM pool.

SCOPE
To analyze the different learning of KM practices and analyze the best practices in IT as well as non IT industries focusing on the different methodologies implemented.

METHODOLOGY
Data Gathering Procedure: The evaluation methodology will be applied by implementing procedures designed to address the research questions and achieve the purpose of this study Research Design: Not Fixed yet. Sample: collected out of Survey. Technique: Not fixed yet. Solution Outline: Analysis of the Output

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CHAPTER II: Literature Review OVERVIEW OF KM

Difference between Information and Knowledge o Information Information is a non-random structure within a system, indicating future interactive potentialities, either originating along with it, or acquired or developed by it in the course of its interacting with and responding to its environment and the problems generated by that interaction (Bickhard, 1999). Note that this definition does not require correspondence between information and the environment. Nor does it assert that information is encoded in some simple cause-and-effect fashion, but leaves room for emergent information in the context of interaction with the environment. o Knowledge Knowledge is a tested, evaluated and surviving structure of information (e.g., DNA instructions, synaptic structures, beliefs, or claims) that may help the living system that developed it to adapt. KM is capturing, storing, updating and sharing of Knowledge for better decision making and to increase an organizations bottom line. o KM With the advent of information growing deeper and faster theres been a boost in advancements of the way people are doing business and hence ended up in managing their data and sharing the learnings People today are becoming more aware of security to data and enhancements in storing the data. Not only IT industry but the importance of managing and sharing knowledge has triggered other industries to jump in. Many organizations have started using advance technology to realize the benefits of knowledge like as pointed few below:
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KM will help reduce in taking wrong decisions. Faster proactive response to emerging scenarios Process improvements: As community meet very rare to share practices hence a shared location can be of optimum use. The knowledge perceived from customers, suppliers and peers will open doors for new business requirements. Creates flat and lean organization updating all on same platform Reduce cost of training Reduce cost and risk Increase versatility of the workforce Faster more Robust problem solving

The concept of KM has not restricted to software industry but spread across other verticals of non IT industry like hotel management and Airline Industry. KM" interventions will involve either IT tools or social techniques or some mix of them. Whether such an intervention is a bona fide KM intervention depends on whether it is a policy, program, or project targeted at enhancing knowledge processing and through knowledge processing, knowledge outcomes, and ultimately business decisions and processes.

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Three Tier framework of KM process

Fig 1.1 Three Tier framework of KM process

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CASES
As said KM practices is not applicable only to IT but Non IT Industry too. And KM process includes not just management of data by technology but also by people. Comparison of KM practice in IT industry at Infosys with KM practice in a hotel Chinese Dining Corporation in Hong Kong. The below case is taken from below link. www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/km-success-stories CASE I: KM at Infosys Over the years in addition to IT services in banking, finance, securities, and insurance several new areas like e-commerce, telecom and ERP has been included. But with the rapid growth of information and speedy development of technological sector the organization realized increasing geographic dispersion, technological flux, and functional specialization. Hence they realized there would be sustaining problems in competitive world; high growth and market leadership in absence of strong practice of formally manage its knowledge supply chain. Thus, this led to the initiation of Knowledge Management process. The KM solution had four important primary elements: o The KM portal: a central repository o People Knowledge Map: a directory service for locating experts o Knowledge Exchange: a set of online discussion forums o K-Mail: an auto response generator and workflow engine for answering questions Apart from above elements the package also had number of tools like given below: K-Agent: An intelligent agent for authoring documents that worked in the background. K-classify: A tool for automatically classifying a submitted knowledge asset according to the corporate taxonomy.
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K-desktop: and environment for preparing a document for submission to the repository as a knowledge asset. K-enterprise: A BI for analyzing and viewing KM measurements. K-Mark: An enterprise repository through which people could share their intranet, classify and search and browse and can find set of websites on a topic. K-subscribe: for receiving automatic notification on arrival of new content. The above technology was an enabler for a change which integrated with the mainlines business by encouraging knowledge sharing and re-use. The below case is drawn from below link: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Knowledge_Management_Cases_in_Asia/Knowledge_Managemen t_of_a_Chinese_Dining_Corporation_in_Hong_Kong CASE II: KM in Chinese Dining Corporation in Hong Kong The Chinese dining house we choose to study has a history of over 16 years in Hong Kong. Ten years ago, it sought expertise from specialized management consultants for improving the quality of services. In 2000 it started business in South Mainland China. It has been expanded in recent years from a restaurant to a dining holding corporation with more than 40 restaurants in Hong Kong, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Its great success in running Chinese restaurants which provide various special menus for local cuisine from different areas of Guangdong attracts our attention. The Corporation receives awards for its innovation, outstanding catering service management and excellent customer relationship. It is worth exploring the innovation it makes especially in terms of knowledge management, which is quite a new idea in Chinese dining industry.

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Their KM practices tools and strategies Communication channels: The first one is the Restaurant Daily News. We deliver the news everyday by sending emails to let the crew receive the immediate messages and the recent news about the Corporation. Branch manager needs to sign it to ensure staff members have read it. The second one is poster. The poster would be posted inside the restaurants and it contains some real cases about the customers or some information about product analysis. The third one is VCD. We would distribute a 15-minute VCD to the crew per week. The VCD contains the recent trend of the corporation and the information of different departments. The forth one is the Monthly Magazine, which is distributed to the management team monthly to share knowledge about business management. Management manual Each department has its own management manual which will be updated half a year. Since the management manual contains important knowledge, it should be carefully preserved to avoid the leakage of important information. Menu If the dish is created by individual branch instead of the dining corporation, then there may not have a standard recipe for the dish to be kept by the corporation. But, if the dish is generated by the corporation, then it must have a standard menu which shows clearly about the procedure of making the dish. In future, they hope that they can make a series of dim sum recipes and store them in a computer database. Inside the recipes, the content includes all the things such as ingredients, making procedures, cost, price list and the dishes pictures. Meetings were conducted for sharing best practice Information store

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Who owns the recipes? How to manage and keep the recipes

The Chinese dining corporation we are studying takes a leading role in implementing knowledge management in the Chinese dining industry in Hong Kong. Although it has only a history of three years in KM, it has obvious positive feedbacks from the employees and customers. A white paper on Cognitive Conflict and Consensus Generation in Virtual Teams During Knowledge Capture: Comparative Effectiveness of Techniquesby Anan th Chirav uri, Derek Nazareth, and K. Ramamurthy

Effective knowledge management has been increasingly cited as critical for businesses to compete successfully. Knowledge acquisition/capture, the first step in knowledge management, continues to be a bottleneck and is exacerbated when experts are geographically distributed. Furthermore, knowledge from multiple experts is likely to generate inconsistent knowledge for a given problem domain. There is thus a compelling need to generate consensus by resolving inconsistencies and conflicts that may occur among experts during the process of knowledge acquisition. This process is more challenging when dealing with virtual teams of experts. This study addresses task-based or cognitive conflicts among experts. A key objective of this study is to examine the effectiveness of two cognitive techniquesthe repertory grid (or RepGrid) and Delphiin generating consensus among experts during the knowledge capture process.

Repertory Grid Technique Based on the Kellys personal construct psychology (PCP) theory, RepGrid is a cognitive mapping technique that attempts to describe how people think about the phenomena in their world . RepGrid uses concepts such as elements, constructs, and links. Elements refer to the objects under investigation; constructs are qualities describing the elements that a participant would arrive at by comparing two or more elements and contrasting with a third element (construing); and links are ways in which elements and constructs are related . These concepts are used to create a matrix, which is then used to collect data and form mental models of each participant (see the Appendix for a discussion of the methodology). RepGrid has been employed in knowledge acquisition and to construct.
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Delphi Technique The Delphi technique was developed at the RAND Corporation in the 1950s to generate consensus forecasts based on expert opinion [42]. It is a group process that uses written media to solicit and aggregate the judgments of several experts using questionnaires. The approach is iterative, allowing participants to review the opinions and reasoning of others, and subsequently revise their initial thoughts based on peer feedback to enable convergence toward a common understanding (see the Appendix for a discussion of the methodology). Delphi participants remain anonymous to ensure that dominant personalities or the professional stature of individuals do not disproportionately influence the outcome.

A knowledge validation process begins when an employee submits a document containing a codification of some part of his or her knowledge, and ends when that contribution is either accepted for inclusion in a repository, or rejected. Validation cannot be performed automatically by the repository ; instead, assessing quality requires the insights of peer reviewers or subject matter experts. However, characterizing validation processes as simple sorting mechanisms fails to take into account the significant impact such processes may have on contributors who must interact with them. The paper on signaling theory helps explain how validation process characteristics can affect individuals perceptions of repository quality, They sought to understand which perceptions of knowledge validation processes might play important roles in influencing individuals contribution behaviors. We began by reviewing the KM literature to determine the ways in which individuals perceptions of these processes could vary [21, 52, 54, 64, 89]. We then discussed our preliminary findings with knowledge managers and knowledge contributors to identify the key characteristics that contributors are capable of observing and forming judgments about. This process converged on three such key characteristics: 1. the time lag between submission of a new contribution and a decision by a reviewer, 2. the extent to which contributors can observe the validation process in action, And 3. the restrictiveness (overall rejection rate) of the validation process. 84 Durcikova and Gray Because each contributor will experience a unique set of interactions with a repository, his or her perceptions of the validation process along these three dimensions will vary. Perceptions are thus far more important in understanding contributors behaviors than are any actual or objective measures of validation process characteristics.
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The below literature is from white paper How Knowledge Validation Processes Affect Knowledge Contributionby Alexandra Durcikova and Peter Gray

Signaling theory Signaling theory offers a robust explanation for how people make judgments about quality in a range of situations, particularly when quality is difficult or impossible to directly observe. Signaling problem exists in the field of knowledge management: employees are urged to draw upon knowledge repositories, but may be reluctant to do so if they are uncertain about the quality of knowledge a repository contains. We define perceived knowledge quality as the extent to which an individual believes that a repository provides precise and accurate content that meets his or her knowledge needs. Unfortunately, the quality of a particular entry in a knowledge repository is impossible How Know ledge Valida tion Processes Affect Know ledge Contribution 85 to assess a priori. Moreover, verbal exhortations by knowledge managers may act as weak and unpersuasive signals of quality. Although some halo effect is likely if employees assume that all knowledge in a repository is of similar quality to the specific entries he or she has read in the past, such inferences may be unwarranted. Much may also depend on the knowledge held by a particular employee; the same knowledge found in a repository may be trivial to some but profound to others. Managers who wish to encourage the adoption and use of knowledge repositories thus may benefit from an understanding of the potentially important and reliable signals of repository knowledge quality produced by the knowledge validation process.

The below paper tells you the awareness about knowledge management in IT industry. Knowledge management practices in Indian information technology Companies..by Abhilasha Singha_ and Ebrahim Soltanib

The present paper lays the foundations for the best practices in knowledge management and investigates the degree of awareness and implementation of KM principles and practices in Indian information technology (IT) companies. A purposive sample of 10 IT companies in North India was chosen for study and a survey was conducted with the objective of investigating the degree of awareness and implementation strategies of knowledge management. The present research work is based on secondary data obtained from 10 IT companies. The various phases of
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knowledge management (knowledge generation, knowledge codification, and knowledge transfer and knowledge application) were taken into account and data were interpreted on the basis of weighted scores for each parameter at each phase. Final conclusions were drawn on the basis of the Knowledge Management Index. The interpretation of data revealed that the Knowledge Management Index (KMI) for awareness and commitment is very high as per the pre-defined rating scale but the involvement of top management in allocating the necessary resource flow to initiate and sustain knowledge management practice is needed.

Below is an example of KM index how it was conceived and tabulated and Final conclusions were drawn on the basis of a Knowledge Management Index, which can be calculated by the given formula:

Where w is weighted sum score, i is number of sub-parameters, n is number of respondents and R is maximum value of rating which is four in the present study. A firms culture heavily shapes how new organizational knowledge is captured, legitimated (or rejected), and distributed throughout an organization.

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Fig 1.2 Knowledge Management Index

The Knowledge Management Index for culture in the sample population comes out at 73.38%. This was calculated by putting the values in the formula mentioned above and then dividing the total weighted sum score by the function of total number of responses and pre-identified subparameters. As per the responses of respondents, a clear perception was observed that there is a need to document experiences gained from earlier projects so that this learning can be applied on future projects. They had the general belief that companies must be able to capture, validate and distribute new knowledge fast enough to change strategic direction and resource allocations, if they are to prosper in turbulent environments. Companies whose culture is most effective at creating and integrating new knowledge into the organization have norms and practices that demand broad participation in knowledge gathering and distribution.

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REFERENCES
1) Success-stories.[Online].Available http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/km-success-stories 2) Knowledge management cases in Asia. [Online]. Available. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Knowledge_Management_Cases_in_Asia/Kno wledge_Managemnt_of_a_Chinese_Dining_Corporation_in_Hong_Kong 3) Chirav uri, Derek Nazareth, and K. Ramamurthy. Cognitive Conflict and Consensus Generation in Virtual Teams During Knowledge Capture: Comparative Effectiveness of Techniques ournal of Management

Information Systems / Summer 2011, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 311350. 4) Alexandra Durcikova and Peter Gray How Knowledge Validation Processes Affect Knowledge Contribution Journal of Management Information Systems / spring 2009, Vol. 25, No. 4, pp. 81107. 5) Abhilasha Singha_ and Ebrahim Soltanib knowledge management in IT industry. Knowledge management practices in Indian information

technology Companies Total Quality Management Vol. 21, No. 2, February 2010, 145157

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