Term Paper on "Knowledge Management Has Been Practiced"

Term Paper 10 pages (3514 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Knowledge management has been practiced for quite a long time. Indeed it's a function that is naturally practiced in all human organizations. It is done in informal ways by all the people who undertake activities so as to improve integration tasks and knowledge production. There is need to realize that the main of knowledge management is not to enhance the effectiveness of the workers or the bottom line of organization. Its major aim is to improve the processing of knowledge (Firestone and Mcelroy, 2003) expecting enhancements like such to result into improved quality solutions. When this is done, worker effectiveness and bottom line will be improved. Like several other business processes that are emerging, knowledge management may be defined differently by businesses and organizations. It may also be defined and understood differently by different people in the organizations. A number of organizations view knowledge management to be a kind of document management. This refers to the systems that enable consultants to share the best practices, engineers to allocate design data and so forth. To call center administrators and the customer service, it could mean an easy, database that can be searched or a complicated problem resolution tool that is guided. Knowledge management may be defined as the practices that are capable of maximizing the organization's knowledge value by assembling, structuring, and conveying to the critical points of consumer interaction. The systems of knowledge management are not linked by nature to particular communication channels. Knowledge ought to be a resource with multi-channels. The systems for knowledge management are normally deployed in order to attain goals that are measurable and specific in a number of areas like lowering service costs. It is true that knowledge management enables firms to minimize customer service costs through the reduction of repeat calls, wrap-up times, call handling and training of agents, and also by maximizing the capability of level 1 agents to provide solution to problems. The enhancement of the performance of level 1 agent improves the overall efficiency and effectiveness of call center workers. It also provides firms and organizations with access to a larger pool of labor since the need to get people with domain knowledge and interpersonal skills is reduced. Knowledge management also results into improved service. This is because it also results into improved quality of the services that are provided by the organizations. Customers will receive the correct answers quickly. Similarly, there will be no need to transfer customers to other agents or putting the customers on hold. The value of customer service will be great. A survey that was conducted by Dr. Jon Anton who is a call center expert illustrated that the customers buying goods and services that have defects but get customer care service that is superb when their problems are being resolved are more likely to buy the products again from the organization than the customers who purchase perfect products that are having no defects at all. Knowledge management ensures that there is consistency in the services that are provided by the organizations. It is extremely hard for organizations be aware of the response from customers if these organizations are not having knowledge management systems. knowledge management make sure that the customers having similar questions get similar responses even if the problems are being tackled by different agents, the channels for interactions like web, phone, email are different. When there is consistency within the organizations, it is possible to provide the best responses to customer problems responses. This will boost quality and efficiency of the organizations. When there is enhanced customer service, the operational areas will make the organizations to achieve their goals and objectives.

Major milestones in the evolution of knowledge management that have proven useful to me

Some of the major in the evolution of knowledge management that has proven useful to me are mainly in the KM 2.0 category which includes; knowledge aping using the latest ICT technologies, expert directories, knowledge fairs, collaborative technologies such as groupware, knowledge repositories as well as social software such as wikis and blogs

Knowledge Management as a Set of Processes

A three-tier structure of organizational processes and results distinguishing knowledge processes, operational organizational processes and the processes for administering knowledge processes have been developed (McElroy, 2003 and Firestone and McElroy, 2003, 2003a). Operational processes refer to those that apply knowledge but neither produces nor integrates the knowledge. Outcomes include market share, sales revenue, Retention of customers and compliance to the Environment.

The Three-tier Structure

Two knowledge processes are in existence. The first one is knowledge production. It is the process that firms executes to result into fresh general knowledge and also other knowledge created through non-routine processes. The second process is knowledge integration. It is this process that provides the fresh knowledge to people and groups that comprises the firm. Examples of results are fresh strategies of the organizations that are communicated all through the organization through the use of e-mail and new policies of health insurance that are communicated new releases of the firm's personnel manual.

Knowledge management refers to the processes that endeavor to alter the present pattern of the processing of knowledge in the organizations so as to improve its outcomes. A distinct knowledge management action refers to that having similar goals as the ones that are stated above or the others that are meant to participate in the processes. KM involves the study of processes like such and their effects on operational processing and knowledge. this is implying that KM's role is not to directly create, manage or integrate a number of the outcomes of the knowledge in firms, but it only impact the knowledge processes. This in turn affects the outcomes of knowledge. For instance, when the knowledge manager alters the regulations that affect knowledge production, knowledge claim's value is capable of improving.

Examples of activities that, while not specifically denoted as "KM" nevertheless represented key KM activities in organizations are;

The usage of emails by employees to communicate with each other or other experts without the e express knowledge of the firm. The hosting of corporate events such as sports and luncheons with other industry leads as guests. This is because some of the activities lead to indirect passage of information from employee to employee as well as the gaining of insight from key KM leaders who may be presents as participants or speakers

Some key KM leaders that I consider influential in this field are;

a. Verna Allee, the President of Integral Performance Group

b. Michael Burtha, the Executive Director, Knowledge Networking Worldwide, Johnson & Johnson

c. Baruch Lev, the Philip Bardes Professor of Accounting and Finance-New York University

d. David Owens, the Chief Knowledge Officer and Vice President at The St. Paul Companies

e. Ray Ozzie, the CEO of Groove Networks

Q2

2) How to compare and contrast the major KM cycle frameworks, taking the best

One would compare and contrast the major KM cycle frameworks by considering the differences and similarities that exists in the major phases involved in them such as the encompassing of the capture, data creation, the codification, information sharing, access, application as well as how the knowledge is reused in the within as well as between organizations. The main approaches are the Wiig (1993).Meyer and Zack (1996), McElroy (2003), and Bukowitz and Williams (2000) approaches. Knowledge is managed in these by the systematic adherence to the necessary processes of knowledge encompassing up to its usage and reuse. This is done by following strictly the path that the information follows in order for it to develop to become a valuable asset to a given individual or organization (Dalkir,2005)

Q3

The two KM models that I feel are comprehensive and therefore easy to implements are the Zack KM cycle and the Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle.

The Zack KM cycle

The Zack KM cycle is useful since it provides various analogies that are useful. Such an analogy is the product platform analogy (knowledge repository) as well as the information process platform (refers to the knowledge refinery) so as to emphasize the idea of value-added processing that is necessary for the leveraging of knowledge in a given organization. The Zack KM cycle is made up primarily of processes that leads to the creation of higher value added "organizational products" at each and every stage of the knowledge processing procedure. Example is the addition of value from information by extracting information such as trends from the data. Competitive intelligence too can be effectively gathered as well as synthesized so as to repackage the "unprocessed" data into a meaningful and interpreted knowledge that is validated too.

The Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle

The The Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle (Bukowitz and Williams,2000) describes the knowledge management framework that outlines how a given organization generates, maintains as well as deploys the strategically sufficient knowledge stock towards the creation of value. It consists of knowledge repositories, processes, relationships, external sources, functional skills, organizational intelligence and information technologies. The functions of this cycle… READ MORE

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