Captured Knowledge
Collison and Parcell remark ‘captured knowledge requires some context and also a collection of specific experiences that are ‘distilled’ to provide the content’ (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.34). To be effectively utilised knowledge must be easily accessible and understandable to the recipient in order to offer any enhancement. The model appears to presuppose that all knowledge can be codified and stored as captured knowledge although Collison and Parcell (2004) posit a large amount of knowledge will remain as tacit knowledge that can’t be easily codified (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.39). Seyar (1992) agrees remarking all that we know cannot be ‘reduced to what we can say’ and therefore only a limited amount of knowledge can be easily shared (Sayer, 1992, p.13). Collison and Parcell (2004) suggest there are several barriers to sharing knowledge.
As much as IT assists in communicating and sharing knowledge in modern life Collison and Parcell suggest IT can also become a barrier to KM. They note barriers such as sending a file by email that can’t be opened by the recipient or network restrictions that prevent file sharing. They also suggest that meetings should have a meaningful outcome and remark meetings where agreement hasn’t been reach leading to further meetings is a barrier of information sharing. Lack of time to network and isolation of information that is relevant cross-departmentally are also barriers noted by Colison and Parcel (Collison & Parcell, 2004, pp.46-47).
In some organisations especially large organisations knowledge can become fragmented and isolated, leading to errors and loss of resource, reoccurring repeatedly as individuals and departments learn by their mistakes, rather than learning from shared knowledge (Robertson et al, 2002). When knowledge is shared effectively throughout the organisation and provides new insights and solutions to problems from one department or individual to another the process of learning can take place (Goh, 2002).
Learn: before, during and after
Collison and Parcell’s model depicts a unilinear process of learning before, during and after. From a critical realist approach, transfer of knowledge and hence learning cannot easily be achieved. Sayer (2002) remarks knowledge cannot be gained entirely through ‘contemplation’ and ‘observation’. Arguing ‘knowledge is primarily gained through activity’. Sayer (2002), also proposes that knowledge and learning is a social activity and therefore in order to learn consideration must be given for how the knowledge was produced (Sayer, 2002, p.13-14). Adequate allowance for social networking provides a conduit for knowledge to flow creating a forum for learning. It is proposed that unlike information, knowledge is affected by cultural values and is influenced by beliefs and commitment (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
Knowledge management practitioners have tended to focus on the technical aspect of their work (Hariaran, 2002). However, the ‘people’ aspect of knowledge management is a greater problem than the technical (Hariean, 2002; Davenport et al, 1998; Pfeffer et al 1999). Reige (2005) remarks that the ‘people’ aspect of knowledge management can create barriers such as poor social networking and communication, cultural differences and sub-cultures, insufficient allocation of time and absence of trust within the organisation.
Barriers also exists at an organisational level with firms concerned that promoting knowledge management is not economically feasible especially small firms that do not have sufficient infrastructure or resource to support successful implementation.
Following empirical research by Pauline and Mason (2003) in New Zealand it was found that most barriers to knowledge management are internal to the organization. Pauline and Mason (2003) suggest the main internal barriers preventing implementation of knowledge management are culture, management and leadership style and ‘lack of awareness and vision about knowledge management’ (Pauline and Mason, 2003).
Boundaries exist where employees are concerned with risk, choosing not to capture or share knowledge, where a fear of failure leads to a cautious approach to sharing and using retained knowledge (Ruggles et al, 1997, p.7). Collison and Parcell (2004) propose a natural reluctance to seek help, suggesting an inherent reaction to resolve issues independently in order to avoid exposing a perception of weakness (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.50). Pauline and Mason (2003) remark workers were found to resist sharing insights and ideas due to lack of time and fear of losing value within the organization (Pauline and Mason, 2003).
Organizations with an intrinsic approach to innovation and newness sometimes disregard captured knowledge in a quest for newness. Ruggles suggests it is often seen as ‘ignoble’ to use other people’s ideas or to reuse existing ideas and work. This quest for innovation can incur substantial costs to organisations but rewards to individuals for innovative ideas if successful can be significantly greater than reused ideas (Ruggles et al, 1997, p.7). Collison and Parcell (2004) argue it is faster and more efficient to reuse knowledge than to recreate it. Using retained knowledge can allow increased productivity and enhance additional learning which can then be shared (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.34).
Knowledge must be linked to the overall business strategy. Companies should develop their knowledge in a targeted way and not leave it to develop randomly (Probst, et al, 2001). Knowledge sharing fails in organisations because firms tend to change their organisation’s culture to fit knowledge sharing strategies and practices (Riege, 2005).
Theory in use: Espoused values
Collison and Parcell’s model proposes a linear transition of business objectives through to business results using a process of learning through accessing, applying, validating and renewing captured knowledge.
In order for the organization to learn individuals must learn. Senge (1990) states ‘Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no organizational learning occurs’ (Senge 1990, p.139).
Agryris, (1999) argues that individuals develop their own approach which may not be concurrent to that of the organization, defined as theory in use. (Agryris, C, 1999, pp.99-100). Espoused values governed by organizational objectives tend to be explicit structures; this may take the form of the company’s mission statement defining the company’s values and beliefs.
Agryris, (1999) proposes that individuals develop a ‘mental map’ which determines how they will respond to a situation. Furthermore, rather than explicit espoused values Agryis (1999), argues individuals use a predetermined mental map to delineate their actions. This can be interpreted as a defined divide between theory (what the organization wants to occur through the company’s mission statement or organizational values) and action (what the individual actually does, the individuals considered approach to a situation) (Agryris, C, 1999, pp.99-106).
Theory in use can lead to development of sub-cultures and divides within the organization creating barriers. Senge (1990) argues organizations must work to transcend ‘internal politics’ and ‘game playing’ which dominate traditional firms (Senge 1990: 273-286).
APPLICATION
Employed as the Technical manager of a manufacturing company the author is regularly required to manage barriers that exists within the organisation in an attempt to take a structured coherent approach to knowledge management.
The author is responsible for new product development, engineering and maintenance areas which are often supported by a cornerstone of knowledge. The company uses a Project management system which includes document management in order to capture explicit knowledge. Collison and Parcells model below (fig.3) holds some relevance to this process.
Business Objectives
As noted by Davenport et al. (1998) there are several enabling factors to knowledge management such as culture and structure which should be aligned to the company’s strategy. Sub-cultures exist within the author’s organization and these are not necessarily aligned to the business objectives. There may be several reasons for this. As noted by Agryris, (1999) theory in action does not always align with the companies espoused values. Sub-cultures within the organization possess shared views, values and beliefs and these individuals tend to group making the dividing cultures identifiable. This often leads to ‘internal politics’ and ‘game playing’ between sub-cultures which Senge (1990) remarks organizations should work to eliminate.
The business objectives also need to be clear to everyone in the organization to ensure a unitary response. This can often fail at middle management leading to a large group of employees that have very little indication of what they are working towards. Without clearly defined business objectives employees either become demotivated or set their own objectives which may differ from that set by the ‘organization’.
The company’s mission statement should outline the objectives of the business and the companies espoused values which should be shared by the entire organization. The companies MD groups all members of the organization together annually and reviews the last year’s objectives and what the companies objectives will be for the near future as well as what environmental and market changes should be considered. This appears to help the majority of the organization to pull together to a common objective, however sub-cultures still exist and how these objectives are translated may not be unitary.
Captured Knowledge
The authors department is responsible for maintaining information stored within a document management system. Documents stored within the system include Standard Operating Procedures (SOP’s), drawings and specifications. It is important that all of the information within the document storage area is easy to locate, easy to understand, clear and up to date.
In order to make knowledge easy to locate all documents are identified and then stored in a central area. This relies on a sharing culture to encourage individuals to actively exchange knowledge. Collison & Parcell (2004) argue that organizations must ‘nurture the right behaviors and foster a supportive culture’ to effectively allow knowledge to be captured (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.40).
Captured knowledge needs to be able to be coded and decoded accurately. Within the author’s organization documents are often of a technical nature and therefore specific skills are required in order to code and decode certain documents. Collison & Parcells model presupposes that captured knowledge can simply be used and applied but this can only apply if the user can decode the information received either in a tacit or explicit form. As stated by Sayer (2002) there are misconceptions that scientific knowledge is perceived to be the ‘highest form of knowledge. (Sayer, A, 1992, p.13). Unless the individual decoding the information has specific skills the information can be considered useless, unless accompanied by tacit knowledge such as explanation and guidance from an individual who possess relevant skills to decode the document.
Some of the knowledge that is stored in the document repository is stored as a SOP which is intended to capture activity required to carry out a process. The engineers within the department are responsible for defining the process using their skills as an engineer and then documenting the activity so that operators can carry out the process. This is the process of converting tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge which Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) note earlier must occur for knowledge to be effectively exploited by the organization.
Conversion of Tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge can be difficult as noted by Sayer (1992). If we are unable to say all that we know then we are unable to capture all that we know (Sayer, 1992, p.13). Therefore, it is likely that individuals will say or capture what is believed to be important to them at that time.
How much information is shared may be limited by several factors such as lack of time, IT infrastructure, culture, relationships, the environment and the ability to code and decode information (Collison & Parcell, 2004, Pauline & Mason, 2003, Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
The company is extremely reliant on SOP’s which has had a significant impact on the culture within the organization, predominantly within shop floor personnel who have to follow the SOP’s in order to carry out tasks. The construction of an SOP creates a divide between the engineers and operators and disputes resonate around assumed knowledge. What should and should not be documented, what can and can’t be documented i.e. what should remain as tacit knowledge and what knowledge can be assumed.
Translation of the SOP can also lead to issues, where the engineer may have made assumptions of prior knowledge, or may not have suitably articulated information. When SOP’s are too detailed the operator may not read all of the information contained and will unlikely retain all of the information. Too brief and there is risk of missing activity that may be assumed. The result is a document that can become more destructive than constructive and used predominantly when product has been manufactured incorrectly or there is an H&S incident.
Access and Apply
Information should be easy to access and should be clearly identified. Cataloguing codifiable explicit knowledge is achievable but tacit knowledge holds different challenges. Collison and Parcells model is ambiguous as to the type of knowledge that should be accessible. The author’s organisation contains a significant amount of explicit knowledge which is relatively easy to access. However, much of this explicit knowledge is complimented with tacit knowledge and needs social intervention in order to be applied appropriately. As Collison & Parcell (2004) note earlier it is not possible to capture everything, some knowledge will ‘remain in the heads of the practitioners’ (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.39). Individuals character, values and beliefs can significantly affect how easy obtaining tacit knowledge becomes. Some individuals offer too much information clouding the original enquiry, others too little, and some are unreliable and changeable.
Collison & Parcel suggest captured knowledge should be ‘embedded back into business activity as it was created from business activity’ (Collison & Parcell, 2004, p.39) as noted earlier Sayer (2002) agrees stating knowledge is ‘primarily gained through activity’ (Sayer, 2002, p.13).
Captured information will almost always be outdated given there will usually be a lag between capture and access. As posited earlier, Ruggles et al. (1997) may suggest a cautious approach to captured knowledge, resulting in risk adverse individuals becoming reluctant to use captured knowledge. This sometimes occurs within the author’s organisation and documents may be redrafted as the recipient does not trust what is contained within the document. It is often a question of ownership, if retained knowledge is used by the recipient, the recipient now becomes the new owner and may be unwilling to accept ownership if mistakes are transitioned. Furthermore, Ruggles et al. (1997) suggest individuals may be reluctant to share knowledge. This is sometimes prominent in the author’s organisation where individuals are unwilling to commit to sharing information for fear of accepting responsibility for the content.
IT can make accessing information extremely quick and easy which excellent search facilities, and structured databases that are able to catalogue and capture thousands of documents. Conversely IT can make documents difficult to locate buried in deep folder structures. Documents can become lost in a labyrinth of files and folders making it easier to reproduce than reuse. Structures can be constructive and efficient as well as destructive and frustrating. Collison & Parcell, 2004, Pauline & Mason, 2003, Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995 all note IT as barriers to KM.
Validate and Renew
Unless knowledge is known to exist it will not be renewed therefore information must be accessible. With controlled documentation such as drawings and SOP’s it is important that knowledge is regularly validated and renewed. As noted by Collison and Parcel (2004) where information is not refreshed it can become stale deeming it unreliable and outdated.
In the authors organisation it is considered good practice to validate captured knowledge. There is risk involved for the recipient in utilising captured knowledge and therefore to mitigate risk validation of knowledge would usually take place, this may be checking a drawing against a part or a SOP against a process.
Renewing knowledge relies on commitment from individuals; Nonaka & Takeuchi (1995) remark knowledge is also affected by cultural values and beliefs. Furthermore, individuals need to be aware when knowledge is outdated. For example if there is a request for a process to be changed the engineer responsible for the process should be made aware. Once notified the engineer can extract the SOP from the repository, validate the information is correct and make the required changes. The updated SOP can then be returned to the repository, with important notes in the revision log explaining the change; this is also supported by an engineering change request which details the change. All change requests require approval from the management team and therefore are circulated to raise awareness of the change, allowing department managers to assess the impact of the change on their department and the business as a whole.
Learn Before
All new products within the author’s organization are loaded as a project which has an owner and a project file containing all information relating to the project. When a new project is loaded the owner follows a process which includes several review points in order to share information. The first review point is a ‘project review phase’ this is a meeting that includes all relevant departments within the company. The project owner outlines the project objectives and it then becomes a collective responsibility to understand if we have done this before as an organization or if any member of the project team has prior knowledge that may be relevant. As noted by Goh, (2002) when knowledge is effectively shared throughout the organization learning can take place.
Additionally, projects are grouped so that any similar projects are easily identifiable. Where a project exists that is similar this will be either resurrected or relevant knowledge extracted and used within the new project. As noted earlier by Sayer, (2002) consideration must be given for the how the shared knowledge was produced (Sayer, 2002, p.13).
Learn During
During the project activity further information will be collected and stored within the project file for later use. New processes and technologies that exist can be identified by forming network groups also exhibitions and seminars offer an insight into current product and process knowledge.
When developing a new product, material and a product test may need to be carried out which further develops knowledge as individuals learn more about the product in order to produce costs and samples and establish a robust process. A great deal of this information is retained in the project file but the story behind the retained knowledge is often tacit knowledge distributed among the project team.
Learn After
Collison & Parcell (2004) recommend learning after, creating an opportunity to reflect on the project activity which may be useful to the team or others in the future. The approach within the author’s organization is to complete the activity and move onto the next project. Very limited time is spent reflecting on the activity that has taken place. This can result in mistakes being repeated by other project teams or even the same project team if the mistake is not effectively captured as explicit knowledge as noted by Robertson et al (2002).
Business Results
In order to establish if the business objective has been achieved we should look at the business result. A measure can be taken between the linear process defined by Collison and Parcell to establish if the business results were as expected.
An example of this may be development of a new product or entry into a new market. On the back of market research a plan is formulated to show the size of the market and the potential portion that the company is looking to capture in a measure of revenue. Business objectives are defined in order to capture the potential new market. A typical objective would be to develop a new product and sell this into a new market. The resulting incremental revenue can then be measured and compared to the original objective.
Collison and Parcells model shows the process of Business objective to Business results as linear. In order to know that one equates to or has any effect on the other a measure need to extrapolate. Collison and Parcell do not make provision for this in their model.
CONCLUSION
Organizations are faced with many challenges that must be effectively managed in order to successfully implement and sustain Knowledge management. The importance of knowledge within organizations key and retaining this knowledge within the organization presents various complications.
Demanding market conditions call for new and innovative ideas which are sometimes reliant on the knowledge contained within organizations. Keeping this knowledge refreshed and current is difficult but if all enabling factors within the organization can be aligned the benefits of knowledge management can be achieved.
Collison & Parcell (2004) take a practical approach to KM but their model has several shortcomings as discussed earlier in this document. Collison & Parcells model ignores many of the barriers to KM identified by Argyris (1999), Pauline & Mason (2003), Riege (2005) and Sayer (1992).
Following consideration of the author’s organisations approach to knowledge management applying Collison & Parcell’s model the author has identified the importance of clearly defining the organizations strategy. It may be possible that a partial cause for sub-cultures within the organization is the individual interpretation of the company’s strategy. This needs to be clear to all within the organization in order to effectively differentiate groups with differing views and beliefs to that of the organization and those that are not clear on the views and beliefs of the organization.
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