How Knowledge management helps to sustain a company

1. How Knowledge Management Helps To Sustain A Company Abhinandan Jain Ankit Kumar Arya Kishore Sarbadhikary Harsh Vardhan Bardia Nilesh Dutta Soumya Basu Tathagata Banerjee 170301001 170301008 170301015 170301023 170301030 170301037 170301044

2. The process of managing the cycle of capturing knowledge from organizatio nal activities and learning from that knowledge about scope for improv ed organizational effectiveness through changes to behavior and organizational a ctivity (Costello, 1996). Knowledge Management (KM)

3. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ADVANTAGES TO RAISE KNOWLEDGE TO KEEP ITS INTELLECTUAL CAPITALSTRATEGIES PLANNING COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY TO USE INFORMATION PRODUCTIVELY TO IMPROVE ITS ACTIVITIES

4. Global Bank Manufacturing Company Improper Technical Infrastructure Not measuring and evaluating the KM project results Inability of KM team for distinguishing organizational relations Not clarifying KM results relation to routine tasks Lack of knowledge sharing Weak usability of KM system Wrong perceived image of KM Lack of sufficient involvement of workers Irrelevant knowledge with inappropriate flow and stream Irrelevant knowledge with inappropriate flow and stream External consultants weakness in business knowledge and organizational relatio n Lack of sufficient involvement of workers Cases Where Knowledge Management Caused Failure Infrastructure and preparation Identification Collecting Organizing Storage Sharing Evaluation

5. Cases Where Knowledge Management Caused Failure Global Company Pharmaceutical Company Lack of sufficient budget for KM Lack of knowledge sharing Overreliance on Technology Wrong perceived image of KM Project cost Irrelevant knowledge with inappropriate flow and stream Inappropriate knowledge structure Lack of efficient strategy for development and roll out Lack of conflict management Inefficient reward system External consultants weakness in business knowledge and organizational relation Infrastructure and preparation Identification Collecting Organizing Storage Sharing Evaluation

6. Failure stages of Knowledge Management Tx Technology Cux Cultural Cox Content PMx Project Management

7. Success Due to Operational Excellence Success Due to Tacit Knowledge • Southern Co.'s IT Aids Post-Katrina Recovery • Southern had taken steps to meet worst- case scenarios, such as building an enterprise content management platform to ensure that engineers could get immediate access to design plans of electrical substations and other power equipment. • As a result, the electricity distributor restored service to its Mississippi customers within 12 days of the hurricane, instead of the initially estimated 28. • It is , not enough to create rich environment where people can share. • Xerox had lot of these i.e online knowledge universe with catalog of best practices. Chat room for COPs, company yellow pages and a section of public website, knowledge street devoted to promoting knowledge share. • What are also required are good ideas, leadership and motivated people.

8. 1. Competency Trap Syndrome 2. Diminished problem-solving ability 3. Dogmatism and social alienation Dark Side of Knowledge Management – By 1990, Britannica was clearly the market leader focused on producing high-quality multi-volume sets of printed encyclopedia. However, it was oblivious to the rising tide of the digital media. – At MSys Technologies, for example, the initial paltry response to its repository motivated the implementation of a reward system. – M-College, the dysfunctional development of the reputable Community of Practice could be traced to the impermeability of its boundary, the lack of leadership renewal process and the qualitative nature of e-learning. Internally, core members hogged their positions of influence and jealously guarded the established canons of the CoP while new members were kept out of the inner circle and had little opportunity to contribute fresh ideas.

9. Thank You References 1. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peyman_Akhavan/publication/263611689_Knowledge_ management_critical_failure_factors_A_multicase_study/links/53e9a00d0cf2fb1b9b671743/Kn owledge-management-critical-failure-factors-A-multi-case-study.pdf 2. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/13673270910971806 3. http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1108/13673270510602737 4. Bloomberg 5. "The New Knowledge Management: Complexity, Learning, and Sustainable Innovation"(Mark W. McElroy)

Editor's Notes

Knowledge management is responsible for understanding: What your organization knows. Where this knowledge is located, e.g. in the mind of a specific expert, a specific department, in old files, with a specific team, etc. In what form this knowledge is stored e.g. the minds of experts, on paper, etc. How to best transfer this knowledge to relevant people, so as to be able to take advantage of it or to ensure that it is not lost. E.g. setting up a mentoring relationship between experienced experts and new employees, implementing a document management system to provide access to key explicit knowledge. The need to methodically assess the organization's actual know-how vs the organization's needs and to act accordingly, e.g. by hiring or firing, by promoting specific in-house knowledge creation, etc. It helps firms learn from past mistakes and successes. It better exploits existing knowledge assets by re-deploying them in areas where the firm stands to gain something, e.g. using knowledge from one department to improve or create a product in another department, modifying knowledge from a past process to create a new solution, etc. It promotes a long term focus on developing the right competencies and skills and removing obsolete knowledge. It enhances the firm's ability to innovate. It enhances the firm's ability to protect its key knowledge and competencies from being lost or copied. -------------------------------------------------------------------- Preparation and infrastructures is a fundamental stage in KM cycle in which the foundation of the KM process is built. The main decisions about the conditions and quality of the KM system are made in this step. Developing required infrastructures such as those related to information technology can facilitate the implementation of knowledge management initiatives (Shaabani et al., 2012; Zaied, 2012; Choi et al., 2010). In failure cases, factors such as separated budget, wrong estimated costs, and improper infrastructure emerged in this stage. Because the KM team is formed in the initial stage, the failure factors related to it such as inappropriate KM team member and leader appeared in this stage. If the top managers of the organization are not convinced to support the KM project, the detrimental effects of that can come out in the beginning stage in the form of such factors as lack of familiarity with aspects of KM projects and lack of commitment and support of top management for KM. Study of the cases proved these premises. The next step is identification. In this step, the required knowledge that can be helpful for an organization based on its business domains and knowledge strategies are identified so that they can be collected later. Since identifying critical knowledge is a challenging task which will affect the firm as a whole (Love et al., 2012), lack of sufficient involvement of workers in this step may lead to weakness in identification of relevant and useful knowledge and can impose © Emerald Group Publishing 14 serious dangers on the KM process. Also, weakness of external consultants in business knowledge can in turn result in their failure to identify vital and important knowledge for organization in this phase. In the collection stage, the identified knowledge is gathered to be used. In addition, technology which can act as “enabler” of the knowledge acquisition (Milles and Smith, 2011) is used in this phase to design and prepaer knowledge bases, documentation systems and so forth based on the nature of required knowledge. Thus, the main threats in this stage were nonconformities between current systems and new systems, inappropriate knowledge structure which is formed initially in this step, weak usability of KM system whose architecture is prepared in collection step. Organization is the step in which collected knowledge is structured and specialized to be utilized within the organization. Akhavan et al. mentioned some indicators for this step: IT based KM architecture, knowledge engineering tools, equipped knowledge bases, data mining, content analysis, and text mining technologies. As can be perceived from these indicators, this step is more technical than others, thus it can be more vulnerable in technical areas. If the system developed in this stage does not conform to the current system, then the resulting conflict can be so confusing that users will eventually abandon new system which will doom the KM system. Weakness of KM team is another factor which can affect KM initiative in this stage. Having low information about organizational relations, KM team members and external consultants may design and develop a KM system that cannot be implemented and executed in the current organizational structure. Not having applicable structure and desirable flow among the actors inside the firm, the knowledge organized in this step may transform into one of CFFs. As another technical step, storage has the same situation and its potential failure factors can be seen in Table 2. Sharing has the greatest number of failure factors. As can be interpreted from Table 2, behavioral and managerial issues such as KM-oriented culture, resistance against change, lack of conflict management, and reward system, most of which are related to the workers are potentially CFFs. So not paying enough attention to the employees, their needs, and the factors that affect them in relation to the KM process can jeopardize KM systems because they should work to the system and the main and primary goal of any KM system is encouraging the knowledge workers of a firm to share their knowledge and use other co-workers’ knowledge and experiences to accomplish the organizational goal more efficiently (Bhatti et al., 2011). If the KM system, like most of other systems, is not evaluated, and its shortcomings are not eliminated after implementation, the system will become outdated and users will gradually ignore it. Having no plan for evaluating the result in this stage stems from the lack of top managers’ commitment to the KM. Lack of efficient strategy for development and rollout and neglecting the evaluation of the KM project result are failure factors in this stage of KM cycle. © Emerald Group Publishing 15 After recognizing the main CFFs in each stage of the KM cycle, we asked some expert scholars in the KM context to rank CFFs based on their importance in each stage according to their actual effects in each case. Due to resource limitation, having prioritized CFFs can help organizations to focus on the most important factors which may endanger the KM strongly. Table 3 show the CFFs with their relative ranks based on their importance in each stage. The final result is based on an iterative process following the Delphi panel rationale.
Case 1: a global bank A global bank that spanned across 70 countries decided to implement various KM projects after the departure of a major client who felt it could not receive integrated services across divisions and countries from the bank (Newell, 2001; Scarbrough, 2003). The main objective of the KM project was to leverage on intranet technology to develop a global knowledge network so that the services in the bank could be integrated. Among several independent intranet projects proliferated were OfficeWeb, GTSnet and Iweb. PAGE 8jJOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTjVOL. 9 NO. 3 2005 OfficeWeb brought together the relevant branch managers in the Domestic Division to create a community of users where local knowledge could be freely shared. The project was strategically important as it could support the shift towards a more decentralised, entrepreneurial, organisational structure in the branches. GTSnet was intended to consolidate the disparate sources of information across the bank and allow users in the Transaction Services Division to obtain information from an integrated source. The project was given abundant financial resources and was staffed mainly by external IT consultants. Iweb was designed specifically for the IT function. Besides being a central repository for storing information, Iweb was intended for use as a platform for staff to gain and share expertise particularly in intranet technology. The project was well allocated with technical staff and hardware resources. Furthermore, a senior IT manager was involved in establishing standards for the creation and maintenance of contents on the intranet. Officeweb was abandoned even before it was rolled-out. GTSnet held obsolete content soon after it was implemented. Iweb was more successful than the other two projects, but it failed to promote any sharing of knowledge within the IT division. The main reasons for the KM projects’ failure at the bank were as follows: B During test trials of Officeweb, the bandwidth of the existing infrastructure was found to be inadequate to support the network traffic generated. B GTSnet did not involve the targeted end users during the project development stage. It also failed to convince the users of the importance of the project to the success of the Division. Furthermore, GTSnet was staffed by external IT consultants who did not possess the relevant business knowledge. Hence, when it was launched, it was unable to garner support internally to bring together the technical and business expertise. Downloaded by Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad At 06:35 13 January 2018 (PT) B While Iweb infrastructure was fully operational, it was unable to change the users’ basic attitudes towards knowledge-sharing behaviour. When it was launched, there was no impetus for individuals to share their knowledge or access the knowledge of others. -------------------------------------------------- Case 3: A manufacturing company A European manufacturing company that had more than 60 production units in some 30 countries implemented three distinct KM projects, namely, ‘‘production project’’, ‘‘supply-chain project’’ and ‘‘design project’’ (Kalling, 2003). The focus of ‘‘production’’ was on capturing, documenting and sharing knowledge about production methods such as machine maintenance methods and safety prevention. The main aim was to cut production costs. ‘‘Supply’’ was intended to improve and distribute knowledge about offered products in downstream supply chain. The aim was to enhance product functionality and better understand the effects of product design on the economics of transport and warehousing. The objective of ‘‘design’’ was to improve structural product design so that designers could construct prototypes with minimal raw materials. VOL. 9 NO. 3 2005 jJOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTjPAGE 9 Downloaded by Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad At 06:35 13 January 2018 (PT) Two years after implementation, ‘‘production’’ was able to capture and transfer knowledge to the plant that needed it, but its aim to promote the application of the new knowledge resulted in a mixed level of success. ‘‘Supply’’ was a codification of knowledge culled from customers, warehouse delivery centres, transporters and end-consumers. However, it was under-utilised. ‘‘Design’’ was a highly sophisticated software system but it was largely neglected by designers and became obsolete after a while. The main reasons for the failure of KM at the manufacturing company were as follows: B In ‘‘production’’, out of 40 plants studied, ten plants did not apply the new knowledge largely because they did not perceive a production performance gap in their plants. They were unconvinced of the value created from applying the new knowledge. It was later discovered that the rest of the plants that applied the new knowledge actually saw a significant improvement in their production performance. B When ‘‘supply’’ was launched, it was under-utilised because users found that the software merely provided them with information they already possessed. Moreover, ‘‘supply’’ neither resulted in increased sales volume for sales staff nor helped create better products for designers. B ‘‘Design’’ was perceived to be too cumbersome and difficult to be understood. In addition, it did not reduce the raw material costs or the amounts of prototypes as intended. Since ‘‘design’’ was largely neglected by designers, it was not updated and after a while became obsolete. ----------------------------- Case 5: a global company A global company, which was one of the top ten organisations in its industry, lost a number of deals because of its inability to offer integrated solutions in the order handling line of business (Braganza and Mollenkramer, 2002). In response, the management commissioned a KM project known as Alpha with the objective to create a ‘‘blueprint for gaining and maintaining global order handling services market leadership’’. Underpinning Alpha was a comprehensive attempt to manage the knowledge across the company. Within Alpha several functions and teams such as business architecture, IT and knowledge content and design were formed. One of Alpha’s priorities was to build a network of ‘‘knowledge-enabled worktables’’ to provide staff customised access to Alpha’s knowledge base. Due to the teething problem of using new technology and the poor translation of design requirements to system functionalities, the IT team could not complete the first worktable for the sales function on schedule. Meanwhile, the knowledge content and design team had already developed a large amount of content. Fearing that the delay could dampen interest in KM, the team engaged a vendor to develop an intranet system as a quick alternative to making its content available. This move was perceived by the IT team as an invasion into its territory. Furthermore, the intranet was treated with scepticism from the rest of the functions in Alpha. By the end of the year, the viability of the worktable was in doubt. Given the high dependence and unsustainable expenditure on external IT resources, Alpha was perceived to be losing control over its IT-related projects. Thus, the management curtailed the worktable project and disbanded Alpha completely when it eventually lost faith in knowledge management. The main reasons for the failure of Alpha were as follows: B Knowledge was managed within silo-oriented communities. Thus, business-critical knowledge that straddled across multiple functional groups was neglected. B There was an over-reliance on IT systems to manage knowledge in Alpha. Tacit knowledge and behavioural issues, on the other hand, received insufficient attention. B Three different external consulting firms were engaged at different stages of Alpha’s development. Inputs from these consultants confounded instead of facilitated the KM initiative. B As time passed, the cost to sustain the KM initiative ballooned beyond control. The management decided to cut its losses and terminated the initiative altogether. -------------------------
Case 1: a global bank A global bank that spanned across 70 countries decided to implement various KM projects after the departure of a major client who felt it could not receive integrated services across divisions and countries from the bank (Newell, 2001; Scarbrough, 2003). The main objective of the KM project was to leverage on intranet technology to develop a global knowledge network so that the services in the bank could be integrated. Among several independent intranet projects proliferated were OfficeWeb, GTSnet and Iweb. PAGE 8jJOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTjVOL. 9 NO. 3 2005 OfficeWeb brought together the relevant branch managers in the Domestic Division to create a community of users where local knowledge could be freely shared. The project was strategically important as it could support the shift towards a more decentralised, entrepreneurial, organisational structure in the branches. GTSnet was intended to consolidate the disparate sources of information across the bank and allow users in the Transaction Services Division to obtain information from an integrated source. The project was given abundant financial resources and was staffed mainly by external IT consultants. Iweb was designed specifically for the IT function. Besides being a central repository for storing information, Iweb was intended for use as a platform for staff to gain and share expertise particularly in intranet technology. The project was well allocated with technical staff and hardware resources. Furthermore, a senior IT manager was involved in establishing standards for the creation and maintenance of contents on the intranet. Officeweb was abandoned even before it was rolled-out. GTSnet held obsolete content soon after it was implemented. Iweb was more successful than the other two projects, but it failed to promote any sharing of knowledge within the IT division. The main reasons for the KM projects’ failure at the bank were as follows: B During test trials of Officeweb, the bandwidth of the existing infrastructure was found to be inadequate to support the network traffic generated. B GTSnet did not involve the targeted end users during the project development stage. It also failed to convince the users of the importance of the project to the success of the Division. Furthermore, GTSnet was staffed by external IT consultants who did not possess the relevant business knowledge. Hence, when it was launched, it was unable to garner support internally to bring together the technical and business expertise. Downloaded by Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad At 06:35 13 January 2018 (PT) B While Iweb infrastructure was fully operational, it was unable to change the users’ basic attitudes towards knowledge-sharing behaviour. When it was launched, there was no impetus for individuals to share their knowledge or access the knowledge of others. -------------------------------------------------- Case 3: A manufacturing company A European manufacturing company that had more than 60 production units in some 30 countries implemented three distinct KM projects, namely, ‘‘production project’’, ‘‘supply-chain project’’ and ‘‘design project’’ (Kalling, 2003). The focus of ‘‘production’’ was on capturing, documenting and sharing knowledge about production methods such as machine maintenance methods and safety prevention. The main aim was to cut production costs. ‘‘Supply’’ was intended to improve and distribute knowledge about offered products in downstream supply chain. The aim was to enhance product functionality and better understand the effects of product design on the economics of transport and warehousing. The objective of ‘‘design’’ was to improve structural product design so that designers could construct prototypes with minimal raw materials. VOL. 9 NO. 3 2005 jJOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENTjPAGE 9 Downloaded by Institute of Management Technology Ghaziabad At 06:35 13 January 2018 (PT) Two years after implementation, ‘‘production’’ was able to capture and transfer knowledge to the plant that needed it, but its aim to promote the application of the new knowledge resulted in a mixed level of success. ‘‘Supply’’ was a codification of knowledge culled from customers, warehouse delivery centres, transporters and end-consumers. However, it was under-utilised. ‘‘Design’’ was a highly sophisticated software system but it was largely neglected by designers and became obsolete after a while. The main reasons for the failure of KM at the manufacturing company were as follows: B In ‘‘production’’, out of 40 plants studied, ten plants did not apply the new knowledge largely because they did not perceive a production performance gap in their plants. They were unconvinced of the value created from applying the new knowledge. It was later discovered that the rest of the plants that applied the new knowledge actually saw a significant improvement in their production performance. B When ‘‘supply’’ was launched, it was under-utilised because users found that the software merely provided them with information they already possessed. Moreover, ‘‘supply’’ neither resulted in increased sales volume for sales staff nor helped create better products for designers. B ‘‘Design’’ was perceived to be too cumbersome and difficult to be understood. In addition, it did not reduce the raw material costs or the amounts of prototypes as intended. Since ‘‘design’’ was largely neglected by designers, it was not updated and after a while became obsolete. ----------------------------- Case 5: a global company A global company, which was one of the top ten organisations in its industry, lost a number of deals because of its inability to offer integrated solutions in the order handling line of business (Braganza and Mollenkramer, 2002). In response, the management commissioned a KM project known as Alpha with the objective to create a ‘‘blueprint for gaining and maintaining global order handling services market leadership’’. Underpinning Alpha was a comprehensive attempt to manage the knowledge across the company. Within Alpha several functions and teams such as business architecture, IT and knowledge content and design were formed. One of Alpha’s priorities was to build a network of ‘‘knowledge-enabled worktables’’ to provide staff customised access to Alpha’s knowledge base. Due to the teething problem of using new technology and the poor translation of design requirements to system functionalities, the IT team could not complete the first worktable for the sales function on schedule. Meanwhile, the knowledge content and design team had already developed a large amount of content. Fearing that the delay could dampen interest in KM, the team engaged a vendor to develop an intranet system as a quick alternative to making its content available. This move was perceived by the IT team as an invasion into its territory. Furthermore, the intranet was treated with scepticism from the rest of the functions in Alpha. By the end of the year, the viability of the worktable was in doubt. Given the high dependence and unsustainable expenditure on external IT resources, Alpha was perceived to be losing control over its IT-related projects. Thus, the management curtailed the worktable project and disbanded Alpha completely when it eventually lost faith in knowledge management. The main reasons for the failure of Alpha were as follows: B Knowledge was managed within silo-oriented communities. Thus, business-critical knowledge that straddled across multiple functional groups was neglected. B There was an over-reliance on IT systems to manage knowledge in Alpha. Tacit knowledge and behavioural issues, on the other hand, received insufficient attention. B Three different external consulting firms were engaged at different stages of Alpha’s development. Inputs from these consultants confounded instead of facilitated the KM initiative. B As time passed, the cost to sustain the KM initiative ballooned beyond control. The management decided to cut its losses and terminated the initiative altogether. -------------------------
Setting up the content-management system presented some challenges, including matching data from one legacy system with a second one. The former system was a database with text data related to drawings, but no images; the latter contained drawings without the related text.
Competency Trap describes the tendency for organizations to rely only on one or few proven approaches of the past to deal with all the challenges of the future. Being conceited with the initial success, these organizations unconsciously discount the new experiences and become incapable of coping with the demands of the environment as they move forward. For example, for almost two centuries, Britannica focused on producing high-quality multi-volume sets of printed encyclopedia. By 1990, it was clearly the market leader in the encyclopedia business. However, it was oblivious to the rising tide of the digital media. Competitors entered the market with CD-ROM versions and seriously threatened Britannica’s sale. While Britannica sold for $1,500 to $2,200 per set, CD-ROM encyclopedia went for $50 to $70. Even then, the vast majority of the CD-ROM copies were given away to promote the sales of computers. Within five years, Britannica suffered huge losses and was sold off at half its book value in 1996 (Voelpel et al., 2006). In the case of H-Bank, its quick, initial success represented a competency trap that blinded decision makers from recognizing the contextual differences between the pilot site and subsequent implementation sites. For example, agents in the call center required full-text and keyword search but users in other departments needed concept search. The camaraderie enjoyed by agents in the call center which helped ensure freshness of content of the database was never found in the rest of the departments. Thus, the very competency that enabled H-Bank to implement knowledge interchange during the pilot became an entrapment for it to carefully consider bank-wide implementation issues.

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