Knowledge Management Primer: Ten Basic Facts to Get You Started
Dr Barbara Tey

No hype, no jargon, just straight talk on KM to give you some ground in this first part of a series by Dr Barbara Tey.

Fast Facts Knowledge Management (KM) is - the art of creating value from intangible assets (Sveiby) - helping the right people to apply the right knowledge at the right time, using the right technology in the right spirit (Tiwana) Epistemology is the knowledge about knowledge. It helps us understand how KM works. Typology of knowledge (knowledge types) - Nonaka & Takeuchi, well-known KM researchers, argue that knowledge is made up of o    Explicit knowledge - knowledge that can be easily codified or imparted, e.g. a list of names. o    Tacit knowledge - knowledge that cannot be easily codified or imparted, e.g. the art of making friends. Nonaka & Takeuchi propose four modes of knowledge transfer: Name of process Knowledge transfer route Socialisation tacit knowledge > tacit knowledge Externalisation tacit knowledge > explicit knowledge Combination explicit knowledge > explicit knowledge Internalisation explicit knowledge > tacit KM may be divided into knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, knowledge dissemination and knowledge store (Laudon & Laudon). If we truly understand the nature of knowledge, we will not be afraid to share our knowledge or fear losing our personal edge at work. Read on...

Knowledge management (KM) is one of those terms that you might not be very familiar with and may be too embarrassed to ask because it is assumed that everyone should already know its meaning in this day and age. While most managers understand clearly what marketing management or financial management is, how many of us can give a passable definition of what knowledge management (KM) is off-the-cuff? Consider this - how many Malaysian graduates have had the opportunity to study KM as a degree major or even single subject, as opposed to subjects such as Consumer Behaviour or Managerial Finance? Unfortunately, KM is either little understood or relatively new to many Malaysian organisations despite the "K" in KM being widely used in the mass media as a prefix in terms including K-based economy and K-based society.

1. What is knowledge management (KM)?

Professor Karl-Erik Sveiby defines KM as "the art of creating value from intangible assets". Intangible assets are those assets that cannot be capitalised such as best practices, quality, customer relationship, branding and human competency or capital.

Put simply, KM can also improve performance and innovation in this respect; it is primarily about helping the right people apply the right knowledge at the right time, using the right technology in the right spirit (Tiwana, 2002).

2. When did the term KM originate?

Peter Drucker spoke of knowledge workers in Landmarks of Tomorrow way back in 1959 whereas Professor Karl Wiig coined the KM term during a United Nations International Labour Organisation (UN-ILO) conference at Switzerland in 1986. However, it was only around the early nineties that KM started becoming a buzzword.

This does not mean that before then, knowledge had not been 'managed'. We know that over the centuries, sages have consciously sought to preserve the knowledge of the ages for future generations - right from the era of ancient hieroglyphics to the printed word and digital files of today.

3. What discipline does KM fall under?

KM is a multi-faceted discipline encompassing the fields of management, operational practices, philosophy, technology, strategy and human behavioural traits (Wiig, 2002); hence it can be a tricky discipline to understand. Not uncommonly, many managers have been introduced to KM through consultants employing the technology pitch, giving the impression that KM is very much about IT systems.

4. What is knowledge?

To know more about KM, one possible starting point is to delve a little into epistemology - the theory of knowledge or the study of knowledge, including the presuppositions upon which it stands. This is because the way knowledge is understood or interpreted by managers tends to influence how they manage knowledge.

Short and simple definitions of knowledge include "anything you know" (Orlikowski, 1993), "information in action" (O'Dell, 1998) or "the capacity to act" (Sveiby, 1997). One should realise that information alone does not equal knowledge. Instead, knowledge is what we have come to believe and value based on meaningfully organised accumulation of messages through experience, communication or inference (Zack, 1999). Furthermore, knowledge constitutes a fluid mix of framed experiences, values, contextual information, expert insight and intuition that provides a framework to assess and integrate new personal input (Davenport & Prusak, 1997).

5. What are the different `types' of knowledge?

Knowledge may be categorised in different ways. These different ways of categorising knowledge types are collectively known as the typology of knowledge.

In this article, we will discuss the typology of knowledge posited by Nonaka and Takeuchi, which is easily the most well-known and widely accepted knowledge typology. According to this acclaimed duo, knowledge may be distinguished as explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge.

Explicit knowledge is defined as codified knowledge or knowledge in a readily understood and transferable form. Instruction manuals, databases, patents and licenses are examples of explicit knowledge.

On the other hand, tacit knowledge is difficult to codify, as it's in our head, dynamic and unstructured. Many of us have undergone the experience in which we were conscious of knowing something, but when we tried to share, we were at a loss to express what we knew. Barring any physiological problems, such a phenomenon may be attributed to the tacit nature of knowledge which has been acknowledged by KM gurus as being difficult to articulate and share.

One of the first authors to demonstrate the tacit nature of knowledge was Michael Polanyi who wrote the well-known phrase "We know more than we can tell" almost 40 years ago. Yet, even if we could articulate our tacit knowledge, transferring it would be another problem. Just consider the likelihood of a successful entrepreneur transferring a good part of his entrepreneurial skills to us even after the former has genuinely revealed all that he knows over a moderately long period of training. As observed from the example, tacit knowledge goes beyond conscious knowledge; it includes deep-seated knowledge and capabilities innately related to who we are.

6. Are the types of knowledge `transferable'?

Nonaka and Takeuchi demonstrate how knowledge is transferable or converted from one type to another or from one form of the same type to another form of the same type. The four processes are outlined as follows:

Socialisation	from tacit knowledge to tacit (emphatised) knowledge
Externalisation	from tacit knowledge to explicit (conceptual) knowledge
Combination	from explicit knowledge to explicit (systemic) knowledge
Internalisation	from explicit knowledge to (operational) tacit knowledge

Examples of the above processes include managers imparting values to their subordinates through socialisation as they work side by side everyday, students externalising their knowledge when they answer examination questions, employees internalising knowledge that they read from instruction manuals, and authors writing an article from a combination of what they know and have read from other sources.

7. What is organisational knowledge?

In the basic form, organisation knowledge is some knowledge of what everyone knows about everything in the organisation. Organisational knowledge is also defined as the processed information embedded in routines and processes, which enable action and is closely linked to human elements (Myers, 1996). An estimated 90 percent of the real value of intellectual capital resides within an organisation's pool of knowledge workers, encompassing their skills, experience, insight, intuition and the trust built over the years (Barth, 2000). Now you know why human capital is so invaluable!

Since KM is mostly applied in the context of organisations, we sometimes come across the term organisational knowledge management or OKM. Nevertheless, the term KM is used widely in a broad sense.

8. What are the components of KM?

According to Laudon and Laudon (1999), KM may be divided into four main components, namely knowledge creation, knowledge sharing, knowledge dissemination and knowledge store. To put it simplistically, but not necessarily exactly, one could say that an organisation which consciously does the above, may be said to be practising KM, though the extent or effectiveness varies.

Source: www.transknowformance.com

Alternatively, KM may be said to consist of seven processes namely, Creation, Acquisition, Storage, Sharing, Transfer, Application and Renewal of knowledge (www.transknowformance.com).

9. Knowledge is Power. So why share knowledge and lose my personal edge at work?

This is a common fallacy but not a surprising one, since organisational knowledge constitutes mainly of self-created assets. After all, who could blame you for being a tad possessive about your so-called hard-earned knowledge assets? Well, if knowledge assets are misconstrued to be finite and tangible rather than part of an on-going growth process, then it follows that knowledge sharing is tantamount to giving away a valuable personal asset such as money, which is to be done sparingly and cautiously.

Others fear that sharing knowledge is a win-lose, limited-power game where one's power decreases as one shares. Instead, sharing knowledge empowers others without disempowering oneself. Those whom we empower can one day empower us, too. As we share, we actually learn. So to miss out on sharing means missing out on opportunities to learn. In the new KM paradigm, knowledge shared is knowledge gained.

In addition, knowledge does not reside in the collection of information itself but resides within the person who possesses it. Therefore detaching knowledge from the knowledge bearer grossly undermines the value of that knowledge besides doing serious injustice to the knowledge bearer (Churchman, 1971 c.f. Malhotra, 1999). Competent employees who own a rich store of tacit knowledge need not fear that their intangible assets can be isolated from them in such a way that it compromises their so-called personal competitive edge within the company. Likewise, employers should not assume that `capturing' an employee's knowledge would make that employee dispensable afterwards.

Another compelling factor for sharing instead of hoarding knowledge is based on the principle of use and disuse - use it or lose it! As such, you are exhorted to share your knowledge, or else lose it in the same manner that muscles waste away due to lack of exercise. Moreover, knowledge might not be the only thing you risk losing if you don't share your knowledge - job status, reputation, credibility, goodwill are also likely at stake.

10. What is the K-economy all about?

When asked to give a definition that students could easily understand, Tengku Azzman Shariffadeen (NIE supplement, The Star, 25 April 2001) said, "The K-economy is about knowledge and the ability to use it to create new value and wealth. Wealth is measured by the results of knowledge that is inventively applied...the K-economy includes all human economic activities of previous eras, such as agriculture and industry, but it introduces new activities that were not prominent or possible before."

We conclude with some advice from Drucker, arguably, the 'grandfather' of KM. Drucker believes that a macro understanding of knowledge serves as the three fundamentals of a nation's knowledge economy - firstly, knowledge does not lead to a disappearance of work; secondly knowledge does not eliminate skills but is fast becoming the foundation for skills since knowledge exists only when doing work; and thirdly, knowledge brings about a real revolution in both the productivity of work and the life of workers.

The success inherited by the country cannot be continued if
creativity and innovation do not become part of the nation's culture. People are the
most important factor in a knowledge-based economy,
a new era which invariably leads to the subsequent
knowledge management paradigm.
As we move into this new, and for some, challenging era where intellectual capital and
organisation intelligence are recognised as
the key factors for continued survival, competitiveness and growth, knowledge
management becomes increasingly critical and fundamental for survival and
self-sustenance."

YAB Dato' Seri Abdullah Bin Hj Ahmad Badawi
Prime Minister of Malaysia