Readings 1618 Review

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Readings 16-18 Review

• Shawn Loveland
• SIRLS Graduate Student

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Presentation Format

• Summary presentation (quick)
• New highlights presented in each article
• Analysis of crosscutting themes

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Articles

• 16) Organizational Learning and
  Communities-of-Practice towards a unified view
  of working, learning, and innovation (Brown, J)
• 17) Organizing Knowledge (Brown, J)
• 18) Capturing Value from Knowledge Assets the
  new economy, markets, for know-how, and
  intangible assets (Teece, D)

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Organizational Learning
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Practice Vs. Official

• Workplace practices differ from the official
  method.
• Compensation, education, training, and technology
  focus on the official way of doing the job, not
  the actual way it is done.
• Conflict arises when the two methods are not in
  sync.
• Organizations over define the processes as silos
  or islands of activity.
• Most practices use informal-horizontal
  communities of practice to work and share
  knowledge.
• Communities of practice attempt to bridge the
  abstract view and reality.

Organizational Learning
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The Changing Work Environment

• A companys desire to down skill jobs
• Reduced information flow to employees.
• Highly structured job and process flow.
• Results in
• More skills are needed from employees.
• Overly structured job causes employees to
  improvise more.
• Employees must bridge the gap between what is
  provided and what is needed.

Organizational Learning
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Communities Of Practice

• Evolve from, and around, unofficial practices
  rather than official practices within
  organizations.
• Spontaneous forms of organization, that emerge
  and develop as forums for learning around actual
  practices in organizations. .
• They are critical for learning and innovation.
• They adapt in order to traverse the limitations
  of the formal organization.

Organizational Learning
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Differences Between Communities Of Practice And
Groups Or Teams

• Communities of practice are not created in a
  top-down fashion.
• Groups and teams are created top-down.
• Organizations are facilitators of communities of
  practice - providing support that corresponds to
  the actual needs of the community.
• Groups and teams abstract expectations of the
  organization.
• Communities need to be left to organize
  autonomously in terms of their formation and
  development if spontaneous organizational
  innovation and learning is to be encouraged.
• Groups and teams are formally created by the
  organization.

Organizational Learning
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Main Paper Take Away

• Organizations need to build processes on how
  things are done and not how they want them to be.
• Changing processes to how the organization wants
  them to be, must take into account how they will
  be done. (A.K.A. Game Theory).
• Communities of practice development must be
  encouraged and nurtured.
• It should not be controlled or manipulated. It
  is a delicate balancing act.

Organizational Learning
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Organizing Knowledge
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Knowledge

• Property of individuals.
• Organizational knowledge.
• Held collectively in communities of practice.
• Consists of
• Know-what- explicit knowledge of what to do.
• Know-how ability to put know-what into
  practice.
• Good managers foster knowledge development just
  as traditional capital is fostered.

Organizing Knowledge
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Changes In Business

• New culture, processes, and technology are being
  developed to create a web of knowledge a user can
  participate in.
• Breaks down traditional islands of knowledge.
• Employees are developing communities of
  practice.
• Most organizations have webs of communities of
  practice.
• Communities of practice are still imperfect
  because they have a limited perspective.

Organizing Knowledge
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Improving Communities Of Practice

• Having a diverse set of communities.
• Members within a community with different
  beliefs, perspectives, and spanning across
  multiple organizations.
• Multiple communities with different beliefs,
  perspectives, and spanning across multiple
  organizations.
• Understanding different communities have
  different standards and goals.
• Best practices of one community may not be
  applicable to another.

Organizing Knowledge
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Information Flow

• Information flows differently within a community
  of practice than it does between them.
• Organizations often underestimate the challenge
  of reusing knowledge that was developed else
  ware.
• Leakiness.
• Often times information can be leaked out through
  one community and then back into the company
  through another community easier than it can be
  transferred from one community to another.
• Causes problems protecting the companys
  intellectual property.

Organizing Knowledge
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Knowledge Management Players

• Translators translates information between
  communities.
• Knowledge brokers facilitates the exchange of
  information between communities.
• Boundary object physical object, technology, or
  technique that act as a gateway between two
  knowledge depositories.

Organizing Knowledge
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Main Paper Take Away

• The value knowledge plays within an organization
  is often overlooked.
• Both internally and externally.
• All organizations are knowledge organizations and
  knowledge creation is a critical part of
  organizations do.
• Communities of practice plan an important role.

Organizing Knowledge
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Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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Key Points

• Knowledge assets are created and exploited
  globally now more than ever before.
• The strategic benefits of knowledge management.
• Seizing opportunities by identifying and
  combining complementary knowledge assets.
• Recognizing and correcting strategic errors
  utilizing KM for better situational awareness.
• Adapt to changing business conditions.

Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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First Mover Advantages

• Imbeds proprietary knowledge into the product.
• Interface and user standards.
• Customer builds a knowledge base and spends
  capital in the first product.
• Increases switching costs.
• High initial development costs can be recouped
  before the next entrant into the market.
• RD head start.
• Understanding of the market is gained.
• Head start in creating knowledge about the market
  and customer.

Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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First Mover Disadvantages

• Competitors can glean knowledge.
• Learn form the first movers products.
• Hire first mover knowledge employees.
• Private IP becomes public IP.
• Decrease switching costs.
• Band together to create open standards.
• IT and communications technologies.
• Allow smaller firms to become more specialized.
  When banded together they can complete against
  larger companies.
• Reduce production and channel costs and increase
  efficiencies.

Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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Fusion

• Today.
• The complexities of products are increasing.
• New products are rarely stand-alone.
• Tomorrow.
• Design reuse is important.
• IP will become even more valuable.
• Sold and licensed just like any other
  organizational capital.
• An integrated supply chain will be more
  important.
• Suppliers will be both suppliers and competitors.
• The focus will not just be on the creation on
  knowledge.
• On the deployment and use of knowledge.

Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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Main Paper Take Away

• The demands of organizing knowledge are a
  critical but can be easily overlooked when
  explaining why firms exist, what they do, and how
  innovation occurs.
• The essence of a firm is its ability to create,
  transfer, assemble, integrate, and exploit
  knowledge assets.

Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
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Analysis
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Crosscutting Themes

• The rules of business are changing. Knowledge
  management is critical to the survival of
  organizations in the new information economy.
• Knowledge is an international commodity.
  Barriers of transferring knowledge are being
  broken down.
• Knowledge is exchanged between companies more
  readily today than every before.
• Outsourcing, supply chain, licensing, sold.

Analysis
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Crosscutting Themes

• Knowledge must be managed just like any other
  business capital.
• Protected, used, and grown.
• Becomes obsolete.
• Some tend to hoard it.
• Different than traditional capital.
• Value grows with use.
• Used simultaneously by different users.
• Quickly transferred locally, nationally, and
  internationally.

Analysis
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Crosscutting Themes

• Knowledge flow requires business culture and
  processes.
• If you build it, they will not come.
• Information flows differently based on community
  and culture.
• Traditional hierarchy vs. Communities of
  practice.
• Communities of practice A vs. Communities of
  practice B.
• Internal vs. External of the company.
• US vs. Japan.

Analysis
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Organizational Knowledge

• Organizational knowledge provides a company with
  a synergistic advantage that is difficult to
  duplicate.
• A new way to measure the value of a company.
• Knowledge firms have a market premium that
  outweighs conventional assets and market
  evaluation.
• Organizational knowledge allows a company to use
  and reuse organization knowledge multiplying the
  value of the knowledge.

Analysis
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Communities Of Practice

• Good way to share knowledge.
• Supports the real needs of the people doing the
  work and not the abstract expectations of the
  organizations management.
• Adapt quickly to changes in the work environment
  and needs of the participants.
• Requires support and autonomy from the
  organization.

Analysis
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Communities Of Practice

• Beneficial to a large company because to can cut
  across politics, departments, company group
  think.
• However, communities of practice can be blinded
  by their limited perspective and community of
  practice group think.
• Can include resources outside the organization.
• Most organizations have communities of practice
  that are overlapping and are independent for the
  official organizational structure.

Analysis
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Critique

• Organizational Learning
• Readability very poor
• Value interesting concepts, however, the value
  was lost because of the readability
• Use of examples below average
• Organizing Knowledge
• Readability average
• Value Interesting perspective on the value of
  knowledge
• Use of examples average
• Capturing Value From Knowledge Assets
• Readability average
• Value Interesting perspective on knowledge, but
  nothing new
• Use of examples average

Analysis
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Capturing Shop Floor Knowledge

• Difficulties capturing shop floor knowledge
• Lower education level
• Inadequate IT infrastructure
• Lack of time to document tactic knowledge
• Lack of a sharing forum
• Poor visibility of shop floor knowledge
• Lack of value an employees places on their input
  to process
• Lack of management focus
• Difference in terminology between managers and
  line employees

Khanna, Amit. Mitra, Debanik. Gupta, Avneesh How
shop-floor employees drive innovation at Tata
Steel, KM Review. 8.3 (July/August 2005)
Analysis
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Models Of KM
Model 1
Model 2

• Malhotra, Yogesh. Why Knowledge Management
  Systems Fail? Enablers and Constraints of
  Knowledge Management in Human Enterprises,
  American Society of Information Science and
  Technology, Monograph Series. (2004)

Analysis
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Additional Information

• Organizational Learning
• http//www.knowledge-portal.com/knowledge_and_inno
  vation/the_role_of_communities_of_practice.htm
• Organizing Knowledge
• http//www.ischool.utexas.edu/i385q/archive/kiehn
  e_t/INF385Q-intranets-040325.ppt
• http//www.razak.com/kmi/corporate.shtml
• Capturing Value from Knowledge Assets
• http//www.providersedge.com/docs/km_articles/Know
  ledge_Strategy_-_Aligning_K-Programs_to_Business_S
  trategy.pdf

Analysis
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Additional Resources

• Malhotra, Yogesh. Why Knowledge Management
  Systems Fail? Enablers and Constraints of
  Knowledge Management in Human Enterprises,
  American Society of Information Science and
  Technology, Monograph Series. (2004)
• Khanna, Amit. Mitra, Debanik. Gupta, Avneesh How
  shop-floor employees drive innovation at Tata
  Steel, KM Review. 8.3 (July/August 2005)
• Gallivan, Michael J. Spitler, Valerie K.
  Koufaris, Marios. Does Information Technology
  Training Really Matter? A Social Information
  Processing Analysis of Coworkers Influence on IT
  Usage in the Workplace Journal of Management
  Information Systems. 22.1 (Summer 2005)

Analysis
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Questions