COMP3410 DB32: Technologies for Knowledge Management

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COMP3410 DB32Technologies for Knowledge
Management

• Lecture 3
• Organisational Knowledge Management
• By Eric Atwell, School of Computing, University
  of Leeds
• (including re-use of teaching resources from
  other sources, esp. Stuart Roberts, School of
  Computing, Univ of Leeds)

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Module Objectives

• On completion of this module, students should be
  able to
• understand the nature and importance of
  different types of knowledge, including
  organisational knowledge
• recap

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Knowledge in Knowledge Management

• Three meanings
• the state of knowing or to be acquainted or
  familiar with (know about)
• the capacity for action (know how)
• codified, captured and accumulated facts,
  methods, principles and techniques.
• Based on F Nickols,
• The Knowledge in Knowledge Management. KM
  Handbook.

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From Information to Knowledge
Belief-Structuring
KNOWLEDGE
high
Cognitive-Structuring
beliefs justification
INFORMATION
Order/Structure
meaning significance
Physical-Structuring
DATA
sensing selecting
low
SIGNALS
high
low
Human Agency
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Google practice and theory

• Google finds hits, ORDERED using lots of metrics
  eg no of links TO and FROM each page
• Finds html pages, also ppt, images, maps
• Google has other tools scholar, books, code,
  labs
• We looked at basic maths compute many weights,
  add/multiply together
• Google API can be called by a program, to find
  hits and download them to a CORPUS BootCat can
  use a SEED-LIST of many more than 10 keywords

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Organisational Knowledge

• The view of knowledge taken in this module is a
  very narrow one, motivated by those KM tasks that
  can be aided by technology. This lecture
  attempts to redress this imbalance a little by
  showing that KM is more than simply a technical
  issue.

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Knowledge Management

• It could be argued that the concept of knowledge
  management either is an oxymoron.. or
  misleading..
• Alvesson and Karreman, Odd Couple Making sense
  of the curious concept of knowledge management,
  J Man Studies, 387, 995-1018, Nov 2001.
• You cannot manage knowledge any more than you
  can manage love or friendship or religion
• Stephen Denning, World Bank

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Oxymoron

• LDOCE oxymoron a deliberate combination of two
  words that seem to mean the opposite of each
  other, such as cruel kindness

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Organisational Knowledge

• What is known or knowable
• Most organizations have a far richer store of
  ..knowledge than is ever utilized for the benefit
  of the enterprise as a whole, because it is
  piecemeal, is dispersed throughout the
  organization and is held principally as
  unrecorded impressions and insights in the heads
  of individuals.

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Organisational Knowledge

• Programmed information (explicit/implicit)
• operational, transaction-oriented systems
• databases, information systems, decision-support
  systems.
• text, if searched using IR/IE (or text analytics
  NLP)
• Non-programmed information (tacit, cultural)
• intelligence (in the military sense)
• strategic knowledge (know why and know when)
• gained through casual interaction
  unpremeditated information.

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Where is human knowledge stored?

• Individual explicit AND tacit
• Culture shared beliefs, norm, values
• Ecology eg the trend towards open plan offices
  attempts to promote knowledge sharing

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Where corporate knowledge resides
Delphi Group survey 2000
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Knowledge Bases

• 2/3 of knowledge is NOT in electronic form
• Of the remainder, 2/3 is in documents English
  text
• 1/3 of 1/3 (12) is in knowledge bases data
  with structure , eg
• Databases
• XML (HTML, SGML,) tagged text/data
• Knowledge representation formalisms, eg predicate
  logic, ONTOLOGIES, DATR, RDF, OWL, semantic
  networks

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Process view of KM

• Knowledge management revolves around a number of
  processes which typically include
• Knowledge gathering creation and acquisition
• Knowledge organising and storage
• Knowledge refining finding patterns, clusters,
• Knowledge transfer and use

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Example process view The processes suggested by
Coleman are 1 Gathering process of bringing
information and data into the system 2.
Organising and storage process of associating
items to subjects, giving them a context, making
them easier to find 3. Refining process of
adding value by discovering relationships,
abstracting, synthesis and sharing 4.
Disseminating process of getting knowledge to
those who can use it.
Coleman D, Collaborating on the Internet and
Intranets, Proc. Hawaii International Conference
on Systems Sciences, IEEE Computer Society,
2350-8, 1997
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People-oriented Knowledge Creation

• Socialisation (tacit ? tacit)
• Tacit knowledge acquired through shared
  experiences
• Externalisation (tacit ? explicit)
• Converting tacit (implicit) knowledge to explicit
  through use of abstractions, metaphors, analogies
  and models

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People-oriented Knowledge Creation II

• Combination (explicit ? explicit)
• Creating new explicit knowledge by bringing
  together knowledge from different sources.
• Internalisation (explicit ? tacit)
• Embodying explicit knowledge into the shared
  mental models and work practices of the
  organisation.

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Knowledge diffusion the I-Space Model
Codified
Abstract
Uncodified
Concrete
Undiffused Diffused
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Knowledge Utilisation

• Tacit, explicit and cultural knowledge combine
• architect
• understands what is aesthetically pleasing (tacit
  )
• material characteristics (explicit)
• norms and conventions of their profession
  (cultural)
• driving a car
• clutch control (tacit know how)
• highway code (explicit)
• when to bend the rules (cultural)

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Why is KM important?

• More and more work is knowledge work, less and
  less is manual work.
• In 1920 the ratio of manual work to knowledge
  work was 21. By 1980 it was the other way round
• Data, information, knowledge these are the
  resources needed for knowledge work.
• Fred Nickols, What Is in the World of Work and
  Working Some implications of the Shift to
  Knowledge Work, in The Knowledge Management
  Yearbook 2001-2002, JW Cortada and JA Woods
  (Eds), Butterworth Heinmann

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Knowledge is a resource

• The basic economic resource is no longer
  capital, nor natural resources, nor labour. It
  is and will be knowledge. Value is now created
  by productivity and innovation, both applications
  of knowledge at work.
• Peter Drucker, Post-Capitalist Society (1993)
• Knowledge is power
• In a competitive environment individuals may not
  be open to sharing their knowledge.
• For example try to find out how Google works

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KM provides the competitive edge

• First generation computer systems replaced manual
  with IT-based procedures.
• Databases and data communications led to
  availability of better Information for
  decision-making. Information Management
  foregrounded.
• Knowledge management changes the focus from the
  technology to the organisation. Increases
  differentiation.
• This, coupled with the importance of adaptability
  leads to the idea of the learning organisation.

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Use of IT

• Knowledge Management is more than an IT issue.
• Computer technology can help to
• organise, analyse and make accessible the
  information from which knowledge derives
• Integrate disparate information sources
• aid articulation of tacit knowledge
• aid knowledge diffusion, sharing and cooperative
  working
• discover knowledge in the form of patterns and
  abstractions

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Issues to think about

• Does an organisation hold any knowledge that is
  not associated with individuals?
• Is knowledge a resource? How does it differ from
  other managed resources?
• Is there more to KM than (managing) the
  infrastructure and work environment to help
  exchange, flow and capture what people know?
• Which of Colemans processes could be aided by
  IT?
• Can you give examples of Colemans processes in
  teaching and research in the School of Computing?