Week 2 Article Summary

For Week 2, there are 2 sets of notes to blog about. I’ll blog about them in no particular order, except to do the Alvari article first which perked my interest when we discussed in class. Also, after the all the articles for this week, I will tackle the blog questions posed in class, “Which would you rather have, Truth or Knowledge?” in a separate blog entry. I’m hoping that reading some of the articles will give me some insight.

Alvari – 2001 – Review: Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual Foundations and Research Issues.

One interesting thing about the article was that it brought up “universal truth” and said it would not tackle it. So much for getting more background on the blog question of truth versus knowledge.

The article also reviewed at the beginning much of the lecture of data, information, and knowledge that reinforces what we discussed in class. It challenges that knowledge exist before data or information. As in the diagram in class showing how knowledge flows to information, it again states that information is knowledge articulated. It also presents other alternate views of what KM and acknowledges at with so much information in the world today, much information is of little or no values (what about my blog???...hopefully is it serving a purpose).

Again, as in the first week’s articles, tacit versus explicit knowledge are detailed (I blogged extensively on the concepts in week 1). However, this article was a great chart that takes knowledge perspectives further in a easy to compare table. It presents knowledge as many different things…an object, a process, a capability, etc. To me, these are all valid perspectives and it is interesting to see the contrast. Traditionally, I have thought of knowledge as an object. I relate to all of these, but “state of mind” is the most out there to me. I understand it, but would never have expressed it that way.

There are many other concepts presented in the article. I found the organizational memory described as semantic or episodic to be fascinating. Semantic is general knowledge and episodic memory is more specific to decisions. Memory has an influence on knowledge of individuals and organizations, both positive and negative. Different factors have different impacts on how knowledge is obtained and applies.

Many other concepts where presented including knowledge creation and how technology is helping and impacting knowledge.

Bohn – Measuring and Managing Technological Knowledge

The stages of knowledge presented in this article start with having no knowledge to having complete knowledge. I personally think the all persons and organizations are somewhere in the middle and at different stages at different times. Some knowledge of an organization is purely at an awareness level. If it is in “complete ignorance” then it probably doesn’t matter to the firm. Some of he later stages are pretty far-fetched for most companies. Formulas and algorithms are likely in few scientific organizations. Most companies however do have manuals and procedures.

I did like the charge that had the scale showing the different stages and behaviors associated. The higher the stage, the more formal knowledge is applied, stored, and managed. However, I do think that certain industries and companies are better suited to have a higher level of knowledge.

Currently, my company is using CMMI certification to obtain higher levels of knowledge. It is interesting that QUALITY and KNOWLEDGE seem to be closely linked. This link was my “revelation” for this article.

Definitions – Notes on Information and Knowledge by A Burns

We have used these notes in class and they are a great summarization of the basic concepts we have covered so far. Data, Information, knowledge, wisdom, expertise, and truth have some interesting definitions. Information has one, “Objective Truth”, that I will use in the blog question about truth versus knowledge.

The scope of knowledge as an object is new to me. I think some of the articles to come will help give me more information. Tact versus Explicit is here again. I really do think this to be the major hurtle in KM. Also, the many scales is the theme from the Bohn article. Everything including knowledge has different levels.

Nonaka – 1991 – The Knowledge-Creating Company

From the start, it is clear that Nonaka is challenging that knowledge is created and that it is not discovered. The article also says that Japanese companies start managing knowledge from the center of their human resources. I don’t completely agree that Japanese manufacturing and has the article states, Japanese knowledge are the best. The article to me is biased, but makes very good points.

As with the other articles, Nonaka describes tacit versus explicit knowledge. However, he goes further to say that it is not all that difficult to exchange tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge and vise versa. I believe that articulating tacit knowledge is much more difficult that he explains. Making bread is not the most difficult thing to do and therefore, his example may be okay with simple items.

Being innovative does involve knowledge, but tacit knowledge is not easily learned. I really think that it is the corporate cultural and individuals that help create knowledge. Working in the banking industry, many times change is slow, but the culture is that way. Changing the culture of a company will lead to different outcomes.

His use of “metaphor”, “analogy”, and “model” are really talking again about the culture and how change is handled. This article definitely draws a connection between change management and knowledge management.

CFO – It’s who you know and that’s why we use acronyms

This is a short little article, but does touch on one idea that I had not blogged about from week 1, that is network versus repository. Repository seeks to put everything in a database while network will just use search engines to find information in various forms. Personally, I like the network model and think that many systems should and are trying to make be a hybrid. Data can be found using a network approach, but certain mediums like video, need to have proper tags. I think that a repository approach to cataloging data while using network approach to expand past the borders of a traditional database may be the best approach.

The article also claims that expertise should not be bottled, but find it when you need it…the network approach. I agree, but some effort needs to be made to make sure information is stored properly.

The amount of information available is overwhelming. Over 70 million hours of radio recorded last year is incomprehensible. Trying to find what you need on the internet is only easy sometimes. The amount of data is only getting bigger, so companies like Google are going to be even more critical in the future.

Notes from Chapter 2 - Knowledge-Engineering Basics
Knowledge Engineering and Management: The CommonKADS Methodology
by Guus Schreiber et al.

This is excerpts from an online book about Knowledge Engineering and Management. Many of the topics from the article are highlighted here. Modeling and processing information create problems and solutions. The chapter also gives good roles associated with KM.

Knowledge Elicitation is a fascinating topic for me. I work primarily requirements management and we elicit requirements from stakeholders. The techniques for knowledge elicitation are the same as in requirements.

So in the articles from today, I have seen a connection between KM and Change Management and Requirements Management. The common theme being management. I am definitely going to try to find as many connections between KM and my personal knowledge of other fields of study.

That’s it for articles this week. The only other materials in the materials for week 2 are powerpoints. I really didn’t get the knowledge of truth versus knowledge for the blog question, so looks like I’ll poke around the internet a bit before blogging about it.