KM in academia, disaster management, and general

The first article I read for this week, was A Tale of Two Hurricanes by Chua, which is a comparison of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita through the lens of knowledge management. I picked this article because I remember vividly the news coverage before, during, and after each storm, so to review it now ten years later with a knowledge management perspective is pretty cool. Kelly also talks about this article on her blog here. Chua starts by developing the table (pictured below, via a screenshot from my Kindle) that shows a KM framework that he uses to "identify different dimensions along which the two disasters can be compared (p. 1518)." 

The neat thing about this article, is that due to the close timeframe of the two hurricanes, the author was able to directly compare the emergency management preparation and reaction. Obviously, we all know that  the government failed on both the local and federal level to prepare residents (and the city re: levees in New Orleans) prior to Hurricane Katrina, during, and immediately afterwards. They took considerable flack in the PR department, so when Rita hit a few weeks later, everyone was jumping to prepare and help out. This unique situation then allowed Chua with clear examples of the good and bad of KM processes (Knowledge creation, reuse, & transfer) in disaster management. For instance, the distrust between local government agencies and the federal government agencies caused many problems with Hurricane Katrina, but when Hurricane Rita rolled around with the media pressure on everyone to work together, they did manage to work together much more efficiently. 

The next thing I read was the Knowledge Management entry in the Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences by Dalkir. In retrospect, I wish I had read this first or when I was struggling with the Polanyi reading. Dalkir gives a clear and concise overview of knowledge management that I think would have helped give me a better overview prior to jumping into the semester reading. Plus I like visual aids, and this article had them! For instance: 

I also liked how Dalkir had a section for emerging roles in the KM field, it reminded me of when Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney's article spoke about the importance/need for executives to embrace KM and choose a stance for the future success of their companies. Of course, some might disagree. Two of the roles that Dalkir mentioned were:    

Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) - in charge of ensuring that the company's "KM goals are in line with organizational strategies and objectives (p. 3136)." 

Chief Learning Officer (CLO) - in charge of ensuring that the company "acts like a learning organization, improving over time with the help of accumulated best practices and lessons learned (p. 3136)." 

I like the sound of these roles, and I understand why they may be needed, but I think we are a long way off from having these sort of jobs be considered necessary or normal. I think that part of the problem with getting business minded people to accept knowledge management is the nebulous nature of knowledge management. I mean, there isn't even a clear definition of knowledge management, and without a clear consensus on most things km related, the less willing executives will be to allocate company resources to km. 

The final article I read for this post is Knowledge Management and Academic Libraries by Townley. This one starts off by talking about how libraries and many other industries generate information/records on usage that they can use to organize and manage knowledge, but then fail to utilize that knowledge effectively. Which, kind of goes back to what I was saying in the last paragraph, about businesses being hesitant to explore knowledge management.  Townley takes four broad objectives from a survey by Davenport, De Long, and Beers: Create knowledge repositories; improve knowledge access; enhance the knowledge environment; and manage knowledge as an asset. Townley explains how these can be applied with academic libraries. For instance, creating a knowledge repository out of information that the library already collects would "add value to integrated library systems (p. 49)." This would lead you to the second objective of improving knowledge access, which Townley proposes Academic libraries do by creating a network of "subject specialists..from several institutions...to share experiences and learn from each other (p. 49)." Townley has a good idea, but this still seems like a costly proposal for academic libraries. As far as enhancing the knowledge environment, Townley says that in order to accomplish this, "management must generate meaningful contacts among the staff, provide resources and incentives, and praise progress (p. 50)." The final objective of managing knowledge as an asset seems pretty obvious, basically Townley recommends a review of intellectual services and making sure that the library is using them effectively. In his conclusion, Townley touches on how embracing knowledge management can "expand the role of libraries in the academic community and to result in strengthened relationships with related units, inside and outside the university (p. 54)." Which is a good point, because we are constantly hearing how libraries need to update and embrace in order to stay viable with patrons in this age of technology. While I agree with Chua, Dalkir, and Townley that knowledge management will eventually be an important part of the future success of businesses, I think that we are still a ways out from KM being considered necessary by the businesses themselves. Although, I would think that disaster or risk management agencies/businesses may come around sooner rather than later because of all the benefits that km offers them and the populations/companies they serve.

References 

Chua, A. Y. (2007). A tale of two hurricanes: Comparing Katrina and Rita through a knowledge management perspective. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(10), 1518-1528.

Dalkir, Kimiz. Knowledge Management. In Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition. Taylor and Francis: New York, Published online: 09 Dec 2009; 3129-3138. http://dx.doi.org/10.1081/E-ElS3-120043816 

Townley, C. T. (2001). Knowledge management and academic libraries. College & Research Libraries, 62(1), 44-55.

Throwback Thursday!

The first article I read for this week was Knowledge management in academic libraries: special tools and processes to support information professionals by Jantz. When I started reading this, I agreed with Jantz that the job of the reference librarians (and the profession in general, really) was evolving due to advances in technology. However, it felt like Jantz was saying that reference librarians are basically tech wizards for patrons, which I disagree with. I believe that technology certainly plays a large part in how librarians help patrons, but that is not the only important function they perform or way in which they help patrons.

So in this article, Jantz introduces the common knowledge database (CKDB) which is a tool developed by reference librarians at Rutgers University in order to "help librarians manage knowledge (p. 33)." What I thought was interesting about this article was that Jantz spoke about how knowledge management is rarely mentioned in libraries because it is considered a business concept, but then with the CKDB he tried to introduce a KM tool for libraries that sounded a lot like the KM tools of consulting companies as described in the Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney article I read and blogged about here two weeks ago, and Lisa blogged about here. In their article, Hansen et al spoke about how consulting companies like Ernst & Young focus on reusing knowledge in order to provide quality service with a minimal turnaround time. However, Jantz noted that they don't have "good techniques for extracting and sharing knowledge that is in one person's head (p. 39)." So it seems that there is great need for more research on how to format the CKDB tool, and other km tools so that they better fit libraries. For another perspective on the Jantz article, Joe blogged about it here.

The next article I read was Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: An exploratory study by Wang and Lu. This article also harkens back to the glory days of two weeks ago when I blogged here about Massingham's KM risk management article. In that article Massingham described a framework for KM risk management and a knowledge score. In this article, Wang and Lu focus on the "knowledge transfer channels used during organizational crisis and how they affect organizational performance (p. 3934)." These articles are as much alike as they are different, they are both talking about how to use knowledge management to aid in similar occurrences, but approach it differently. Of course risk management is different than organizational crisis. While you want to avoid/prepare for both, risk management gives the notion that the company is in trouble and it shows outwardly to clients, whereas organizational crisis makes me think that it is more of an internal issue. But maybe I'm just playing with semantics, regardless both concepts are very serious to organizations. This article and the Massingham article were written in the same year, so I'd be curious if Wang and Lu's would have approached their article different if they had known about Massingham's piece, because I think they would have really liked his approach with using the knowledge score to help provide clarity in risky times.

The last article I read was Knowledge management and reference services by Gandhi. The author starts off by describing the four principle components of KM as: knowledge, management, information technology, & corporate culture. The first three, I understand. But how is corporate culture a principle component of knowledge management? I see it being an aspect of it, but not a principle part of km. However, as I read further, the author later clarifies what he means by describing corporate culture's role in knowledge management as: "an open forum that encourages people to interact with each other, share ideas, experiences and viewpoints and be heard without fear of reprisals (p. 371)." So basically, collaboration, which makes more sense. Like Jantz, Gandhi said that the librarian's role is shifting: "They must move beyond the role they have always excelled at - finding, selecting, organizing, and managing information - to creating and managing knowledge (p. 379)." So the overall theme in this week's readings seemed to be about librarians embracing the changes in technology and adapting to it by incorporating knowledge management or knowledge management tools in order to better serve patrons.

References 

Gandhi, S. (2004). Knowledge management and reference services. The journal of academic librarianship, 30(5), 368-381.

Jantz, R. (2001). Knowledge management in academic libraries: special tools and processes to support information professionals. Reference Services Review, 29(1), 33-39. 

Wang, W. T., & Lu, Y. C. (2010). Knowledge transfer in response to organizational crises: An exploratory study. Expert Systems with Applications,37(5), 3934-3942.

KM Bingo!

Let's be real, scholarly reading can be pretty exhausting, however it is also great exercise for building your critical thinking skills which is why we do it. That doesn't mean you can't have fun with the process. So this week, I read articles by Levy, Tremblay, and Yuan et al and some of you may have seen my tweet the other night where I joked about developing a play-along bingo game for the Tremblay article. Where did that come from you ask? Well let me explain! Tremblay's article, The Information Society: From Fordism to Gatesism: The 1995 Southam Lecture* is about the "the greater integration of information and communication into the function of economy and society" that had been mostly unchanged since Henry Ford's Model T assembly line (Fordism) but is now being altered with the onset of the Information Age (Gatesism, as in Bill Gates) (p. 1). 

One of the things I liked about this piece is how Tremblay points out, with great self awareness, that information and communication professionals are getting wrapped up in their optimism and not approaching the "information society" in a realistic manner.  I believe he referred to it as "inveterate progressivism." He goes on to list different inventions that he imagines will be available in about ten to twenty years. This brings us to the bingo joke, because quite  a few of those inventions came to pass (p.5): 

"Television sets, which can pick up many more channels than today's television, can also be used in conjunction with small keyboards to provide a multitude of communication services." - Netflix, Hulu, Apple TV 

"There is less need for physical travel than in an earlier era. Banking can be done from home, and so can as much shopping as is desired..." - Amazon, Banking Apps, can you imagine Tremblay's thoughts on Amazon's proposed drone delivery service? 

"Some homes have machines that receive transmitted documents. With these new machines one can obtain business paperwork, new items selected to match one's interests, financial or stock market reports, mail, bank statements, airline schedules, and so on..." - Fax machine, 3D printer, oh and the iPhone, for the win! 

"Citizens can wear radio devices for automatically calling police or ambulances if they wish." - Life Alert, anybody? 

"Homes have burglar and fire alarms connected to the police and fire stations.." I believe ADT or other various home security companies have things like this. 

So my idea was that I could put these inventions on a bingo sheet to be checked off as you read the article and match it up to Tremblay's ideas. Silly, I know. Anyway, this is a very interesting article, especially when you consider it was written in 1995. The next article I read was WEB 2.0 implications on knowledge management by Levy, which basically discussed whether or not WEB 2.0 is just a passing phase and what, if any affect will it have on organizational knowledge management. In the paper Levy reviews what WEB 2.0 is and what it constitutes based on various literature. One of the concepts Levy lists is WEB as a platform, and Musser and O’Reilly explained with a very good example that “it [WEB 2.0] should be treated as a platform and not as a main application. Just as the telephone is regarded as a channel, while the conversation is the essence, WEB 2.0 applications should be treated as channels only (p. 122).” 

As for knowledge management 2.0, research seems to be mixed, or as Levy puts it “confused.” Since it is still a new field it “is struggling in organizations wishing to manage their knowledge.” However, I don’t think this is cause for concern because you can’t blame a business for being cautious in accepting new concepts when the research is this new and mixed. I think it will eventually come together in a way that businesses can adapt it into concepts that better their knowledge management processes. 

The last article I read for this post is The Use of Different Information and Communication Technologies to Support Knowledge Sharing in Organizations: From E-Mail to Micro-Blogging by Yuan et al. This article discusses how new communication technology tools like e-mail, social media, wikis, blogging, etc. can facilitate information sharing in companies. In my opinion, this article closely relates to the Levy article, because in a way it also talks about WEB 2.0's affect on knowledge management, except this article relies more on the technology itself and the employee's perspective. The authors interviewed a bunch of employees from a large company in order to get their input. One of the interesting observations from the interviews was that “more than half of internal social media users interviewed think the increased social capital associated with social media use increases their motivation for sharing expertise with one another (p.1664).” Which makes sense, because if a person is talking about what they got done, or what important project they are working on, then it could motivate people to post about their output as well, and if you have not been doing anything then you certainly cannot post that you have! The study also mentions that companies need to carefully consider the ICTs they use because without support or proper design, they can have the opposite affect on employees. 

References

Levy, M. (2009). WEB 2.0 implications on knowledge management. Journal of knowledge management, 13(1), 120-134.

Tremblay, G. (1995). The Information Society: From Fordism to Gatesism: The 1995 Southam Lecture. Canadian Journal of Communication, 20(4).

Yuan, Y. C., Zhao, X., Liao, Q., & Chi, C. (2013). The use of different information and communication technologies to support knowledge sharing in organizations: From e‐mail to micro‐blogging. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 64(8), 1659-1670.

*Do journals pay writers based on the length of the article title?

Q: To KM or not to KM? A: Depends on your risk matrix.

So throughout the last three weeks I have been on a roller coaster of emotions regarding this class. At first I was really excited to be taking a class that utilizes social media and blogging as a part of the course. Then I read The Tacit Dimension. Like three times. That's about how many times it took to sink in! Throughout that time I read some of my classmates' blog posts and was immediately intimidated that they seemed to grasp the concept so much faster. Next I read Communities of Practice by Noriko Hara which was thankfully much more easily understood. So that's why I've been MIA the last few weeks, but I should start posting blogs at least once a week from here until May.

As I mentioned in the introductory post, each of my posts will discuss three knowledge management related articles. This week I read two theoretical km articles and one research article:

- What's your strategy for managing knowledge by M. Hansen, N. Nohria, & T. Tierney

- Wikis as a knowledge management tool by T. Grace

- Knowledge risk management: a framework by P. Massingham

The first article I chose was the Knowledge risk management article by Massingham because it related to another topic I'm interested in, which is intergovernmental relations in emergency management. I actually wrote my capstone paper on that when I was an undergrad, so I felt like this article would be a good one to start reading for class. In this article, Massingham talks about knowledge management as it applies to risk management and the emerging field of (you guessed it) knowledge risk management. Here Massingham makes the case that older decision tree methods are not the best way to handle risky organizational decisions and instead suggests a different KRM model based upon a study of the Australian Department of Defence. The article goes on to detail the Royal Australian Navy's KRM approach that utilizes a Hazard Risk Index (HRI) to identify levels of risk like a traditional decision tree, but supplements the HRI with "accredited individuals known as Competent Authorities (CAs) to manage the risk. Pairing the HRI and the CAs together to manage risk, the paper notes "is an excellent [way] to reduce cognitive error by aligning RM with competency." However, Massingham does note that the number of "technical decisions makes it difficult for individuals to prioritize risks" as well as the fact that "individuals don't perceive risk in the precise logic of decision theory." With that in mind, Massingham develops a "decision support tool" to help "provide a solution to the problem of cognitive restraints." This is where the knowledge management portion comes in, this model that Massingham devises is grounded in knowledge management. Part of the weakness of RAN's risk management approach is the subjectivity in risk assessment and lack of prioritization. Massingham proposes the utilization of a "knowledge score" as opposed to a "risk score" because it "better differentiates amongst the risk factor," and "aims to increase objectivity in risk assessment by focusing individuals on the bigger picture of the KNOWLEDGE necessary to manage the risk event" as opposed to the risk event itself.

This article was pretty in depth, so it took me reading it, processing and then re-reading it to feel like I understood it well enough to discuss, but it had great table graphics of risk matrices that helped. Overall it was very interesting, however as Massignham observed, this paper's biggest weakness is that it is based on a single case study and the KRM field is very new so much research is still needed. Also the size of the Australian department of defence must be relatively small, so it would be interesting to see Massingham's KRM theory applied to another country's department of defense that is larger and more active. Regardless, if the knowledge score is not something that pans out in research, the six items it would be based on, necessary qualifications level (NQL), length of time to learn (TTL), degree of complexity (DOC), receiver's transfer capacity (RTA), risk management motivation (RMM) and risk management capability (RMC) deserve more investigation.

The next article I read was slightly related to the Massingham KRM article. What's Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge by Hansen, Nohria, and Tierney focuses less on how organizations use knowledge to influence their risk management and more on how organizations manage their knowledge. Specifically, the writers looked at the strategies of consulting companies because the success of their entire business could hinge on how they choose to manage their knowledge. The article goes on to explain how consulting companies like Ernst & Young employ a "codification strategy" that relies heavily on the efficient reuse of knowledge, whereas companies like Bain use a "personalization strategy" that depends on person-to-person contact. The efficiency of the codification strategy allows consulting companies to take in more business and obviously more profit. However, if you're a client that is looking for something more, well, personalized then you would want a consulting company that uses the personalization strategy. One thing the writers did mention, was that companies should pick one method or the other. They cite CSC Index as a company that attempted to employ both which caused many problems. For example even though the market increased 20% from 1994 to 1996, CSC Index lost $50 million in revenue,  which later led to them folding into their parent company." I enjoyed learning about the different km strategies and the examples used made this article super easy to understand, which is always nice. The other thing I was thinking about while reading this was about what kind of jobs there could be for information professionals in km. But as the writers mentioned, analysis and IT support is vital for companies that use the codification strategy. So where there's people with information needs there are information professionals! 

The last article I read was Wikis as a knowledge management tool by Grace. This article was pretty brief and straightforward. Grace talks about how many companies are starting to utilize wikis so that employees can easily edit and share knowledge. After reading the Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney article this article made me wonder if companies that use the codification strategy also use wikis to aid in their task of reusing knowledge. Of course, we've all heard the doubts about user edited wikis like Wikipedia, so there are also drawbacks to using wikis, which Grace mentions in the article as well. Of course, nothing is perfect, but if used appropriately and with close oversight, wikis can be a great resource for companies. 

                                                References 

Grace, T. P. L. (2009). Wikis as a knowledge management tool. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(4), 64-74.

Hansen, M., Nohria, N., & Tierney, T. (2000). What’s your strategy for managing knowledge. The knowledge management yearbook, 2001, 55-69.

Hara, N. (2009). Communities of practice: Fostering peer-to-peer learning and informal knowledge sharing in the work place (Vol. 13). Springer.

Massingham, P. (2010). Knowledge risk management: a framework. Journal of Knowledge Management, 14(3), 464-485.

Polanyi, M., & Sen, A. (1983). The tacit dimension (pp. 21-25). Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.