I See Knowledge Management in ICT

Happy Tuesday everyone!

While I know that we still have to do a peer review of each others proposals/grants and our own revisions, I am so glad to be done with that paper. What about y'all?

As for this week's readings I read my final (!) research article, which was written by Goggins and Mascaro. In the review category I read an article on organizational knowledge by Tsoukas and Vladimirou and an article on epistemology (boo-hiss!) by Cook and Brown.

This first article, Context Matters: The Experience of Physical, Informational, and Cultural Distance in a Rural IT Firm by Goggins and Mascaro was pretty dry there is no way of getting around that. Dry, but informative. This article is about Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and if it sounds familiar, that's because it is. UK announced (http://ict.uky.edu/) a few weeks ago the approval for a new degree in ICT. According to the site, the ICT program "focuses on the intersection of technology, people who use that technology, policies and regulations that govern the use of that technology and communities or environments in which that technology is used." So with that basic understanding of ICT, Goggins and Mascaro focused on how ICT is shaped/affected by distance, more specifically physical distance, cultural distance, and informational distance by studying an IT firm in a rural area. What the authors conclude in this study is that while we are in the age of technology and many computing-related studies are focused primarily on the "organizational impacts of computing (p. 125)," technology and computing have an affect beyond those organizations in the social setting.

 The next article I read was Bridging Epistemologies by Cook and Brown. If you're unfamiliar with why epistemology is so unpopular, take a look at the Google definition: "the theory of knowledge, esp. with regard to its methods, validity, and scope. Epistemology is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion (n.d.)." Sounds like fun, right? Anyhow, this article focuses on how groups or individual practice results in "knowing," and from here Cook and Brown discuss different types of knowledge such as explicit, tacit (remember Polanyi, anyone?), as well as how there is a sort of tango (they use generative dance, but I prefer tango) between knowledge and knowing. As Melinda points out in her blog, this is a rehash of one of our first discussions about what exactly the difference is between information, data, and knowledge in school. 

The final article I read for this week was What is Organizational Knowledge by Tsoukas and Vladimirou. This article also brought up our good friend Polanyi in an effort to better explain and understand organizational knowledge, how it develops, and how it can be managed. In their conclusion, Tsoukas and Vladimirou found that knowledge developed by the workers is very dependent upon many different aspects (work experience, education, etc.) and is nearly impossible to manage. So perhaps management should perhaps take a more laissez-faire approach with employees if the situation is positive and try and study what exactly it is the employees know in order to make a more formal framework. 

We're almost done, you guys - just 5 weeks to go!

References 

Cook, S. D., & Brown, J. S. (1999). Bridging epistemologies: The generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing. Organization science, 10(4), 381-400.

Goggins, S. P., & Mascaro, C. (2013). Context matters: The experience of physical, informational, and cultural distance in a rural IT firm. The Information Society, 29(2), 113-127. 

Tsoukas, H., & Vladimirou, E. (2001). What is organizational knowledge?. Journal of management studies, 38(7), 973-993. 

Knowledge Management Topics: Trust, Reputation, Information Sharing, & Knowledge Outsourcing

 Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Who wouldn't trust this kitteh?

Even though it's Spring Break, knowledge management waits for no person! I don't know about y'all, but I've been getting bombarded with e-mails about the UK payroll issues. If you haven't been getting the e-mails, the Cliffnotes version is this: On payday two weeks ago, UK states that there was an unfortunate error by their banking partner, PNC which led to many employees not receiving their paycheck on time. This led to me think about how it relates to what we've talked about with knowledge sharing and bounded awareness in knowledge management. So this week I picked articles related to trust and reputation in knowledge management. 

 

Knowledge Management comic strip from here.

The first article I read was Information sharing and trust during major incidents: Findings from the oil industry by Ibrahim and Allen. In light of incidents such as the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, I found this article to be very relevant.  Remember the Hansen, Nohria, & Tierney's article that talked about how consulting companies save and recycle knowledge to be reused by the employees for the benefit of the company's bottom line? The bottom line in this article is about information sharing, albeit in the oil industry and not consulting companies. The fascinating thing about this article is that you would think that trust is something super important before employees feel free to share information. However, Ibrahim and Allen show that sharing information actually builds trust. Which I guess makes sense, as Melinda put it (here) that sharing information is sort of a gesture of 'good faith.' However, the cynic in me also thinks that maybe some people are fond of information sharing because it spreads the guilt around if something happens. Sort of like: "Here, now you all have the same information. If it blows up, it wasn't just me who knew and didn't say anything." Although, personally, I prefer Melinda's way of thinking, maybe it is a little bit of both?

The next article I read was Knowledge outsourcing: an alternative strategy for knowledge management by Lam and Chua. This was a case study about knowledge outsourcing and how it is currently used by an organization, in the hopes of presenting it as an alternative to knowledge management. On a knee jerk reaction, I think this is nuts. If you are going to outsource knowledge for your company, then why not just hire the people that already have the knowledge. However, after I thought about it, it does make sense in certain instances. For example, if it is a small company that does not have many technological needs, then outsourcing that help to a dedicated external tech help company would make sense.  The article presents some interesting points and while I'm open to the idea, I am still not sold that knowledge outsourcing (KO) is a viable alternative to knowledge management. The way I look at it is that in the long run, knowledge management will help a company run smoother. It's like the old adage: "Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for life!"

The final article I read for this week was The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices by Lucas. This article did a complete 180 from the Ibrahim and Allen article, by saying that trust is necessary for the "transfer of best practices." Although, I think there is an important distinction between the "transfer of best practices" and "information sharing." To me, information sharing is more general in nature, whereas transfer of best practices means that over time the best of that information sharing has evolved into sound practices and is perhaps useful on a wide scale in the company.  So what Lucas is saying then is that to get these best practices, you need trust and a good reputation (Sorry Joan Jett). Which of course make complete sense and is probably why innovation driven companies like Google work so hard to cultivate trust and create positive working environments for their employees.

 

Dilbert comic strip from here.

References 

Hassan Ibrahim, N., & Allen, D. (2012). Information sharing and trust during major incidents: Findings from the oil industry. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 63(10), 1916-1928.

Lam, W., & Chua, A. Y. (2009). Knowledge outsourcing: an alternative strategy for knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 13(3), 28-43. 

Lucas, L. M. (2005). The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 87-101. 

A Quick Note

So is anyone else going to be spending their Spring Break in the luxurious land of paper writing for LIS 658? Because I am!

And before you ask: YES,  Spring Break deserves to be capitalized.

Anyway, I was thinking it might be nice to have an extra pair of eyes look over my paper when I get done with it, and I'm more than willing to return the favor and look at your paper too. So if you're interested just comment below or shoot me an e-mail at whitney.waddell@uky.edu

Risks in Knowledge Sharing vs. Bounded Awareness

Rejoice classmates, the midterms are almost done, and the wondrous holiday of Spring Break is nearly upon us! Anyway, the first article I read for this week was Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation by Brown and Duguid. This was a pretty nifty article because it talked about how companies view work versus how it actually gets done, which is something I think most students can relate to, amirite? Educators sometimes have an idea about how students should go about learning, and students nod, say yes, and then do their school work in whatever manner best suits them. As Joe pointed out in his post about this article, sticking to a manual, rarely benefits employees or meshes with the workflow. For instance, when I worked at a call center, we would have various trainings on different issues. However, inevitably these different methods we would be instructed to use would affect the company’s call metrics (handling time, adherence, queue volume, etc.) and they would tell us to disregard the changes so that we could clear out the backed up calls. The problem in this case was that the trainers and people making changes were not familiar enough with the job to really know how the changes would affect the bottom line. This disconnect between workers and companies is at the heart of what Brown and Duguid discuss in this article.

The next article I read was Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster by Kumar and Chakrabarti. I wasn’t yet born when the Challenger exploded, but I do remember growing up and hearing about how horrible it was from family members and teachers. Despite the tragic situation it deals with, I really liked this article. Mainly because the idea of bounded awareness seems like it could apply to a whole host of political science stuff. Anyhow, the authors argue that while there are benefits to individual tacit knowledge, it “also plays a role in creating limits on their knowing and inducing bounds on their awareness (p. 946).” Which sounds to me as if, don’t miss the forest because you’re busy looking at the tree.

The last article I read for this week was Knowledge risks in organizational networks: an exploratory framework by Trkman and Desouza. What’s something that KM articles love to discuss? Frameworks! They are like Oprah, in their own tacity knowledge sort of way.

You get a framework!

Everybody gets a framework!

Ahem, sorry it’s late, I digress. So this article is concerned with the risks related to “knowledge sharing in networks (p. 19).” The authors outline how these risks affect the km process, and offer a framework to provide some “structure” to the process in order to reduce any concerns and to better aid companies. Anne’s post here has an excellent write up on this article. I think that this article in particular is interesting because it wants structure, but then if you think back on the article by Brown & Duguid, you see that the structure sometimes adds risk by creating bounded awareness. At least that's how I interpret that, what are y'alls thoughts?

References

Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (1991). Organizational learning and communities-of-practice: Toward a unified view of working, learning, and innovation. Organization science, 2(1), 40-57.

Kumar, A., & Chakrabarti, A. (2012). Bounded awareness and tacit knowledge: revisiting Challenger disaster. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(6), 934-949.

Trkman, P., & Desouza, K. C. (2012). Knowledge risks in organizational networks: an exploratory framework. The Journal of Strategic Information Systems, 21(1), 1-17.