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.

Coffee & Knowledge Management

After reading Kelly's post about knowledge management and social media, I decided to read Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of Starbucks by Chua and Banerjee first this week. The goal of this article was for Chua & Banerjee to study how companies utilized social media to support their customer knowledge management. Customer knowledge management (CKM) is basically feedback from a company's customers that helps the company to see if/where change is needed. This particular study focused on Starbucks, and their social media usage. For the purpose of the study, the authors broke down social media into various categories, including (p. 239): Microblogging services (Twitter); social networking services (Facebook); location-aware mobile services (4Square); and corporate discussion forum services. Chua & Banerjee found that Starbucks is successful at utilizing and extrapolating CKM from its usage of social media. 

Like Kelly, I agree that companies should be cautious with incorporating social media just because of a study. First, it is not the right call for every business. I mean, what would a funeral home company tweet about? Second, it isn't about the amount of social media services you use, it is about how well you use them. Similarly, Joe mentioned in his post on this article, that effectiveness is the keyword when it comes to corporate social media. Quality over quantity, people. 

The next article I read was Methodology for the implementation of knowledge management systems by Chalmeta and Grangel. As Joe said in his post a few days ago, this article was pretty dry, albeit very straightforward! While many of the articles I've read thus far talk about the potential benefits of companies utilizing knowledge management practices, most of those articles also mention the lack of a method of implementation. This article aims to remedy that by providing the "KM-IRIS Methodology" which the authors split into five different phases (p. 744): Identification, extraction, representation, processing, and utilization. One of the things I liked about this article's methodology was the table that clearly delineated each phase of the methodology and how they can be applied (Fig. 1, pg. 745). Chalmeta and Grangel take this method and apply it to a business enterprise, in order to show it in practice, although they do acknowledge as one of the study's limitations that it was only tested once. 

The final article I read for this week was Nimble knowledge transfer in high velocity/turbulent environments (HVTEs) by Jones and Mahon. This article is kind of a throwback to my earlier readings about knowledge risk management, and the differences between explicit and tacit knowledge. For the purpose of this paper, high velocity/turbulent has nothing to do with airplanes, but instead with decisions that have life and death consequences. This paper draws from examples and seeks  to give a KM model for these situations. In this article, Jones and Mahon argue for a better/more training for management so that there can be a greater "development of tacit knowledge and potential approaches to dealing with HVTEs (p. 784)." Although, Jones and Mahon also admit that in calmer environments, explicit knowledge would still be important. 

References 

Chalmeta, R., & Grangel, R. (2008). Methodology for the implementation of knowledge management systems. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 59(5), 742-755. 

Chua, A. Y., & Banerjee, S. (2013). Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of Starbucks. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(2), 237-249.  

Jones, N. B., & Mahon, J. F. (2012). Nimble knowledge transfer in high velocity/turbulent environments. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(5), 774-788.