Reference no: EM132372217
Knowledge Management Assignment - Case Study Exercise
Task 1: Implementation of Knowledge Management
Give your views on failure of implementation of knowledge management at a global company based on five distinct stages of knowledge management:
Stage 1: Advocate and learn.
Stage 2: Develop strategy.
Stage 3: Design and launch KM initiatives.
Stage 4: Expand and support initiatives.
Stage 5: Institutionalize knowledge management.
Case study: A global company (Source: Chua, A. and Lam, W., "Why KM projects fail: a multi-case analysis", Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 9, no. 3 (2005).)
A global company, which was one of the top ten organizations in its industry, lost a number of deals because of its inability to offer integrated solutions in the order handling line of business. In response, the management commissioned a KM project known as Alpha with the objective to create a "blueprint for gaining and maintaining global order handling services market leadership". Underpinning Alpha was a comprehensive attempt to manage the knowledge across the company.
Within Alpha several functions and teams such as business architecture, IT and knowledge content and design were formed. One of Alpha's priorities was to build a network of "knowledge-enabled worktables" to provide staff customized access to Alpha's knowledge base. Due to the teething problem of using new technology and the poor translation of design requirements to system functionalities, the IT team could not complete the first worktable for the sales function on schedule. Meanwhile, the knowledge content and design team had already developed a large amount of content. Fearing that the delay could dampen interest in KM, the team engaged a vendor to develop an intranet system as a quick alternative to making its content available. This move was perceived by the IT team as an invasion into its territory. Furthermore, the intranet was treated with skepticism from the rest of the functions in Alpha. By the end of the year, the viability of the worktable was in doubt. Given the high dependence and unsustainable expenditure on external IT resources, Alpha was perceived to be losing control over its IT-related projects. Thus, the management curtailed the worktable project and disbanded Alpha completely when it eventually lost faith in knowledge management.
The main reasons for the failure of Alpha were as follows:
- Knowledge was managed within silo-oriented communities. Thus, business-critical knowledge that straddled across multiple functional groups was neglected.
- There was an over-reliance on IT systems to manage knowledge in Alpha. Tacit knowledge and behavioral issues, on the other hand, received insufficient attention.
- Three different external consulting firms were engaged at different stages of Alpha's development. Inputs from these consultants confounded instead of facilitated the KM initiative.
- As time passed, the cost to sustain the KM initiative ballooned beyond control. The management decided to cut its losses and terminated the initiative altogether.
4.1 Use the brainstorming guidelines to conduct a five-minute brainstorming session on the following topic. Your goal is to identify creative solutions to the problem.
Employees in large companies often complain that personal worth perception is low. They feel that the company does not overtly reward them for their contributions and set procedures that allow them to be most productive and creative.
4.2 Based on the problem given in 4.1, complete the following tasks:
a. Brainstorm how the company can reward efforts and increase the perception of personal worth other than issuing pay increases.
b. Use nominal group technique to find the best solution to the employee personal-worth perception problem. Consider the solutions from the brainstorming activity and select the "best" solution from that set.
c. Use consensus decision making with the goal of selecting a solution to the employee personal worth perception problem to which all members of the group can commit.
Task 1: Knowledge Codification 5.1 Develop a set of general frames to codify the following:
- A horse
- A student
- An airline pilot Use these frames and describe the following:
- Flash dance, an 18-hand thoroughbred
- Brenda, a medium-height, fourth-year liberal arts students
- Fred, a 30-year veteran airline captain
Task 2: Knowledge developers 5.2 Someone suggested two types of potential knowledge developers: "Send me a well-developed computer programmer or a programmer competent in several languages, and we'll make him or her into a successful knowledge developer."
and
"Send me a talented generalist with well-developed interpersonal skills or somewhat more delicately, 'a user friendly person' and a rigorously analytical mind, and we'll team him or her with a competent knowledge developer." In your opinion, which approach would be more successful in knowledge development? Why?