Knowledge Management Systems

The term knowledge management refers to organisational capability to create knowledge, mobilise and sustain it for continuous innovation and to diffuse it to the people who need the knowledge at the place where they need it and at the time when they need it. One key objective of managing knowledge for an organisation is simply to become more effective and productive such that knowledge is turned into competitive advantage. The organisational objective is straightforward; the solution requires a combination of organisation efforts and information systems.

It is acknowledged by academics and practitioners that knowledge management does not equal technology as it had been almost projected as such at the beginning of the knowledge management movement (Gold et al., 2001; Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Knowledge management is much more than technology. Technology alone will not make a knowledge-intensive company. However, if the appetite, skills, and attention to knowledge are already present in an organisation, technology can expand access and ease the problem of getting the right knowledge to the right person at the right time. Without technology knowledge management does not go very far. Information Systems that relate to knowledge management are widely termed as Knowledge Management Systems (KMS). They are tools to support the management of knowledge that employ information and communication technologies - IT (Alavi and Leidner, 2001). While not all knowledge management initiatives involve an implementation of IT, and admonitions against an emphasis on IT at the expense of the social and cultural facets of knowledge management are not uncommon (Fahey and Prusak, 1998), many knowledge management initiatives rely on IT as an enabler (Weill et al., 2002), with two identified underlying models for KMS: 1) the repository model, 2) the network model.

Knowledge Management Systems – The Repository Model

The repository model treats knowledge as an object that can be captured, stored, organised and diffused. These systems, therefore, focus on managing explicit knowledge and, consequently, they produce more storage-retrieval aspects of knowledge management (Prusak, 2001). These types of system were populating the knowledge management world from the first generation, and there are many still mushrooming today. Corporate intranets present the most prevalent technical infrastructure for the development and management of knowledge repositories. This is because intranets provide an ideal environment for multimedia publication of knowledge across multiple types of computer hardware and software, and for easy retrieval and display of interrelated knowledge items through hypertext links (Alavi and Leidner, 2001; Cranfield University, 1998). Cranfield’s study (1998) further

suggests that repositories contain knowledge from both internal and external sources. Examples of external knowledge consist of competitive intelligence, industry trends, and other business related publications. Examples of internal knowledge include contents of internal reports, document templates, memos, internal best practices. Hansen et al. (1999) claim that the consulting firm Ernst & Young, for example, has made significant investment in codification of the firm’s internal knowledge and development of large knowledge repositories; 250 individuals at the Ernst & Young Centre for Business Knowledge manage and maintain these knowledge repositories. Hansen et al. further explain that the staff at the Centre for Business Knowledge work with and help consultants to locate and access the required repository content; and in addition to this central group, staff members throughout the various Ernst & Young practice areas are responsible for capturing and storing practice-specific knowledge.

Creation of knowledge repositories for the capture and storage of internal best practices has become a popular form of KMS in most organisations. The teams managing the knowledge repositories ensure easy, fast and organisation-wide access to the repository content through the use of advanced IT tools. This type of KMS applies a what is known to be person-to-document process (Birkinshaw and Sheehan, 2002; Hansen et al., 1999).

This type of KMS follows very much the development in the IT industry and this may lead to an understanding that knowledge management equals IT implementation, but managers soon realise that technology alone will not make knowledge-intensive enterprises (Davenport et al, 2003). While the exciting IT is clearly developing, it is important to emphasise the limitation in any programme of knowledge management that, for example, effective knowledge management cannot take place without extensive behavioural, cultural, and organisational change (Cummings, 2004; Siemieniuch and Sinclair, 2004; Hansen and von Oetinger, 2001).

Knowledge Management Systems – The Network Model

The network model of KMS does not attempt to extract and codify into written documents knowledge from individuals who possess it. Knowledge remains with the individuals and the transfer of knowledge to other people, in contrast with the repository model, is through person-to-person contacts. The network model of KMS is predicated on providing access to knowledge that resides within individuals through establishing direct contacts among people rather than aiming at extracting and capturing the knowledge into electronic knowledge repositories. Thus, this type of KMS supports the social-interaction knowledge management initiative, which is based on the premise that knowledge creation and diffusion are fundamentally socially constructed and occur most efficiently through direct interactions among members of communities (Heaton and Taylor, 2002; Wenger, 2000).

The network model KMS uses technology, IT, for a different purpose from the repository model. Intranets are used more as yellow pages or knowledge mapping with the objective for the users to find the people who possess the knowledge he/she needs (Hansen et al., 1999). Hansen et al. (1999) give the examples of McKinsey and Bain consulting companies that heavily rely on this kind of KMS. Alavi and Leidner (2001) give the example of Hoffman-LaRoche, a pharmaceutical company, that has developed a knowledge map of its drug approval process. For each step of the process a directory of relevant people, organised according to their knowledge of the key

issues, is developed. The use of the system during the drug approval process to identify and tap into the required knowledge has greatly expedited the process and has reduced the rework and repeat of the process activities. Davenport and Prusak (1998) give as an example British Petroleum, a giant oil company, that has a programme running called BP’s Virtual Teamwork. The objective of this programme is to build a network of people, not to develop electronically codified knowledge. The programme uses many different IT tools to form the KMS that has enabled the creation of rich communication networks among people around the globe. Many documented examples from BP’s Virtual Teamwork Programme show the usefulness of this kind of KMS. One example (Davenport and Prusak, 1998) can be illustrated to show how this system has given particular value to BP. Due to equipment failure, an operation on a North Sea drilling ship could not continue. Through a satellite link, a communication to a group of experts in Aberdeen was established. Problems were solved in a few hours, rather than the traditional few days. This saved BP many hundreds of thousands of dollars when compared to possible alternative solutions without the Virtual Teamwork Programme system.

The network model of KMS faces its share of challenges in its design and implementation, for example in the creation and use of knowledge maps and the directory. Encouraging people to share about themselves is not always a straightforward matter. It is a matter of discipline, culture and other personal considerations which technology cannot address (Janz and Prasarnphanich, 2003; De Long and Fahey, 2000).

Discussion

There has been a shift in the literature on knowledge management since its emergence as a popular area of investigation from the 1990s onward. I have identified three generation of knowledge management and knowledge management systems. From an initially enthusiastic and largely uncritical focus on the potential for new IT to unlock and optimise the knowledge assets of organisations, accounts of knowledge management have become more diverse and less credulous (Marshall and Brady, 2001). I call this the first generation of knowledge management and knowledge management systems. Many of the initiatives mainly capturing individual and collective knowledge into a storage device and the KMS involved in this first generation were simply data bases and content management tools. The most inner oval in Figure 2-6 represents this first generation.

While admitting that IT has opened up new possibilities for the diffusion of knowledge and the processing of data and information, a growing number of scholars are unconvinced by the enthusiastic claims made by IT-led knowledge management approaches. Their critique of technologically biased accounts has done much to address the hitherto neglected social dimension in knowledge management (for example Storck and Hill, 2000; Wenger, 2000). I call this the second generation, in the mid 1990s, represented by the middle inner oval of Figure 2-6. In this second generation, knowledge management builds on the existing knowledge bases, and emphasises the learning and innovation or the knowledge creation through social interaction. The KMS involved in this era were intelligent content services, individual process-based application and knowledge mapping, and collaborative tools to facilitate distant social interactions.

The third generation, represented by the outer oval of Figure 2-6, is a movement towards integrated knowledge management – between different knowledge management initiatives within an organisation and between different organisations (for examples Francis and Bessant, 2005; Cummings, 2004; Grant and Baden-Fuller, 2004). The KMS supporting this generation may be tools such as Integrated Enterprise Applications. The objective of this third generation of knowledge management is to optimise the different existing knowledge managements for the improved performance of certain alliances/partnerships or joint-developments (Grant and Baden-Fuller, 2004).

Figure 2-6: The three generations of knowledge management and the related knowledge management systems