Most effective ways to implement 'Knowledge Management strategies' as part of HRM Strategies and How to overcome organizational challenges.

Knowledge Management: ‘an umbrella term which refers to any deliberate to manage the knowledge of an organization’s workforce, which can be achieved via a wide range of means” (Donald Hislop 2013, p.56).

Usually organizations, has potential workforce as 'knowledge workers', who are highly skilled and competent with necessary academic qualifications, vast practical based experiences and credentials to perform their job. Often, these workers mostly undertake creative, problem-solving type of work at higher level.

I recommend HR Managers and Directors, to perceive 'knowledge' in a broad spectrum. "Knowledge is an 'asset' of an individual, as well as 'asset' of the organization. So, its important that organization take necessary measures to retain, protect and convert knowledge as corporate asset of the company, rather than considering as individual asset".

Therefore, a Knowledge Management strategy has to be implemented, as part of HRM strategy, aligned to corporate strategies. However, organizations may perhaps face challenges in motivating 'knowledge workers' to participate in its organizational knowledge management activities. Subsequently, organizations needs to overcome these challenges to implement "Knowledge Management' strategies. Firstly, as a proactive step, organizations are required to identify and prioritize the key challenges observed by organization, which are usually as below:

CHALLENGE-1: Managing Explicit and Tacit Knowledge

In this modern world, the organizations ought to understand the importance of knowledge management and its challenges, and furthermore proactively manage the knowledge sharing challenges, applying systems approach. It’s always observed that there is self-drive and motivation for knowledge workers to accomplish company’s corporate objectives and goals. However, the motivation towards knowledge sharing on explicit and tacit knowledge is often based on the specific goal. So, we can assume knowledge sharing for organizations as below

Challenges for 30% of Explicit Knowledge sharing:

The human capability of making meaning out of information is deemed very important to knowledge. (Miller 1999). Knowledge is seen as highly context dependent knowledge has no meaning outside of a context for example black has no meaning apart from white. (Despres and Chauvel 1999, Miller 1999). The knowledge produced by an individual will vary from that which another person will produce if the context is not the same. There are different type of knowledge depending on the behavioral or technical competencies.

For example, the explicit knowledge in IT company, the technical data from knowledge workers is raw, unanalyzed with facts and figures. If there is no proper linking to data transformation through people, procedures, hardware, software, papers etc. leads to the situation, where in the information won’t be fully understood by learner or receiver. There always exist sharing codified knowledge as mentioned in below diagram.

Challenges for 70% of Tacit Knowledge sharing:

In most organizations, the knowledge cannot be expressed easily and often they are acquired from personal experience which is known as Tacit knowledge, and it is mostly subjective, cognitive, and experiential and non-codified. In addition, this knowledge is difficult to transfer and often requires face to face interaction.

The challenges of tacit knowledge sharing can be easily understood by ‘The Spiral of Knowing (Wells, 1999 Model)’, as illustrated in the below diagram.

The different modes of knowing, which includes instrumental, procedural, substantive, Aesthetic and theoretical. The action of knowing starts with understanding a task and then becomes practical experience and transforms to information and later codified to build knowledge base, as part of knowledge sharing. Knowing is a continuous process for knowledge workers, as there is learning happens every day in life and it goes on. However, it is challenge to covert the tacit knowledge, as and when required.

Resistance to Learning:

Most of the knowledge is tacit and therefore it is perceived to be personal to knowledge worker. Even when partially codified knowledge exists, it often needs the author (creator of the knowledge) to be available as and when required to support and clarification. However, without Knowledge Workers willingness to share or codify tacit knowledge, KM initiatives likely to have limited success. In addition, it is difficult to force the knowledge workers to participate in Knowledge management. The below are the resistance to learning (as mentioned by Malone, 2003 after Lewin, 1951).

• Time restrictions
• Work life balance
• Cost to self
• Lack of support
• Active discouragement

CHALLENGE-2: Worker’s attitude and behaviors for Knowledge sharing

a)?Cultural Diversity in Internationalization:

Cultural diversity or diversity related to internationalization is observed in most organizations, which is described as variation in different demographic variables. Moreover, such variations are related to deep level characteristics such as skills and values to surface level characteristics such as gender, age, or race.

On the other hand, cultural diversity is often observed as the existence of a number of different nationalities working together in an organization (Hambrick et al., 1998) and could be described as a form of deep level heterogeneity. (Jackson et al., 1995). Moreover, cultural diversity may be prescribed as the task relevant diversity in organization because international members have been drawn to the organization to use their specific abilities and therefore may offer complimentary information and skill.

b)?Knowledge Hoarding:

Knowledge Hoarding ‘an individual’s deliberate and strategic concealment of information’ (Evans et al 2015). For example in an organization, a qualitative study of practicing IT service professional inclined to hoard knowledge was conducted over the 34 days. It was closely observed that 20 workers were processing IT service incident and 26 workers were interviewed about knowledge sharing practice. The research finding showed that IT service practice is characterized more by pro-social collegiality in sharing knowledge/know-how than by self-interested strategic knowledge concealment. (Research by Clive Trusson, Donald Hislop and Neil F. Doherty)

Knowledge workers believe that their knowledge is their own asset and personal, which they learned by self-interest. They sometimes faced problems, hurdles and difficulties in real-life situation and resolved those by themselves. Therefore, they perceive as ‘owners’ for that particular knowledge, which they learned through practical work experience. Usually, Knowledge Hoarding is observed in Knowledge workers due to following risk factors:

• Instable Job Security
• Loss of own reputation and credibility
• Lack of Communication and difficult to codify
• Lack of teaching skills
• Ineffective Knowledge transfer

c)?Resistance to change:

In most organization, it is always observed that there exists resistance to change to new knowledge or system. The main reason for failure in implementing new knowledge and skills is that it is a change initiative and often perceived as the resistance to change. On the other hand, this resistance sometimes considered as a source of information, being useful in learning how to develop a more successful change process.

In addition, as humans its always observed that it is difficult for Knowledge Workers to come out of comfort zone and try new knowledge and apply those in the workplace. The following are some factors that often leads resistance to change in knowledge workers:

• Ambiguity concerning new knowledge
• Disruption of regular, routine, or existing practices
• Threat of losing position power
• Resistance to the new Technology
• Consider as ‘Overload of tasks’

d)?Lack of Participation:

In most organizations, the knowledge workers often feel reluctant to share their knowledge, as it takes considerable amount of time to structure the information/knowledge in a step-by-step format, so that learners can easily understand knowledge/skills (with guided tools and technique) and created in the method that is easily understood by all learner and they able to quickly relate and apply to their job. In addition, knowledge workers are not self-motivated, and they do not get appreciation or recognition for this additional job, which is their knowledge sharing.

How to overcome challenges of Knowledge Management strategies during implementation

In most organizations, with the effective both IT systems, and HRM practices to address above challenges, and facilitate worker engagement in knowledge management. I have below two recommendations.

Recommendation-1: Effective implementation of Knowledge sharing in Explicit Knowledge

The effective implementation of knowledge sharing involves below four stages:

1)?Generate Knowledge and validate:

Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides framework for evaluating and incorporating new experience and information. (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). For most organizations, we need to adopt excellent knowledge management approach to ensure proper generation of knowledge with validation. Therefore, I rather recommend implementing Apollo based Information/Knowledge Management control.

APOLLO (Practice based approach to Knowledge Management):

Knowledge workers are expected to produce knowledge Based on trusted source of information which has proven results, or financial data or outcomes/conclusions to resolve complex problems. In addition, the learners who will access needs to be given permission to read forward and print out content as per 'HR Knowledge Management policies and procedures' to ensure the knowledge is more accurate and focused.

2)?Store and Distribute Knowledge:

“Your own employees are perhaps the most qualified instructors available to you.” – Google.

Google created a “willingness to share” atmosphere, where they created mechanisms to disseminate knowledge, which required individuals and teams to learn how to speak the common language in order to develop a culture of knowledge sharing, and information dissemination resulting in a healthy workforce supporting Knowledge Management.

The knowledge shall be stored in trusted IT database servers (preferably clouds), which has back-up sources, as well as the data in properly transferred as effective information knowledge base, in a way KM is easily accessed by all employees 24/7.

3)?Apply Knowledge:

The organization shall establish HR Policies, procedures, and practices to impact the willingness of knowledge workers to participate in KM initiatives.?Below are the recommendations on for HR functions to consider:

4)?Evaluate the outcomes of KM:

Learning evaluation is the important step, where learning effectiveness is assessed for trainings, upon successful completion, to ensure it fulfills/meet the identified learning needs of individual employees, departmental and organizational. This step completes the learning cycle. However, if the learning doesn’t fulfill or meets the requirements, then learning needs analysis is carried out again.

Kirkpatrick Four Levels Evaluation:

The Kirkpatrick Model was developed by Dr. Donald Kirkpatrick in the mid-1950s as he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation, as his goal was to effectively measure the impact of the training programs, he was delivering at the University of Wisconsin Management Institute. Today, the Kirkpatrick Model is the most highly recognized, utilized and regarded method of evaluating the effectiveness of trainings in below mentioned four levels.

Recommendation-2: Establishing ‘Learning Organization’ and EGL Online Platform

Learning Organization - Overview and Benefits:

In the 1990’s a book called “The fifth discipline” by Peter Senge, highlighted the process of creating a learning organization. Peter wrote that as the pace of society and business increase that there could be a real need to increase the capacity of people in the workplace to create a competitive capacity and learning environment.

Establishing the culture of ‘Learning organization’ encourages adaptative and generative learning where employees are motivated to resolve problems. Moreover, the organization starts with empowerment and alignment, which creates an environment to develop aligned HR corporate strategies for employees at all levels. The below are the organization benefits:

• Creates continues learning opportunities (@ Individual Level)
• Encourages collaboration and Team Learning (@ Team/Department Level)
• Creates systems to capture and share learning (@ Organizational level)

Learning Organizational Model:

It is important to implement Learning Organizations, as mentioned in below diagram (triple loop), wherein individual learning to organizational learning.

Building Learning Organizations:

Learning Organizations are skilled with below five main activities:

1. Systematic Problem solving – Implement Deming Cycle (Plan Do Check Act) and continuous service improvement.
2. New approaches – Effective use of scientific method, tools, and techniques.
3. Learning from history and experience - Proactively assess performance
4. Learning from others experience - Leads to use of best practices and benchmark
5. Transfer knowledge quickly and efficiently

Establish Employee Generated Learning (EGL) Online Platform:

With effective use of IT technology, there is a new form of beneficial knowledge sharing, known as ‘Employee-generated Learning’ approach, where in knowledge workers use an easy content authoring online tool to create and share their own educational content and provide access to all other workers in the same organization working in other countries.

The results of EGL are more effective for new employees joining organizations. New joiners can easily navigate and access to highly effective, relevant technical training materials that are based on the real-life business experience created by their senior colleagues. Moreover, the experienced knowledge workers become highly engaged in their work because EGL gives them recognition.

References:

• Hislop, D (2013) Knowledge Management in Organizations: A Critical Introduction (3rd edition), Oxford, Oxford University Press.
• Clive Trusson, Donald Hislop and Neil F Doherty, Loughborough University (2018) The rhetoric of ‘knowledge hoarding’: a research-based critique. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(6), pp.1540-1558.
• Davenport, TH and Prusak, L (1998) Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MASS.
• Garvin, D, Edmondson, A and Gino, F (2008) “Is Yours a Learning Organization?”, Harvard Business Review.
• Kirkpatrick, D. 1998. Evaluating Training Programs (2nd Edition). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler
• Malone, S. A. (2003) Learning about Learning, CIPD, London. Lewin, K (1951) Filed Theory in Social Science, Harper and Brothers, New York.
• 7 Prerequisites of a Learning Organization, Written by Bj?rn Sandberg (https://dandypeople.com/blog/7-prerequisites-of-a-learning-organization).
• https://www.mbaknol.com/management-concepts/resistance-to-change-in-organizations/