MODEL EXAM

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT – IMPORTANT QUESTION PAPER

PART-A - Answer any 8 out of 10 questions ( 8 x 5 = 4

0 m a r k s )

1. Outline the Importance of knowledge sharing.

2. Sketch the key steps in KM lifecycle.
3. Relate the role of strategy planning in KM.
4. Demonstrate how does the knowledge capture and transfer happen through teams?
5. Paraphrasing why knowledge management is important in today’s scenario.
6. Distinguish between deep knowledge and shallow knowledge.
7. Express the major factors that influence the knowledge management.
8. Predict the effects of environmental and organizational characteristics on KM processes?
9. Sketch the steps in case based reasoning.
10. Predict the technologies to manage knowledge.
11. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of the case based system.
12. Differentiate knowledge elicitation techniques.
13. Assess the role of DM in customer relationship management?
14. Outline the different types of knowledge sharing systems.
15. Demonstrate wikis and how does it contribute to knowledge creation.
16. Infer the term process modelling and how does it contribute to knowledge creation?
17. Comment on knowledge enabling.
18. Predict the tools used for knowledge codification.
19. Demonstrate how does organization encourage knowledge sharing?
20. Comment on cross functional project team.
 PART-B

(Answer any 4 out of 6 Questions) – (4 X 10 = 40 MARKS)

1. Measure the Nonaka’s model of knowledge creation and transformation.

2. Appraise the following a) Intranet b) Extranet c) Groupware.

3. Summarize the impact of KM on organizational performance as a whole.

4. Defend why we need to assess knowledge management in an organization.

5. Illustrate various components of knowledge based system from the user’s perspective.
6. Explain the key features of knowledge repositories. Elicit the need for Knowledge
repositories.
7. Categorize any five classification and categorization tools.
8. Illustrate the XML tools are used in KM.
9. Organize the knowledge networks and communities of practice.
10. Defend how the knowledge resource is exploited to improve the economic performance
of an organization?

PART -C – CASE STUDY (Compulsory) – (1 x 20 = 20 MARKS)

1. collected from all over world. About 30 of these are in depth case studies from research
and interviews, 50 are from academic journals, 150 from conferences on articles in
magazines, the rest are case lets that illustrate the use of specific KM techniques.

As this section picks up a solution from the database and publish them in a standard format to
give a flavour of what is to follow, the following examples been given:

1. Best practices yield one free fat plan (Texas Instruments)

 This is one of KM's classic example dating from the 1990s. It demonstrates how sharing best
practices across the world-wide operations Texas instruments saved an order of $ 500
million.
2. Holistic KM @ the Dept. of Health
This is a good example of how a KM strategy embraces several inter related dimensions
including people, processes, technology, content and also top — down, bottom up and
middle — out approach
3. Telling stories to capture lessons learned (British council)
The use of narrative techniques in workshops to capture lessons learned.
Questions:

a) Which of the above examples is suitable to the modern world? Give reasons.
b) Do you think case studies help in enhancing knowledge? Discuss with examples.

1. The information system (IS), which supports capturing, gathering, and distribution of
knowledge, is one component of the organizational memory; and it is defined as an
organizational memory information system (OMIS). Data collected have been qualitative,
and most of the questions have been open ended with some close-ended type of
questionnaire finally put together to collect qualitative data as previously mentioned. The
data collection method used has been structured interviews, “face to face,” with all 14
employees in the company, including the 12 PS consultants and the two employees in the
IS support team. It should be noted that, before conducting the interview with the 12 PS
consultants, each of them had been given a clear definition of the term OMIS
(organizational memory information system) in terms of functions, resources, and tools.
The main assumption we used is that the slowdown in IT industry at that time on the
international and local levels, and the related increase in job insecurity, do not negatively
impact the employees’ use of the OMIS in terms of sharing knowledge. As for the
interview questions, they have targeted the following areas: the existing setup and how it
supports the OMIS, the main issues that hinder the implementation of a successful OMIS,
and the main areas that need improvement. The interview questions have targeted each of
 the factors stated in the above section, where each of the factors with its main points has
been put into questions targeting answers that should clarify how the model could be
applied, as well as the main points needed to be covered in the implementation phase.
The role of the questions is to highlight the main factors in relating all those points all
together, combined with the Jennex, Olfman, and Pituma OMIS Success Model, which
had finally led to a realizable framework towards the implementation of a successful
OMIS. On the other hand, and as this case study is qualitative, the findings will be
directly resulting from the questionnaires’ answers. This means that we have to assume
that all interviewed employees had given honest answers without any intentional bias.
The main limitation of this case study is that we are only qualifying the “computer
documents” form of OMIS by focusing on intranet, email, and portal services. The other
two forms of OMIS (paper documents and selfmemory) are not covered. Also, other
means of knowledge diffusion and transfer (such as direct contacts between people and
communities of practice) are not covered. On the other hand, cultural issues related to
knowledge management and organizational memory are not analyzed. After conducting
the interviews with all the staff members of the PS division of “CITE,” a successful
implementation of an OMIS is affected by multiple factors. The following factors like
Training, Management of OMIS, Communication, Technology and Corporate Culture
have been identified.

Questions:
1. What are the different kind interviewing techniques used in the data collection? What
technique was used in this case study? What are its advantages and limitations?
2. What are the other techniques for collecting data/knowledge?
3. What is meant by corporate memory and how it is enhanced by this information
system?
4. What would be the individual and organizational impact of this system?

2. Initially, Toyota developed and produced cars only in Japan and exported them abroad in
order to ensure high quality and to maintain customer trust in the brand. Having steadily
been developing its business globally afterwards and because of increasing overseas
demand, the need to tailor production to local needs, the opportunity of tax breaks and in
order to save shipping costs, Toyota evolved to the second stage of its manufacturing
model: it started to produce vehicles where the market is. This model has been working
well in established mass markets such as North America and Western Europe, because
the high sales volume justifies the production overhead. Recently, Toyota has identified
attractive business opportunities in other developing markets such as BRICs (Brazil,
Russia, India, and China), and each has huge growth potential. The strategic challenge to
Toyota was whether the previous manufacturing model used in the North American and
European markets will apply equally well in emerging markets. In these emerging
markets, local demand sometimes fluctuates widely or may vary greatly from that in
Japan, Western Europe and the USA. Equally, demand is usually not high enough to
achieve optimal production. Finally, the materialization of free trade agreements in
different parts of the world has presented tremendous opportunities for Toyota to allow
its manufacturing model to evolve to its third stage: a global production and supply
network that will solve, efficiently and effectively, the problems of local production in
emerging markets. Toyota announced a break-through initiative called the “Innovative
International Multipurpose Vehicles (IMV) Project”, which aims at increasing the self-
reliance of overseas manufacturing facilities in such a way as to optimize overall
worldwide production, especially in emerging markets, by both understanding common
needs and paying sufficient attention to unique local needs. The IMV initiative is a very
innovative strategy for Toyota. Within these emerging markets, the study of the unique
local needs and then the developing, manufacturing and supplying of cars, which closely
meet them promises competitive advantage. The success of IMV is dependent upon the
leadership of local engineers. Historically, Toyota used to recruit only Japanese nationals
to be designers and engineers, first assign them to work in mother plants in Japan to gain
knowledge and skills and then transfer them to overseas factories. Therefore, in the
planning and development stages, this meant listening to dealers and customers in Asia,
Africa and South America and repeatedly debating the issues among members of the
design and engineering teams. Nowadays, Toyota never underestimates the importance of
local knowledge. The success of the IMV is dependent upon human resource
development in Asia, and more efforts are being made in this area. The advanced digital
technology of the Global Production Centre, established in 2003, is being used to train its
managers and workers in the IMV project factories

Questions :

1. What are the unique challenges faced by the Toyota w.r.t knowledge creation, transfer
and sharing?
2. Discuss about strategic knowledge creation and enabling at Toyota
3. Discuss how knowledge sharing has helped Toyota to achieve success in its IMV
project.
4. What knowledge sharing strategies would have been used by Toyota in this project?