WORKSHOP ON KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT : TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES

Submitted to : Submitted by :
Prof. Taranbir singh Simrandeep kaur
Class- BBA-2
Roll no. 5716

GOVT.MOHINDRA COLLEGE,PATIALA

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 INDEX
Sr.no Particulars Page no.
1. Introduction of km and data,formation & knowledge 3
2. Types of knowledge 4
3. Interest in km and about km 5
4. Definitions 6
5. Evolution of km and km tools 7
6. Km tools 8
7. Evolution of IT tools in km 9
8. New tools for information management 10
9. Km technologies 11
10. Km technologies 12
11. Advantages of km 13

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INTRODUCTION

Both knowledge and knowledge management (KM) are difficult to define. Academics in the
field of KM typically define knowledge as a derivative of information, which is derived from
data. Knowledge is information or data, organised in a way that is useful to the organisation. The
central idea is that KM efforts work to create, codify and share knowledge valuable to the
organisation. Another idea is that KM shifts the focus from process to practice. It is using
communication and collaboration to improve how people do their practice (their job within an
overall process). KM is essentially defined by the need to manage knowledge in an organisation
like an asset. The impetus for managing knowledge in organisations is the realisation that the
new economy is based on knowledge. The most basic idea driving KM is that knowledge is a
strategic asset that must be managed. It should be managed as an asset or resource, just like land,
capital, and labour. This is a shift away from how to simply obtain knowledge to how to use it
productively. Knowledge is to be seen as an activity as well as an object; it is a product and a
process. It is something that must be created and shared. KM is essentially about tacit knowledge
(TK). It is aimed at making TK explicit and then sharing that for reuse across an organisation.
The following can be expressed as KM lifecycle: Knowledge generation Knowledge codification
Knowledge transfer. KM initiatives are often expressions of part of this process. Some are
concerned with the first part: knowledge creation, innovation or organisational learning. Others
are concerned with capturing TK for codification. This means recording videos or feeding data
into a database. Knowledge transfer is sharing knowledge. This means a database of information
with access methods. It can mean fostering networks of people for sharing knowledge or creating
knowledge maps showing who has what expertise. There are different tools for the KM. It can be
divided into two parts: Information technologies tools and Web-based (IT) tools. Web, in coming
years, will present a set of new tools for managing knowledge by providing an extremely rich
common language for representing knowledge.

DATA, INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE

There are numerous definitions of data, information, and knowledge in the literature. However,
as Davenport and Prusak note, knowledge is neither data nor information but it is related to both.
However basic it may sound, it is still important to emphasise that data, information, and
knowledge are not interchangeable concepts. The terms 'data', 'information' and 'knowledge' have

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been defined and distinguished in the write-up for other units of this course. We shall not repeat
it here. It is useful to recall that there are three elements involved in the knowledge process: the
knowee, the knower, and the process of knowing or cognition (operating in the knower).
Knowledge is created when the knower knows the knowee. It implies that knowledge is what a
knower knows; and there is no knowledge without someone knowing it: Outside of the knower
only embodied knowledge (resource) exists. Information becomes knowledge once it is
processed in the mind of an individual. This knowledge then becomes information again once it
is articulated or communicated to others in the form of text, computer output, spoken, or written
words or by other means. Knowledge is embodied in nature and its manifestations, in man-made
artifacts, documents of all types (including the digital forms) as text, images, sound, and
multimedia, and most importantly Knowledge management

TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

Knowledge and Society in people, not only what is in their brain, but also their skills, cultural
practices, traditions, conventions, laws, etc. For an enterprise, it is strategic to focus on
proprietary corporate knowledge, intrinsic to its core competence / expertise and is often
protected by patents, copyright, non-disclosure policies, and its other intellectual properties In
brief, knowledge is information integrated with experiences, reflected upon and interpreted in a
particular context. Knowledge is a renewable, re-usable and an accumulating asset of value to an
enterprise that increases in value with employee experience and organisational life. It is
intangible, boundary-less, and dynamic, and if it is not used at a specific time in a specific place,
it may be of no value otherwise. Although know ledge can be represented in and often embedded
in organisational processes, routines, and networks, and in document repositories, it is only the
cognitive process and intellection of a person(s) that can generate knowledge or apply it. It may
be noted from the literature that knowledge can be thought of in many ways, and indeed there are
a number of different types discussed [Teece, 1998]. From a knowledge management
perspective, it is useful to be able to identify and categorise types of knowledge as it may help to
indicate which of the categories are more amenable to management than others. A typology of
knowledge is: 'core', 'advanced' and 'innovative' knowledge. Core knowledge is the minimum
level of knowledge required for daily operations; advanced knowledge enables a firm to be
competitively viable; and innovative knowledge enables a firm to lead the industry to which it

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belongs, and competitors. Knowledge is also categorised as 'explicit' and 'tacit' knowledge.
Explicit knowledge is expressed in words and numbers and shared in the form of data, scientific
formulae, specifications, manuals, and the like. This kind of knowledge can be readily
transmitted between individuals formally and systematically. Tacit knowledge is highly personal
and hard to formalise, making it difficult to communicate or share with others. Subjective
insights, intuition, experience and hunch fall into this category of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is
deeply rooted in an individual's actions and experience as well as in his/her ideals, values, and
emotions. Tacitness may be considered as a variable, the degree of tacitness being a function of
the extent to which the knowledge is or can be codified and abstracted. Knowledge may
dynamically shift between tacit and explicit over time although some knowledge always will
remain tacit. Codification is the degree to which the knowledge is fully documented or expressed
in writing at the time of transfer between indi viduals. The complexity of knowledge increases
with lower levels of codification. Another categorisation of knowledge is 'practical, experience-
based knowledge' and 'theoretical knowledge' derived from reflection and abstraction from
experience.

INTEREST IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Interest in Knowledge Management The level of interest in KM has been building -for several
years and this is partly because of the recognition that knowledge has become increasingly
important to an individual firm's successs. As pointed out by KPMG (1998) "We are in an era
where the traditional pillars of economic power - capital, land, plant, and labour - are no longer
the determinants of business success. Instead an increasing number of organisations depend for
their value on the development, use and distribution of knowledge- based competencies."

ABOUT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Just as there are many definitions of knowledge, there are also numerous definitions of
knowledge management. To date, no general approach to managing knowledge has been
commonly accepted- although several isolated, and at times diverging notions are being
advanced. According to Malhotra (1998) academic notions of knowledge and management are
split between the various camps of psychologists, technologists, and organisation theorists, and
that the 'trade', press, or practitioners follow a techno-centric approach (looking at how various

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IT systems can facilitate knowledge management) or they take a human- resource oriented
approach (for example looking at the cultural issues that are relevant to kriowledge
management). However, a simple way of defining Knowledge Management is that "KM is the
process of organizing and sharing the diverse forms of business information created within an
organisation.Klvl can include managing enterprise document libraries, discussion databases,
Intranet websites, and other types of knowledge bases. KM is the application of enterprise portals
to organise, manage, and share the diverse forms of business information created by individuals
and teams in an organisation. We shall be discussing KM in the framework of an enterprise or
organisation - a company, a research centre, an educational institution, a project or any other
corporate entity. KM in general relates to unlocking and leveraging the knowledge of individuals
so that it becomes available as an organisational resource independent of particular individuals.
Many authors view KM from an information systems perspective and is based on the belief that
KM systems can be used to capture and store workers' knowledge and make it accessible to
others through a searchable application. In this perspective KM should enable an organisation to
effectively store, manage, retrieve, and enlarge its intellectual properties. The repository view of
KM emphasises the gathering, providing, and filtering of explicit knowledge as the information
held in a repository can easily be transferred and shared. Nevertheless, it is neither easy nor
appropriate to use de-contextualised information. Knowledge managers often need access to
human experts, for their tacit knowledge. This 'expert sharing' dimension of KM emphasises "the
human aspects - cognitive, social, cultural and organisational- aspects, in addition to information
storage and retrieval. Rather than focusing on the management level of an organisation, expert
sharing focuses on the self-organised activities of the organisation's members."

DEFINITION

Karl Sveiby [1] defined KM as, ÐThe art of creating value from an organisations intangible
assets Davenport and Prusak [2] defined KM as, KM is concerned with the exploitation and
development of the knowledge assets of an organisation with a view to furthering the knowledge
objectives.Despres, Charles and Chauvel, Daniele [3] defined KM as, The purpose of knowledge
management is to enhance organisational performance by explicitly designing and implementing
tools, processes, systems, Received on 6 August 2009; Revised on 4 September 2009 34
DESIDOC J. Lib. Inf. Technol., 2009, 29 structures, and cultures to improve the creation,

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sharing, and use of different types of knowledge that are critical for decision-making. According
to the World Bank, KM is the management of knowledge through systematic sharing that can
enable one to build on earlier experience and obviate the need for costly reworking of learning
by making the same repetitive mistakes.

EVOLUTION OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

The emergence of the term explicit knowledge and the introduction of KM in the 1980s were
new. It was a natural evolution brought about by the confluence of many factors. The
developments that have led to present perspective on KM come from many areas. Some are
intellectually based, while others are pragmatic and rooted in the need to innovate to secure real-
life performance. KM can be described as the most recent phase of an evolution from a
managerial focus on data management than information management and finally KM. The three
practices that have brought the most contents and energy to KM are information management,
the quality movement and the human factors/human capital movement. Information management
developed during the seventies and eighties and is usually understood as a subset of the larger
information technology and information science world. IT is a body of thought and cases that
focus on how information itself is managed independent of the technologies that house and
manipulate it. It deals with information issues in terms of valuation, operational techniques,
governance, and incentive schemes. Information, in this context, generally means documents,
data, and structured messages. In broad terms, KM shares information managements user
perspective, a focus on value as a function of user satisfaction rather than the efficiency of the
technology that houses and delivers the information

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TOOLS

The development of IT for organisations has produced many successful ERP-type systems that
manage well-defined processes. But systems to manage ill-defined, knowledge intensive
processes have met with less success. KM practitioners use a wide range of IT tools to share,
create, codify, and share knowledge. The trend in the development of IT for organisations is
toward more communication and collaboration tools

Requirement of Knowledge Management Tools The tools for KM are focused on assimilation,
comprehension, and learning of the information by individuals who will then transform data and

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information into knowledge. Knowledge is strictly linked and connected to the individual (or
group) who creates it, which may cast doubts on the availability of information systems tools to
effectively support KM. Thus the visible part of knowledge, what the literature calls explicit as
opposed to the tacit dimension of knowledge, is only information regardless of the amount of the
other individual knowledge embedded into it. Therefore, there is requirement of KM tools, which
can collect, catalogue, organise, and share knowledge or transfer information (the explicit
knowledge) embedded in various forms and types of documents and media. These reasons are:
(i) Facilitate information contextualisation: To facilitate information contextualisation, metadata
on its characteristics and integration within a specific environment must be attached to it before
storing. This facilitates better retrieval and management for the knowledge seeker. (ii)
Intelligently transfer information: Information transfer must occur by taking into account the
user, the content, and the time of transfer. A tool that can optimise these three aspects can truly
provide information according to the needs of the users, respecting one of the key functional
foundations of KM. (iii) Facilitate social interactions and networking: Direct communication and
verbal knowledge transfer through social interactions among individuals is the most natural
aspect of knowledge sharing. A KM tool supports this social aspect and facilitates searching. (iv)
Present a customised human-computer interface: The tools also support interface customisation
and ease of use. The human-computer interface, ease of use and usability will drive intention to
use and reuse the tools.

Tools available for Knowledge Management A number of tools are available to support the
functionalities and processes of KM, which are listed below: (i) Tools to access
knowledge:These tools provide access to explicit knowledge that can be shared and transferred
through the enterprise information systems. For example, Convera is a tool used for retrieval
ware. It works on powerful indexing systems to classify expertise based on both content and
collaboration dynamics and networks within the enterprise. (ii) Tools for semantic mapping:
These tools are meant to quickly support presentation of information, analysis, and decision
making. Ontology tools are also part of this category as they enable users to organize information
and knowledge by groups and schemata that represent the organizational knowledge base. For
example, Anacubis is a ground-breaking visual research and analysis software for corporate
researchers, analysts, and intelligence professionals. It supports the visual discovery and analysis
of intelligence in both online and enterprise information. Information is represented in the

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Anacubis Desktop by icons and links. Users can also import, create, analyse, and distribute
visual representations of their research and analysis. (iii) Tools for knowledge extraction: These
tools support structured queries and replies. They help mining text by interpreting relationships
among different elements and documents. For example, ClearForest Text Analysis Suite is an
advanced text driven business intelligence solutions which apply intelligent mark-up to key
entities such as person, organization, location, as well as detailed facts or events embedded
within free-form text such as news articles, web surveys, and HTML documents. (iv) Tools for
expertise localisation: These tools enable quick location of the knowledge holders in the
enterprise and facilitate collaboration and knowledge exchange. For example, ActiveNet
maintains a continuous, real-time view of organisational activities. ActiveNet continuously
discovers each persons work activity and business relationships by processing communications
from such sources as documents, discussion databases, e-mail, instant messaging and digital
workspaces. (v) Tools for collaboration work: These tools enable teams to globally share
dedicated spaces for managing the project lifecycle; editing and publishing materials; conducting
live discussions and interactions; and maintaining a repository of materials associated with every
step of the process. For example, QuickPlace is a Lotuss web-based shared workspace software
for realtime collaboration among geographically dispersed participants. Using QuickPlace,
coworkers, suppliers, partners, and customers can communicate online immediately within a
structured workspace created for that purpose. An online workspace can make it possible for
people to work together more easily and less expensively.

EVOLUTION OF IT TOOLS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Some Categories of IT Tools Commonly Associated with Knowledge Management Some

categories of IT tools commonly associated with KM are shown in Table 1. 4.2 Categorisation of
Tools Based on Different Types of Knowledge Four different types of knowledge and the
different types of KM tools that can be used are

1. Web-based Information Technology Tools for Knowledge Mangement

Web offers a very powerful platform for tools supporting all stages of KM. The web allows for
an unprecedented degree of integration of different representational and communicational media

2. Traditional Database Tools

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These tools attempt to allow users to create general data properties implicitly within a database.
They allow for the creation of objects that have certain properties, can communicate with other
objects and so on.

3. Process Modelling and Management Tools

Processes that involve the transformation of physical material have been the focal metaphor.
Tools have been built to support these processes encode considerable knowledge of the process.

4. Workflow Management Tools

These are the process management tools for information-intensive organisations. Workflow tools
allow for the specification of the movement of documents in information processes.

5. Enterprise Resource Management Tools

Enterprise modelling tools are being developed to provide all the modelling capabilities of
ERP/ERM systems along with the explicit representation of organisational and environmental
knowledge

6. Agent Tools

These tools rely on agents, relatively autonomous programs that can perform a variety of tasks.
Agents may be provided with the specifications of the information that the user is interested in
and these will then search the web and specified other databases to find the information.

7. Search Engines, Navigation Tools and Portals

Some of the search engines perform automatic textonly searches while others relied on human
interpreters who would access web pages and then analyse and classify them.

8. Visualising Tools

These tools have been developed to investigate the structure of knowledge domain and
knowledge within domains. These tools have been used for data visualisation in the areas of
financial market to molecular biology.

9. Collaborative Tools

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 These types of tools are provided for setting of bulletin board and for real-time video
conferencing, whiteboards, and chat rooms.

10. New tools for information management

A new group of web-based information management tools has emerged based on freeform social
software that enhances individual knowledge work, group communication, and collaboration.
Information management tools for knowledge work and communication are not new. The new
tools open up one-to-one and group communication to be viewed by many users if not the public.
They differ fundamentally from the old suite of tools in that they are based on user participation
and are mostly characterised by participatory services, where users create content. They usually
allow users to manage and modify their own data within a given system information that is
usually made public for others benefit. Thus the services get better the more people use them.
Organisation or knowledge is drawn out of user actions like tagging or visiting sites. But by far
the most dominant characteristic is that of participation.

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