Chapter 7

Managing
Knowledge and
Collaboration

11.1 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 5 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Important dimensions of knowledge

• Knowledge is a firm asset
• Intangible
• Creation of knowledge from data, information, requires
organizational resources
• As it is shared, experiences network effects
• Knowledge has different forms
• May be explicit (documented) or tacit (residing in minds)
• Know-how, craft, skill
• How to follow procedure
• Knowing why things happen (causality)

11.2 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Important dimensions of knowledge (cont.)

• Knowledge has a location
• Cognitive event
• Both social and individual
• “Sticky” (hard to move), situated (enmeshed in firm’s
culture), contextual (works only in certain situations)
• Knowledge is situational
• Conditional: Knowing when to apply procedure
• Contextual: Knowing circumstances to use certain tool

11.3 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Organizational learning
• Process in which organizations learn
• Gain experience through collection of data,
measurement, trial and error, and feedback
• Adjust behavior to reflect experience
• Create new business processes
• Change patterns of management decision making

11.4 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Knowledge management: Set of business processes

developed in an organization to create, store, transfer,
and apply knowledge
• Knowledge management value chain:
• Each stage adds value to raw data and information
as they are transformed into usable knowledge
• Knowledge acquisition
• Knowledge storage
• Knowledge dissemination
• Knowledge application

11.5 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Knowledge management value chain

• Knowledge acquisition
• Documenting tacit and explicit knowledge
• Storing documents, reports, presentations, best
practices
• Unstructured documents (e.g., e-mails)
• Developing online expert networks
• Creating knowledge
• Tracking data from TPS and external sources

11.6 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Knowledge management value chain:

• Knowledge storage
• Databases
• Document management systems
• Role of management:
• Support development of planned knowledge storage
systems
• Encourage development of corporate-wide schemas
for indexing documents
• Reward employees for taking time to update and
store documents properly

11.7 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Knowledge management value chain:

• Knowledge dissemination
• Portals
• Push e-mail reports
• Search engines
• Collaboration tools
• A deluge of information?
• Training programs, informal networks, and shared
management experience help managers focus
attention on important information

11.8 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 5 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Knowledge management value chain:

• Knowledge application
• To provide return on investment, organizational
knowledge must become systematic part of
management decision making and become situated in
decision-support systems
• New business practices
• New products and services
• New markets

11.9 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

The Knowledge Management Value Chain

Figure 11-2
Knowledge management
today involves both
information systems
activities and a host of
enabling management and
organizational activities.

11.10 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• New organizational roles and responsibilities

• Chief knowledge officer executives
• Dedicated staff / knowledge managers
• Communities of practice (COPs)
• Informal social networks of professionals and employees
within and outside firm who have similar work-related
activities and interests
• Activities include education, online newsletters, sharing
experiences and techniques
• Facilitate reuse of knowledge, discussion
• Reduce learning curves of new employees

11.11 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

The Knowledge Management Landscape

• Three major types of knowledge management

systems:
• Enterprise-wide knowledge management systems
• General-purpose firm-wide efforts to collect, store, distribute, and
apply digital content and knowledge
• Knowledge work systems (KWS)
• Specialized systems built for engineers, scientists, other knowledge
workers charged with discovering and creating new knowledge
• Intelligent techniques
• Diverse group of techniques such as data mining used for various
goals: discovering knowledge, distilling knowledge, discovering
optimal solutions

11.12 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Three major types of knowledge in enterprise

• Structured documents
• Reports, presentations
• Formal rules
• Semistructured documents
• E-mails, videos
• Unstructured, tacit knowledge

• 80% of an organization’s business content is

semistructured or unstructured

11.13 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Enterprise-wide content management

systems
• Help capture, store, retrieve, distribute, preserve
• Documents, reports, best practices
• Semistructured knowledge (e-mails)
• Bring in external sources
• News feeds, research
• Tools for communication and collaboration

11.14 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Enterprise-wide content management

systems
• Key problem – Developing taxonomy
• Knowledge objects must be tagged with categories for
retrieval
• Digital asset management systems
• Specialized content management systems for classifying,
storing, managing unstructured digital data
• Photographs, graphics, video, audio

11.15 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Knowledge network systems

• Provide online directory of corporate experts in well-defined
knowledge domains
• Use communication technologies to make it easy for employees
to find appropriate expert in a company
• May systematize solutions developed by experts and store them
in knowledge database
• Best-practices
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ) repository

11.16 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

An Enterprise Knowledge Network System

Figure 11-5
A knowledge network maintains a
database of firm experts, as well as
accepted solutions to known
problems, and then facilitates the
communication between employees
looking for knowledge and experts
who have that knowledge. Solutions
created in this communication are
then added to a database of
solutions in the form of FAQs, best
practices, or other documents.

11.17 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Enterprise-Wide Knowledge Management Systems

• Major knowledge management system vendors

include powerful portal and collaboration technologies
• Portal technologies: Access to external information
• News feeds, research
• Access to internal knowledge resources
• Collaboration tools
• E-mail
• Discussion groups
• Blogs
• Wikis
• Social bookmarking

11.18 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Knowledge Work Systems

• Knowledge work systems

• Systems for knowledge workers to help create new knowledge
and ensure that knowledge is properly integrated into business
• Knowledge workers
• Researchers, designers, architects, scientists, and engineers
who create knowledge and information for the organization
• Three key roles:
• Keeping organization current in knowledge
• Serving as internal consultants regarding their areas of expertise
• Acting as change agents, evaluating, initiating, and promoting
change projects

11.19 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Knowledge Work Systems

• Examples of knowledge work systems

• CAD (computer-aided design): Automates creation and
revision of engineering or architectural designs, using computers
and sophisticated graphics software
• Virtual reality systems: Software and special hardware to
simulate real-life environments
• E.g. 3-D medical modeling for surgeons
• VRML: Specifications for interactive, 3D modeling over Internet
• Investment workstations: Streamline investment process and
consolidate internal, external data for brokers, traders, portfolio
managers

11.20 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Intelligent Techniques

• Intelligent techniques: Used to capture individual and

collective knowledge and to extend knowledge base
• To capture tacit knowledge: Expert systems, case-based
reasoning, fuzzy logic
• Knowledge discovery: Neural networks and data mining
• Generating solutions to complex problems: Genetic
algorithms
• Automating tasks: Intelligent agents

• Artificial intelligence (AI) technology:

• Computer-based systems that emulate human behavior

11.21 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Intelligent Techniques

• Expert systems:
• Capture tacit knowledge in very specific and limited
domain of human expertise
• Capture knowledge of skilled employees as set of
rules in software system that can be used by others in
organization
• Typically perform limited tasks that may take a few
minutes or hours, e.g.:
• Diagnosing malfunctioning machine
• Determining whether to grant credit for loan

11.22 © 2010 by Prentice Hall

 Management Information Systems
Chapter 11 Managing Knowledge

Intelligent Techniques

• How expert systems work

• Knowledge base: Set of hundreds or thousands of
rules
• Inference engine: Strategy used to search
knowledge base
• Forward chaining: Inference engine begins with information
entered by user and searches knowledge base to arrive at
conclusion
• Backward chaining: Begins with hypothesis and asks user
questions until hypothesis is confirmed or disproved

11.23 © 2010 by Prentice Hall