Knowledge Management Principles

This document discusses the principles of knowledge management and the importance of explicit and tacit knowledge. It explores the benefits of knowledge sharing in organizations and provides steps to increase the return on investment (ROI) of knowledge management.

Running Head: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
0
0
Knowledge Management
Knowledge Management Principles
(Student details :)
4/25/2019

Knowledge Management
1
Knowledge Management Principles
Solution 1
As per the scenario, I am considering that I need to buy a new brand Holden Commodore. In
this context, when I tried to gather explicit as well as tacit knowledge for buying Holden
Commodore car from different resources, then I got to know the significance and difference
amid two types of knowledge management tactics.
In this context, there are two main types of knowledge those are central to knowledge
management (KM) as follows:
 Explicit knowledge
 Tacit knowledge
Here, explicit knowledge is all about knowing-that which means that the knowledge digitized
or codified within academic books, documents, memos or reports is known as explicit
knowledge. In other words, this KM tactic provides a documented info which can further
facilitate actions in real-time. Besides, explicit knowledge can be easily found, articulated,
shared as well as employed whenever required (Hislop, 2011).
On the other hand, tacit knowledge is all about knowing-how of the situation. Moreover, any
knowledge embedded within the human minds from their experiences and job places is
known as tacit knowledge (Health Knowledge, 2018). In addition, a person’s wisdom and
experiences, which is context-specific and difficult to be codified and extracted is often
termed as tacit knowledge. Hence, a tacit KM tactic includes an individual’s intuitions and
insights, which he or she can apply during their daily life (Baloh et al., 2017).
Now, in this given scenario when I considered buying new Holden Commodore car and I
gathered tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge on buying Holden Commodore cars from
various resources like the annual car reviews list, Holden Web site, family members and
friends I have gained many findings. In this way, here I am listing the main findings with
their source of knowledge (tacit or explicit):

Knowledge Management
2
 When I accessed the Holden Company’s official website then I got to know about the
whole range of the Holden cars and hence Commodore is a series of Holden cars (GM
Holden, 2019).
 Moreover, there are three categories of Holden Commodore cars include Commodore,
Commodore Tourer and Commodore Sportwagon. The latter two are upgraded
versions of Holden Commodore cars (GM Holden, 2019).
 Besides, if I am willing to buy Holden Commodore’s basic series then it is further
having following models:
 Commodore LT
 Commodore RS
 Commodore RS-V
 Commodore VXR
 Commodore Calais
 Commodore Calais-V
In this way, by accessing the website I could easily differentiate among various Commodore
Models of Holden Commodore cars with the help of their all-inclusive features, price and
comparison (GM Holden, 2019).
In this way, while gained both the explicit and tacit knowledge about the Holden Commodore
cars through different ways, I found the explicit way of gaining knowledge about the car
more useful as vast knowledge about these cars, customer reviews and detailed experiences is
available over the internet as well as academic journals. In this way, with the help of GM
Holden Ltd. Website and other resources I could decide over which model I want to purchase
from Holden Commodore cars (GM Holden, 2019).
Solution 2
Community of Practice (herein after referred as CoP) is a kind of environment where
connection of different people, sharing of experiences and ideas is usually encouraged
(Omotayo, 2015). In addition, CoP is a wide network of people having common issues or
interests and hence they get together for exploring a number of ways of working for getting
the solutions. Besides, in CoP people typically identify common resolutions as well as share
innovative ideas and practices (Gao et al., 2015). Apart from this, a CoP enables an
individual for the following knowledge management practices:

Knowledge Management
3
 CoP allows one to share their experiences and hence learn through others’
experiences.
 CoP allows people to collaborate as well as attain common outcomes related to the
common problems
 CoP more often accelerates an individual’s learning within the community setting
 CoP builds and validates upon existing knowledge management
 CoP offers an opportunity of innovating as well as creating novel ideas in order to
solve problems within a community (Baloh et al., 2017).
In addition, CoPs bring a lot of knowledge into an organization which helps the organization
to grow as well as assist people of our community. Hence, CoP needs to be adopted by each
and every institution to function effectively. With the help of defining the CoP, this
discussion has found the purpose of the Community of Practice as sharing and learning
knowledge at a large level. Apart from sharing and learning, CoP also creates knowledge as
we just discussed it enables one to explore his own as well as others’ innovative ideas (Zheng
et al., 2011).
Now, from the above main findings about CoP we can easily get the benefits as well as role
of CoP within a local hospital setting. Hence there are some major benefits of the CoP for a
local hospital:
 If we introduce and utilize the CoP within a local hospital setting then it functions as
an incubator, which brought best practices, experiences, research, a reflective learning
cycle, as well as passionate people together.
 Undoubtedly, CoP attempts to inspire medical practice changes for good, which in
turn demonstrated structural priorities (Health Knowledge, 2018).
 CoP offers opportunity for improving an extensive care of the old aged people. In this
way, provincial CoPs are better supported for facilitating hospital systems change.
 CoPs enhance health literacy within our local community, which cultivates hospital’s
success rates (Dul et al., 2011).
 CoPs help to improve reproductive health at a large extent
 In order to improve perinatal and maternal health within a community, CoP assists
local hospitals
 While people communicate in a group or community for the common problems then
gender violence rate also gets reduced

Knowledge Management
4
 Most importantly, medical and professional practice development within local
hospital entities is majorly affected by CoPs (Bosua & Venikitachalam, 2015).
Solution 3
As we know that knowledge sharing is the procedure with which tacit or explicit knowledge
is communicated in between different individuals. In this context, knowledge sharing refers
as an effective transfer of knowledge assets in a way that the beneficiary of knowledge can
apprehend it well enough in order to act over it.
In addition, based on whether tacit or explicit knowledge is being shared with knowledge
sharing process, socialization or exchange procedures are utilised (Baloh et al., 2017). Here,
rival organizations such as Visa and MasterCard, or Honda and Toyota, can easily execute
knowledge sharing system for acquiring mutual benefits within the long-term businesses (Dul
et al., 2011). In this context, we know that every firm has employees having a certain amount
of explicit and tacit knowledge. Moreover, it is well-known that every technical and non-
technical skill comprising knowledge skills is not available among the employees of an
organization (Dul et al., 2011). In this way, knowledge on any topic or project can be useful
to each other when it is getting shared amid two or more organizations. This is the reason that
through sharing such knowledge resources, MasterCard and Visa as well as Toyota and
Honda would mutually benefit each other (Allee, 2016).
Apart from this, in case of Honda and Toyota, when Honda is designing a more fuel efficient
engine than the Toyota then Honda can offer benefits to Toyota. On the other hand, Toyota is
able to design an extremely aerodynamic body for cars hence it can also benefit Honda in the
same context. In this way, through exchanging knowledge with each other these two
organizations may acquire benefits and hence develop an extremely efficient vehicle (CTS,
2014).
Moreover, during the past many rival organizations have shared their knowledge skills for
fighting the prevailing competition, which resulted in better products as well as well-
established business standards (Health Knowledge, 2018). Besides, IBM used to initially
develop its own PC motherboards having a special high-speed expansion interface, which is
known as MCA and hence IBM started charging a licensing fee for rest manufacturers for
using their design (Gao et al., 2015). Hence, to sustain the competition within the form of
small PC clone manufacturers such as Compaq shared its knowledge as well as pooled their

Knowledge Management
5
resources to develop their own standard of PC motherboard expansion interface, which is
known as ISA. In this way, the knowledge sharing system amid Compaq and IBM resulted in
the popularity of the IBM standards. In this way, rival organizations can always have a
knowledge sharing system in a way that this system can mutually benefit each other (Bosua
& Venikitachalam, 2015).
Solution 4
As per the given scenario, a company’s investment on knowledge management started
seeming unsuccessful as the return on investment (referred as ROI) has been decreased from
10% to 5% during the year of system implementation. In this way, because of a decreased
organizational performance in terms of value of ROI, system is thinking about uninstalling
the knowledge management system right way (Zheng et al., 2011).
In this context, company needs to understand that factors responsible for the decrement of the
ROI are completely strongly co-related with the knowledge management tactics (Omotayo,
2015). Thus, such responsible factors can be as follows:
 The product recalls
 Unexpected deaths or injuries
 Unprofitable products and services
 Lawsuits
 Decreased employee morale
 Any unexpected damage to the company brand
 Huge customers loss
 Inability of attracting or retaining employees’ talent
 Targeting by any takeover company
 Lessened work productivity, growth, revenue, profit margin and shareholder values
(Lister, 2018).

Knowledge Management
6
Therefore, company does not need to uninstall the implemented system immediately but they
need to imply proper steps to implement the knowledge management within their
organization. Thus, the steps which need to be implemented for increasing the value of ROI
of the company are as follows:
 Step I: firstly, organization needs to identify the main business problem
 Step II: secondly, organization needs to prepare for the change through changing their
knowledge management while adopting knowledge sharing culture with any other
firm (Hislop, 2011).
 Step III: later then, organization might need to create a separate team for the change
management within the organization
 Step IV: during the 4th step, organization should perform the knowledge audit through
identifying what is missing from the organizing knowledge so that they can update the
knowledge regarding the same (Hislop, 2017).
 Step V: hence, after above four major steps of knowledge management the firm can
define key features of the firm in order to get high ROI.
 Step VI: furthermore, instead of shutting the whole system down the firm should build
blocks for an effective knowledge management with the tools like knowledge
mapping, knowledge warehouse, capturing tacit knowledge, automated categorization
and knowledge mining (CTS, 2014).
 Step VII: in the end, with the help of a knowledge directory and content management
of the organization, they can inter-link knowledge to their people which is ultimately
in the direction of attempting for high ROI.
References
Allee, V., 2016. 12 Principles of knowledge management. Training and development, 51(11),
pp.71-74.
Baloh, P., DEsouza, k.c. & Paquette, S., 2017. The concept of knowledge. Eds. ed. New York:
Neal-Schuman Publishers Inc.
Bosua, R. & Venikitachalam, K., 2015. Aligning strategies and processes in knowledge
management: a framework. Journal of Knoledge Management, 17(3), pp.331-46.

Knowledge Management
7
CTS, 2014. 5 WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR TEAM’S PRODUCT KNOWLEDGE. [Online]
Available at: https://customersthatstick.com/blog/5-ways-to-improve-your-teams-product-
knowledge/ [Accessed 27 October 2018].
Dul, J., Ceylan, C. & Jaspers, F., 2011. Knowledge workers’ creativity and the role of the
physical work environment. Human Resource Management, 50(6), pp.715-34.
Gao, F., Li, M. & Clarke, S., 2015. Knowledge, management, and knowledge management in
business operations. Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(2), pp.3-17.
Health Knowledge, 2018. Principles, theories and methods of effective communication
(written and oral) in general, and in a management context. [Online] Available at:
https://www.healthknowledge.org.uk/public-health-textbook/organisation-management/5a-
understanding-itd/effective-communication.
Hislop, B., 2011. Knowledge management as an ephemeral management fashion? Journal of
Knowledge Management, 14(6), pp.779-90.
Hislop, D., 2017. Knowledge management in organisations: A critical introduction. 3rd ed.
UK: Oxford University Press.
Lister, P., 2018. A smarter knowledge commons for smart learning. Smart Learning
Environments, 5(1), pp.1-15.
Omotayo, F.O., 2015. Knowledge Management as an important tool in Organisational
Management: A Review of Literature. Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal), p.1238.
Zheng, W., Yang, B. & Mclean, G.N., 2011. Linking organizational culture, structure,
strategy, and organizational effectiveness: Mediating role of knowledge management.
Journal of Business research, 63(7), pp.763-71.

Knowledge Management
8