BAS51 - World Bank's Journey to a Knowledge-Based Organization

This case study examines the World Bank's strategic shift towards knowledge management under the leadership of James Wolfensohn, who envisioned the bank as a 'knowledge bank' rather than merely a lending institution. The absence of effective knowledge management had previously led to inefficiencies, project delays, and over-reliance on centralized decision-making in Washington D.C. Wolfensohn's vision emphasized knowledge sharing and leveraging internal expertise, facilitated by information technologies and satellite communication, to empower local initiatives and reduce poverty more effectively. The transformation involved decentralizing operations, enhancing communication skills, and building a robust knowledge bank to provide innovative solutions for developmental projects, marking a radical change in the World Bank's operational strategy and global impact. The case study references the BAS51 Dimensions of the Knowledge Society module.

WORLD BANK KNOWLEDGE
MANAGEMENT
NAME OF THE STUDENT:
NAME OF THE UNIVERSITY:

INTRODUCTION
The following presentation showcases the different types of organizational tasks that
were undertaken by the management of World Bank.
The management of World Bank concentrated on the improvement of the Knowledge
Management to ensure the creation of “Knowledge Bank”.
The creation of the knowledge Bank was necessary as because it could help in the
bank to reach out different new areas and help the people of these distant areas with
effective and innovative solutions from a vast range of stored knowledge (Lord and
Washington 2018).
The stored knowledge of the organization had always a greater impact than any
instant idea of poverty reduction or any other kind of developmental activities being
undertaken by the management of the organization.
The Knowledge Management of the organization helped them to decentralize their
operations and reduce their dependency on Washington D.C.
 The reduction of dependency helped the organization to be more effective in nature.
The main change of the organization was brought in the strategy. The strategy of the
company helped them to achieve their goals and objectives.

BACKGROUND
The absence of Knowledge Management in the company was a long standing problem for the
organization.
The management had to innovate new ideas every time they undertook a project which was always
time consuming as well as involved a huge expenditure.
Apart from this developmental projects undertaken in distant places often faced a number of
different hurdles.
This included lack of proper funding, absence of expert ideas, centralized permission for every type
of the projects and the permission to start the project or start a part of the project (Enns 2015).
The main sanction thus always came from Washington D.C. which was clearly a great operational
problem for the organization as field officers had to contact the headquarter for any kind of
assistance.
This assistance often came too late which delayed the project and also led to certain technical or
logistical problems within the project.
 The effectiveness of the centralized operations was thus often questioned as without proper
efficiency the projects were just of no use.
This was the time for a revolution in the name of the creation of a Knowledge Bank, which could
help to change the total picture and make the global development Bank one of the best ever
developmental banks.

TRANSFORMATION OF WORLD
BANK INTO KNOWLEDGE BANK
James Wolfensohn was the creator of the Knowledge Bank in World Bank.
The main importance of the Knowledge Bank was the help it could provide to the
World Bank in different kinds of developmental activities across the globe
(Oppenheimer and Prusak 2014).
The biggest benefit that was achieved through the creation of the Knowledge Bank
was the communication skills that were implemented by the management.
The management started the use of the satellite communication technology to
communicate and use the technology to develop distant areas of the globe that
lacks basic infrastructure and telecommunication technologies (Visser and Tolhurst
2017).
 The implementation of the strategy helped the organization as it was now able to
decentralize most of its operations and easily rely on the storage of knowledge bank
to find effective solutions to different kinds of new and complex projects.
The transformation of the vision and the mission of the company to an enriched
bank full of expert knowledge was the key to the success of the bank in the
globalized world.

REFERENCES
 Enns, C., 2015. Knowledges in competition: Knowledge discourse at the
World Bank during the Knowledge for Development era. Global Social
Policy, 15(1), pp.61-80.
 Lord, D. and Washington, S., 2018. Introduction. In Safe Mobility:
Challenges, Methodology and Solutions (pp. 1-10). Emerald Publishing
Limited.
 Oppenheimer, D. and Prusak, L., 2014. Knowledge Management at the
World Bank. John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
 Visser, W. and Tolhurst, N., 2017. The world guide to CSR: A country-by-
country analysis of corporate sustainability and responsibility. Routledge.