MGT703 Knowledge Management: Hewlett Packard's KM Initiatives Case

This case study delves into Hewlett Packard's (HP) knowledge management initiatives, highlighting the company's open work culture and its impact on knowledge sharing and innovation. It explores various strategies adopted by HP, including the use of Lotus Notes for knowledge bases like the Tr...Read More

Running head: HEWLETT PACKARD
Hewlett Packard
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note

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1. The company, Hewlett Packard is known for their open and free work culture where the
employees enjoy learning and sharing knowledge. They have taken the initiative of
treating their employees generously and as a result of that they have experienced fast
growth with the need for important layoffs. The employees are also encouraged to take
part in the profit- sharing program. In the Hewlett Packard Company there is very meager
sharing of information, resources and employees at every unit. The managers of the
company have felt that there is strong and specific business focus which is brought about
by devolution. It is considered as the main factor for the success of the organization.
The HP Company might be open to sharing of knowledge but they have only few
units who are interested to spend their time and money for influencing the power and
efforts which do not have any kind of immediate effect. It can be mentioned from the
article that Hewlett Packard is considered as an extensively successful highly
technological organization. It is widely recognized that their knowledge about markets,
consumers and products ids their most important source of competitive advantage. Due to
their transference, the knowledge is spread in the business units which are not so
important to share with other.
Alegre, J., Sengupta, K. and Lapiedra, R., 2013. Knowledge management and innovation
performance in a high-tech SMEs industry. International Small Business Journal, 31(4), pp.454-
470.
2. With the adoption of knowledge management practices, the system of the company has
flourished. The managers have also come to the conclusion that knowledge needs no
central management function. In the middle of 1995, it was evident that a number of
knowledge management initiatives were adopted in different business units of the

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company. There are some units which had been in the same place for a number of years
while others were just in the stage of commencement.
The importance of knowledge management and its connection to innovation is
widely recognized. The value of knowledge management in the process of severe
innovation in the company has emerged due to the traditional assets questions to
management. The company could experience success because they have implanted
knowledge among the employees, has those characteristics which are good for the public
and also hard to be imitated in the market. That is why innovative organization such as
HP has high and sophisticated knowledge requirements in order to pay attention to the
interactive aspect of knowledge.
Birasnav, M., 2014. Knowledge management and organizational performance in the service
industry: The role of transformational leadership beyond the effects of transactional
leadership. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1622-1629.
3. One of the initiatives of HP involved the educators of HP There are more than 2000
educators and trainers working for the company and they find it difficult to share
knowledge while working in groups. That is why the company has started using Trainer’s
Trading Post which is based on Lotus notes forum. This was helpful for most of the
internal trainers and educators by which they could share different ideas, materials and
methods. This method of knowledge transfer was highly appreciated by the educators and
trainers of the company.
With the use of lotus notes as a form of technology the educators got access to
three different forms of knowledge bases. One of these is already mentioned above,
Trainer’s Trading Post and the other two were Training Library and Training Review.

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Training library is a set of training documents and the training review is the gathering of
training resource evaluation I the form of consumer reports. Training review was later on
combined with Trainer’s Trading Post as the educators did not admit of any online
opinion whereas Training Library contributed to a great deal.
Siemens, G., 2014. Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age.
4. The training review never took off because the educators did not want to speak
out online about the course and the training review became inefficient without it.
Moreover, there was no reward or recognition for the process of participation. As the
training review was not successful, therefore Karney had to merge it with Trainer’s
Trading Post. In this way the knowledge base became dominant for the use of the
educator. Karney had expected that it will be the only source of offerings in the coming
years.
Karney had taken a number of steps such as giving out free Notes license to the users
3000 free airline miles for first 50 readers and again 500 miles for those who posted a
submission. With these steps and many more Karney was not satisfied. He felt that there
is still something lacking in the commencement of fresh contributions. In that case, he
could have provided the opportunities to leave comments by the employees and
customers so that they could solve each others’ problems. It would have involved all and
they would feel a true sense of community. If Karney took this step then he could get
better customer experience.

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Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S., 2015. The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in
knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), pp.360-
370.
5. As an incentive of knowledge management base, Karney initiated the function of library
within HP laboratories as the research wing of the company. The aim of this project was
to deliver a guide for human knowledge resources not only in the labs but also in other
parts of the company. Most of the incentives of HP were questionably a combination of
information and knowledge and it was not easy to draw a line between the two. The
information system groups of the HP Company have a lot of experience in data and
information management.
As a result of those incentives, knowledge management at HP can be considered
as the company has both internal as well as external sources as the base of knowledge
management. The mechanism of knowledge management helps in the understanding of
the knowledge requirement and the best method to transfer it. It has also been effective in
involving the participants in the network of current knowledge management to share the
suitable practices and transfer of emerging knowledge. Moreover, it was appropriate for
the organizational culture of HP and they are still looking for any new and better methods
that can be introduced for the improvement of the organization.
Hislop, D., 2013. Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford
University Press.
6. As per Karney, there was a risk with the knowledge base because in a decentralized
company as HP, the steps that need to be taken are not clearly understood. It is not even

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clear whether the actions that were implemented by the company would go beyond
knowledge management. Although the knowledge has been shared well within the
business and organization, but there is little or no support in the organizational culture for
transferring across units.
The risk can be overcome by relying on the experts so that they can furbish their
original knowledge profiles and keep on maintaining them consistently. It might pose to
be a challenge for the company and that is why the experts will be given incentives for
their work.
Holtshouse, D.K., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science &
Business Media.
7. There were a lot of challenges faced by the Knowledge Management and that is the PPO
customer’s initiative did not succeed. The first reason for the failure was security which
was not provided at the right level for knowledge management. Sensitive information
should always be covered from most of the users but that was not done and there was
easy access for everyone.
The company also failed to overcome the organizational culture challenges and
give rise to a culture that could encourage sharing, learning, improving and changing that
could be done with the help of technology. Although there was an urge among the
educators to share knowledge but no appropriate tool was launched to increase the
efficiency. The company failed terribly in upgrading them with technology. Moreover
they needed to focus more on the shared purpose instead of the result or efforts. With the
use of knowledge management tools they did not allow the employees to open up
themselves in the organization.

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Jiménez-Jiménez, D., Martínez-Costa, M. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2014. Knowledge management
practices for innovation: a multinational corporation’s perspective. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 18(5), pp.905-918.
8. Product Processes Organization of HP is a corporate group of the company with the aim
of developing product and launching them. It is involved in a number of activities such as
corporate quality, procurement, product marketing, safety, environmental and
organizational change. The company felt there is a strong need for information
management to be a part of PPO. But the knowledge management with the PPO
customers’ initiative was not so successful and the appropriate system was not built,
rather it only remained in the planning process.
The reason behind this is that there was a gap in the demonstration of the process
to the customers even though the system prototype was used a number of times. This
particular group of PPO is working on three projects which have three different goals.
The first one involves the information of the competitors from HP’s Components group.
The second one involves the creation of Web- based interface for gathering information
for primary and secondary research. And the third one involves the management of
international marketing intelligence. All these projects have the goal to facilitate the
process of structuring and spreading knowledge with the use of IT but they could not
succeed in the end.
Lai, Y.L., Hsu, M.S., Lin, F.J., Chen, Y.M. and Lin, Y.H., 2014. The effects of industry cluster
knowledge management on innovation performance. Journal of Business Research, 67(5),
pp.734-739.

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Bibliography
Alegre, J., Sengupta, K. and Lapiedra, R., 2013. Knowledge management and innovation
performance in a high-tech SMEs industry. International Small Business Journal, 31(4), pp.454-
470.
Birasnav, M., 2014. Knowledge management and organizational performance in the service
industry: The role of transformational leadership beyond the effects of transactional
leadership. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1622-1629.
Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S., 2015. The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in
knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), pp.360-
370.
Hislop, D., 2013. Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford
University Press.
Holtshouse, D.K., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science &
Business Media.
Jiménez-Jiménez, D., Martínez-Costa, M. and Sanz-Valle, R., 2014. Knowledge management
practices for innovation: a multinational corporation’s perspective. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 18(5), pp.905-918.
Lai, Y.L., Hsu, M.S., Lin, F.J., Chen, Y.M. and Lin, Y.H., 2014. The effects of industry cluster
knowledge management on innovation performance. Journal of Business Research, 67(5),
pp.734-739.
Liebowitz, J. and Frank, M. eds., 2016. Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press.

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