Strategic Knowledge Management and Skandia: A Detailed Analysis

This report provides a strategic knowledge management analysis of Skandia, a multinational insurance and financial services company. It examines how Skandia utilizes knowledge management, communities of practice, and performance measurement to formulate strategies and make effective decisions. The report delves into the challenges Skandia faces, particularly regarding quality management, core competencies, and the value of employees' knowledge. It explores intellectual capital, emphasizing the use of the Collison & Parcell model for understanding employee, process and technology. The analysis also covers the role of communities of practice in fostering knowledge sharing and innovation, and the importance of performance measurement using KPIs and scorecards. The report concludes by discussing the challenges and opportunities in leveraging knowledge management to achieve strategic goals and improve business operations at Skandia. The report uses secondary sources of investigation and valuable reading material to support the analysis and recommendations.

Strategic Knowledge Management

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN ANALYSIS..........................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................11

INTRODUCTION
Strategic knowledge management refers to the process and infrastructures organisation
use to attain, create or share knowledge for formulation of strategy and makes strategic decision.
A clear knowledge strategy defines to an overall approach a firm intent to take align its concise
knowledge based resources & capabilities to an intellectual requirements to its strategy (Davison
and Huang, 2017). For aim to develop strategies, sharing of the knowledge is vital along with
leadership is need to develop an environment, where a specific kind of an information is being
available to correct people during precise time basis. This essay will cover organisation named as
“Skandia” is a leading multinational insurance & financial services company, is based in
Stockholm, Sweden. Point of the focus is on Executives are trying to put consideration on
quality management, core competencies, and value of employees, their knowledge, and
experience on the job. Although essay will try to develop analysis about knowledge
management/environment, communities of an interest/practice, challenge of performance
management along with intellectual capital and social network. Moreover, report will try to
speak on how all given four would be lead to strategy formulation. Also, assessment will be
perform using the secondary sources of investigation using valuable reading material.
MAIN ANALYSIS
Strategic knowledge management (SKM) mainly deals with use, creation & sharing of an
knowledge to formulate strategy and makes an effective decisions. As the strategy is meant to
implement something valuable thought, idea or process into structured organisation to rise its
probability of future success and sustainability while working into specific environment. For the
Skandia, strategic formulation is necessary, firm is previously operating on the bottom-line and
they were facing issues regarding quality management, ineffective core competencies & value of
the employees are also founded deficient (Lasserre, 2017). While operating at the bottom-line,
Skandia has faced problem related to downgrade quality expectation related to an actual
performance, competence such as professional insight of the employee and improper
organisational learning which is linked to developing moral and motivation. Also due to
operation at the bottom-line, expectation of operation viewed till date. Hence, executives of the
Skandia are literally serious about such issues and they are looking forward to accomplishes
effective quality management, proactive core competencies and value of their people such as

skills, value & knowledge as collective part of the hidden values of the firm. To formulate
strategy to all above, firm will try to focus on four main consideration on a knowledge
management, communities of an interest/practice, challenge of performance management along
with intellectual capital and social network (Marques and et. al., 2016). In this essay, critical
analysis will be try to be focus on Intellectual capital of the firm to first identify strategies and
formulate that, in order to remove deficiency of a business operation. The explanation of all four
topics are as follows:
Knowledge Management/Environment is a complete system that is actually promotes
collaborative environment for capturing & share existing knowledge, creates opportunities to
gather new knowledge and assist to provide tools and approaches to gain set strategic goals of
the organisation (Geisler and Wickramasinghe, 2015). Knowledge is mainly a part of intellectual
capital, firm can use to think about strategies to achieve any combined objectives or aim.
Knowledge is the clear awareness, consciousness or familiarity gained by the experience or
learning. For every firm, it is defined as what people know about its customer, products,
processes, mistakes etc. Majorly it is organisational knowledge related to the vision, missions
and products or service of the Skandia. Moreover, organisation knowledge is an essential
component of IC is used at time of adapting new kind of alteration or changes. Skandia AFS is
facing challenge of leveraging work related to intellectual capital through other functions such as
human resources, information technology, and business development. As, director of the IC, Leif
Edvinsson is seeking for organisational knowledge using of the Collison & Parcell model which
consists of three main parts as people, process and technology.
Illustration 1: Collison & Parcell model

Source: Collison & Parcell model, 2018
This model is useful for Skandia AFS to understand its work of the people, process along
with technology. Employees of Skandia are capable to perform its task or duty and director of IC
is facing challenge of leveraging of the work among its employee, also they are unable to take
advantage of given technology along with process of business tactics such as action plan to
gather new customer, monetary as in relevance of AFS Dept. of the Skandia. Its tacit knowledge
which is a part of routine of an organisation and difficult (Valmohammadi and Ahmadi, 2015).
In the past time, due to rise in burden of monetary policies and financial burden, it was become
difficult for firm to leverage their work among employee which in reality may lead to an issue of
quality issues of the Skandia.
Role of the knowledge management is essential here to determine impacts of such kind of
the challenges and in response pivotal to determine strategies to ascertain correct solution to led
Skandia to work effectively. To solve this, knowledge management practicality approach is best
one here to bring such knowledge to ascertain right solution of the issue. Personalisation will be
applicable here to bring people together Ad-hoc to discuss problems or solution such as clear
management of work etc. To attain KM goals, its necessary for Skandia to create repositories,
improve access and develop environment which is in the favour of effective KM. Personalisation
is the part of KM strategy, in which knowledge is completely linked to the person who had
developed it. That person is the director of the AFS who creates work related to the Intellectual
capital of the Skandia.
To develop strategy, mechanisms of the knowledge management is applicable here and
though opportunity as mechanisms of the knowledge management will be applicable here to
experience either direct or indirectly. It is important to improve negative experiences by direct or
indirect approach (Franco and Papadopoulos, 2015). Using direct, management of the Skandia
AFS will do experimentation and trail and error of previous mistakes done previously and
indirect in which observation of people to formulate strategy for future purpose. Knowledge
management may cause problems related to the ownership, trust, barrier of the understanding,
culture etc. Thus, Skandia is need to be focus on process of knowledge sharing in its firm to
acquire true results or outcomes in minimum point of time.
Communities of Practice/Interest is refers to as a small group of people with a common
interest meeting to share idea, knowledge and learn from one and other past experience. Also,

CoP is the outlined group of people who shares concern or a passion for something they can do
and learn how to perform it very well or better. CoP are mainly consists of three categories
namely domain, community and practice.
First one is domain, where member's are being identified by use of the similar know-
how and interest which break them from other person. Secondly, community on which
interaction among the members to learn from each-other & share knowledge and thirdly, the
practice where member's are practitioner, who use to share their experiences, problem solving
tools for building deliberate communication (Shujahat and et. al., 2017). Moreover, member's of
the communities of practice will helpful to get perfect solution of a problem, generate new or
innovative idea, new manner of performing things & share knowledge or new processes. If talks
in context of Skandia AFS, communities are mainly informal, whose membership is voluntary.
Also, member's shares work of similar background & experience.
Furthermore, group interaction among members are done using mail, group discussion &
e-chat room. Its necessary and useful to brings out transparency among team working. Due to the
process of transparency, communities of the Skandia is expected to perform at its best efforts and
able to develop communication around of the business environment or working. In context of IC,
communities of practice function are different from other group within the organisation on the
basis of community of practice, under which sharing of knowledge & develop member skills is
voluntary. Also, people with similar skills or expertise forms groups and team group exists, once
interest is being maintained. Formal work group is based on task with product and service
result. In this membership is not voluntary and group is mainly formed by determination of firm
goals. Also, group exists until its deployments. Project team is mainly focused to accomplishes
specific task or objectives (Kasemsap, 2017). Also, team is given specific time-frame and
outlined objectives to accomplish it without lesser chances of the constraint or barriers. Informal
network is a scope or say task to share and give access to given any information or data. In such
type of network, member shares a source of friendly relationship which is actual in reality is
mutual. Also, people or say members exist until unless there is no as such reason to meet.
Hence, in context of the Skandia AFS, communities of practice is one of the best practice
and work to rise growth of outcomes and results into the develop manner or way. Groups of this
firm is having similar tacit knowledge or know-how and they must communicate with each-other
to solves out critical prototypes into the operations.

The Challenge of Performance Measurement: Performance is a notion that permeates
contemporary societies, as it is used to assess the quality of an individual and collective efforts.
Performance measurement is the periodic process of measuring an individual ability to work or
contribute into an effective manner or process of time (Archer-Brown and Kietzmann, 2018). It
is one of the pivotal consideration that is put into consideration to develop intellectual capital
such as human capital such as real manpower, building relationships and structural capital. In
reality, firm measures their IC to gather process to develops an effective process of
communication along with building long term relationship in the organisation to maintain quality
of work or goals. Big purpose of strategic performance is to validate actual efforts of a person
along with bringing sense of working and acquiring strategic goals or objective. Skandia AFS is
facing the challenges related to the leveraging of the work of the IC due to non-performance of
human resource, information technology & business development. To measure performance,
several key indicators such as scorecard, KPI etc., are exists to takes an effective on about
improvement of it. KPI is helpful to gain & measure how accurately companies, business units,
projects or an individual are performs as per the standard goals or targets. Moreover, well
designed KPI is helpful to provide vital navigation instruments to have clear understanding of
current level of performance.
Skandia is looking to rethink over quality management, core competencies and value to
act specific manner to achieves business goals and targets. Also, advance technology is need to
be utilises in an effective manner to develop future chances of an employee performance or
activity (Venkitachalam and Willmott, 2017). AFS unit of the Skandia has realised issues or
problem related to downgrading activities or performance of the employee's due to less focus on
development of the IC. Measurement of the performance will be undertaken using of the KPI
(key performance indicator) and scorecard. With use of the KPI, gap between current and
expected will be expect by determining unique point of the performer, either doing internal
assessment of the performance by taking feedback or opinion from people. The major role of
performance measurement is to ascertain ability or goals of each & every worker to gather
proactive action plan or decision making to accomplishes necessary outcomes.
There are several challenges such as lack of the technology such as tools about activities
or performance measurements such as feedback platforms, e Appraisal, electronic scorecard etc.,
lesser involvement of the other people, increasing rate of the biases along with lack support of

cost & time. Due to all such thing, performance measurement has faced true challenges in
relation to development and growth of the business activities or purpose. For better outcomes, its
prominent for AFS unit of the Skandia to takes instant decision making on the counterparts of a
performance (Ogiela, 2015). Thus, its been necessary for Skandia to identify or ascertain needs
or desires. For purpose to develop strategic formulation, its necessary to determine performance
of the IC and measures it to empower employee's to act freely onto the matter of formulation of
the strategies.
After the defined research on performance measurement, Skandia AFS unit can benefit in
the following areas such as: Formulation, implementation and review of organizational strategy,
communication of the results achieved to stakeholders and strengthening of brand and reputation
along with the motivation of employees at all levels, creation of a performance improvement
culture, and fostering of organizational learning. Moreover, Skandia is required to go for analysis
of major challenges to determine scope of future critical outcomes of performance measurement.
Intellectual Capital and Social Networks is refers to as the set of knowledge and also
knowing capability of a social collectivity such as an organisation, intellectual community or the
professional practices. IC is helpful to build control themes and also distinction in substantial &
expanding of the knowledge process. Dimension of the intellectual capital such as types of the
knowledge, level of an analysis in knowledge and knowing, combination & creation of
intellectual capital along with exchange and creation of intellectual capital. The purpose of the
IC is to have understanding of the human resources, relation capital along with structural capital
of a firm (Kianto and Vanhala, 2015). Also, its prominent for Skandia to have right & correct
understanding of activities of a firm.
Intellectual capital is being referred to as intangible asset is said to be as wide range of an
activities such as IT support, consumer trust, brand image & corporate culture. Majorly, IC is
divided into three categories namely such as human capital, organisational & customer's capital.
Based on this categorisation, Skandia has identified hidden values quality management, core-
competencies and manage performance procedures. Classification of IC is as follows:
Human capital is the significant part of IC, as it deals with skills, attitude & value and
leadership qualities employee's added to the processes. Also, it is termed as source of innovation
& strategic renewal.

Structural capital represents support need to provide employees for their task. Also,
support is an essential to permit human capital to the function. It comprises of a processes,
informative system, culture or building and procedures.
Customer capital is a strength & loyalty of the customer's relationship. Also, customer's
satisfaction, repeat business, financial well-being and price sensitivity which is used as one of a
common indicators of customer capital (North and Kumta, 2018). Hence, human & structural
capital is require to support growth of the customer capital.
Social capital is defined as knowledge embedded within available through and utilised by
interactions among an individual and their chain of network for inter-relationship. Although,
social network is helpful to represents an ability of people to work together and helpful to makes
realisation for accomplishing business vision or mission.
Company approach to the IC is on giving training & development to its human capital to
unlock their talent, knowledge or an information to develop processes that is helpful to support
customer capital. Skandia AFS is focused towards its hidden values such as development of the
quality management, core-competencies along with values of an employee's to rightly utilises
both human and structural capital.
Intellectual capital is essential for Skandia AFS for development of an organisation from
learning to intelligent organisation. Although to transform it, Skandia must start investing on
training or development of its employee's e to enrich their talents and expertise. Also, AFS is
currently implementing process that helps to ensure transfer of skills, learning & experience
happens. Skandia is also being advised to improve competence of the employee's to be creative
as well as innovative that to transform IQ into European currency units. In addition to this,
Skandia AFS is establishing proprietary list of intellectual capital items. These are mainly
comprises of the human capital, structural & customer's capital to led effective performance of
the Skandia AFS. Lastly, social network is required to grow valid performance & developing
core competencies of the firm.

CONCLUSION
From the report above, it is concluded that Strategic Knowledge Management is an
effective study which helps developing, implementing as well as maintaining several strategies
within the company, which is essential in terms of success and sustainability of business.
Intellectual capital in form of Human Capital helps a company in formulating appropriate and
necessary strategies associated with enhancing an efficiency of human resources within a
company. This is done through a detailed analysis of quantifying the work and efforts of each
employee within the firm, which helps them in forming strategies that increase the same. In
addition, structural capital helps the firm in analysing the structural requirements and
performance influence which the same has on a company. Thus, strategies are formulated using
this capital which supports in building up the performance of a company. Lastly, relationship
management also helps in formulating strategies through building commitment and engagement
among employees towards the company and its plans to enhance its performance within the
market.

REFERENCES
Books & Journals
Archer-Brown, C. and Kietzmann, J., 2018. Strategic knowledge management and enterprise
social media. Journal of knowledge management. 22(6). pp.1288-1309.
Geisler, E. and Wickramasinghe, N., 2015. Principles of Knowledge Management: Theory,
Practice, and Cases: Theory, Practice, and Cases. Routledge.
Inkinen, H. T., Kianto, A. and Vanhala, M., 2015. Knowledge management practices and
innovation performance in Finland. Baltic Journal of Management. 10(4). pp.432-455.
Kasemsap, K., 2017. Strategic innovation management: An integrative framework and causal
model of knowledge management, strategic orientation, organizational innovation, and
organizational performance. In Organizational Culture and Behavior: Concepts,
Methodologies, Tools, and Applications(pp. 86-101). IGI Global.
Lasserre, P., 2017. Global strategic management. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Marques, C. S., and et. al., 2016. Strategic knowledge management, innovation and performance:
a qualitative study of the footwear industry. Journal of the Knowledge Economy. 7(3).
pp.659-675.
Martinsons, M.G., Davison, R.M. and Huang, Q., 2017. Strategic knowledge management
failures in small professional service firms in China. International Journal of
Information Management. 37(4). pp.327-338.
North, K. and Kumta, G., 2018. Knowledge management: Value creation through organizational
learning. Springer.
Ogiela, L., 2015. Advanced techniques for knowledge management and access to strategic
information. International Journal of Information Management. 35(2). pp.154-159.
Paroutis, S., Franco, L.A. and Papadopoulos, T., 2015. Visual interactions with strategy tools:
Producing strategic knowledge in workshops. British Journal of Management. 26.
pp.S48-S66.
Shujahat, M., and et. al., 2017. Strategic management model with lens of knowledge
management and competitive intelligence: A review approach. VINE Journal of
Information and Knowledge Management Systems. 47(1). pp.55-93.
Valmohammadi, C. and Ahmadi, M., 2015. The impact of knowledge management practices on
organizational performance: A balanced scorecard approach. Journal of Enterprise
Information Management. 28(1). pp.131-159.
Venkitachalam, K. and Willmott, H., 2017. Strategic knowledge management—Insights and
pitfalls. International Journal of Information Management. 37(4). pp.313-316.