Strategic Knowledge Management and Organizational Performance

This essay critically discusses the development of a strategic knowledge base within organizations, focusing on the statement "Before we measure something we must ask whether we understand what it is we are trying to measure." The essay explores key themes such as knowledge management, communities of practice, performance measurement, intellectual capital, and social networks, using Grenada Electricity Services Ltd. as a case study. It analyzes explicit and tacit knowledge, the importance of communities of practice for knowledge acquisition, and the role of key performance indicators (KPIs) in measuring organizational performance. The essay also addresses the challenges of performance management, including poor alignment with corporate goals and leadership commitment, and emphasizes the need for effective knowledge management to achieve organizational objectives and gain a competitive advantage. It highlights the importance of understanding what needs to be measured for effective strategic knowledge base development.

Running head: MANAGEMENT
Strategic knowledge management
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Table of contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Analysis......................................................................................................................................3
Conclusion................................................................................................................................11
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
The essay is prepared to discuss about the development of strategic knowledge base in
the organisation for facilitating the overall performance of the organisation and at the same
time, acquire profit and competitive advantage in business. The statement “Before we
measure something we must ask whether we understand what it is we are trying to measure”
is based on whether we have sufficient knowledge and information about what we want to
measure or not and based on this, the development of an effective strategic knowledge base
should be developed (Dalkir 2013). This would not only help in the management of better
information and knowledge, but would also be beneficial for resolving the issues and
challenges of performance measurement along with facilitation of the intellectual capital
management and social networks effectively at Grenada Electricity Services Ltd.
The essay also demonstrates the various themes that are associated with the
management of knowledge and information and also highlights the importance of
communities of practice or interest, which are necessary for developing an effective strategic
knowledge base and also contribute to the better understanding of what needs to be measured
as well as achieved. By covering all these areas, the knowledge base would be developed and
even it should facilitate greater knowledge acquisition that would be required for measuring
what should be achieved at Grenada Electricity Services Ltd. Moreover, Hislop, Bosua and
Helms (2018) proposes that the various categories of intellectual capital should be developed
and the reasons an challenges would be measured and examined, thereby, provide insight
about how the performance management measures and key performance indicators would
establish effective strategic knowledge for a specific organisation.

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Analysis
According to Becerra-Fernandez and Sabherwal (2014), the effectiveness of
knowledge management program and also the efficiency of an organisational functioning has
been dependent upon the acquisition of knowledge regarding the aspect that we want to
measure. The concept of knowledge management is based on the collection of proper metrics
that have been considered as useful for measuring he right things associated with the program
of knowledge management. With the collection of right metrics, it would be much easier for
communicating the health and information about the Knowledge management program
within the organisation and also to the leadership of the organization, i.e., Grenada Electricity
Services Ltd. There are various aspects revolving around the concept of knowledge
management such as the communities of practice, lessons that have been learnt, continuity of
knowledge and search for information and knowledge. Also stated by Liebowitz (2019), there
are various aspects that are needed to be considered such as the understanding of diversity of
interests of those who have participated in the group and also developing a classification of
stakeholders seemed to be important for facilitating the understanding of measurement prior
to the management of knowledge and measurement of it.
When we want to measure something, based on the statement illustrated above, it
would be important for determining the search metrics used by Grenada Electricity Services
Ltd. This would be possible with the help of tuning and optimisation that should allow for
gathering search results and at the same time, report those information and knowledge from
the administrator of knowledge management system consistently. It could be effective as the
KMS administration should be able to analyse different types of keywords and determine
where the search queries come from. It could further be supported by using advanced search
filters and analysis of keywords. The feedback mechanism, as stated by Holsapple (2013),
demonstrated whether the employees of an organisation have used the knowledge or not.

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Based on the feedback mechanisms, messages and information were gained, which represent
the fact that proper knowledge what needs to be measured has been gained.
To measure the effectiveness of a knowledge management system of Grenada
Electricity Services Ltd, a set of metrics has been used for analysing the system and
determine the cause and impact of those so as to achieve the objectives and goals via outcome
metrics. It should provide value with the help of performance metrics while at the same time,
analyse the readiness through learning metrics through implementation of the right strategy
and by making necessary adjustments. Grenada Electricity Services Ltd.’s performance
metrics have analysed the satisfaction of the system users and also invested considerable
amounts of resources in the management of knowledge management tools and for
infrastructure development purposes.
According to Alegre, Sengupta and Lapiedra (2013), the explicit knowledge
represents the basic form of knowledge and information that are easily transferrable because
of its easily written nature and also due to better accessibility to the knowledge and
information. The explicit knowledge has been developed with the help of processing,
organising, structuring and through interpretation of data based on the analysis if
performance metrics. Due to this, this kind of knowledge could be easily articulated as well
as stored and communicated. It could be in the form of research reports white papers or
documents, data sheets, etc. On the other hand, based on the statement of Noruzy et al.
(2013), it could be understood that the implicit knowledge represented the basic and practical
application of the explicit knowledge or information. As understood from the statement
provided in this assignment “Before we measure something we must ask whether we
understand what it is we are trying to measure”, knowledge should be formed with the
communication of information and an example could be where one employee ask another
employee about how to perform a specific task. A conservation starts, which basically has

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been promoted through the knowledge of the employee’s implicit knowledge that has been
parted to the other individual for educating him or her about how the thing should be done.
This has some relation with the statement where it was mentioned clearly that to measure
efficiency of something, there must be proper knowledge and understanding about what we
want to measure and such has also been the case of implicit knowledge transfer or
acquisition.
The tacit knowledge of Grenada Electricity Services Ltd has been developed on the
basis of own experiences gained personally, which should be required for acquiring the
desired information and knowledge required to present those in a tangible form (Gascoigne
and Thornton 2014). Moreover, this kind of knowledge has also been developed with the
application of implicit knowledge that could allow people to understand about what to
measure based on the personal experiences and skills gathered in the due time.
To understand about what needs to be measured, the development of Community of
practices plan would be essential for agreeing upon the moderator criteria and the various
stakeholders involved in a business like Grenada Electricity Services Ltd. This should
influence the group behaviours and remain aligned with the group goals and objectives much
more comprehensively. As stated by Davies (2015), the management of knowledge is critical
for measuring the efficiency of a system and so group discussions become essential. The
Communities of Practice or CoP has been an effective way where a group of professional and
skilled people work in an organised group so as to discuss about their ideas, share their
individual areas of interests and find out a solution to make effective decisions and overcome
challenges. This often proved to be beneficial for improving their skills, knowledge and
expertise, furthermore, allow them to learn from each other’s skills and experiences based on
the ideas and opinions shared by them during the group discussions or during the process of
decision making. As per the arguments of Hughes, Jewson and Unwin (2013), the

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Community of practices could also help in increasing the success of the organisation as well
as ease down the stage of adaptation fore newly hired employees, furthermore, understand the
roles and responsibilities properly by acquiring a sense of belongingness through community
based practices.
The projects undertaken while working with the community become much faster to execute
and this also could help in preventing any personal involvement, furthermore, ensure creation
of additional services and products during the brainstorming sessions as well. The
Community of practices has also helped in recruitment, selection and retention of best talents
through selection of those who seemed to be the most skilled and competent and could
perform to their potential s as to raise the production level largely. Moreover, Pyrko, Dörfler
and Eden (2017) opines that this also should transform the weaknesses of the organisation
into the strengths, which could also help the organisational members to work together and
achieve the organisational goals and objectives of Grenada Electricity Services Ltd
effectively. They should also be able to reflect the social nature of human learning and
deliver a better experience for advancing in the knowledge domain and continue to remain
successful in the long term as well (Cundill, Roux and Parker 2015). For example, Hewlett
Packard or HP managed teleconferences for reducing the down time and waiting time for the
customers and even identified several issues and problems that needed immediate solutions.
American Management system or AMS also made sure to overcome the problem of growth
decline by involving individuals who possessed strong leadership skills and qualities needed
to manage better communities of practice and improve overall business functioning
(Stoszkowski and Collins 2014).
The performance management, according to McDavid, Huse and Hawthorn (2018),
has been effective for determining the performances of workers within the workplace while
even promoting personal and professional development programs and campaigns required to

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improve the overall business performance. This would also help in maintaining efficiency
within the workforce while at the same time, ensure promote better alignment within the
corporate goals and objectives and measure the efficiency of overall business management
systems. Not only does the performance management fulfil the objectives of paying attention
to the specific and measurable development goals, but also it has shed light on the rating of
employees for determining the increase in merit, promotions, incentives and rewards too. In
spite of the values and benefits offered, there are several challenges and issues as well such as
poor alignment with the corporate goals and objectives, lack of measurements, the challenges
of leadership commitment of management, while managing the performance system and poor
performance management too. Cordery and Sinclair (2013) is of the view that the poor
performance management system could also be the cause of employees quitting due to poor
results and also because of misleading information, which might result in lowering down the
morale of employees, furthermore, waste a lot of resources, both time and financial resources.
Due to this, the employees would be paid much less, thus, keep them de-motivated
and also the brand image of the organisation might deteriorate, thereby, lead to increase in
legal risks as well. The performance system lacked certain alignment with the performance of
individuals and also sometimes, the lack of measurement proved to be problematic for
collecting data and information required to measure the overall performance of Grenada
Electricity Services Ltd. The leadership and management challenge along with the
management of performance system required an appropriate and up to date framework, which
needed to be implemented with the help of a plan broken down into multiple components that
hold equal importance and various areas of responsibilities.
Another effective way by which knowledge has been acquired to measure the
performance is the use of Key performance indicator or KPI (Ebrahim and Rangan 2014). For
example, during the use of balanced scorecard in the performance management system,

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Skandia AFS managed to use the Intellectual capital for developing the baseline ratio and
determine how well the business had been performing. The score card ratio also helped in
comparing the strategic goals by determining the profit for each of the customers,
furthermore, in a constructive manner, determined the outcomes of business across various
organisational units. The different business units have also worked together for the
achievement of business goals and objectives, thereby, helped in making informed decision
whenever required as well. In order to make the use of KPIs successful and noteworthy, the
goals and objectives must be clearly defined as well. Another major example could be where
Essex Police department define the objectives and goals in a clear manner and even followed
the policies and principles that were kept aligned with the corporate goals. Due to this, the
performance improved and also the Essex Police Department managed to attend to the
demands of people in a proactive way and at the same time, fostered good and strong
leadership all across the various levels of the organisation effectively too.
The Essex Police also used the KPI as a critical success factor for prioritising on the
various factors that would help in the execution of strategies and even detect the response
time by type of incident. Thus, Harbour (2017) states that it could be clearly understood that
the KPIs have helped in understanding what kinds of targets should be achieved and thus the
targets have been aligned with the goals and objectives to be achieved. Not only does this
help in communicating the business plan and aims but also could create a trigger or act as
catalyst to manage better discussions among people within the workplace.
Also, stated by Dumay and Garanina (2013), that the intellectual capital or IC
combined the organisational resources as well as the human, financial and relational
resources that are required to facilitate business performance,. But for this, it is also true to
the fact that human capital, structured capital and relational capital would be necessary,
which should be necessary to impart knowledge and information about what things should be

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measured and how it would be measured (Berzkalne and Zelgalve 2014). The intellectual
capital of Grenada Electricity Services Ltd hold importance because of the potential of such
non-monetary and non-physical resources that would ensure value creation and bring
innovation all throughout. The human capital of the organisation include the knowledge
possessed by individuals along with their potential skills and experience, which should allow
them to be considered as essential human resources. The structured capital included the
corporate culture, business functions, processes, systems, applications and intellectual
properties too, that would hold equal importance for making the business properly (Beattie
and Smith 2013). It has also been understood from the necessities of a business that the
intellectual capital should also be managed with the help of forming relationships with the
shareholders or investors and with the customers, based on which, the services would be
delivered and the customers would be kept satisfied as a whole.
The social networking has played a vital role in the management of knowledge and
information, because not only the communication processes have been improved, but also the
sharing of knowledge and information had been possible. Due to this, the social networks
have been formed so as to enable transformation and facilitate better collaboration among the
various members of the organisation (Nimtrakoon 2015).
Nonaka is commonly known as the father of knowledge management. His radical
views are directed towards exploring the dynamics of acquiring, creating and sharing
knowledge. Mention can be made of the SECI model, where Nonaka makes valuable
contribution. In this model, the major components are socialization, externalization,
internationalization and Combination (Stoyanov 2018). Through these aspects, the aim is the
development of tacit and explicit knowledge of the individuals. Adopting this model is
assistance for the Grenada Electric Services Ltds towards maintaining the balance in the flow
of information from explicit to implicit. Considering the arguments of Mikovic et al. (2016),

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insight can be gained into the frameworks used for mapping the social capital and knowledge.
Creation and exploitation of the social capital results in enhancement of the Grenada Electric
Services Ltd knowledge. In this context, social capital is perceived to possess three
dimensions: structural, cognitive and relational. Structural relates to the network
configuration for mapping the ties in the Grenada Electric Services Ltds. Cognitive relates to
the codes, which are used for enhancing the mutual understanding. Relational refers to the
normative negotiations for achieving trust, loyalty and dependence from the clients and
customers.
Taking a cue from the arguments of Drucker, insight can be gained into the aspect of
communities of practice. Drucker is of the view that until and unless commitment is made,
only promises and hope are there, but is devoid of planning (Drucker 2018). In this context,
Nonaka’s statement can be brought into the context in terms of acquiring, sharing and
creating knowledge for enhancing the mutual understanding. When the knowledge is
externalized into the societal capital, Nahapiet and Ghosals’ arguments finds an integral
position in the discussion. Drucker also presents his views on management, which is
considered as “indispensable” and “disciplinary” in terms of standardizing the operations. In
this context, Castrogiovanni et al. (2016), Rastogi is of the view that involving the employees
in the mainstream activities and operations is productive in terms of upgrading the standards
and quality of the performance.
If the arguments of Marr is considered, intellectual capital attains primary value in
terms of mapping the knowledge based economy. Undisputed nature in this aspect can be
contradicted with the arguments of Nahapiet & Ghosal regarding cognitive aspect of the
social capital. Along with this, benchmarking is considered to be essential for gaining a
deeper insight into the practices behind the operational performance. According to Wenger &
Lave, Grenada Electric Services Ltd lines have greater effects on the perspectives on

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innovation and knowledge, which can act as an elaboration for the propositions of Nonaka
(Drucker 2018).
Conclusion
Actions of an individual attains value and weightage, when they understand the depth
of the actions and try to evaluate the possible benefits and impact. Narrowing down the
search on Grenada Electric Services Ltd, the assignment focuses on the themes of knowledge
management, communities of practices, challenges in the performance measurement and
intellectual capitals and social networks. Scholarly reviews on these themes expands the
scope and arena of the strategic knowledge management. Management of knowledge is
necessary in terms of maintaining the balance in the types of tacit and explicit.