Chapter 8 Knowledge Sharing Systems: Systems that Organize and Distribute Knowledge

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Chapter Objectives

To explain how knowledge sharing systems help users share their knowledge, both tacit and explicit: For tacit knowledgesystems utilized by communities of practice, particularly those that meet virtually For explicit knowledgeknowledge repositories To present the different types of knowledge repositories To demonstrate how sharing systems serve to organize and distribute organizational and individual knowledge
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Corporate Memory
Corporate Memory (also known as an organizational memory) is made up of the aggregate intellectual assets of an organization. It is the combination of both explicit and tacit knowledge. The loss of Corporate Memory often results from a lack of appropriate technologies for the organization and exchange of documents or employee layoffs.
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

What Are Knowledge Sharing Systems?

Systems that enable members of an organization to acquire tacit and explicit knowledge from each other. Knowledge markets that must attract a critical volume of knowledge seekers and knowledge owners in order to be effective.

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Requirements for Set up of an Effective Knowledge Market

Knowledge owners will:
1. 2. 3. 1. want to share their knowledge with a controllable and trusted group decide when to share and the conditions for sharing seek a fair exchange, or reward, for sharing their knowledge not be aware of all the possibilities for sharing, thus the knowledge repository will typically help them through searching and ranking want to decide on the conditions for knowledge acquisition

Knowledge seekers may:

2.

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Knowledge Sharing Tools

Document Management
Electronic storage medium with a primary storage location that affords multiple access points Indexing / classification taxonomy

Workflow Management
set of tools that support defining, creating, and managing the execution of workflow processes Analysis and optimization Audit of necessary skills and resources Replication and reuse of stored processes
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Requirements for the Success of a Knowledge Sharing System

1. Collection and systematic organization of information from various sources 2. Minimization of up-front knowledge engineering 3. Exploiting user feedback for maintenance and evolution 4. Integration into existing environment 5. Active presentation of relevant information

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Barriers to the Use of Knowledge Sharing Systems

Many organizations, specifically science and engineering-oriented firms, are characterized by a culture known as the not-invented-here syndrome Organizations suffering from this syndrome tend to essentially reward employees for inventing new solutions, rather than reusing solutions developed within and outside the organization Strong-tie networks rewarded more often than weak-tie
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Reasons Why Knowledge Sharing Systems May Fail

1. If they dont integrate humans, processes, and technologyunsuccessful if they are designed as standalone solutions outside of the process context 2. If they attempt to target a monolithic organizational memory
must be both an artifact that holds its state and an artifact embedded in organizational and individual processes must be decontextualized by the creator and recontextualized by the user must tag an authenticity marker

3. If they dont measure and state their benefitsrequired of any business initiative 4. If they store knowledge in textual representationsknowledge artifacts that are stored in textual format may lack the adequate representation structure, including long texts that are hard to review, read, and interpret 5. If users are afraid of the consequences of their contributionsprovide incentives for the employees contributions to the knowledge repository, there may be some organizational barriers that actively act against knowledge sharing 6. If users perceive a lack of leadership support, lack an understanding of the generalities that would make their knowledge useful, or just dont feel its worth their time to make a contribution
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Specific Types of Knowledge Sharing Systems

Knowledge sharing systems are classified according to their attributes
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Incident report databases Alert systems Best practices databases Lessons-learned systems Expertise locator systems

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Types of Knowledge Repositories

Knowledge Sharing System Originates from experiences? Describes a complete process? Describes failures? Describes successes? Orientation

Incident Reports

Yes

No

Yes

No

Organization

Alerts

Yes

No

Yes

No

Industry

Lessons Learned System

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Organization

Best Practices Databases

Possibly

Yes

No

Yes

Industry

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Lesson Learned Process

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Purpose of LLS: To Support Organizational Processes

Collect the lessons: Passive, Reactive, After-Action Collection, Proactive Collection, Active Collection, Interactive Collection Verify the lessons Store the Lesson Disseminate the Lesson: Passive dissemination, Active casting, Broadcasting, Active dissemination, Proactive dissemination, Reactive dissemination Apply the Lesson: Browsable, Executable, Outcome reuse
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Expertise-Locator Knowledge Sharing Systems

Help locate intellectual capital The main motives for seeking an expert
someone who is a source of information someone who can perform a given organizational function someone who can perform a given social function

The intent when developing these systems is to catalog knowledge competencies

information not typically captured by human resources systems could later be queried across the organization

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Characteristics of ExpertiseLocator Systems

ELS Categorization Dimensions Purpose of the system CONNEX (HP) To share knowledge for consulting and to search for experts Yes KSMS (NSA) To staff projects and match positions with skills Yes, supervisors also participate in data gathering SPuD (Microsoft) To compile the knowledge and competency of each employee No, supervisors rate employees performance SAGE (FL Universities) To identify expert researchers within FL universities for possible research opportunities No, uses funded research data as the proxy for expertise Expert Seeker (NASA) To identify experts in the organization to staff projects and match positions with skills Both, self-assessment using competency assessment and database and Web content mining as proxy for expertise Whole personnel

Self-Assessment

Participation

Only those who are willing to share

Whole personnel

Whole personnel in the IT group

Knowledge Taxonomy

U.S. Library of Congress; INSPEC Index; Own No User (nagging)

Department of Labor (O*NET)

Own

Profiles all researchers at universities (public and private) who are active in funded research in FL None required

Levels of Competencies Data Maintenance

Yes User and Supervisor

Yes Supervisor

No Fusion of universities funded research databases

Company Culture Platform

Sharing, Open HP-9000 Unix, Sybase, and Verity

Technology, Expertise OS/2, VMS, and Programming Bourne shell

Technology, Open SQL and MS Access

Expertise Coldfusion and MS Access

Own for competency assessment, none required for database and Web content mining Yes Optional user maintenance for career summary and competency management, none required for database and Web content mining Technology, Expertise Coldfusion, MS Access, and multiple existing DB platforms

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Expertise-Locator Knowledge Sharing Systems

Goal: to catalog knowledge competencies, including information not typically captured by human resources systems, in a way that could later be queried across the organization to help locate intellectual capital. Significant challenge in the development of ELS, knowledge repositories, and digital libraries, deals with the accurate development of knowledge taxonomies. Taxonomies, also called classification or categorization schemes, are considered to be knowledge organization systems that serve to group objects together based on a particular characteristic.
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Knowledge Taxonomy at NASA

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Ontology and Knowledge Taxonomy

Significant challenges to create ELS
Expensive Time-consuming Complex Requires collaboration Requires consensus Political concerns Usability / granularity

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Ontology and Knowledge Taxonomy (continued-2)

Tools to facilitate development of an ELS
Semantic networks
serve to structure concepts and terms in networks or webs versus the hierarchies typically used to represent taxonomies

Authority files
lists of terms used to control the variant names in a particular field, and link preferred terms to nonpreferred terms control the taxonomy vocabulary

Web text data mining

what the employee knows based on what she already publishes as part of her job minimal user effort to maintain the accuracy of the records
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Case Study: Postdoc

Web-based document management collaboration
system used by NASA Used by three geographically distant teams of experts to collaborate in ways for which e-mail did not suffice Allowed creation of a common vocabulary, adherence to agency security standards, source portability, and ubiquitous access using web standards Expanded to be used by 30 NASA programs and other government agencies

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Case Study: SAGE

The purpose of Searchable Answer Generating Environment (SAGE) is to create a searchable repository of university experts in the state of Florida. www.sage.fiu.edu

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

SAGE Architecture

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Technologies to Implement SAGE

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Event Diagram for an Actor Model-based ELS

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Case Study: Expert Seeker

Expert Seeker is an organizational expertiselocator KMS used to locate experts at NASA The main difference between Expert Seeker and SAGE is that the former searches for expertise at NASA (KSC and GSFC), while the latter is on the Web and seeks expertise at various universities

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Expert Seeker Architecture

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

POPS System
Expands on Expert Seeker approach of reusing existing information sources with their integration Displays the social network between the user and the people who work on the same projects and people with the same skill sets and competencies Know-who system Allows project managers to find intermediaries to talk about potential project members, their abilities, interests, qualifications
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

POPS System
(continued-2)

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Blue Reach Expert Locator

IBM needed a way to share knowledge across the multinational organization Built on same time/lotus infrastructure Balance two needs
Experts ability to control visibility Experts accessibility to information seekers

Knowledge taxonomy Full logging Load balancing on experts

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Blue Reach Expert Locator

(continued-2)

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Shortcomings of Knowledge Sharing Systems

Making knowledge meaningful across organization Improper contextualization Disparate knowledge repositories/sources
Develop one-stop search functionality Design dynamic classification systems Entice employees to find what they need

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

KM Systems to Share Tacit Knowledge

To create a cultural environment that encourages the sharing of knowledge, some organizations are creating knowledge communities A community of practice is an organic and selforganized group of individuals who are dispersed geographically or organizationally but communicate regularly to discuss issues of mutual interest
Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Communities of Practice
Decreasing new employees learning curves
new employees identify subject matter experts foster relationships with more senior employees mentor-protg relationships for career development understand the larger organizational context of their individual tasks identify experts that can address customer issues relevant codified knowledge can often be reused locate, access, and apply existing knowledge in new situations common virtual workspace to store, organize, and download presentations, tools, and other valuable materials Metadata is used to identify authors and subject matter experts create trust within the organization by helping individuals build reputations both as experts and for their willingness to help others forum in which employees are able to share perspectives about a topic Discussing diverse views within the community can often spark innovation provides a safe environment where people feel comfortable about sharing their experiences

Enabling the organization to respond faster to customer needs and inquiries

Reducing rework and preventing to reinvent the wheel

Spawning new ideas for products and services

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe

Conclusions
In this chapter you learned: What are knowledge sharing systems Design considerations for knowledge sharing systems Specific types of such systems: lessons learned systems, knowledge repositories, and expertise locator systems Case studies of ELS: Postdoc SAGE Expert Finder, to locate experts in Florida Expert Seeker, to identify experts at NASA. POP Blue Reach Communities of practice are important to share tacit knowledge

Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal -- Knowledge Management 2010 M.E. Sharpe