Manage Knowledge and Information
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note
Table of Contents
Assessment Task 1
Answer 1
Key forms of knowledge created and shared by KCA across their business operations include:
Production Information about patents and licences over goods, product and process innovation, technologies and processes, supply chain information and knowldge.
Information about competitors, markets, customers and their preferences, environment; as well as information about communal and neighbourhood issues.
Sales information about CRM and connected data that include sales data, market share, client preferences and trends.
Corporate knowledge that includes knowledge about management information, HR information, financial data, and any other relevant data and information (www.nswbusinesschamber.com.au 2016).
Answer 2
KCA’s benchmarking process includes following elements:
- All the KCC plants around the world have access to a consolidated database that contains information about all the equipment operated by individual plants. This has helped the KCA to benchmark is manufacturing functions against comparable plants.
- “Common presentation process” is urbanized by the KCC main office in order to make sure standardized data compilation and reporting mechanisms for each plant. Moreover, the hub is on the key method of competence and presentation viz. waste, delay (downtime) and speed.
- Each plant is required to periodically enter performance data on key method and again receives periodical report on plant’s relative performance. These reports are reviewed to identify where potential improvements are needed.
- Performance improvement measures are devised through the operations of worldwide working groups that constitute operations managers from plants all over the world.
- The KCC working groups keep in contact with one another through conducting regular meetings and e-mails correspondence in order to share accumulated knowledge (www.nswbusinesschamber.com.au 2016).
Answer 3
Need for constantly creating and sharing knowledge in KCA
- To maintain KCA’s reputation as a leading corporate citizen
- To maintain strong customer relationships
- To leverage manufacturing process (Hislop 2013).
Answer 4
KCA’s syndicate team approach for knowledge management development and its benefits
The syndicate teams of KCA comprises of employees from all across the Australia working in various divisions and sites of the organization. The management development programs has been assisting the organizational in the knowledge development and sharing practices through these syndicate teams. Each syndicate team are given a specific work problem concerning the organization. The syndicate teams work on the problems at hand and develop solution that has practical application to the KCA.
The benefits of syndicate teams include:
- Provides workable solutions to the organizational problems
- Allows KCA to utilize the benefits of training provided to the teams members immediately
- It helps in the knowledge sharing. Moreover, the works of syndicate teams helps in development pf knowledge flows and networks that can be utilized by the employees when future problems or issues arise.
- Participative approach to solve problems further helps the employees to better understand the implications of their decisions and to get a “big picture” of KCA (Liebowitz and Frank 2016).
Answer 5
Strengths and weakness of the system
Strengths
- It has significantly contributed in the effectively overseeing the KCA’s widespread knowledge demands that precisely contributed in the company’s success.
- The system to enhance the knowledge and information available to the sales and marketing professionals has helps in KCA’s sales growth.
- It has helped the organization to achieve low employee turnover as the employees perceive the organization’s knowledge systems as a motivational tools that helps them to grew professionally as well as personally (Fuller 2012).
Weaknesses
- The weakness of the system is the complexity of the system.
- The system is complex and requires huge investment for training of employees and maintaining the effectiveness of the system.
Assessment Task 2
Knowledge Management Plan
Executive Summary
The report presents knowledge management plan for KCM. The report has undertaken complete analysis of knowledge management plan in context of the identified problems and the how an effective knowledge management plan would assist the organization to overcome those problems. The report has also discussed the procedure of knowledge creation, information sharing and the ways to harness the knowledge for the purpose of benefitting the KCM. In addition, the report has also discussed the contingency plans and the knowledge management evaluation processes.
Aims and Objectives
The objective of developing knowledge management plan is to assist the KCM to regain its competitive strength and help the organization to position in the market as a first choice in the minds of the customers in the dynamic and competitive business environment (Borghoff and Pareschi 2013).
Need for knowledge management
Knowledge management helps the organization to capitalize on the information available in the organization by developing mechanisms to store the knowledge that can be employed by the organization in future where such knowledge can be useful (Power et al. 2015).
Knowledge creation
It is the process of continuous transfer, combination and conversion of different types of data available or present within the organization. Whenever an idea is generated, it leads to creation of some kind of information, however, in the absence of knowledge manage systems it lost once the organizational objectives are achieved (Becker et al. 2013).
Knowledge harnessing and sharing
Knowledge management procedures helps the organization to store the data crated within the organization or collected from external business environment. Knowledge harnessing and sharing are inter related. Knowledge is harnessed through practice, collaboration and by developing precise systems or mechanisms of storing knowledge.
Knowledge management process
The knowledge administration process can be discussed as
- Discovering knowledge in the organization as well as external business environment through observation and research processes
- Once the knowledge is identified, it is access in terms of its applicability for the organization and then organized in some order for ease in future usage (Jones and Sallis 2013).
- The next step in the knowledge management process is the sharing of knowledge to the employees as per their need. In addition, the organization also shares information with its stakeholders such as customers, suppliers, and any other interested party for betterment of business efficiency.
- The next step in the knowledge management process is the reusing the knowledge. The purpose of knowledge management is to use the knowledge that is collected by the organization, in the case of similar issues arises. It helps the organization and its various stakeholders to make effective decision in case of similar problems arises (Holsapple 2013).
Staff learning and development needs
For an organization to achieve success, it is important that its employees are skilful and efficient in their work. In this regard, it is important for the top management to identify the learning and development needs of its employees. In the dynamic business environment, it is important that organization continuously evaluate the performance of its employees against external business environment needs and devise mechanisms to fulfil the gap between the existing skills and the required (desired) skill sets. Further, staff learning and development needs can be identified through job analysis or performance appraisals. Once the need for staff learning and development are identified, the organization is required to develop comprehensive plans for training and learning programs and also setting up means to enhance the effectiveness of such programs through development of knowledge management procedures (Ghoshal et al. 2012).
Knowledge management resources
Some of the most commonly employed knowledge management resources are:
- Cross functional project teams
- Training
- Storytelling
- Mentoring (Coyte et al. 2012).
Perceived constraints and contingency measures
The knowledge management system is developed to help the organization to increase the efficiency of the organization, however, due to the highly competitive and constantly changing business environment, the business need contingency plans to adapt and to be responsive to the changes of business requirements. The constraints may arise to some unforeseen business changes. It can be managed through extensive market research and development initiatives that would help the organization to forecast such constraints, In addition, innovative business solutions and technologies are also required to be developed to respond to changing business requirement and staying a step ahead of the competitors (Wang et al. 2014).
Evaluation of knowledge administration systems
The evaluation of knowledge administration systems can be undertaken through –
- The evaluation of KCA’s knowledge administration systems can be undertaken through analysis of the business processes and goals and the comparing the effectiveness of system against the effectiveness of the system in achieving organizational objectives.
- Another method of evaluation involves development of performance matrices against some of the organizational functions such as operations, human resources, marketing and sales functions and again comparing actual performance against the standard results as expected by the organization (Becerra and Sabherwal 2014).
Assessment task 3
Answer 1
Knowledge management
- It can be defined as a process that governs the formation, allocation, and operation of human intelligence. In any business organization whether large or small information is shaped, captured, shared and customized and is ultimately used in the organization as a product. Therefore, the knowledge management is concerned with identifying information resource points, significant functions that lead to knowledge formation and eliminating risky bottlenecks that may impede the flow of information to the point of practice (Jones and Sallis 2013).
Answer 2
It has been identified that there are number of legislation, which are highly influential for the knowledge management. These legislations are “Archives Act 1983, Privacy Act 1988, Freedom of Information Act 1982, Crimes Act 1914, Public Service Act 1999, Public Governance Performance and Accountability Act 2013, Evidence Act 1995”, Electric Transactions Act 1999 and Fair Work Act 2009.
In this context the major regulations are Archives Regulations, Privacy Regulation 2013, Legally binding privacy guidelines and rules, Freedom of Information (Charges) regulations 1982, Public Service Regulations 1999, Commonwealth Procurement Rules and Electronic Transactions Regulations 2000.
The relevant standard to the knowledge management re AS ISO 15489 Records Management, AGLS Metadata Standard 2010 (AS5044) and functioning Manual, AS/NZS ISO 16175 Principles and Functional Requirements for Records in Electronic Office Environments, Australian Government Recordkeeping Metadata Standard (AGRkMS) and functioning Guidelines.
Answer 3
The major key benefit of the knowledge management are mentioned below
- Enabling better and faster decision making
- Finding relevant information and resources
- Reusing expertise, documents and ideas
- Avoiding repeated mistakes
- Quick communication system
- Accelerating the customer delivery
Answer 4
Several major barriers hinder the sharing of knowledge, which are
- The lack of time critically hampers the knowledge sharing, as the needy colleagues cannot be identified properly.
- Individual may fear that knowledge sharing can jeopardise their position in the organization, which may reduce the scope of knowledge sharing.
- A individual may not be aware of the importance of the knowledge in their procession, which minimises the chance of knowledge sharing
- The position based status immensely negates the chance of knowledge sharing as the individual are focused solely on meeting their responsibilities.
- The lack of communication, evaluation as well as mistake tolerance can obstruct the knowledge sharing.
Answer 5
The standard for the knowledge is AS5037-2005 Knowledge management. The major objectives are
- Introducing the concepts efficiently
- Long list of knowledge management enablers
- List of related areas of practice
- Mapping context and culture
- List of indicators
- The benchmarking guideline for practices
- Reflection on future developments
Answer 6
Correlation calculations: Finding out the relation between two variables within a specific data range
Probability Assessment: Assessing the chance of occurrence of any event in reality
Regulation Analyses: Finding out the effectiveness of any given regulation
Dynamic programming: Resolving any complex problem by breaking down into numerous simple sub problems (Anderson et al. 2016).
Linear programming: Regulating the level of linear function of several variables
Queuing theory: it states that the purpose of model is predicting the queue length and waiting time
Simulation: imitating the practical operation, system and process over time
Transportation methodology: The ways to transfer any object from one place to another (Bickel and Doksum 2015).
Question 7
The information technology is one of the most impressive examples of knowledge management sector. It highly focuses on dealing with data in order to collect, assess, protect and share information.
References
Anderson, D.R., Sweeney, D.J., Williams, T.A., Camm, J.D. and Cochran, J.J., 2016. Statistics for business & economics. Nelson Education.
Becerra-Fernandez, I. and Sabherwal, R., 2014. Knowledge management: Systems and processes. Routledge.
Becker, J., Kugeler, M. and Rosemann, M. eds., 2013. Process management: a guide for the design of business processes. Springer Science & Business Media.
Bickel, P.J. and Doksum, K.A., 2015. Mathematical statistics: basic ideas and selected topics (Vol. 2). CRC Press.
Borghoff, U.M. and Pareschi, R. eds., 2013. Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.
Coyte, R., Ricceri, F. and Guthrie, J., 2012. The management of knowledge resources in SMEs: an Australian case study. Journal of Knowledge Management, 16(5), pp.789-807.
Fuller, S., 2012. Knowledge management foundations. Routledge.
Ghoshal, A., Gupta, A. and Subramani, M., 2012. Allocating Shared Resources Optimally for Call Center Operations and Knowledge Management Activities.
Hislop, D., 2013. Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press.
Holsapple, C. ed., 2013. Handbook on knowledge management 1: Knowledge matters (Vol. 1). Springer Science & Business Media.
Jones, G. and Sallis, E., 2013. Knowledge management in education: Enhancing learning & education. Routledge.
Liebowitz, J. and Frank, M. eds., 2016. Knowledge management and e-learning. CRC press.
Power, D.J., Sharda, R. and Burstein, F., 2015. Decision support systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Wang, S., Noe, R.A. and Wang, Z.M., 2014. Motivating knowledge sharing in knowledge management systems a quasi–field experiment. Journal of Management, 40(4), pp.978-1009.
www.nswbusinesschamber.com.au, 2016. [online] Available at: https://www.nswbusinesschamber.com.au/NSWBCWebsite/media/Policy/Thinking%20Business%20Reports/Older%20Reports/Knowledge-Management-in-the-New-Business-Environment-Case-Studies.pdf [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
