WELCOME!

1. WELCOME! Meiho Institute of Technology 11th December 2006 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH SEMINAR

2. A little bit about me …… • Academic & Professional background: BSc MBA DBA ADipC EurIng CEng MCMI MILT FCIOB FICE FRSA • International KM expert – working closely with United Nations, Astra Zeneca, Unilever etc • Published first integrated book on Knowledge Management • Senior Lecturer in Knowledge Management • Trustee of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation • Love playing the saxophone and enjoy the pub.

3. WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT?

4. DIMENSIONS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

5. TACIT & EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE

6. Kolb’s (1984) Learning Cycle

7. TEAM LEARNING (Senge, 1990)

8. SUCCESS & FAILURE: WHAT DRIVES OL?

9. ORGANISING KNOWLEDGE: ONTOLOGY & TAXONOMY

10. CAPTURING KNOWLEDGE • Cognitive mapping tools such as oval mapping • Information retrieval tools – desire for precision and recall • Search engines • Personalisation tools

11. EVALUATING KNOWLEDGE • Case based reasoning • OLAP • Datamining

12. SHARING KNOWLEDGE • Internet, Intranet, Extranet and E-mail • Groupware tools • Text based conferencing • Yellow Pages • Computer based training/e-learning • Security

13. STORING KNOWLEDGE:Data Warehouse • Database with query and reporting tools • Stores current and historical data from internal and external sources • Data mart – subset of data warehouse which contains summarized or highly focused data for certain users

14. PRESENTING KNOWLEDGE:Visualisation • Modelling – way of representing objects e.g. journal covers, weather maps, flows of citations • Rendering – makes computer generated image look like photograph e.g texture mapping • Virtual reality

15. STRATEGY AS PLAN OR PATTERN

16. WHAT DO THEY TEACH ON MBA PROGRAMMES?

17. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STRATEGY

18. CLIMATE & CULTURE

19. IMPORTANCE OF STORYTELLING

20. KNOWLEDGE CREATING COMPANYNonaka, 1991

21. Frameworks of Intellectual Capital

22. Moving beyond tacit and explicit distinctions : A realist theory of organisational knowledge Working Paper

23. Introduction • Knowledge and competitive success • Economic role to promote innovation • RBV to KBV of firm • Is knowledge a football? • Is knowledge an ongoing social accomplishment?

24. Gilbert Ryle (1949) • Tacit (knowing how) & Explicit (knowing what) • Polanyi(1967) – continuum • Nonaka (1994) – neat conversion processes from one form to another: socialization, combination, externalization and internalization • All-encompassing but little revealing concept • Logical behaviourist perspective

25. What’s your philosophy? Functionalism or Idealism? • Naturalism debate ignoring social relations • Closed rather than open systems • Any universal laws or theories? • Idealists assert reality constituted by our perceptions • Reality answerable to our representations rather independent reality • No scope for causal explanation only meanings

26. Fancy postmodernism or feminism? • Postmodernists emphasise diversity of world, plurality of perspectives • Knowledge divided into discrete systems of thought • Invoke problem of incommensurability • ‘Situated knowledge’ in terms of power relations forwarded by feminists • Problems of white, western, heterosexual male in research • Certain positions are advantageous over others • Research by white males as distorted but not black women?

27. What’s your philosophy of knowledge? Realism? • Real world exists independent of us • Seek to penetrate surface phenomena to reveal mechanisms and structures • Explanation is not ‘billiard-ball’ but identifying mechanisms and structures • Theory is conceptualisation • Observations are theory laden • Critical theory

28. All mental states are ignored Consciousness reduced to behaviour or disposition to behaviour Problem you may be in pain but refuse to show behaviour linked to it Pretend to be in pain? Purely look at surface level behaviours Problems with Ryle!

29. Realist Theory of Organizational Knowledge

30. Consciousness • Consciousness primary character of mind • Inner, subjective, first-person ontology • Experiences in the present • Collective consciousness not Hegelian spirit but shared meanings and representations through social interactions in context of power relations and culture • Cognitive, relational and cultural • Social Capital

31. Intentionality • Mental process that represents objects, events and states in the world • Can be conscious, unconscious, semi-conscious in terms of hopes, desires, beliefs, fears. • Intention leads to action in locus of control • Some intentions go unrealised

32. Organizational Memory • Past experiences stored in organizational memory influences consciousness • Foucault’s genealogy • Absorptive capacity linked to past experience • Remembering and forgetting • Unlearning • Organizational & Human Capital

33. Spark: Organisational Routines & Sensemaking • Gunpowder analogy • Dispersed knowledge in organisations • Allow coordination and integration • Allow improvisation • Dynamic capabilities in volatile environments • Create plausible stories for diagnosis and solutions • Sensemaking not accuracy but plausability in terms of observations and past experiences

34. Conclusions • Problem of no recourse to philosophy in literature but themes and patterns • Consciousness and memory primary knowledge mechanisms and structures • Tensions between figurative stories and literal memories in orgs • Contribution to intellectual capital • Methodological implications

35. TIME FOR REFLECTION