Problem with Knowledge Sharing

THE PROBLEM:

In Albion fabrics, one of the main problems we face is sharing information about the factories and their capabilities such as machinery, capacity to deliver in time, etc. which we think are vital for customer satisfaction and reputation of our company. So, knowledge sharing is one of the problems between teams because each team will be busy working for their own clients and there won’t be any time available for the teams to interact as a CoP. The tacit knowledge doesn’t get explicit here. One team may have worked with a factory in the past and other team may work with it in future. So, there must be some knowledge flow between each and every team so that the time and effort for rework will be reduced which ultimately results in customer satisfaction and also provide competitive edge.

We should also keep in mind that Albion Fabrics is a small organisation and we have limited budget on implementing technology to support the knowledge sharing process.

HOW TO MAKE IT EXPLICIT?

To make the tacit knowledge explicit, we need to use IT as a tool. As Firestone and McElroy (2003) says that “If the practise of KM is to enhance knowledge processing, then all related applications and uses of IT should also serve the same purpose. They also say that IT is a tool for knowledge managers to use in their attempts to enhance knowledge processing.

But Richard McDermott (1999) said that “IT alone cannot solve knowledge problems, there should be personal interaction between employees or else nothing can be attained but a Information Junkyard. (For more literature on this article by Richard refer to http://www.itu.dk/~kristianskriver/b9/Why%20information%20technology%20inspired%20but%20cannot%20deliver%20Knowledge%20Management.pdf).

But we think IT can be the most reliable and affordable and possible solution for our problem because we always can’t make the employees interact personally. We use codification strategy here and storing the knowledge is more helpful.One of the reasons might be- knowledge sharing on a personal level is difficult and takes time and other technology and also the knowledge seeker and the provider should be available at the same time. This may be difficult for a organisation like ours. So, we depend on codification rather than personalisation strategy with our problem of knowledge sharing.

The possible cheapest and reliable technology we can use is to create a single database where information, specifications and problems faced with each factory we worked with will be recorded so that every employee will be able to access it from our intranet and also in our website. (Helps employees working outside. Information secured through passwords).

Organisations need a single database and e-commerce systems of all activities that allow their customers, staff and business partners to have a real time information of their use.(Shepard, 2000).

REFERENCES:

1. Firestone, M.J and McELroy, W.M;2003;Information Technology Requirements: Key Issues in the New Knowledge Management,pp-220-222.

2. McDermott,R; 1999; Why Information Technology Inspires but cannot Deliver Knowledge Managemet,pp-21-26.

3. Shepard,E; 2000; Transforming Knowledge into Professional Power, Association Management.