Putting social aspects of KM into practice

Knowledge management is not just about IT practices and tools to manage and store knowledge. Except of IT, knowledge management can be backed up by social and cultural measures which are strongly related to a very important aspect of knowledge management, creating an ideal environment for knowledge and promoting the knowledge sharing culture.

The following suggestions are based upon solutions that have been successfully implemented into organizations and on ideas that on my opinion might be helpful if applied.

First of all, I believe that it is very important to create an ideal knowledge sharing environment because as Earl (2001) notes down, tacit knowledge usually is passed down from person to person through everyday interaction and conversation. So in order to pass tacit knowledge around the organization, interaction between the people within the organization should be encouraged and this leads to a solution that promotes the knowledge sharing culture. Two examples are Skandia’s future center (Earl and Nahapiet, 1999) and British Airway’s Waterside (CABE, n.d.) offices. Both companies have created their sites having in mind how to ‘enforce’ their employees to interact with each other and increase the possibility of tacit knowledge exchange.

Another way to promote the knowledge sharing spirit would be a reward system for the employees who are contributing the most. This way those who share the knowledge are rewarded so they know their contribution was not for nothing and also once people start getting rewards for their contribution it is very possible that more will follow and try to contribute.

People who put effort in knowledge sharing can be rewarded differently. For example (Velker, 1999) Xerox gives people the opportunity to get recognition when sharing their knowledge with others so the reward for them is being recognized as an expert or a specialist in the field. A different method of rewarding knowledge contributors could be giving bonuses to those who contribute the most. Of course the problem of quality against quantity is rising up here because it is hard to measure when the contribution is made just for the sake of it or if it is a worthwhile contribution. Of course this is up to the organization to decide how the reward scheme will work.

As it was aforementioned, tacit knowledge is usually exchanged by conversation and social interaction so apart from trying to encourage people within an organization to interact more during work, the organization can provide the means for the people to start interacting outside their work space also. One good way to do that would be organizing group activities like activity weekends, secret Santa, inter-organizational parties, etc. The more people come in touch with each other the more tacit knowledge is exchanged between them and for sure having a friendly environment in the organization can help the flow of knowledge as people will be less reluctant to share their knowledge with people they are friends with. This is backed up by Cortada and woods (1999) as they found out that in most successful projects they had studied people were not hold back from sharing their knowledge as oppose to unsuccessful projects in which people were holding the knowledge for themselves.

Solutions for Albion fabrics

Based on the aforementioned examples and methods of how to promote the social aspects of knowledge management into the organization the following suggestions can be made for Albion fabrics.

To begin with, a redesign of the office space can be made to rearrange the way employees interact. Cubicles must be abolished and create a feeling that there are no boundaries between each and every employee. Also, offices can be set up so they all face each other to promote the team spirit within the office and pass the message that the employees are not individuals who work at the same room but they are a team working together for common targets and goals.

Except from rearrangement of the office space, to encourage the employees to start interacting more with each other some organization rules can be applied. For example a common lunch hour can be scheduled so if all the employees go to take their lunch together the sense of team spirit is raised and they have a chance to discuss during their lunch time. Maybe tacit knowledge won’t be exchanged but at the very less if people communicate the organization is building up the friendly environment that is desired. Also, another way to boost communication between employees would be reducing or even keeping the use of e-mails within the organization to minimal levels. If each person meets the person they want to reach in person instead of e-mailing they will have to socialize and discuss and this way the target of exchanging tacit knowledge is enforced as well as the target of creating a friendly-knowledge sharing environment.

Last but not least, a reward scheme is suggested for the organization. Of course this measure can work in collaboration with the IT part of the organization’s knowledge management system. For example, if a wiki is chosen to support the knowledge management system, the top contributors of the wiki can be rewarded on a monthly basis and given a bonus or a surprise gift for their contribution. To avoid having useless data and information being passed over as knowledge a rating system can be applied so the CKO or all the employees of the organization can vote if the content was useful or not.

References

CABE. n.d. BA Waterside Harmondsworth case study. http://www.cabe.org.uk/default.aspx?contentitemid=240 (accessed February 28, 2009)

Cortada, J.W. and J.A., Woods. 1999. The Knowledge Management Yearbook 1999-2000. Butterworth-Heinemann.

Earl M. (2001). Knowledge Management Strategies: Toward a Taxonomy. Journal of Management Information Systems. 18,(1),p.215-233.

Earl, M.J. and J.E., Nahapiet. 1999. Skandia. Case study LBS-Cs99-015-00. London: London Business School.

Velker, L. 1999. Xerox: from internal solution to KM product . http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/Editorial/Feature/Xerox-from-internal-solution-to-KM-product-9059.aspx (accessed March 1, 2009)