Reducing time to competence

Many organisational initiatives such as efficiency, core competency advancement, actualization of customer-centric products and services, and limitation of the fixed costs of doing business can help to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage within the marketplace. Knowledge management is a targeted expertise designed to impact productivity and innovation in thoughtful ways. (Sarvary) suggest that KM represents a new technology that is changing the competitive landscape of contemporary business. (Sarvary, 1999).

For example in supply side economies of scale KM is used to create added value to customers by appreciably increasing product quality. While in demand side economies of scale KM is used to increase product quality. (Ofek & Sarvary, 2001). Therefore, the effective management of knowledge has the capacity to deeply impact the way a firm does business from the minor details of daily operations to the strategic decision-making processes.

One of the prime reasons for adaptation of knowledge management by organizations is the loss of “corporate memory” due to downsizing. i.e. when employee leaves the organization, they corporate knowledge leaves as well. This has been identified as one of the problems faced by AFL in which garment technicians leave the organization and with the arrival of new comers the business in faced with the problem of training them so as to learn their job roles and techniques which are crucial in such a delicate industry.

Lubit (2001) argues that tacit knowledge is often difficult to disseminate to others in the context of the workplace, but it is also invaluable to circulate because it is a unique asset that is very hard to copy by other firms. Hence, it can be logically understood that tacit knowledge can form the basis for competitive advantage, but to do so it must become obvious in the real world and utilized to achieve the strategic agenda of the organization (Lubit, 2001). Ideally, a firm can better manage its intellectual capital base by uncovering the tacit knowledge of its employees and turning that into explicit knowledge, available to others. (Erickson & Rothberg, 2000).

Knowledge acquisition:

There exits 3 generation of staff at Albion fabrics. The new comers, present or older employees and the retired employees. The knowledge created and gained by individual members of staff e.g. all garment technicians at AFL are kept by the employees when they leave the organisation.

Knowledge conversion:

This creates the problem we can name as “loss of corporate memory”, ie when the employee leaves he/she takes all tacit knowledge with him/her which is kept in their mind. This is the knowledge that employees are not conscious of, rooted in action, procedures, commitment, values and emotions etc. The problem is that there is not any mechanism for AFL employees to share this type of knowledge with the rest. The new employees can learn from knowledge capital of the present ones and the present employees from that of more senior (in terms of experience) or retired employees. There should be opportunities in place for employees to take advantage of such a cycle of knowledge transfer.

Knowledge application:

The application of knowledge and sharing of experiences between generation of garment technicians and designers does not have a structured mechanism. New employees need to have
Updates on how to function better and fit in within routines and job processes of AFL. The only appropriate mechanism in place for new comers is to spend a day at the factories and observe work procedures without much brainstorming between teams.

Knowledge protection:

AFL would need to have a mechanism for protection of its shared knowledge between previous, retired employees and the newcomers and at such there is no evidence of knowledge protection and this is mostly due to the fact that the value of knowledge in particular tacit is not truly appreciated by AFL.

Objective 1: Reduce time to competence from 6 months to 3 months:
In order to improve the loss of corporate memory due to for example staff leaving, retirement or redundancy the objective of this corporation should be to transform the “time to competence” from 6 months to 3 months.

It is imperative that new employees would take advantage of the knowledge and experience of the present or older employees as well as enhancing their new skills and knowledge by learning from employees whom have retired and are no longer working within AFL. The objectives are to implement methods of sharing the knowledge between different generations of employees within this organisation (AFL).

Incentives for the retired employees to be brought back to the organisation should be put in place, retired employees need to feel a sense of belonging to the organisation even after they have left, they need to feel valued for contributing to organisational progress and receive recognition for contributions and achievement they have made in order to gain competitive advantage for AFL.

Story telling, Cops, interviews, mentor and teacher techniques.

(Kleiner, A. and Roth, 1997) have given insight about the use of stories for sharing experiences and disseminating lessons learned is well-known knowledge management practices. These can vary from unstructured stories to structured narrative techniques specifically intended to build organizational learning such as learning histories Metaphors and analogies (Nonaka, I and Takeuchi, H,1995) argue that are also used to share concepts. Metaphors combine ideas into expressive imagery, while analogies are useful in helping us form new ideas by comparing them with familiar ones.

The use of personal or team web blog for employees of AFL means that individuals or groups can express their ideas and reflect on their experiences. Management can use employee blogs or micro-blogs as a tool to assess employee’s contribution to knowledge sharing or personal contribution in relation to organizational performance. Also management can reward employee’s contribution to web blogs through the performance related pay schemes etc.

Another method of enaging retired and senior employees to share their knowledge is by
using podcasts instead of desktop videoconferencing and multimedia computing to transmit sound and video as well as text to enable knowledge transfer between different generations of employees. New generation of employees and present ones as well as all managers can use smart phones to listen or watch the recordings of description of jobs and tips and techniques through use of podcasts. Then the recorded discussion or interviews with retired employees or senior staff on the podcasts can be placed on the business intranet for all employees to download. This means that employees will feel more engaged and informed about events.

Reference:

Ofek, E. & Sarvary, M. (2001). Leveraging the customer base: Creating competitive advantage through knowledge management. Management Science, 47 (11), 1441-1456.

Lubit, R. (2001). Tacit knowledge and knowledge management: The keys to sustainable competitive advantage. Organizational Dynamics, 29 (3), 164-178.

5. Kleiner, A. and Roth, G. How to make experience your company's best teacher. Harvard Business Review 75, 5 (Sept.–Oct. 1997).

7. Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press, 1995.