CHALLENGES, BENEFITS AND ISSUES OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

Organisations are developing information systems designed specifically to facilitate the sharing and integration of knowledge. Such systems are called knowledge management systems.

This study is to do a little research

· How field data exists

· The implementation and development of such systems

· It also provides the analysis of current practices, outcomes and the nature of knowledge management systems.

The concept of coding and transmitting knowledge is not new. This type of training , employee development programmes, organisational policies, reports and manuals have served KMS for years.

For example,

The McDonalds restaurant operating manual capture almost every aspect of the restaurant. Management includes cooking, nutrition, hygiene, marketing, food production and accounting. This process of coding and disseminating knowledge again repeats improving the effectiveness of its operations.

Knowledge is subjective information related to facts, procedures, concepts, interpretations, ideas, observations and judgements. Major challenge of knowledge management is less its creation and more its capture and integration.

A program was conducted on Management of Information Technology at Northeast university in july 1997. It included 109 participants from 12 different countries. The participants were Chief information officers, Information system managers and general area executives.

10 US and 4 non Us respondents report having an existing KMS in their organisations. Three Us and 4 non US respondents reported developing the KMs in their organisations.

Issues of knowledge Management:

Information:

Building vast amount of data into usable form

Avoiding overloading users with unnecessary data

Eliminating wrong or old data

Ensuring customer confidentiality

Keeping the information current

Management:

Change management implications

Getting individuals to volunteer knowledge

Getting business units to share knowledge

Demonstrating business value

Bringing together many people from various units

Determining responsibility for managing the knowledge

Technology:

Determining infrastructure requirements

Keeping up with new technologies

Security of data on internet

Benifits of existing knowledge management systems:

Process outcomes:

Communication:

Enhanced communication
Faster communication
Morevisible opinion of staff
Increased staff participants

Efficiency:

Reducing problem solving time
Shortening proposal times
Faster results

Faster delivery to market

Organisational outcomes:

Financial:

Increased sales
Decreased cost
Higher profitability

Marketing:

Better service
Customer focus
Targeted marketing
Proactive marketing

'' This is a draft.. references will be added in due course.. ''

THE MODELS OF KM

What a MODEL is..?

A Model is a narrative description that can promote knowledge and learning and models are the representations which are expressed in a medium of interest (Postrel, 1986). A logo can representan organization but does not model it.

Among many implications, SECI model proposed by Nonaka and Takeuchi in 1995 dealing with Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization. These tried to distinct between Tacit and Explicit knowledge. SECI model is a spiralling process of interactions between explicit and tacit knowledge.

The different types of models of knowledge management are found in search are
Epistemology,
Ontology...
The different meanings of Epistemology stated in survey are as....

EPISTEMOLOGY IS ...

Theory of knowledge (Nelson, 1976)

Includes the origin of knowledge(Herman, 1935)

Place of experience in generating knowledge(Fries, 1840)

Relation between knowledge and certainty(Wittgestein, 1945)

Central concern of philosophy(Poincare, 1902) etc.,

In my perspective, Epistemology is the one which came from the inner self up to what extent we can believe a truth . It seems like some how we must get around things which are very close to the reality.

I have even had the terminity recently in compiling a brief resume under the title Knowledge Management with our teammates. But once when the discussions and debates are completed, we came to know that the models of Knowledge Management are likely different. There has been growing interest in treating knowledge as a significant organisational resource.

where as ONTOLOGY is a set of concepts within a domain and relationship between those concepts..(jacquette, 1996) which can be used to reason about the properties of domain or sometimes to define the domain too...

From these... we can understand that the primary task of knowledge management models like Epistemology and Ontology is to just identify how knowledge and justification are enclosed or bounded to the natural human philosophy. so that one can make a careful and attentive reasoning.

In my critical analysis, there are Four things necessary for a model to exist. They are:

a) subject of model
b)observer
c)user and
d)creator of model

Basically, the subject is chosen depending upon the status of the interaction throughout. Model makes the import and export of knowledge bases from one form to other just like the ‘’knowledge conversion’’ (McElroy, 1999) in SECI model reviewed earlier. It A referencing point is put forth by each model. All such reference points are made together located individually, addressed individually so that easy sharing is done. We can resolve many differences in the description framework. It has become one of the primary goals in knowledge based systems. A separate platform can be created where people can share their true beliefs to define one’s own behaviour only with some significant changes.

At the same time, the user can understand and apply it easily. Designing the model needs a simple ability to share and view its conceptual tools working together in different positions. Moreover, the implications work on the same. Model is primarily focused on differentiation of knowledge in two areas. The explicit and tacit knowledge which work underground to attain sustainability for its existence. These work in providing knowledge on type of information desired, but such a data is necessary to create and use in naturally formed knowledge management models are generally dispersed.

References:

1) Stanford (2005) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#add Date accessed: [5 Feb,2009].

2) Carnfield (1999) Organisational Benifits, http://www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/msc/mop/organisational.asp Date accessed: [5 Feb,2009].

3) Aiai (1997 ) http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~alm/kamlnks.html Date accessed : [6 Feb, 2009]

4) Abecker, A., Bernardi, A., Hinkelmann, K., Kühn, O., & Sintek, M. (1997). Towards aWell-Founded Technology for Organizational Memories, in B.R. Gaines, & R. Uthurusamy (Eds.), Artificial Intelligence in Knowledge Management, Papers from the 1997 AAAI Spring Symposium, Menlo Park.