Knowledge Management in Learning Organization Context – Book Summary

20 Oct

Knowledge Management in Learning Organization Context

Jann Hidajat Tjakraatmadja

As part of my assignment, and as reference if somebody need it. for notes: original book written in
Indonesian, and I am sorry if I did some mistakes in translation. In my real summary, there are some
graphics and chart, but none in here, sorry again.. ^_^

Chapter 1. New Paradigm Of Knowledge Era

There are 3 era of change (Alvin Toffler, “The Third Wave”, 1980), manual (Physic), Industry (Machine)
and Knowledge. In knowledge era, we can find 3 characteristics of this era, first, its easy to find but also
it easiest to out of date, second the complexity of problems and last is the change of situation that
impacted organization is unpredictable.

Knowledge era need new organization that has ability to change with the times. It also need mature
human with global competency, ethical and creative. At last, this new organization and mature human
need conducive neighborhood for supporting the change.

Chapter II. Why Indonesian’s reformation is very slow?

When Asia crisis attack, Indonesian declare its reformation. But, until now the reformation doesn’t show
the speed as expected. the criteria to valuate these reformation is comfortability to do business in a
particular country. there are 10 indicators: the easiness to: start business, get license, employer
availability and rules, property, loan access, investor protection, tax, inter country trading, contract
clause and exit strategy. Indonesia did not have all of these, because of some reasons below:

1. Our nation is losing sensitivity (dead) taste. Some company is in comfort zone and doesn’t know how
to react for the successful future.

2. Reform of our nation too far. The reformation gave too much freedom, and forgot to freedom set
boundaries or restriction, while Indonesian mentality is still in “teenager” phase
3. Communities are losing their identities. Indonesia lost its patient and wisdom, it also lost confidence.

4. Our society is obsessed by the past glory. Tradition should not become barriers to success.

5. Short-term thinking.

6. Our nation is still getting used to justify habits than the truth.

7. Human capital has not yet reached “critical mass”.

8. The crisis of true leadership. Leader should serve his people (servant leadership), Indonesian has not
found one yet.

Chapter III. Knowledge and Human Learning Process

According to Nonaka and Hirotaka, for supporting information era, an organization needs to have
explicit knowledge (know how) and tacit knowledge (know why) continuously. Knowledge comes from
collectible information that connected systematically and meaningful. Information derives from
analyzed data and meaningful. Human kept information in their neurons that connected systematically
when problems came, and created understanding and improve through experience, practice and
learning process. Human has 3 knowledge; cultural, tacit and explicit knowledge.

Intelligence is human mental ability to create, get, achieve or integrate their knowledge. Intelligence
improve capability act effectively, do right and rational. Competency in working world derives from
motif, character, self-concept, knowledge and skill. Competency type is technical competency and
behavior competency.

Naturally, human change, physically and mentally. When learning process touch human minds and
human soul, it called double loop, but if knowledge only touch human minds, it called single loop
learning.

Human position in organization

Organization need asset, asset could be tangible asset (machines, building, land) and intangible asset
(human capital, knowledge, culture). Organization potential asset is learning human. There are 2 types
of learning, unlearning (leave old habit/concept) and pro-learning (understanding new knowledge). For
supporting learning process, huma need 7 abilities (Sinamo, 2005),

1. Ability to think perceptional-rational

2. Ability to think creative and imaginative

3. Ability to think critical-argumentative

4. Ability to choose from alternative

5. Ability to do freely

6. Ability to feel

7. Ability to respond

There are some reason that organization fail to change, there are: (Raka, 2000)

1. No sense of urgency

2. There is no agent of change

3. Unclear vision and mission

4. Less vision and mission socialization

5. Unable to reduce obstacle of change

6. Not systematic and consistency of change management

7. Too fast to feel it has been successfully

8. Unsuccessful to change company culture

So, to be success, learning organization needed:

1. Competent employees

2. Organization media

3. Leader as learning catalyst

4. Trust and learning culture

5. IT availability, organization structure and reward system

Chapter IV. Individual and Organization learning model

Individual learning model:

1. Single loop (a) and double loop learning (b), Argyris (1985)

2. Jann Hidajat individual learning model (2001)

Learning individual has learning ability and change. Individual must learn his environment (outside in)
and also must actualize himself (inside-out).
Employee’s competencies are intellectual competency, emotional competency and social competency.

Learning organization is organization that has capability to change continuously and improve their
capabilities because the employees have commitment and individual competency to learn and share
knowledge.

Learning organization model, Nonaka dan Hirotaka (1995)

Organization as knowledge process creation: converting between the personal, tacit knowledge of
individuals who produce creative insight, and shared, explicit knowledge, which the organization needs
to develop new product and innovations.

Learning organization model Jann Hidajat (2001)

The concept are: (1) Learning Organization Single Loop where organization could integrate knowledge
through thinking process (intellectual and emotional), (2) Learning organization Double Loop where
organization could integrate intellectual, emotional and spiritual simultaneous through thinking process
and soul.

Chapter V. Knowledge Management in Learning Organization context

Knowledge management becomes company successful factor because the new economic era will refer
to the knowledge era. Knowledge management represents a progressive logic of meaning beyond
information management, because it is influenced by the quality of work environment and by IT.
Knowledge management is seen as the embodiment of integration and the culmination method of
existing organization.

Intelligence learning organization is an organization that has capability to growth its strength
continuously based on knowledge and service. 3 era of learning paradigm shift:

1. TQM paradigm era: focus to build working process and get zero defect, high quality and continuous
improvement (kaizen)

2. Learning organization paradigm era: focus to thinking patterns

3. Institutional learning discipline paradigm era: knowledge as learning organization discipline

Chapter VI. Three Pillars of Learning Organization

Learning individual pillar. Mature people have 3 characteristic, intellectual maturity, emotional maturity
and social maturity. People successfulness depends on thinking process and soul process. Thinking
process has 4 steps, observation process, self-reflection process, change of thinking way and
actualization process. Soul process (Double loop learning) steps are change of vision process, paradigm
alignment process, understanding of “why” and knowledge of care “why”.

Learning organization pillar. There is no big different between learning individual and learning
organization, the difference are quantity and institutional process. Learning organization also need
double learning loop (vertical) to create culture/habit and become “the place” for individual. And in the
end, organization-thinking process will create new tacit knowledge and then change tacit knowledge to
explicit knowledge.

Knowledge path transformation Pillar

Knowledge path transformation function is to combine and synergize individual knowledge become
organization human capital.

5 learning discipline (Senge, 1990): personal mastery discipline, sharing vision, mentally model,
systematic thinking and learning team.

Chapter VII. Learning Organization Building

1. Foundation: Trust and Learning culture

a. Trust is a foundation to build understanding, tolerant, positive attitude, and ethical behaviors.

b. Learning culture is defined as value of trust or daily activity that create sharing and knowledge
combination between organization employees.

2. First pillar: Learning skills. Skills needed are skill to solve the problems, using new methodology,
learning from the past, learning from success (benchmarking) and skill to transfer knowledge to other
people.

3. Second pillar: learning facilities, consist of: systemic information, organization structure and rewards.
Systemic information is needed to give easy access to knowledge sources around the world.
Organization structure is needed to create quality habitat in learning organization, it will impact
employee’s relationship effectiveness. Rewards use for formal recognition

4. Roof: learning discipline as protection from internal negative environment or external negative
environment.

5. Enabler: leader quality. A leader has 4 functions, as informant, as visionary, as coaching and as agent
of change.

Learning organization outcome is Human Capital. Human capital formula:

= Media * Moderator *Σ (Employee generic competency)

While human capital dimension consist of intellectual asset, credibility asset and social asset.

Chapter VIII. Empirical Study of Learning Organization Building Concept Implementation

5 learning discipline by Senge (1990) need learning habitat or knowledge transformation paths of
learning organization. Some obstacles in building learning habitat are:

1. Personal obstacles, especially intellectual maturity ad emotional maturity

2. Obstacles from the lack of relational learning support (trust, learning culture and leadership)

3. Obstacle from the lack of managerial support

4. Obstacle of learning infrastructure

An empirical study showed:

1. Trust and learning culture will improve the quality of learning habitat

2. There is correlation between trust, learning culture and the quality of learning habitat

3. Good leadership could strengthen trust and learning culture

4. Good leadership could improve employee maturity

5. Individual learning process is organization learning process starting point

6. Learning organization process could happen by sharing knowledge within employee

In not supporting learning habitat, the increasing of employee generic competency will decrease human
capital value. At this condition, great leadership is needed; reward could also used as motivator. In this
condition, information availability could impact knowledge transformation process.

In good supporting learning habitat leader’s intervention, organization structure, rewards and
information availability could give negative impact to employee generic competency to human capital
competency.

Chapter IX. Getting Started

Formula 1:

Learning Organization = Leadership * Learning Foundation * learning Skill * learning Facilities * learning
discipline
Formula 2:

Learning Organization = Leadership * performance * Knowledge Sharing * Explicit Knowledge *

Implementation

4 principles to success:

1. Commitment

2. Start from the small

3. Set target

4. Spread crisis issue to make other employee realize about change

Practical steps to start build Learning Organization is:

1. Decide pilot project

2. Implementation steps

a. R1: building individual learning skill to achieve personal mastery

b. R2: building learning team capability to improve affectivities process of knowledge sharing

c. R3: Building learning organization capability, to get Human Capital

3. Maintaining profound change process at every step.

I hope this post helpful and give some guidance, since I write this summary without read every
sentences and every words in the book, a little bit exhausted for reading more than 300 pages, right?? :d

But it’s enough to get great grade. Perhaps in my next Knowledge Management posting I should write
my own opinion and analysis, since my final exam for this module is create Knowledge management
program in my company/was my company.