Addis Ababa University

School of Information science

Graduate Program
INss 626: Knowledge Management and Organizational Learning
Knowledge Capture and Codification
 Tacit Knowledge Capture

 Major approaches to knowledge acquisition from

individuals and groups:
 1. Interviewing experts.
 2. Stories.

 Or combinations!!!
 Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d

 Themajor tasks carried out by knowledge engineers

in capturing tacit knowledge:
 Analyzing information and knowledge flow.
 Working with experts to obtain information.
 designing and implementing a knowledge
management system or knowledge repository
Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d

On the other side are the subject matter

experts, and they had to be able to:
 Explain important knowledge and know-
how.
 Be introspective and patient.
 Have effective communication skills.
 Tacit Knowledge Capture …cont’d

 Multiple
experts are often participants in knowledge
engineering sessions
 cover the range of expertise they represented,
 validate the content,
 provide different perspective, etc.

 Groupknowledge acquisition techniques can also

be adopted - for knowledge acquisition at the
community of practice level
 Interviewing Experts

 Torender key tacit knowledge of an individual into

more explicit forms.
 Structured interviewing of subject matter experts is the
most often used technique
 Inmany organizations, structured interviewing is
performed through exit interviews - held with
knowledgeable staff near retirement age.
 Content management systems are well suited to
publishing their lessons learned and best practices
accumulated over their years of experience at the
organization.
 Interviewing experts …cont’d
 Structured interviewing techniques require
 strong communication and conceptualization skills.
 a good grasp of the subject matter at hand.

 Structured interviewing yield specific data that is

often declarative in response to focused questions.
 Structured interviews may also be used to clarify or
refine knowledge originally elicited during
unstructured interactions.
 Two types of structured interview

 Open ended
 How does that work?”
 “What do you need to know before you decide?”
 “Why did you choose this one rather than that one?”
 “What do you know about . . .”?
 “How could . . . be improved?”
 “What is your general reaction to . . . ?”

 Closed
 Reflective listening
 Fourmajor techniques used in reflective listening
include
 paraphrasing,
 clarifying,
 summarizing, and
 reflecting feelings.
 Paraphrasing

 Paraphrasing
 the restating of the perceived meaning of the
speaker’s message but using your own words.
 the goal is to check the accuracy with which the
message was conveyed and understood.
 Examples of paraphrasing
 “What I believe you said was . . .”
 “If I am wrong, please correct me but I understood
you to say . . .”
 “In other words, . . .”
 “As I think I understand it . . .”
 Clarifying

 Clarifying
 lets the expert know that the message was not
immediately understandable.
 responses encourage the expert to elaborate or clarify
the original message so that the interviewer gets a better
idea of the intended message.
 The interviewer should focus on the content not on the
expert’s ability to communicate,
 the expert should be encouraged to elaborate or
explain by using open questions wherever possible
 Summarizing
 Summarizing
 helps the interviewer compile discrete pieces of
information
 Helps to form a knowledge acquisition session into a
meaningful whole.
 It helps to confirm that the expert’s message was
heard and understood correctly.
The summary should be expressed in the words of the
interviewer.
 Examples
 Example of clarifying
 “I don’t understand . . .”
 “Could you please explain . . .”
 “Please repeat that last part again . . .”
 “Could you give me an example of that . . .”
 Example of summarizing
 “To sum up what you have been saying . . .”
 “What I have heard you say so far . . .”
 “I believe that we are in agreement that . . .”
 Reflecting feelings

 Mirrorsback to the speaker the feelings that seem

to have been communicated.
 The main focus is on emotions, attitudes, and
reactions, and not on the content itself.
 The purpose is to clear the air of some emotional
reaction or negative impact of the message.
 Reflecting feelings

 Some examples are:

 “You seem frustrated about . . .”
 “You seem to feel that you were put on the spot . . .”
 “I sense that you are uncomfortable with . . .”
 Transcription of interviews

 Transcripts of interviews are analyzed in order to identify

key concepts, common themes, and major methods or
techniques that were mentioned.
 If multiple experts were interviewed for the same
procedure or subject, then conflict resolution might be
needed.
 Usually, each individual will be interviewed more than once so
that interviewers can validate their understanding of the
knowledge that has been elicited,
 Each interview will raise additional questions, whether
these are aimed at clarifying, correcting, or expanding
upon critical elements.

 Subsequent interviews are more focused and target a

more detailed level.
 Stories
 Stories
are another excellent vehicle for both capturing
and coding tacit knowledge.

 An organizational story is a detailed narrative of

management actions, employee interactions, and other
intra organizational events that are communicated
informally within the organization.

A story can be defined as the telling of a happening or a

connected series of happenings,

 An organizational story can be defined as a detailed

narrative of
 past management actions,
 employee interactions,
 or other key events that have occurred and that have been
communicated informally
 Stories …cont’d
 Conveying information in a story provides a
rich context,

 Itcausing the story to remain in the conscious

memory longer and creating more memory
traces than is possible with information not in
context.

 Stories can greatly increase organizational

learning, communicate common values and
rule sets, and serve as an excellent vehicle
for capturing, coding, and transmitting
valuable tacit knowledge.
 Stories …cont’d
 Stories need to evoke some type of response,
 the moral of the story
 The organizational lesson to be learned
should be easily understood, remembered, and acted
upon.

 Organizational stories should have an impact.

 Stories
should prevent similar mistakes from
being repeated, or they should promote
organizational learning and adoption of best
practices stemming from the collective
organizational memory.
 Keyelements required to use stories to encapsulate
valuable knowledge
 The story should spring the listener to a new level of
understanding;
 The story should have a happy ending
 The story must be brief and detailed
 Listeners should be encouraged
 True is better than invented
 Other methods of tacit knowledge
capture
 Learning by doing
 Learning by observations
 Ad hoc sessions.
 Action learning.
 E-learning.
 Learning from others through business guest speakers
and benchmarking
 Tacit knowledge capture at
organizational level
 Organizational knowledge acquisition is a
qualitatively different process from that which
occurs at individual and group levels.
 At the group level we are primarily concerned with
identifying and coding valuable knowledge, which
is mostly tacit in nature,
 organizational
knowledge capture takes place on
a more macro level.
 Tacit knowledge capture ……..
 Malhotra (2000) proposed and outlined an approach
for knowledge capture at organizational level.
 Four major organizational knowledge acquisition
processes:
 (1) grafting,
 (2) vicarious learning,
 (3) experiential learning, and
 (4) inferential processes.
 Grafting
 Involves the migration of knowledge between firms.

 It
is a learning process whereby the firm gains
access to task- or process-specific knowledge that
was not previously available within the firm.

 Typicallyachieved through mergers, acquisitions, or

alliances in that there is a direct passing of
knowledge between firms
 An example would be technology transfer or other
forms of explicit knowledge.
 Vicarious learning
 Vicarious  indirect, mediated, remote
 processes occur through one firm observing other
firms’ demonstrations of techniques or procedures.
 Examples are benchmarking studies where companies
can adopt the best practices of other industry leaders.
 Thisknowledge is more tacit than that obtained
through grafting as it involves learning how to do
something or know-how.
 Experiential Learning
 Experiential
knowledge acquisition involves
knowledge acquisition within a given firm—that is,
knowledge created by doing and practicing.

 Repetition based experience relies on the learning

curve to establish routines and procedures.

 Thistype of knowledge is initially tacit but can be

easily codified and transferred

 Authorsalso refer to the processes of single- and

double-loop learning.
 Single-loop learning involves the refinement and
improvement of existing procedures and technologies
as opposed to developing new ones (adaptivity for
efficiency).
 Inferential Processes
 Learning is within the firm and occurs by doing.

 Knowledge acquisition occurs primarily through

interpretation of events, states, changes, and
outcomes relative to the activities undertaken and
decisions made.

 Learning is experimental, deductive learning that

seeks to make sense of occurrences and to establish
causal links between actions and outcomes.

 Thistype of learning is sometimes called double-loop

learning because it involves changing underlying
assumptions and frameworks (adaptivity for
effectiveness).
 Tacit knowledge capture ……..
 The
results of all four types of organizational
knowledge capture
 will ultimately reside in some type of knowledge
repository.
 is the recipient of organizational memory, and
containers are usually some form of database on an
intranet or extranet.
 Once the capture of such knowledge ocurres – we
can proceed more directly to the codification of this
content.
 knowledge codification
 Knowledge codification is the next stage of
leveraging knowledge.

 Codification 
 organization, collection, arrangement;
 the creation of content categories;
 Organization of knowledge and making it external

A formalized procedure is required for the receipt

and codification of individual and group
innovations.
 Knowledge Codification ….

 converting knowledge into a tangible, explicit form such as a

document,
 Knowledge can be communicated much more widely and with
less cost.
 Documents can be disseminated widely over a corporate
intranet, which makes them available for reference as and when
they are needed, both by existing and by future staff.
 There are, of course, costs and difficulties associated with
knowledge codification.
 The first issue is that of quality, which encompasses
 (1) accuracy, (2) readability/understandability,
 (3) accessibility, (4) currency, and (5) authority/ credibility.
 Knowledge Codification ….

 Knowledge must be codified in order to be

understood, maintained, and improved upon as
part of corporate memory.