Chapter 5

Knowledge Management
Infrastructure

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Learning Objectives

• Organizational Culture
• Organizational Structure
• Community of Practice
• Information Technology Infrastructure
• Common knowledge
• KM System Life Cycle

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KM Infrastructure
• 5 main components:
1. Organizational Culture  behaviour of the
organization’s members
2. Organizational Structure Hierarchical
structure of the organization
3. Communities of Practice  network of
people who share a common interest
4. Information Technology Infrastructure (data,
storage, communication)
5. Common Knowledge (experience)

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1) Organizational Culture
• Organizational culture reflects the norms and beliefs that guide
the behaviour of the organization’s members
• Attributes of a KM-enabling organizational culture include:
– Understanding of the value and benefits of KM practices
– Management support for KM at all levels, including
allocation of time and adequate funding resources
– Incentives that reward knowledge sharing, and
encouragement of interaction for the creation and sharing
of knowledge
– Willingness to tackle the inability to directly measure the
financial benefits from KM

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2) Organizational Structure
• Hierarchical structure of the organization affects the people with whom
individuals frequently interact, and to or from whom they are consequently likely
to transfer knowledge
• Traditional reporting relationships influence:
• the flow of data and information
• the groups who make decisions together
• and thus, the sharing and creation of knowledge
– By decentralizing or flattening the organizational structure, companies
often seek to eliminate organizational layers, so as to:
• place more responsibility with each individual
• increase the size of groups reporting to each individual
• and thus, increase likelihood of knowledge sharing across a larger
group of individuals
• Organizational structures can facilitate KM through communities of practice
(CoPs)
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3) Community of Practice(COP)
• A community of practice (CoP) is a network of people
who share a common interest in a specific area of
knowledge or competence and are willing to work and
learn together over a period of time to develop and share
that knowledge.

• Examples:
– A tech club at Samsung Electronics includes a group of
engineers who do not work in the same unit but meet
regularly, on their own initiative, to discuss problems related
to their area of expertise
– At Xerox, a strategic community of IT professionals, involving
frequent informal interactions among them, promotes
knowledge sharing [Storck & Hill, 2000]

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Characteristics of COPs
1. Domain
– The members of a community share a common domain of
interest
– Domain tells about what type of information is to be shared
within the community.
2. Community
– Group of people who belong to the same domain.
– People share knowledge in order to help each other.
– Share the knowledge by group discussion and meetings
3. Practice
– Set of ways to do work in domains such as communication
and problem sharing
– A well defined activity to be adapted in sharing knowledge.

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CoP’s Versus Team/group
CoP’s Factors Team/Group
Membership of a Membership Teams and work groups are
community of practice is formed by management
voluntary
Communities of practice Specific Focus Teams and work groups are
are not necessarily (some formed to focus on a
stated goals, but they are specific objective or
more general and fluid) activity
Communities of practice Expectation of tangible Teams and work groups are
are not necessarily results required to deliver tangible
results
Communities of practice Existence defined by group Teams and work groups are
last as long as their members separated or reorganised
members want them to once they have achieved
last. their goals

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 Benefits of COPs
Organization
Provide a valuable vehicle for developing,
sharing and managing specialist knowledge
Avoid reinventing the wheel
Cut across departmental boundaries and
formal reporting lines
Generate new knowledge in response to
problems and opportunities
Can be more flexible than traditional reporting
units
Provide early warning of potential
opportunities and threats
Can be vehicle for cultural change (creating a
knowledge sharing culture)
Individual
access to expert help to expand horizons, gain
knowledge and seek help in addressing work
challenges
Members often feel more aware of, and
confident in, their own personal knowledge
Provides a non-threatening forum to explore
and test ideas or validate courses of action
foster a greater sense of professional
commitment and enhance members”
professional reputation
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Approaches to creating COP’s
Steps Description
1. Defining the scope What is the domain of knowledge? At the heart of every
community is a domain of knowledge; that domain can be either
based around a professional discipline or on some specific
problems or opportunities;
2. Finding participants Who can make a major contribution to this community? Who are
the subject experts, and possible co-ordinators, facilitators, and
librarians and/or knowledge managers? Will membership be open
or by invitation only?
3. Identifying common What are the core issues within the domain of knowledge? What
needs and interests are members interested in and passionate about? How do they
hope to benefit from membership of the community?
4. Clarifying the purpose What are the specific needs or problems that need to be
and terms of reference addressed? What is the community setting out to achieve? How
will the community benefit the organisation? What are its values
and ways of working? How will it be structured, organised and
resourced?

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Approaches to creating COP’s
Steps
5. Maintaining members’ interest
and involvement
6. Growing the community
7. Developing the body of
knowledge
8. Moving the agenda forward and
adding value
Description
The on-going success of a community depends on
members’ continued interest and involvement. A good co-
ordinator will be constantly seeking to maintain that using
a variety of methods.
Members will come and go, and there will usually be a
need for on-going recruitment – both to replace lost
members and to “keep things fresh”.
Organising knowledge resources and identifying also
seeking to fill knowledge gaps;
Recognition and reward of community members and
particularly co-ordinators; Help in removing barriers to
community membership; and and involvement of
communities in key management decisions and problem-
solving
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4) Information Technology Infrastructure
• The information technology infrastructure includes data
processing, storage, and communication technologies and
systems
• One way of systematically viewing the IT infrastructure is to
consider the capabilities it provides in four important aspects :
– Reach relates to access and connection, and the efficiency of such
access
– Depth focuses on the detail and amount of information that can be
effectively communicated over a medium
– Richness of a medium is based on its ability to provide multiple
cues simultaneously via body language, facial expression, tone of
voice, Provide quick feedback, Personalize messages
– Aggregation of large volumes of information drawn from multiple
sources
[Daft & Lengel1986; Evans & Wurster,1999]

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5) Common Knowledge
• Common knowledge refers to the organization’s accumulative
experiences in understanding a category of knowledge and
activities, and the organizing principles that support
communication and coordination [Zander& Kogut, 1995]
• Provides unity to the organization:
– Common language and vocabulary
– Recognition of individual knowledge domains
– Common cognitive schema
– Shared norms
– Elements of specialized knowledge that are common across
individuals sharing knowledge
• Common knowledge helps enhance the value of an individual
expert’s knowledge by integrating it with the knowledge of
others

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KMI Summary

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Challenges in building KM System
1. Culture
– getting people to share knowledge
2. Knowledge evaluation
– assessing the worth of knowledge across the firm
3. Knowledge processing
– documenting how decisions are reached
4. Knowledge implementation
– organizing knowledge and integrating it with the
processing strategy for final deployment

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(CSLC) Versus (KMSLC)
• Differences:
Conventional System Life Cycle (CSLC)
System development is primarily
sequential
System testing normally at end of cycle
Process-driven “specify then build”
System analysts deal with information
from the user
Users know the problem but not the
solution
KM System Life Cycle (KMSLC)
KMSLC is incremental and interactive
KM system testing evolves from
beginning of the cycle
KMSLC is result-oriented “start slow and
grow”
Knowledge developers deal with
knowledge from domain expert
Domain expert know both the problem
and the solution
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(CSLC) Versus (KMSLC)

Key similarities:
• Both begin with a problem and end with a
solution
• Both begin with information gathering or
capture
• Testing is essentially the same to make sure the
system is right and it is the right system
• Both developers must choose the appropriate
tool(s) for designing their respective systems

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(CSLC) Versus (KMSLC)

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Stages of KMSLC

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 1) Evaluate Existing Infrastructure
System justification:
• Will current knowledge be lost through retirement,
transfer, or departure to other firms?
• Is the proposed KM system needed in several
locations?
• Are experts available and willing to help in building
a KM system?
• Does the problem in question require years of
experience and cognitive reasoning to solve?

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The Feasibility Question
• A feasibility study addresses several questions:
– Is the project doable? Is it affordable? Is it appropriate? Is
it practicable?
• Areas of feasibility:
– Economic feasibility determines to what extent a new
system is cost-effective
– Technical feasibility is determined by evaluating hardware
and supportive software within company’s IT
infrastructure
– Behavioral feasibility includes training management and
employees in the use of the KM system

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Role of Strategic Planning

• Risky to drop with a new KM system without strategizing.

Consider the following:
– Vision
Forecast what the business is trying to achieve, how it will be
done, and how the new system will achieve goals
– Resources
Check on the affordability of the business to invest in a new
KM system
– Culture
Is the company’s political and social environment amenable
to adopting a new KM system?

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2) Form the KM Team
• Identify the key stakeholders/investor in the
prospective KM system.
• Team success depends on:
– Caliber/ ability of team members in the
project
– Team size of the project
– Complexity of the project
– Leadership and team motivation
– Promising more than can be realistically
delivered

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3) Knowledge Capture
• Explicit knowledge captured in repositories from
various media
• Tacit knowledge captured from company experts
using various tools and methodologies
• Knowledge developers capture knowledge from
experts in order to build the knowledge base
• Knowledge capture and transfer often carried out
through teams, not just individuals

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 Knowledge Capture and Transfer
Through Teams
Team performs Evaluate relationship between
a specialized task Outcome action and outcome
Achieved

Knowledge
Feedback Developer
Knowledge transfer
method selected
Knowledge stored in a
form usable by others
in the organization

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Selecting an Expert
• Knowledge base should represent expertise rather than the
expert
• Questions facing knowledge developer:
– How does one know the expert is in fact an expert?
– How would one know that the expert will stay with the
project?
– What backup should be available in case the project
loses the expert?
– How would the knowledge developer know what is and
what is not within the expert’s area of expertise?

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Role of the Knowledge Developer
• The architect of the system
• Job requires excellent communication skills,
knowledge capture tools, conceptual
thinking, and a personality that motivates
people
• Close contacts with the stakeholder
• Rapport with top management for ongoing
support

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Roles of Knowledge developer

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4) Design of the KM Blueprint
The KM system design (blueprint) addresses several issues:
• System interoperability and scalability with existing company IT
infrastructure
• Finalize scope of proposed KM system with realized net benefits
• Decide on required system components
• Develop the key layers of the KM architecture to meet company
requirements.
• Key layers are:
1. User interface
2. Authorized Access Control
3. Collaborative intelligence and filtering
4. Knowledge Enabling Application
5. Transport Internet layer
6. Middleware
7. Physical layer

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5) Testing the KM System

• Verification procedure
– ensures that the system is right
• Validation procedure
– ensures that the system is the right
system
• Validation of KM systems is not
guaranteed

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6) Implementing the KM System
• Converting a new KM system into actual operation
• This phase includes conversion of data or files
• This phase also includes user training
• Quality assurance is important, which includes checking for:
– Reasoning errors
– Ambiguity
– Incompleteness
– False representation (false positive and false negative)

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7) Manage change and reward structure
• Goal is to minimize struggle to change
– Experts
– Regular employees (users)

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8) Post System Evaluation

• Assess system impact in terms of effects on:

– People
– Procedures
– Performance of the business
• Areas of concern:
– Quality of decision making
– Attitude of end users
– Costs of knowledge processing and update
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Users versus expert

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Layer of KM Architecture

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Exercise

• Prepare a mind map for Chapter 5.

• Submit during next lecture session.
• Thank you 

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