Monday, December 14, 2009

Knowledge management in the public sector: stakeholder partnerships in the public policy development

Summary
This paper discusses the importance of the Knowledge Management in the public sector. The government has come to realise its importance since it plays a major role in coming up with a good public policy. A public policy is said to be effective through enhance decision making within public services. Developing a knowledge-based partnership is considered to be a critical success factor in creating, disseminating, transferring and applying the knowledge between the public sector and stakeholders. This is the KM process that needs to be practiced by the government and stakeholders to achieve greater participation and knowledge sharing. This is very important as the paper has stressed that knowledge is a core strategic asset. The partnership can result in coming up with issues as there will always be different views, misunderstanding and value-based disagreements. To have the desired results, communication must be knowledge-effective and providing a feedback will help resolved these issues. Both the government and stakeholders have their own capacity to develop a good public policy. Therefore, it is important to have an active participation in decision-making and to form a knowledge-based within partnership. This increases the collaboration but must be guided by KM goals and strategies. In this way, this can lead to effective and efficient means of sharing and transferring of knowledge. Thus, public policy becomes more effective.

Review
This paper has stressed the need for comprehensive KM within and in support of the public sector. It reveals that KM plays a vital role in the public sector for delivering an effective public policy through partnership with stakeholders. From the analysis of the issues as a cause of partnership, the commentator is suggesting to have a collaboration models between the public sector agencies themselves as well as between public sector and stakeholders. Deeper studies on KM in the public sector should be taken into consideration to look at ways of enhancing the public service delivery.

Posted by Chariebel Enerio for Knowledge Regiment
Article summary for Week 5, Class 7

Rooney, D. (2005). “Knowledge, Economy, Technology and Society: The Politics of Discourse”. Telematics and Informatics. 22(4), pp. 405-422.

Type of article: Empirical research

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Society, WSIS, Public Policy, Technocracy, Knowledge Regiment

Summary (292 words):

This article aims to provide an outlook of how knowledge is treated in contemporary knowledge-related policy documents to audiences, particularly members of World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) who concern about equity, preserving culture, justice, human right and so on.

By reviewing literatures, the author found that knowledge is an elusive thing which relates to language, culture, power and development. Knowledge societies are not industrial societies permeated by knowledge, but that knowledge societies are permeated by industrial values, which strongly associate with technology.

The empirical research is undertaken by using computer-based analysis applications (Leximancer and Pajeck) to analyze 1.3 million words corpus of knowledge-related policy documents from local, state, national and supranational institutions throughout the industrialized and industrializing world. The data collection process is based on the assumption that public and economic policies’ objective is to make society more knowledgeable and wise about business, culture and environment.

The results indicate that governance, technology and business are the most prominent clusters. Moreover, business cluster is less meaningfully connected to the other clusters, and no cluster that has knowledge as its central focus. The author concluded that current policy documents reflect the technocratic perception which emphasizes the technological and business aspect, and consider knowledge as a convenient vehicle without considering its nature and its connection with social, cultural and economic realms. The author provides three implications to contribute to WSIS objectives, which are (1) we need to choose what politics we want, the politics of emancipation of the politics of technocracy; (2) WSIS members can develop a better knowledge policy which reflect a social and cultural aspect of knowledge; (3) there is an opportunity for WSIS members to progress toward knowledge society by the discourse about knowledge that is not technocratic and unbalanced.

Review (108 words):

This article targets WSIS members, so it brings a specific perspective of humanitarian and culture aspects of knowledge. The author has carefully explained his methodology, and discussed his finding not only from computer-based generated results, but also from comprehensive examples to underpin his claim.

This article has show the manifest inclination and tendency of treating knowledge as a vehicle to achieve technological and business goals in public and economic policy documents. However, the author has not provided a strong evidence to change that inclination. Therefore, this article is appropriate for WSIS members who concern about humanity, culture and social network, but it is not convincing for other audiences.

By Minh Pham - Knowledge Regiment

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

MMIM503 - Lecture 4 Summary & Review

Article Name: A Framework of Knowledge Management Systems: Issues & Challenges for Theory and Practice.

Author: Jungpil Hahn, Mani R. Subramani

Publication: Knowledge Management Systems 


Keywords: Information in organizations, knowledge management, knowledge management systems, organizational behaviour, organizational learning.

Summary: (259 Words)

Knowledge management concepts and practices in organizations are increasingly becoming important and firms are making momentous IT investments in deploying knowledge management systems (KMS). Knowledge management is the systemic and organizationally specified process for acquiring, organizing, and communicating knowledge of employees so that other employees may make use of it to be more effective and productive in their work.This paper supplies an in depth research on knowledge management systems by proposing a developed framework called “Locus of Knowledge”. This framework is comprised of:- Document Repository (Data Warehousing)- Yellow Pages of Experts (Expertise Profiles and Databases)- Collaborative Filtering (Internets and Search Engines)- Electronic Discussion ForumThis framework provides a means to explore issues related to KMS and unifying dimensions underlying different types of KMS. As the basis of value creation increasingly depends on the influence of the intangible assets of firms, knowledge management systems (KMS) are emerging as powerful sources of competitive advantage. However, the general recognition of the importance of such systems seems to be accompanied by a technology-induced drive to implement systems with inadequate consideration of the fundamental knowledge problems that the KMS are likely to solve.The possibilities that authors have discussed and raised within this paper is all about the size and diversity of networks, the maintenance of knowledge flows, and the long term effects of the use of KMS. This will facilitate a framework for the organizations as a reference that would enhance the usability of Knowledge Management System to its fullest and will also open avenues for future perspectives.
Review: (105 Words)This article is one of unique writings from other articles. It portrays a sense of formal knowledge management framework and its methodology. One of the beauties about this article is that it explored positive, neutral and negative views of the topic and provided with clear evidences and investigations of each author.One of the few weaknesses of the articles is that it’s not targeting one particular audience and keeping the views quite general. Conclusion is well built but leaves me with few questions to explore and search, which is on the other hand, is productive for audience. Overall it’s a nice article and worth reading.
By Afraz from Knowledge_Regiment group

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

MMIM503 - Lecture 4 Summary & Review

Author: Paul H. J. Hendriks (2001)

Summary: 265 words

The article, “Many rivers to cross: from ICT to knowledge management systems, is an empirical research paper, intended for IT/IS executives and knowledge managers. The focus of the study is to provide an assessment framework for evaluating the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in organisational knowledge management (KM).

The paper begins with the review of a number of literatures on ICT and KM, and summarising two distinctions for classifying the various KM approaches. First, it distinguishes between engineering approaches and management approaches. Second, it distinguishes between four groups of approaches based on their emphasis in terms of content, which are knowledge storage approaches, knowledge flow approaches, organizational learning approaches and knowledge measurement approaches.

Based on these two distinctions, the author identifies five dimensions of KM and integrates them into a framework. There are three sides to the KM framework: (1) the reflection side includes the relevance of knowledge to the organisation; (2) the content side involves the nature of knowledge, the organisational perspective, and the dynamic nature of knowledge; (3) the action side includes interventions and measures targeted at affecting the organisations as a knowledge system.

The author further claims the five dimensions determine the potential value of ICT applications for KM, and summarise them into five key areas of discussion: (1) relationships between ICT and organizational relevance of knowledge; (2) relationships between ICT and knowledge categories (3) relationships between ICT and the organizational perspective on knowledge; (4) relationships between ICT and the dynamic character of knowledge; (5) relationships between ICT and other knowledge management measures. All five dimensions should be addressed together.


Critique: 71 words

The title of the paper straightforwardly defines the main theme, and the content is succinct, accurate and well-structured. The paper establishes a precise research scope based on a host of literatures. It adopts scientific research methods and techniques to present a holistic view of ICT and organisational KM. The strengths of the paper are using diagrams accompanied with textual analysis, making it easy and logical for readers to follow the discussion.

By Susan Yang - Knowledge Regiment group

Monday, November 23, 2009

MMIM503 - Lecture 3 Summary & Review

Article Name: Death by Information Overload
Author: Paul Hemp
Publication: Harvard Business Review
Audience: Practitioners


Summary: 259 words
This HBR article focuses on exposing and addressing the problems associated with information overload caused by the torrent of emails, instant messages, and so forth. Although it is acknowledged by everyone that information is the inevitable potent tool of the knowledge worker, unmanaged information access can be overwhelming and disadvantageous to both individuals and companies. The author identifies the problems faced by individuals and companies and goes on to suggest solutions to alleviate them. While the problems for individuals is primarily piling up of information and inability to process it at the same pace, the major issue for companies is loss of productivity and efficiency. Employees spend a considerable amount of time processing email not all of which is of real value. Studies by Microsoft show that a single interruption will take on an average of 24 minutes to return to the suspended task. Another concern is the hold-up of decision making due to the ‘online silence’ of the recipient whose reply might be required to proceed on a major project. However, many organizations fail to acknowledge this problem partly because it is not easy to quantify the costs and consequences of information overload.The solutions suggested by the author include good use of technology tools in the market like email filters; twitter feed streamlining, work pattern sensors etc. to address individual and organizational productivity issues. The author strongly advises that it is necessary to make a conscious effort to manage information overload at a personal level and bring about cultural changes in organizations to tackle this multi dimensional problem.

Review: 64 words
A genuine practitioner oriented article with many tips to manage information overload at an individual and organizational level. The examples cited are really enlightening. The article is set out with clear structure and headings to guide the reader and therefore contributes to better comprehension. However, I thought the article heavily dwelt upon email and communication information that it could have been more aptly titled.

By Githin - Knowledge Regiment group

Saturday, November 21, 2009

MMIM503 - Lecture 2 Summary & Review

David J. Pauleen (2004)
Knowledge Management: A Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing

Summary: 260 words
This article is a critique on another article written by Professor G.E. Gorman in the April column of Viewpoint in 2004. The author, Pauleen, criticises Professor Gorman for dismissing Knowledge Management (KM) by stating that KM is “a sheep in wolf’s clothing” and that it is no more an information management system, than library and information science is a card catalogue. Pauleen then explains and analyses the importance of KM and how KM contributes to the success of an organisation. He uses a quote from Larry Prusak – a guru in KM, to explain the difference between information and knowledge where information is considered two-dimensional, and knowledge is three dimensional. In other words, knowledge is how people perceive a piece of information. Different people may perceive the same piece of information differently depending on their background.

Knowledge is often absorbed in the workplace where the employees can observe and listen to experienced information professionals, which they may not learn from the textbooks. KM creates an environment that motivates people to share with others, which is a challenge for most organisations. The key component is to build trust that allows people to feel comfortable sharing knowledge, knowing that they will not be taken advantage as a result of this. In addition, organisations must be willing to give employees the space and time “to think, to explore, to research, and maybe even to sleep on it, as well as the spaces to meet, talk and create with others”, and Snowden (2003) emphasises that real knowledge sharing takes place in a shared social context.
Review: 49 words
This article is very straightforward and easy to understand. Knowledge Management seems to be broader than what others often think. On the other hand, some people tend to keep their knowledge to themselves, in order to feel more important and responsible – this eventually limits the scope of knowledge sharing.
By Anh Thu Le - Knowledge Regiment group