Role of Opinion Leaders and Change Agents in the Knowledge Management Paradigm
The Role of Opinion Leaders and Change Agents in Diffusion of Innovations Knowledge management systems are effective when the innovations are pioneered by organizations. Apart from the innovations themselves, they have to be diffused throughout the organization to benefit the employees. The key question here is that when there are thousands of artifacts and documents […]
Choosing the Right Business School and Major in the Course
An important decision that confronts all aspiring management graduates is about the kind of business school that they would want to join after clearing the entrance procedures. This decision must be taken after due diligence is done on the various business schools and after careful thought has gone into the selection process. There are many […]
Theory of Human Resource Development (HRD)
This module covers the HRD function in organizations from a wide variety of perspectives. At the outset, after the introduction to the module in the previous article, it is time to look at some theoretical perspectives about the HRD function. When the field of management science and organizational behavior was in its infancy, the HRD […]
Digital Piracy and Intellectual Property Rights
The Problem of Digital Piracy In recent years, the corporate world has been wary of theft of intellectual property and digital piracy that is impacting their bottom lines and eroding their profits. To understand, how digital piracy impacts businesses, consider the case of Microsoft that comes out with a new version of its proprietary operating […]
What is Group Discussion and How is it Different from a Debate
Hiring is not an easy process as it seems to be. For hiring a suitable candidate, recruiters may conduct several rounds to assess the skills of that person, so that the company is sure enough that it is choosing the appropriate candidate for the vacant position. Group Discussion is a part of the hiring process, […]
The previous articles in this module introduced the term knowledge management and presented some real world examples of how knowledge management works in contemporary organizations. This article examines the ways and means to build a successful knowledge management system and the process by which essential components of the knowledge management systems can be designed and incorporated.
To take the example of the famous Indian IT major, Infosys, the company and its founders have an abiding commitment to knowledge management as is exemplified in their assertion that their key assets are their people and that their brand derives its value from intellectual capital.
Towards this end, Infosys has a highly successful knowledge management system in place that is vertical as well as horizontal in design and approach. It is vertical because it covers all the components of the traditional hierarchy driven organizations and it is horizontal because it incorporates the entire gamut of divisions and groups in its ambit.
The key aspect about the knowledge management system is that it does away with hierarchical boundaries meaning that all employees are treated equal in the creation, sharing, and dissemination of knowledge.
In other words, any employee at any level can contribute and any employee at any level can participate in discussions and knowledge sharing with those higher or lower in the hierarchy.
The second aspect of a successful knowledge management system is that it must make the preservation and furnishing of project artifacts mandatory which means that project managers have a responsibility to upload the project documents into the knowledge management system upon completion of the projects. In this way, discipline and a structured system of knowledge dissemination as well as a rigorous method of sharing and distributing of knowledge is assured.
The third aspect of a successful knowledge management system is that the employees who give more than they take must be rewarded for their contributions to the knowledge management system and the rewards system in place in the organization must have incentives for employees whose contributions are valuable.
Further, a successful knowledge management system would also enforce strict quality control wherein the documents submitted to the portal are checked for accuracy and reliability and only those that are found to match the quality standards are accepted.
Moreover, the key aspect here is that there must be both voluntary and mandatory participation wherein employees are required to contribute a certain amount of time compulsorily and above that, it must be made voluntary.
The real purpose of a successful knowledge management system is to avoid redundancy and to prevent duplication of effort. After all, who wants to reinvent the wheel and spend time doing things that has already been done by others in the organization.
Hence, a successful knowledge management system would not only help the employees avoid redoing work but also introduce synergies because of complementary activities that can be taken from the system and supplemented with work that is specific to the project.
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