Management Knowledge and Knowledge Management: Realism and Forms of Truth

This paper addresses the issue of truth and knowledge in management generally and knowledge management in particular. Based on ideas from critical realism and critical theory, it argues against the monovalent conceptualization of knowledge implicitly or explicitly held by many authors and aims instead to develop a characterization that recognises the rich and varied ways in which human beings may be said “to know”. It points out and conceptualises a fundamental dimension of knowledge that is generally ignored or cursorily treated within the literature, that is, “truth”. It identifies four forms of knowledge – propositional, experiential, performative and epistemological – and explores their characteristics, especially in terms of truth and validity. It points out some implications for knowledge management

SEED: a tool for disseminating systematic review data into Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the free-content online encyclopaedia, contains many heavily accessed pages relating to healthcare. Cochrane systematic reviews contain much high-grade evidence but dissemination into Wikipedia has been slow. New skills are needed to both translate and relocate data from Cochrane reviews to implant into Wikipedia pages. This letter introduces a programme to greatly simplify the process of disseminating the summary of findings of Cochrane reviews into Wikipedia pages

Transformational Leadership and Knowledge Management: Analysing the Knowledge Management Models

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mutual relationship between transformational leadership and knowledge management as well the potential effects of a transformational leader on his or her followers. In this paper, we review the role of transformational leadership in effective knowledge management and establish the emerging role of transformational leadership, as an ideal leadership style in building knowledge-based companies to achieve a higher degree of competitive advantage. The findings in this article are based upon previous empirical studies that illustrate the formulation of several propositions that contribute to the knowledge management processes. Our findings are based upon possible scenarios that impact transformational leadership and knowledge management using grounded theoretical research. Research limitations are twofold. One limitation is found in the prior literature indicating that past studies have posited that companies might lack the required capabilities or decide to decline from interacting with other companies (Caldwell & Ancona 1988), or even distrust sharing their knowledge (Kraut & Streeter 1995). And, second, our contribution to the literature lies in presenting a link between knowledge management and transformational leadership that incorporates the knowledge management processes that may impact the effectiveness of transformational leaders to enhance their capabilities to effectively play their roles within companies. In addition, managerial applications that may support knowledge management processes are proposed further research is necessary to finalise conclusions. The original value of this research provides an impetus of mutual interaction of knowledge management and transformational leadership

Exploiting tacit knowledge through knowledge management technologies

The purpose of this paper is to examine the contributions and suitability of the available knowledge management (KM) technologies, including the Web 2.0 for exploiting tacit knowledge. It proposes an integrated framework for extracting tacit knowledge in organisations, which includes Web 2.0 technologies, KM tools, organisational learning (OL) and Community of Practice (CoP). It reviews a comprehensive literature covering overview of KM theories, KM technologies and OL and identifies the current state of knowledge relating to tacit knowledge exploitation. The outcomes of the paper indicate that Internet and Web 2.0 technologies have stunning prospects for creating learning communities where tacit knowledge can be extracted from people. The author recommends that organisations should design procedures and embed them in their Web 2.0 collaborative platforms persuading employees to record their ideas and share them with other members. It is also recommended that no idea should be taken for granted in a learning community where tacit knowledge exploitation is pursued. It is envisaged that future research should adopt empirical approach involving Complex Adaptive Model for Tacit Knowledge Exploitation (CAMTaKE) and the Theory of Deferred Action in examining the effectiveness of KM technologies including Web 2.0 tools for tacit knowledge exploitation

Glossary of Knowledge Management

{Excerpt} Networks of people who work on similar processes or in similar disciplines and who come together to develop and share their knowledge in that field for the benefit of both themselves and their organization. Communities of practice maybe created formally or informally, and members can interact online or in person. Knowledge activities that have been identified as most widely used by an organization, often also called the knowledge life cycle or the knowledge value chain. They are to identify, create, store, share, and use knowledge, often in a two-way exchange. Two important requirements have to be fulfilled to achieve improvements from these activities: (i) the activities should be aligned or integrated into business processes; and (ii) the activities should be balanced in accordance with the specificities of each process and organization. A knowledge management solution should not focus only on one or two activities in isolation

Enriching Knowledge Management Coordination

{Excerpt} To manage knowledge—in the sense of making explicit and systematic efforts to enable vital individual and collective knowledge resources to be identified, created, stored, shared, and used for benefit—learning organizations build adaptive and generative institutions, systems and processes, and functions across leadership, organization, technology, and learning dimensions. Only by doing so can they, irrespective of configuration, hope to enjoy the capacity to act effectively to achieve shared vision. Concern for sound management of stocks and, increasingly, flows of knowledge is not a fad. To accomplish their missions, organizations must continually refresh their stocks of knowledge by being part of relevant flows of new knowledge. To this intent, communities (and networks) of practice have, since the mid-1990s, become an accepted part of organizational development. (In a mobile workforce,people are more likely to be aligned to their professional identity than to their organizational affiliation.) They are groups of like-minded, interacting people who filter, amplify, invest and provide, convene, build, and learn and facilitate to ensure more effective creation and sharing of knowledge in their domain. It is also recognized that a coordinating medium,or knowledge manager, is a key factor for managing knowledge in organizations, be that with reference to well-structured, ill-structured, or wicked problem solving. With decreasing bureaucracy and decentralization of operations, it makes sense to distribute leadership for organizational problem solving: the span of knowledge coordination should be as close as possible to relevant knowledge domains

Enhancing Knowledge Management Strategies

{Excerpt} Despite worldwide attention to strategic planning, the notion of strategic practice is surprisingly new. To draw a strategy is relatively easy but to execute it is difficult—strategy is both a macro and a micro phenomenon that depends on synchronization. One should systematically review, evaluate, prioritize, sequence, manage, redirect, and if necessary even cancel strategic initiatives

Cluster: Knowledge management

The Danish Research Centre for Organic Farming (DARCOF) was established in 1995 as a so-called "centre without walls" where the actual research is performed in interdisciplinary collaboration between the participating research groups. The remit of DARCOF is to coordinate research for organic farming, with a view to achieving optimum benefit from the allocated resources. Its aim is to elucidate the ideas and problems faced in organic farming through the promotion of high quality research of international stan-dard

Penerapan Knowledge Management pada Badan Perencanaan Pembangunan Daerah (Bappeda) Kota Pekanbaru

Regional Development Planning Agency (Bappeda) of Pekanbaru city is one of the local government institutions accordance with their tasks to help heads of regions in organizing of government in development planning. Regional development planning must reflect the reality of the needs of an area, which be functioning as a plan to improve the use of available public resources in the region. One of the problems that occur is Bappeda can not be separated from the various constraints such as the lack of documents availability of study results or study to formulate the development planning program. There are still a lack of quantity and quality of human resources in the Bappeda environment, so it is difficult to make a quality and on time planing. Meanwhile, high and rapid of development and growth of the Pekanbaru city which must be balanced by Bappeda to produce planning products that can answer development and changes of region in the future. By applying the knowledge management is believed to have an important role in helping to improve the effectiveness of Bappeda because it can encourage the use of prior knowledge to improve the quality of decision making process. In addition, knowledge management can also serve as a tool in the process of organizational change, because the knowledge management can help to build a culture of learning within an organization. Learn to perform activities which they are responsible should be getting better over time. Based on this, researchers interested in conducting a qualitative research on the application of knowledge management in Bappeda Pekanbaru City.Theoretical concept used by the author is the theory of knowledge management Ismail Nawawi are: human, process, technology, content and the factors that affect the implementation of knowledge management in the organization. This study used a qualitative research with descriptive study. In collecting the data, the researcher used interview, observation and documentation.The results of this study indicate that Bappeda has implemented knowledge management, although there are still deficiencies in the implementation process, for example such as lack of awareness to share information among employees outside the meeting activities. But the advantages are Bappeda continue to make changes for the better as the enactment of theimplementation of an online system to provide information of evelopment activities to the society which is currently only up to the district level

Strategic Knowledge Measurement and Management

Knowledge and intellectual capital are now recognized as vital resources for organizational survival and competitive advantage. A vast array of knowledge measures has evolved, spanning many disciplines. This chapter reviews knowledge measures focusing on groups of individuals (such as teams, business and organizations), as they reflect the stock or flow of knowledge, as well as enabling processes that enhance knowledge stocks and flows. The chapter emphasizes the importance of organizational value chains, pivotal talent pools and the link between knowledge and competitive success, in understanding the significance of today’s knowledge measures, and opportunities for future research and practice to enhance them