Knowledge Communities

In this article you will read about what knowledge communities are, their strategies, tools and processes.

What are knowledge communities?

Knowledge communities (KC) can be defined as:

“Knowledge communities are groups of people who share common challenges, opportunities or a passion for a given topic, and who collaborate to deepen their understanding of that topic through ongoing learning and knowledge sharing.”(AIA Knowledge Communities)

The theoretical aspect of Knowledge communities is based on managing technology, and managing human beings who share their knowledge effectively. The sharing of knowledge further depends upon information seekers who are in need of a certain type of knowledge. So that they can perform certain tasks with confidence and knowledge sources may have all the required information. The theoretical aspect is implemented in such a way so that effective knowledge sharing is possible between knowledge seekers and the knowledge source. This facet helps seekers and sources to be aware of their requirements and resource.

The concept of Knowledge Communities is largely derived from what is known as community of practice (CoP). The term was coined in 1998 by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger who claimed that communities of practice are everywhere and that we are generally involved in a number of them whether at work, school, home, or in our civic and leisure interests. In some groups we are core members, in others we are more at the margins. (Smith, 2003)

Towards the end of last century the idea of knowledge sharing was put to use in corporate world and a broader form of CoP evolved which was known as “knowledge communities”.

“The basic difference between CoP and KC is that the scope of member participation is clearly defined by job description (such as farmer’s community) in CoP, whereas in the case of KC member participation is wide open and covers in some cases, all the employees working in a big organization. “(Yamazaki, 2004)

KC was first put to practice by Xerox which was faced with a global IT infrastructure transition project. Top managers decided to launch a knowledge-sharing initiative which was called the Transition Alliance. The Alliance comprised fifty IT professionals responsible for managing 70,000 desktop workstations, nearly 1,200 servers, and networking hardware on five continents. It was observed that the motivation for learning and developing at an individual level seemed greater in this community structure than in other organizational forms. This had important implications for the longer-term job performance of the participants. (Storck and Hill, 2000) Since then large corporations have used KC with documented positive results.

KC Strategies

KC is based on the idea that knowledge and insight are created and acquired when humans interact with each other and their environment. Any strategy to implement KC therefore must emphasize on the need for a diverse range of social interactions, such as one-on-one conversations, information and communication technology (ICT) tools, group discussion, research projects and presentations. Storck and Hill (2000) identified six guiding principles that are instrumental to the success of organizational learning. These are stated below and are applicable to KC in a corporate environment:

-Design an interaction format that promotes openness and allows for serendipity.
-Build upon a common organizational culture.
-Demonstrate the existence of mutual interests after the initial success at resolving issues and achieving corporate goals.
-Leverage those aspects of the organizational culture that respect the value of collective learning.
-Embed knowledge-sharing practices into the work processes of the group.
-Establish an environment in which knowledge sharing is based on processes and cultural norms that are defined by the community rather than other parts of the organization. (Storck et. al, 2000) Apart from these the management of both technology and context in order to provide effective support for learning and knowledge sharing is essential.

KC Tools

In this section, the aim is to clarify which IT tools support knowledge communities. Most of the KC today is on-line; there is very little interest in face to face KC. The tools generally used for KC are therefore e-mail, groupware, e-learning systems teleconferencing etc. There are however constraints to the usefulness of these technologies. Face-to-face interaction can sometimes be very crucial for example in developing and reinforcing trust relationships between team members. Most knowledge communities have predefined Knowledge Management component architectures which are based on knowledge portals, components, and databases. These architectures act as tools for organizing and classifying knowledge in a proficient manner. In Knowledge Management, a portal is the base source from where members of a knowledge community should start to enter, find, and access knowledge using the various KM methods. Most of search tools used by knowledge communities are server-based systems which can handle the portals of different organizations. These tools should be designed so that they follow a top-down design approach. Due to their basic inherent complexity, these are centralized, inflexible and slow to respond to change in the knowledge base.

If the knowledge base has to handled by an individual rather than a community, then the approach of the design will be bottom-up, and the complexity level of the tool will be minimum. Of course, all tools used for the infrastructure have to be maintained so that they can provide the required knowledge in a classified manner whenever necessary. The knowledge communities use the knowledge assets for the applications like product development by collaboration, automation of different business processes and real time collaborations for online applications. If the applications are user-centric, then the storage cost can be decreased with the help of knowledge assets provided and maintained by the knowledge communities. On the basis of the knowledge base maintained by many communities, it is possible to enhance the capabilities of the search based applications. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools can only provide a foundational infrastructure and environment to support learning. But these tools alone are not sufficient to stimulate effective learning in knowledge communities. “Technology however has a central part to play in providing the media and infrastructure for learning in and between knowledge communities if motivation and the learning context already exist.” (Barrett, et. al., 2004)

Discussion: KC Processes The processes which are used in knowledge communities are the following:

1. Creation or construction of the knowledge database. This is main process in developing the information database, and it should be implemented efficiently so that other processes can reuse this process if needed.

2. Storing the knowledge so that it can be used for learning and implementing the knowledge database. This process also deals with the retrieval of information if data loss is evident.

3. The next process deals with the transfer of knowledge from one category to another. There are different methods available for the transfer and anyone of them can be chosen according to the requirements. Transfer processes are different for various types of users, and can occur at a range of levels.

4. One of the other important processes supported by knowledge community is application. The knowledge base is useful only if it is capable of providing useful information to the user.

5. The last process deals with the learning, which is useful for the knowledge base organization. This process deals with how to learn what is needed, and why it is required.

Knowledge communities have their utility in areas of high structure, automation of processes and tasks, and a stable business environment. Applications should be based on conditions that are most suitable to the pre- specifications of the knowledge base. The structure of these applications should be capable of making use of the knowledge communities. The automation processes which new technologies are used on and based on workflows can get proper backup from the knowledge communities by other systems. Such applications use the knowledge base generated by these communities to achieve lower costs, higher quality, and greater market share for existing products and services. The process of establishing KC is not straightforward. The need for it or the context of knowledge sharing must be defined first. Then we must focus on where to get this knowledge from, that is, which members of the organization or community to focus on. Once the community and the Knowledge context have been decided we need to decide on the media. Putting KC in place is not very difficult but maintaining and running it efficiently is, especially when the community members are expected to have a loss of interest in future or when there is lack of trust among users. Periodic checks and reviews are therefore very essential to sustain any KC.

Relation to knowledge management

KC is very much related to knowledge management. Knowledge management is capturing, organizing, and storing knowledge and experiences of individual workers and groups within an organization and making this information available to others in the organization. This is what KC does too so that we acknowledge that KC is a very effective tool for knowledge management.

An example of KC system

A good example of the use of KC at corporate level is Hewlett Packard’s IT Resource Center (ITRC) which brings together engineers, internal IT staff and customers. The community uses intranet or extranet and is focused on specific products or issues. These inter-organizational communities have membership running in thousands and they cover topics such as business recovery planning and operating systems software. Community participants can ask questions and receive answers within a short period of time. So when systems administrators have problems, they can post symptoms electronically on the intranet and receive detailed help on how to proceed within minutes. For such communities to succeed, members must have mutual trust. Hewlett Packard deals with mistrust by using a system of user profiles and ratings. Community members get to rate each other’s responses from 1 to 10. The response now has a ‘credit rating’ and the query poser can easily assess the utility of this answer. (Barrett, et. al., 2004) Such success stories of KC abound in today’s corporate world.

Conclusion

It’s a well established fact that people with common interest facing similar kind of problems learn faster when in a group. The interaction between individuals creates a knowledge base which is of utmost importance to each member of this community. Knowledge communities are based on this basic premise. They try to bring people together mostly using today’s advanced ICT tools. KC has found tremendous acceptance in the corporate world owing to their simplicity and usefulness. ICT tools work best in creating KC when a sufficient stimulus to learn already exists in the community. ICT tools however have their constraints and face-toface interaction becomes vital sometimes. For a KC to succeed there must be a learning context, sufficient members to contribute knowledge, a media and mutual trust among members. If such requirements exist, KC can become an indispensable tool for any organization or community. The knowledge communities help organizations to identify their knowledge priorities, so that these organizations can upgrade their tools to be more user-friendly in handling the knowledge platform. It helps the organization to develop more appropriate, meaningful, and useful knowledge management bases.

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Knowledge Mapping

This module focuses on the basics of Knowledge Mapping, its importance, principles, and methodologies.

Key Questions

What is K-map?
What does the K-map show, and what do we map?
Why is K-mapping so important?
What are some of the key principles, methodologies, and questions for K-mapping?
How do we create K-map?

Background

Each of the past centuries has been dominated by single technology. The eighteenth century was the time of the great mechanical systems accompanying the Industrial Revolution. The nineteenth century was the age of steam engine. After these, the key technology has been information gathering, processing and distribution. Among other developments, the installation of world wide telephone networks, the invention of radio and television, the birth and unprecedented growth of the computer industry and the launching of communication satellites are significant. Now people started to think that only information is not enough, what matters is Knowledge. So there has been seen shift from Information to Knowledge.

A bit of information without context and interpretation is data such as numbers, symbols.

Information is a set of data with context and interpretation. Information is the basis for knowledge.

Knowledge is a set of data and information, to which is added expert opinion and experience, to result in a valuable asset which can be used or applied to aid decision making. Knowledge may be explicit and/or tacit, individual and/or collective.

The term -Knowledge Mapping- seems to be relatively new, but it is not. We have been practising this in our everyday life, just what we are not doing is – we are not documenting it, and we are not doing it in a systematic way. Knowledge Mapping is all about keeping a record of information and knowledge you need such as where you can get it from, who holds it, whose expertise is it, and so on. Say, you need to find something at your home or in your room, you can find it in no time because you have almost all the information/knowledge about -what is where- and -who knows what- at your home. It is a sort of map set in your mind about your home. But, to set such a map about your organisation and organisational knowledge in your mind is almost impossible. This is where K-map becomes handy and shows details of every bit of knowledge that exists within the organisation including location, quality, and accessibility; and knowledge required to run the organisation smoothly – hence making you able to find out your required knowledge easily and efficiently.

Below are some of the definitions:

It’s an ongoing quest within an organization (including its supply and customer chain) to help discover the location, ownership, value and use of knowledge artifacts, to learn the roles and expertise of people, to identify constraints to the flow of knowledge, and to highlight opportunities to leverage existing knowledge.

Knowledge mapping is an important practice consisting of survey, audit, and synthesis. It aims to track the acquisition and loss of information and knowledge. It explores personal and group competencies and proficiencies. It illustrates or “maps” how knowledge flows throughout an organization. Knowledge mapping helps an organization to appreciate how the loss of staff influences intellectual capital, to assist with the selection of teams, and to match technology to knowledge needs and processes.

- Denham Grey

Knowledge mapping is about making knowledge that is available within an organisation transparent, and is about providing the insights into its quality.

- Willem-Olaf Huijsen, Samuel J. Driessen, Jan W. M. Jacobs

Knowledge mapping is a process by which organisations can identify and categorise knowledge assets within their organisation – people, processes, content, and technology. It allows an organisation to fully leverage the existing expertise resident in the organisation, as well as identify barriers and constraints to fulfilling strategic goals and objectives. It is constructing a roadmap to locate the information needed to make the best use of resourses, independent of source or form.

-W. Vestal, APQC, 2002

(American Productivity & Quality Center)

Knowledge Map describes what knowledge is used in a process, and how it flows around the process. It is the basis for determining knowledge commonality, or areas where similar knowledge is used across multiple process. Fundamentally, a process knowledge map cntains information about the organisation?s knowledge. It describes who has what knowledge (tacit), where the knowledge resides (infrastructure), and how the knowledge is transferred or disseminated (social).

-IBM Global Services

How are the Knowledge Maps created?

Knowledge maps are created by transferring tacit and explicit knowledge into graphical formats that are easy to understand and interpret by the end users, who may be managers, experts, system developers, or anybody.

Basic steps in creating K-maps:

Basic steps – creating K-maps for specific task

The outcomes of the entire process, and their contributions to the key organisational activities
Logical sequences of all the activities needed to achieve the goal
Knowledge required for each activity {gives the knowledge gap}
Human resource required to undertake each activity {shows if recruitment is needed}

What do we map?

The followings are the objects we map:

Explicit knowledge
subject
purpose
location
format
ownership
users
access right

Tacit knowledge

expertise
skill
experience
location
accessibility
contact address
relationships/networks

Tacit organisational process knowledge

the people with the internal processing knowledge

Explicit organisational process knowledge

codified organisational process knowledge

What do the knowledge maps show?

Knowledge map shows the sources, flows, constraints, and sinks of knowledge within an organisation. It is a navigational aid to both explicit information and tacit knowledge, showing the importance and the relationships between knowledge stores and the dynamics. The following list will be more illustrative in this regard:

Available knowledge resources
Knowledge clusters and communities
Who uses what knowledge resources
The paths of knowledge exchange
The knowledge lifecycle
What we know we don?t know (knowledge gap)

Activity: 1

>> Can you create your personal knowledge map which shows the types and location of knowledge resources you use, the channels you use to access knowledge?

Where does knowledge reside?

Knowledge can be found in

Correspondents, internal documents
Library
Archives (past project documents, proposals)
Meetings
Best practices
Experience
Corporate memory

Activity: 2

>> What are the other places where you can find knowledge?

What are the other things to be mapped?

Benefits of K-mapping

In many organisations there is a lack of transparency of organisation wide knowledge. Valuable knowledge is often not used because people do not know it exists, even if they know the knowledge exists, they may not know where. These issues lead to the knowledge mapping. Followings are some of the key reasons for doing the knowledge mapping:

to find key sources of knowledge creation
to encourage reuse and prevent reinvention
to find critical information quickly
to highlight islands of expertise
to provide an inventory and evaluation of intellectual and intangible assets
to improve decision making and problem solving by providing applicable information
to provide insights into corporate knowledge

The map also serves as the continuously evolving organisational memory, capturing and integrating the key knowledge of an organisation. It enables employees learning through intuitive navigation and interrogation of the information in the map, and through the creation of new knowledge through the discovery of new relationships. Simply speaking, K-map gives employees not only -know what-, but also -know how-.

Key principles of Knowledge Mapping

Because of their power, scope, and impact, the creation of organisational-level knowledge map requires senior management support as well as careful planning
Share your knowledge about identifying, finding, and tracking knowledge in all forms
Recognise and locate knowledge in a wide variety of forms: tacit, explicit, formal, informal, codified, personalised, internal, external, and permanent
Knowledge is found in processes, relationships, policies, people, documents, conversations, links and context, and even with partners
It should be up-to-date and accurate

K-mapping – key questions

Knowledge map provides an assessment of existing and required knowledge and information in the following categories:

What knowledge is needed for work?
Who needs what?
Who has it?
Where does it reside?
Is the knowledge tacit or explicit?
What issues does it address?
How to make sure that the K-mapping will be used in an organisation?

Note:

K-maps should be easily accessible to all in the organisation
It should be easy to understand, update and evolve
It should be updated regularly
It should be an ongoing process since knowledge landscapes are continuously shifting and evolving

Offline Readings:

K-mapping tools
K-mapping tool selection
Creating knowledge maps by exploiting dependent relationships
Creating knowledge structure map?
White pages
KM jargon and glossary

Online Resource: http://www..voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KnowledgeMapping

K-mapping Tools:

MindMapping
Inspiration
IHMC (cmap.ihmc.us/) (need to have.NET Framework and JavaRunTime installed in your computer)

(Learn more about KM tool selection at http://www.voght.com/cgi-bin/pywiki?KmToolSelection )
________________________________________

Categorised K-mapping

Social Network Mapping:

This shows networks of knowledge and patterns of interaction among members, groups, organisations, and other social entities who knows who, who goes to whom for help and advice, where the information enters and leaves the groups or organisation, which forums and communities of practice are operational and generating new knowledge.

Competency Mapping:

With this kind of mapping, one can create a competency profile with skill, positions, and even career path of an individual. And, this can also be converted into the?organisational yellow pages? which enables employees to find needed expertise in people within the organisation.

Process-based Knowledge Mapping:

This shows knowledge and sources of knowledge for internal as well as external organisational processes and procedures. This includes tacit knowledge (knowledge in people such as know-how, and experience) and explicit knowledge (codified knowledge such as that in document).

Conceptual Knowledge Mapping:

Also sometimes called -taxonomy-, it is a method of hierarchically organising and classifying content. This involves in labelling pieces of knowledge and relationships between them. A concept can be defined as any unit of thought, any idea that forms in our mind [Gertner, 1978]. Often, nouns are used to refer to concepts [Roche, 2002]. Relations form a special class of concepts [Sowa, 1984]: they describe connections between other concepts. One of the most important relations between concepts is the hierarchical relation (subsumption), in which one concept (superconcept) is more general than another concept (subconcept) like Natural Resource Management and Watershed Management. This mapping should be able to relate similar kind of projects and workshops conducting/conducted by two different departments, making them more integrated.