Strategies for managing knowledge

When a company has obtained knowledge, it must be managed so that it can easily be obtained by those who need it. Knowledge management can be divided into two main strategies: the codification strategy and the personalisation strategy (Hansen et al., 1999).

The codification strategy involves converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge that can be stored in document repositories. If a company uses this strategy it must focus on establishing an IT infrastructure that can be used to categorise and query the knowledge repository effectively. The big advantage of this strategy is that the knowledge in the organisation becomes independent of the person who created it. The problem is that externalising knowledge is difficult and time-consuming. Certain concepts and models that exist inside of an individual’s head can be difficult to codify. It can be even more difficult for the knowledge-seeker to convert the explicate knowledge back into the same, or even similar tacit knowledge that is possessed by the knowledge creator.

The personalisation strategy focuses on transferring knowledge from person to person directly. This strategy also takes advantage of computers, but instead of using them directly as a source of knowledge, they are used to help employees get in touch with each other. Documents stored in computers are only skimmed through looking for relevant knowledge, but instead of using this knowledge directly, the attached contact information is used to reach people who have more information. This strategy requires a culture for taking the time to respond to colleagues who are searching for knowledge–telephones need to be answered promptly. Organisations can also create a directory where employees can look up who knows what. Some companies following this strategy expect employees to rotate offices.

Hansen et al. (1999) emphasises that it is important to choose one of these strategies as the main strategy, and not try to do well in both. They recommend an 80-20 split where one strategy is selected as the main strategy and the other strategy supports the main strategy. A company that tries to excel in both strategies, risks failing in both.

Which strategy one chooses is dependent of what kind of environment the company operates in. A company who does a high degree of specialised work with little reuse of solutions will benefit from the personalisation strategy. Especially in settings that require a high degree of tacit knowledge. The codification strategy suits those companies who want to be able to reuse their solutions and operate in a homogeneous environment.

The choice of knowledge management strategy will naturally affect the type of knowledge that will exist in the organisation. Those who choose a codification strategy will accumulate explicit knowledge, while those who focus on the personalisation will accumulate tacit knowledge.

Communities of Practice

Closely related to the personalisation strategy and the practice-based perspective of knowledge is the concept of Communities of Practice.

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a self-organised group of people organised in a fairly informal way, who share common interest in a topic and exchange experience and expertise by interacting with each other. These communities allow for high level of knowledge-sharing without the need to make the context clear in explicit form. The most used form of knowledge-sharing probably occurs in such communities (Rus and Lindvall, 2002).

In these communities, the more its members participate, the more they learn. And the more they learn, the more they identify with the group and the more involved in the group they become. Members of the same CoP share many of the same boundary objects–symbols such as documents, vocabulary, specialised jargon and concepts that provide focal points around which people can identify and interact (Thompson, 2005; Walsham, 2001).

Communities of Practice are formed by its members informally and without much hierarchy, and in order to function effectively the communities have to stay autonomous without any outside control. Attempts at managing CoP have often ended with the communities’ demise. However, it is possible to facilitate the growth of these communities through seeding their environment with tools and artefacts that communities can use. Thompson (2005) describes an interesting case where a company first seeded the company with artefacts that caused the growth of communities of practice, but later managed to destroy the communities by trying to exploit them.

Bibliography

M. Hansen, N. Nohria, and T. Tierney.

What’s your strategy for managing knowledge?
Harvard Business Review, 77 (2): 106-116, 1999.

I. Rus and M. Lindvall.

Knowledge management in software engineering.
IEEE software, pages 26-38, 2002.

M. Thompson.

Structural and epistemic parameters in communities of practice.
Organization Science, 16 (2): 151, 2005.

G. Walsham.

Knowledge management:: The benefits and limitations of computer systems.
European Management Journal, 19 (6): 599-608, 2001.