Title: Many Rivers to Cross from ICT to Knowledge Management Systems.

ARTICLE SUMMARY & Review (Week3-Class4) by Torrance Mayberry
(Group: Pennie, Ian, vijay, Helen Ng )

Author: Paul H. J. Hendricks
Audience: Academics, Knowledge Management Change Agents.
Theme: ICT acts as catalyst for knowledge management and ICT alone cannot make organizations more knowledgeable.
Aim: Discern relationships between ICT tools and knowledge.

The relationship between ICT tools and knowledge management has proven to be problematic. The advocates of ICT-driven knowledge management suggest ICT alone enables knowledge acquisition, knowledge transfer and distribution, and knowledge creation. In other words, alone, a pure engineering approach can make organisations more knowledgeable.

The advocates against a pure engineering approach acknowledge that ICT can act as a catalyst for knowledge management but they also argue that ICT tools primarily address data and information and not knowledge. In other words, a pure engineering approach ignores the management approach to knowledge.

Research conducted in the period 1993 – 1998 has shown that much of the knowledge management literature was biased towards a technological agenda. This research cites the engineering approach to knowledge was the dominant position in the knowledge management space. Moreover, the engineering approach to knowledge steered away from wider organisational issues and it ignored social and behavioral factors.

To address the ICT-knowledge management problem, one must make a clear distinction between the engineering approach and the management approach. Additionally, one needs to discern between the four classes to knowledge: the knowledge storage approach; the knowledge flow approach; the organizational learning approach; and the knowledge measurement approach. An understanding of these distinctions combined with a set of assessment criteria will provide rationale to establish a meaningful link from ICT to knowledge management.

Review
In conclusion, this article and title assumes the reader of the article has a clear understanding that there are many rivers to cross get knowledge and that we, in knowledge management, know where the rivers to be crossed are located.

A few questions to ponder for the reader of this summary:

1. What are the many rivers in your organisation?
2. Have the many rivers been defined?
3. Where are the crossings located for the many rivers?
4. What are the bridges that need to be constructed to reach the other side?

The Tools & Technologies Needed for Knowledge Management

ARTICLE SUMMARY & REVIEW (Week3-Class4)
(By MIM-SUMMER: Ashwini, Dick, Eleanor, Kai, Holger)

Title: The Tools and Technologies Needed for Knowledge Management (KM)

Theme: This article aims to provide an overview of KM software market, broadly Consisting of two categories: KM infra-structure tools and technologies and KM access software.

SUMMARY

The author, referring to different definitions of knowledge management, recognizes the enormous value that human resources bring to an organization. She suggests that effective leveraging of knowledge, enabled by appropriate technology infra-structure providing the base for establishment of KM solutions, leads to organization environments where knowledge sharing and collaboration becomes a ‘BAU’. KM infra-structure tools and KM access software are the two major categories of KM software market.

KM Infra-structure Tools and Technologies

Data Warehousing Infra-structure: These include tools and application software that focus on extraction and analysis of data captured from business applications to support business decision-making.

Content Retrieval/Management software: These tools, supporting un-structured data management requirements of KM initiatives, enable users to organize information at the object level based on topical areas rather than full documents.

Business-ware Management Systems (BWMS): They enable knowledge capture & use by providing support for real-time application integration and business process automation.

Collaborative Applications: They focus on core functions like email, shared folders/databases, group calendaring/scheduling, and custom applications for knowledge sharing and collaboration.

KM Access Software

Enterprise Information Portals (EIP): This software, augmented by KM tools, provides individual/group access to both structured and un-structured data.

Intellectual capital Management (ICM) Software: It builds and manages the employee competencies inventory, monitors and manages processes by transferring know-how into corporate policies and procedures.

Workforce/Skills management Applications: They determine location of corporate expertise, help in hiring/deploying/retaining employees for supporting KM initiatives.

Emerging KM Tools & Technologies

The new emerging technologies include ‘knowledge exchange platforms’ for trading in knowledge, corporate learning management software, knowledge workflow management software, and knowledge profiling technologies.

REVIEW

The article provides a bird’s eye view of the various tools and technologies available in the KM software market. The simple language, good writing style, logical flow of subject matter has served the intended purpose of introducing the reader to the tools and technologies needed in KM. However, the importance of adoption of these technologies by the ‘people’ component of a KM system has been totally ignored and there is a scope for improving the structure of subject matter.

Reference:
Duffy, J. (2001). The Tools and Technologies Needed for Knowledge Management, Information Management Journal, 35 (1), pp 64.