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?

To Boost Knowledge Transfer, Tell me a Story

MIM – KM Enlightenment Group – Clement, Des, Madalin, Satish, Raju, Teri

Lecture 3 : Week 3 Reading Summary and Review
To Boost Knowledge Transfer, Tell me a Story By Shad Morris and James B. Oldroyd

This is an article written to highlight the ways in which Knowledge transfer among the employees of an organisation can be achieved. The authors of this article have used a successful program of the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation, which they studied, as one of the examples of the ways Knowledge Management can be implemented. The program was initiated at the IFC by its Knowledge Management Managers as a voluntary program. The management at IFC created a site called SmartLessons on which employees could post their experiences and other useful information they wanted to share with their fellow employees in the form of short stories.

Morris and Oldroyd[2009] found that the concept of sharing of information between the employees in this form of Story-telling dramatically increased the capacity of the employees to absorb information. The authors list out the following as the reasons for the success of this program :
· Honesty was encouraged among the employees
· Contributors were was recognized and highlighted
· Increasing the flow of information through News Flashes and rewarding the best rated posts by the employees

This article has been written well and uses the example of the program at IFC to highlight the importance of Knowledge Management in the corporate world. It shows how organisations can benefit from free flow of information within the organisation. Story telling is one of key ways of implementing Knowledge Management and this article is one of the best examples.