We have seen that
knowledge management essentially deals with acquisition, construction and
transfer or sharing of knowledge among the members of the organization, so as
to facilitate better accomplishment of organizational goals. Research findings
also indicate that the organizational culture and the communication strategy
adopted to facilitate free dialogue among the team members are the two critical
elements that were found resulting in effective knowledge sharing. The very
fact that knowledge is collated from and, in turn, shared among the members of
an organization and the role of culture in facilitating smooth sharing of
knowledge, only highlights the criticality of human resources in the management
of knowledge.
Learning in the
organizations mostly occurs within groups. Social learning may be defined as
the process by which knowledge and practices built in the system are
transmitted across different work situations and across time and procedures
that facilitate generative learning. This, in turn, enables an organization to
react creatively to unanticipated developments. Research findings also indicate
that effective social learning in the organizations calls for empowerment of
staff to seek and experiment with new knowledge; trust and mutual respect among
the members; a culture that encourages employees to take risks; ‘forgiving
culture’ of mistakes that encourages knowledge construction based on the
lessons learnt; cohesion among the team members that encourages sharing of
knowledge and goals; and transparent decision-making across the organization.
The scope for social learning is found to be enhanced with the usage of
‘dialogue’, which involves “going beyond individual consciousness into mutual communing
to perceive reality correctly and to learn of a larger reality”. The value of
dialogue to knowledge development can be appreciated from the fact that
dialoguing facilitates generation of new meanings through collaborative
thinking and mutual communing. All this only highlights the importance of human
resources in the entire gamut of knowledge management.
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Box 1:
Knowledge Workers – Characteristics
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·
Technical abilities
·
Cognitive abilities
·
Emotional abilities
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Source:
Adapted from “Characteristics and Necessary Abilities of the Knowledge Worker” by Regina Negri Pagani, Luiz
Alberto Pilatti and Hélio Gomes de Carvalho, The Icfai Journal
of Knowledge Management, Vol. IV, No. 3
(September), 2006.
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6.
What HRMD should do for Better Knowledge Management?
Research findings
indicate that Human Resource Management Department (HRMD) must strive to create
essential social learning enablers in an organization to ensure effective
knowledge management. Some such critical enablers are:
- Positive communication climate – where people can freely approach the manager and say, “Hi! I don’t understand this. It might be stupid, but would you please help me figure it out?”;
- Effective leadership – that depicts accessibility to their staff, non-judgmental approach to the staff and the issues that they bring to the manager;
- Goal alignment – that ensures cohesiveness between the leaders and the team and within the team members; that enables everyone to know where the other is heading, and listening to everyone’s problems and making everyone understand what and why changes are happening;
- Constructive performance management – that sets realistic goals before every member and the performance is rightly recorded and measured;
- Valuing skills and reward and recognition strategies – the very fact of being valued makes an individual willingly engage in a dialog with team-mates, learn and share knowledge with others resulting in team cohesiveness; in short, it is simply practicing the common axiom ‘praise is better than money’;
- Enabling workplace design – workplace design that fosters physical proximity ensures better communication among team members resulting in good engagement in dialog;
- Team-based morale – learning in organizations is basically a social process of interaction which is facilitated by dialog and unless high morale prevails among the team members, dialoging cannot take place freely;
- Socializing – feeling good about the colleagues in the team is a great motivating factor to generate a sense of belonging to the group; such identity results in awareness about the expertise possessed by team members; healthy social relations build trust, make people learn faster and make them more creative and productive; informal socialization leads to better and easy sharing of knowledge; and
- Timely induction programs – induction programs conducted for new recruits well in time provides ‘foundation knowledge’ to the raw members; such programs minimize the scope for misunderstandings; pave the way for better working relationships by reducing anxiety; also improve the efficiency of new members by letting them know as to what is expected of them.
These enablers are
likely to develop a suitable architecture for effective management of knowledge
in the organizations but are also potent enough to pose challenges to knowledge
management, if not effectively used.
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Box 2:
Knowledge Management @ Tata Steel – A Case Study
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In
2003, Tata Steel was chosen as one of Asia’s Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises
(MAKE). It was the only company in the manufacturing sector in India, and the
only steel company in the world to receive this award. The award was in
specific recognition of Tata Steel’s Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives,
which were started in the late 1990s.
It
made it compulsory for all its employees to participate actively in its KM program.
The company based its new performance assessment program on the participation
of each individual employee in the KM program through the introduction of a
“KM index”.
Tata
Steel’s KM initiatives were successful and the number of hits at KM sites of
Tata Steel in 2001-02 was 1100 compared to Shell’s (the second most admired
company in Europe) 1000 hits, even though Tata Steel had only 3000 registered
users as compared to Shell’s 10000 registered users. Through Tata Steel’s KM
initiatives, expert skills became available to the organization, and productivity
increased. As employees were encouraged to come out with innovative ideas,
their job satisfaction increased, and another benefit was a reduction in the
R&D (Research and Development) expenditure.
KM Initiatives
at Tata Steel
The
KM program at Tata Steel was started in 1999. The KM process was started by
bringing together a group of people with exposure in different fields, but
completely inexperienced in implementing KM. The company felt that KM was a
cultural transformation rather than a project. Thus, involving a group of
people from within the company with the support of the top management was
likely to be more effective in implementing the KM strategy, than hiring
people from outside.
The
next step involved establishing a knowledge repository, where all the employees
would participate actively. This repository was placed on the corporate
intranet and all the employees shared their experiences of successes and
failures in implementing projects. Employees were encouraged to participate
actively in the knowledge management program through a Knowledge Piece (KP)
or query on the KM site through the intranet. After verification by an
expert, their contribution was posted on the site. If there was query by any
employee, the author responded and the process was closed only after the
person who inquired was satisfied with the answer (Refer Figure). For more
effective KM, Tata Steel integrated the knowledge repositories at the division/department
level with the main KM repository.
After
the creation of knowledge repository, the next step was forming knowledge
communities (Refer to Exhibit I). Knowledge communities were formed one year
after the knowledge repository was established. Knowledge communities gave a
forum to like-minded people to meet and share their experiences. Knowledge
communities were not problem-solving platforms, but groups of people who came
together to share their knowledge and to learn from one another through their
experiences. Sometimes, knowledge communities took up a problem and solved it
by brainstorming. Knowledge communities were not aimed at short-term gains,
but were an investment for the company’s future.
Revamped
Strategy
Though
Tata Steel did make a good beginning in KM, there were some problems which
were not addressed. Connectivity was still poor and access technology was not
standardized. Many irrelevant contributions were being continuously made to
the knowledge repositories. Said Ravi Arora, Head of KM at Tata Steel,
“Worse, there were cultural problems with technology phobias and attitudes
such as, ‘This is another method to downsize’ and ‘Why should I share my
precious knowledge?’”
In
May 2000, Tata Steel adopted a refined strategy for KM. It started organizing
seminars on KM, and identified and recognized some successful KM efforts made
by employees in the organization. In the same year, the company hired
McKinsey consultants for advice on communities of practice. Communities of
practice were established to work towards capturing the tacit knowledge of
experts, improving the quality of the knowledge repository and encouraging
usage of the repository. These communities included members playing five
important roles viz., Champion, Convener, Practice Leader, Lead Expert and
Practitioner. The communities focused on 21 areas, including iron making,
steel making, rolling, maintenance, mining, waste management, cost
engineering, and energy management. Employees were free to join any of the
communities, irrespective of the area they belonged to.
In
spite of all these changes, only 240 users in 2000-01 felt that the available
knowledge was useful and could be applied in their area of work, and in
1999-2000, only 100 feedbacks were received. Company officials were of the
opinion that these numbers were too small for a company of the size of Tata
Steel. The need of the hour was to improve the quality of knowledge available
and to inculcate in the employees the habit of browsing so that they could
acquire the knowledge stored, and use it.
With
this objective in mind, in January 2001, Tata Steel introduced an index called
the “KM Index”, to measure the performance of the system and reward successful
KM initiatives taken by any employee. Each officer of the company was
expected to score a minimum of 130 points on the KM Index. The scoring system
would change, as the company evolved towards using knowledge proactively. In
2001-02, 70 points were assigned for making a valuable contribution to the
Knowledge Repository, 30 points were assigned to one-time feedback,
interaction or collaboration with the author of another KP, and another 30
points were assigned for the application of a KP from the site. In 2002-03,
the scoring pattern was to be revised, and it was decided that by the time
the organization became a true learning-organization with free flow of
knowledge and information sharing, the points system would be done away with.
In
early 2002, Tata Steel introduced a stringent monitoring system for KM activity.
Employees started browsing the knowledge management pages more frequently. On
the cultural front, employee attitudes transformed from one of, “I am an
expert, I do not need new knowledge” to one of a continuous quest for
knowledge; from just, “I need help” to “I can also help.” According to Arora,
“The extent of organizational knowledge changed from narrow and shallow silos
to wider and more permeable silos”.
To
increase the effectiveness of KM, Tata Steel made two major changes in the
organization. As a first step, performance evaluation of employees was linked
to KM. The senior executives of the company started using a balance scorecard
to monitor the performance of employees, divisions in the KM process, and for
taking corrective measures to improve the implementation of KM. As a second
step, Tata Steel also launched a formal rewards and recognition system for
KM. The CEO rewarded the best performing employee, team and knowledge
community.
Benefits
Reaped from KM
Generally,
any KM implementation has two sets of benefits: First, it reduces the cost of
production and consequently, increases the revenue; and second, it leads to
utilization of existing knowledge and creation of new knowledge.
In
addition, Tata Steel reaped other benefits such as collaboration, conversation
and interaction among employees increased, experts’ skills were available
throughout the organization; job satisfaction among the employees increased
and this reduced the loss of intellectual capital; expenditure on R&D was
reduced as new ideas were generated from within the organization; duplication
of ideas being used across the organization was reduced; productivity
increased as knowledge was available more quickly and easily, and innovations were encouraged. Above all, KM
allowed Tata Steel to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace.
Future of KM
at Tata Steel
In
the future, Tata Steel plans to link e-learning with the KM repository and KM
communities, devise an intellectual capital index, develop a network with
retired employees, and develop employee skills for better externalization of knowledge
and integration with the customers’ knowledge. According to company sources, “The
most important challenge in this economy is creating conversations.”
According to Arora, “The key to business modernization in the 21st century is
not just through the expenditure of huge sums of money to create physical
assets, but orienting people—the greatest asset—towards meeting the
opportunities and challenges of the future.” Tata Steel seemed to be
well-placed to achieve its mission which was redrafted in 1998 to include the
statement: “Tata Steel enters the new millennium with the confidence of a learning
and knowledge-based organization.”
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Source:
Adapted from “Knowledge Management @ Tata Steel” by Sanjib Dutta and AjayKumar, The Icfai
Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol.
III, No. 2 (June), 2005.
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7.
Conclusion
To be is to learn; to
learn is to know and to know is to win. Today’s internet world, by offering a
wide range of choices to consumers across the globe at the mere click of a
mouse, has made consumers a highly knowledgeable lot. To survive in such a
competitive world, organizations have to necessarily build knowledge, replenish
it, and distribute it among the organizational members, so that the accumulated
knowledge can be put to use for the accomplishment of organizational goals. In
building up knowledge bases, organizations must be conscious of what is and
what is not knowledge for the organization and only collate, interpret,
synthesize and distribute among its members such knowledge that has a bearing
on its performance. It is worth bearing in mind here that IT is only an enabler
of knowledge management. Human resources are the key deciders of the
effectiveness of knowledge management, for it is they who are instrumental in
generating knowledge, learning from new knowledge and using it for the good of
the organization. It is the leadership and the style of managing the human resources
and the enabling culture that they create in the organizations, which
ultimately define the effectiveness of knowledge management.
