Chapter 12
Knowledge Management
 adidas management knowledge

1. What is knowledge managementNot a solution.
Complements other organizational initiatives like TQM and Business Process Re-engineering by making use of the know-how and expertise available to the company.
Two-fold process:
Management of knowledge assets.
Management of processes for creating, organizing, transferring, sharing, and using knowledge throughout the organization.
Development of processes to link knowledge requirements to business strategies.
To plan for, generate, represent and provide access to individual and organizational knowledge.
In more common language, knowledge management is:
Managing what is known
How well it is known
Who knows it
How it is applied
How it can be leveraged and used
3. Explicit knowledgeRecorded, consisting of written text, reports, documents, databases, and websites.
Codified and can be classified through a database, website listing or other means of access.
Rule-based or object-based.
Using symbols, explicit knowledge can be easily communicated between groups or individuals.
2. Tacit knowledgeResides in individual’s memories.
Built from personal experience and know-how from experience.
Also values, ideas, bias, preconceptions, assumptions, believes, habits, etc.
Expressed through action-based skills.
If captured, the knowledge is no longer tacit.
4. Cultural knowledgeAwareness of the organizational culture that exists within a company.
Shared assumptions about business practices, goals, capabilities, competitors, customers, etc.
"An organization's cultural knowledge consists of the beliefs it holds to be true based on experience, observation, and reflection about itself and its environment." (Choo, 2002)
5. Nonaka and Takeuchi’s Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge CreationTacit-to-tacit (socialization) where individuals directly share and test knowledge.
Examples: discussions over coffee or lunch, or those discussions at the water cooler, job shadowing, project management orientation, etc.
Tacit-to-explicit (externalization) the transfer of knowledge into a tangible form through documentation or discussion.
Examples: idea generation, concept design, new product development, writing a report, etc.
Explicit-to-tacit (internalization) where individuals internalize knowledge from documents, discussion or learning into their own body of knowledge.
Examples: studying a sales report, the employee manual, technical paper, etc.
Explicit-to-explicit (combination) combining different forms of explicit knowledge such as documents or databases.
Examples: preparation of documents, methodologies, tools, and templates, etc. from other reports.