Unit-1

What is Knowledge?

“Justified true belief” - Nonaka (1994)

“Understanding gained through experience.” - Awad and Ghaziri

(2004)
“Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual
information, expert insight, and intuition that provides an
environment and framework for evaluating and incorporating new
experiences and information”. - Tiwana (2002)

What is Knowledge Management?

Knowledge management is the conscious process of defining,

structuring, retaining, and sharing the knowledge and experience of
employees within an organization.

The primary goal of knowledge management is facilitating the

connection of staff looking for information, or institutional
knowledge, with the people who have it.

With practical knowledge management in place, organizations can

spread information and raise the level of expertise held by specific
individuals or teams to improve the efficiency of their practices.

It often refers to training and learning in an organization or of its

customers. It consists of a cycle of creating, sharing, structuring, and
auditing knowledge to maximize the effectiveness of an
organization’s collective expertise.

Why is knowledge management important?

1)Knowledge management is important because it boosts the

efficiency of an organization’s decision-making ability.
2)By making sure that all employees have access to the overall
expertise held within the organization, a smarter workforce is built
that is more able to make quick, informed decisions, benefiting the
entire company.

3)Knowledge management allows innovation to grow within the

organization, customers benefit from increased access to best
practices, and employee turnover is reduced.

4)The importance of knowledge management is growing every year.

As the marketplace becomes ever more competitive, one of the best
ways to stay ahead of the curve is to build your organization in an
intelligent, flexible manner. You must have the ability to spot issues
from a distance and be able to respond quickly to new information
and innovations.

5)Implementing knowledge management processes offers tangible

benefits that drive value.

Benefits of knowledge management:

1.Reduced time to find information

2.Reduced time for new staff to become competent

3.Reduced operational costs

4.Improved customer satisfaction

5.Improved bid win/loss ratio

Types of Knowledge :
Tacit Knowledge
This is the type of knowledge purely gained through experience.
“Tacit knowledge is what we do not know that we know. It includes
know how, rules of thumb, experience, insights, and intuition” -
Rumizen (2002)
“Tacit knowledge is deeply rooted action, commitment and
involvement in a specific context” - Nonaka (1994)
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge which is sometimes seen as the
sixth sense of human beings. A seasoned decision maker sometimes
cannot present a risk in figures and numbers but his ‘intuition’ tells
him that things might not go as planned.
When tacit knowledge is converted into an easily understandable
form it becomes explicit Knowledge.

Explicit Knowledge :
“The knowledge that is transmittable in formal systematic language”
- Polanyi (1966)

“Explicit knowledge is knowledge codified and digitized in books,

documents, reports, spreadsheets, memos, training courses and the
like” - Awad and Ghaziri (2004).

It is the knowledge that can be represented in numbers and figures.

The knowledge transmitted in schools and colleges is mainly explicit
knowledge. Explicit knowledge is easily understandable and can
easily be transferred from one person to another.
One of the fundamental aims of knowledge management is the
conversion of tacit into explicit knowledge.
 • Explicit knowledge: Explicit knowledge is captured within
various document types such as manuals, reports, and guides,
allowing organizations to easily share knowledge across
teams.
• This type of knowledge is perhaps the most well-known and
examples of it include knowledge assets such as databases,
white papers, and case studies. This form of knowledge is
important to retain intellectual capital within an organization
as well as facilitate successful knowledge transfer to new
employees.

Knowledge management process:

knowledge management process as invloves knowledge acquisition,

creation, refinement, storage, transfer, sharing and utilization. This
process can be synthesized this a little further. Effective knowledge
management system typically goes through three main steps:

• Knowledge Creation: During this step, organizations identify

and document any existing or new knowledge that they want
to circulate across the company.

• Knowledge Storage: During this stage, an information

technology system is typically used to host organizational
knowledge for distribution. Information may need to be
formatted in a particular way to meet the requirements of
that repository.

• Knowledge Sharing: In this final stage, processes to share

knowledge are communicated broadly across the organization.
The rate in which information spreads will vary depending on
organizational culture. Companies that encourage and reward
 this behavior will certainly have a competitive advantage over
other ones in their industry.

Knowledge management tools:

There are a number of tools that organizations utilize to gain the
benefits of knowledge management. Examples of knowledge
management systems can include:
• Document management systems act as a centralized storage
system for digital documents, such as PDFs, images, and word
processing files. These systems enhance employee workflows
by enabling easy retrieval of documents, such as lessons
learned.

• Content management systems (CMS) are applications which

manage web content where end users can edit and publish
content. These are commonly confused with document
management systems, but CMSs can support other media
types, such as audio and video.

• Intranets are private networks that exist solely within an

organization, which enable the sharing of enablement, tools,
and processes within internal stakeholders. While they can be
time-consuming and costly to maintain, they provide a
number of groupware services, such as internal directories and
search, which facilitate collaboration.

(Groupware refers to software that allows multiple users work

together on one project while sitting in locally and remotely with
each other at the real time, so it is also known as “Collaboration
Software.")

• Wikis can be a popular knowledge management tool given its

ease of use. They make it easy to upload and edit information,
but this ease can lead to concerns about misinformation as
 workers may update them with incorrect or outdated
information.

• Data warehouses aggregate data from different sources into a

single, central, consistent data store to support data analysis,
data mining, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine
learning. Data is extracted from these repositories so that
companies can derive insights, empowering employees to
make data-driven decisions.

Knowledge management use cases

Armed with the right tools and strategies, knowledge management
practices have seen success in specific applications, such as:
• Onboarding employees: Knowledge management systems
help to address the huge learning curve for new hires. Instead
of overwhelming new hires with a ‘data dump’ in their first
weeks, continually support them with knowledge tools that
will give them useful information at any time.

• Day-to-day employee tasks: Enable every employee to have

access to accurate answers and critical information. Access to
highly relevant answers at the right time, for the right person,
allows workforces to spend less time looking for information
and more time on activities that drive business.

What is data , information knowledge and expertise?

Data is a number or word or letter without any context. For

example, numbers like 5 or 100, without any context, are mere
data. Without reference to either space or time, these numbers
or data are meaningless points in space and time. The key
 phrase here is “out of context”. And since it is out of context
then it has no meaningful relation to anything else.

A mere collection of data is not information. This means that if

there is no relation between the pieces of data, then it is not
information. What makes a collection of data information is the
understanding of the relationships
between the pieces of data or between the collection of data
and other information. In other words, what is essential in
making data or a collection of data information is the context,
that is, the relation between the pieces of data.

For example,If we are given numbers like 1 and 7, they do not mean
much. We may relate to the number 1 as being less than 2 and
greater than 0, while 7 is a number greater than 6 but less than 8. At
this level of understanding, these numbers are mere data. However,
if we associate7 with the number of days in a week, then we create
context.
With context, these data become information. And the information
given by that context is that there are 7 days in 1 week. We have
established a relationship between the two pieces of data 1 and 7.
We have associated the number 1 with weekend the number 7 with
days. We have placed the data within a context thus
producing information.

Expertise:

Expertise is being able to take the knowledge and learnings from past
experiences and being able to apply it to a particular situation. You
can’t buy expertise – you earn it through years of doing.
Gladwell talks about needing 10,000 of practice before you become
proficient at a skill – that’s expertise. You can have all the knowledge
and information, but actually using it and learning from it is how you
gain expertise.

• Expertise comes from making mistakes – and learning from

them.
• Expertise comes from having huge successes – and
understanding what made them successful.
• Expertise comes from learning from other experts and watching
them operate.
• Expertise comes from applying your knowledge and
information and watching the outcomes.

For example, an accountant might list data entry skills as an area of

expertise. A writer might say that editing is one of their areas of
expertise. Job-related skills are generally hard skills because they are
specific and measurable abilities that you learn through working or
training.
What is epistemology?
This is made up of the union of two words: episteme which can be
translated as “knowledge or science” and logos which would come
to mean “speech.” It is the philosophical study of the nature, origin,
and limits of human knowledge.
Epistemology is the investigation of the nature of knowledge itself.
Its study focuses on our means for acquiring knowledge and how we
can differentiate between truth and falsehood.

Why Epistemology Is Important?

The study of epistemology is fundamental to understanding how and
why we think, in other words, how we acquire knowledge, how we
rely upon our senses, and how we develop concepts in our minds.
A sound epistemology is necessary for the development of sound
thinking and reasoning . Some questions frequently discussed by
epistemologists include:
• What can we know?
• How can we know it?
• Why do we know some things, but not others?
• How do we acquire knowledge?
• Is knowledge possible?
• Can knowledge be certain?
• Why do we believe certain claims and not others?

Subjective & Objective views of knowledge

Objective knowledge, which is that obtained through rigorous

examination, verification and demonstration formal, procedures
that are specified in the so-called scientific method.

This means that the knowledge obtained through science is

verifiable, replicable, demonstrable and verifiable knowledge, which
can be tested anywhere in the world and obtain the same results.
That is why scientific knowledge is objective because it does not
depend on who has carried out the experiments or who has
published their findings.

Instead, subjective knowledge is that which is sustained by

arguments and points of view found, which is a matter
of debate and cannot be proven in any way. For this reason it
consists of variable knowledge, which depends on the processes of
the conscious experience of individuals, their expectations, thoughts
and emotions.

For example, a marketing study around a shampoo brand will surely

record mixed opinions depending on each test consumer, and from
these subjective results you will be able to establish trends or
approval percentages of the product.

The study should be repeated in each different country in which the

shampoo is marketed, since what is successful in a national market
may fail outright in the market of the neighboring country.

On the other hand, if that same brand of shampoo contains a highly

polluting substance that makes it an environmental risk, it will also
be so regardless of which country the shampoo is sold in, or what its
consumers think or feel about it.

Procedural Knowledge:

Procedural Knowledge also known as Interpretive knowledge, is the

type of knowledge in which it clarifies how a particular thing can be
accomplished. It is not so popular because it is generally not used.
It emphasize how to do something to solve a given problem.

Example

Procedural knowledge contains ‘knowing how to do certain tasks.’

For instance, riding a bike.Possessing the right knowledge at the right
time is the foundation for making worthy decisions.

Declarative Knowledge:
Declarative Knowledge also known as Descriptive knowledge, is the
type of knowledge which tells the basic knowledge about something
and it is more popular than Procedural Knowledge.
It emphasize what to do something to solve a given problem.

Example:

Declarative knowledge comprises ‘knowing that something is the

case. Paris is the capital of France and J is the tenth letter of the
alphabet .

Having employees who complete tasks utilizing procedural

knowledge is one thing, getting these employees to convey that
knowledge to others is completely another thing.

BASIS FOR PROCEDURAL DECLARATIVE

COMPARISON KNOWLEDGE KNOWLEDGE

Basic Includes the knowledge Includes the basic

of how a particular knowledge about

thing can be something.

accomplished.

Alternate name Interpretive knowledge Descriptive knowledge

Stated by Direct application to Declarative sentences

the task and difficult to and easily articulated.

articulate formally.

Popularity Less common Generally used

Ease of sharing Hard to communicate Can be easily shared,

the knowledge copied, processed and

stored.

Taken from Experience, action, and Artifact of some type as

subjective insight. a principle, procedure,

process and concepts.

Nature Process oriented Data-oriented

Represented by Set of rules Production systems

COMPARISON EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE TACIT KNOWLEDGE

Meaning Explicit Knowledge is one The knowledge that is

which can be easily acquired from one's
expressed, written and own experience, which
transferred from one cannot be expressed
person to another. easily through words or
pictures is Tacit
 Knowledge.

Nature Objective, logical and Subjective, cognitive

technical and experiential

Codification Codified Non-codified

Transfer Easily transferable Difficult to transfer

Acquired Logical Deduction and Hands-on experience

through hands-on experience and in-depth analysis,
observation, fact-
finding, etc.

Recording and It can be recorded and It defies recording and

storing stored in storing
physical/electronic form.

General Knowledge

The primary purpose of general knowledge is to understand the

domain or business model to understand what is going on and how
to use this model correctly. It may also include information about the
internal and external processes that a person must understand to
use the model. It often contains lots of general examples that cover a
wide variety of tasks and problems.
General knowledge is usually relatively easy to acquire as many
people already have it and can share it. There are many
documentation sources, and it is easy to understand just by looking
at the processes.
Another significant advantage of general knowledge is that it gives a
person an overall picture of the model structure. Consequently, it is
easy to see which areas may require extra attention during future
work.
Specialized Knowledge

Any person will need this type of knowledge to solve complicated

problems or perform unusual tasks. It includes in-depth knowledge
in one or several areas related to the processes and model in
question. It usually contains a limited number of examples, but each
has a detailed description of the specific task or problem.
Specialized knowledge may be hard or tricky to acquire because of its
nature and narrow usage scope. Sometimes it may be documented
appropriately, especially if there is a chance to face it more than a
couple of times. However, there are more examples when the task or
problem was solved locally without sharing the solution with the
community.
The most significant advantage of specialized knowledge is that it
helps solve complicated issues that don’t have a standard or a typical
solution. However, such knowledge often takes a lot of time to
acquire, and it may be costly.

Characteristics of knowledge –
1) Explicitness ( can be expressed )
2) Codifiability ( can be encode or decode)
3) Teachability (can be share or teach )
4) Specificity ( can be specify)

1) Explicitness :
There is a commonly held view that new knowledge always
begins with an individual. For example, a smart investigator has
an insight that leads to a new patent .
The explicitness support innovation, the individual or group that
acts with organization knowledge can adds the necessary value in
the organization.

In order to support a commitment to innovation . The necessary

values that lead commitment to innovation and creation can be
presented as two functions.

Firstly, the human should talking, asking and triggering new

questions and enquiries. Then encourage and help these people to
transfer their ideas into something tangible.

Secondly, the explicitness knowledge helps to establish an enabling

context for knowledge creation. Knowledge cannot be separate
from its context. It is part of the physical, mental or virtual place
where it was created. Where there are individuals in an
organization who do not have the ability to articulate their
knowledge in a formal way, the explicit knowledge should have
the ability to convert to the tacit knowledge into the right
context. This should connect with tacit knowledge in relating to
an organization's culture.

2)Codification
Organizing and respresenting knowledge before it is accessed by
authorized personnel
The organizing part is usually in the form of a decison tree, a decison
table or a frame
Converting tacit knwoledge to explicit knowledge in a usable form
Converting undocumented to documented information
Making corporate - specific knowlege visible, accessible and usable
for decision making.
3)Knowledge Teachability : Zander and Kogut argue that instead
of considering explicit and tacit knowledge, we should consider
two characteristics of knowledge –codifiability and teach ability.

Teachability reflects the extent to which the knowledge can be

taught to other people, through training, apprenticeship, and so on.
Of course, some knowledge could be high in teachability .

As knowledge maturing is basically interconnection of individual

learning process where knowledge is taught and learnt, an
important criterion is its teachability.

Whereas immature knowledge is hard to teach (even to experts),

According to Choen , the performance of an organization is
positively affected by the ability of organization to assimilate
and apply knowledge. Knowledge assimilation can also refer to
an absorption capacity.
Therefore, knowledge characteristics are most likely to support
the relationship between organizational performance and
absorptive capacity.

4) Specificity:
"Specific knowledge is found much more by pursuing your innate
talents, your genuine curiosity, and your passion.”
— NAVAL RAVIKANT

The most important knowledge can’t be taught. It can only be

learned by pursuing the things you’re curious about. Naval Ravikant
calls this kind of knowledge specific knowledge - the knowledge that
can’t be trained for.
Specific knowledge is a term Naval Ravikant uses in the context of
wealth creation to describe valuable knowledge that is specialized to
the person and circumstance.
Specific knowledge isn’t taught in the classroom because every other
student - regardless of their personal circumstance, passions, and
interests - is learning exactly the same thing. It’s not specific to you in
any way.
Instead, specific knowledge is often passed down through
apprenticeships. You’ll learn a lot more valuable info by shadowing
someone with 10+ years of experience in the business than by
reading “business” books.
It takes time and energy to build specific knowledge. You’ll only go
deep enough into an area if you’re passionate and curious about the
field you’re digging in.

Types of experties :

Associational experties : Associational experties are those who has the

understanding of relevant failed so that they wiil be able to understand the
situation more efffectively.

Motor skills :Motor skills are essential for everyday life. Motor skills are the
movements our bodies make to perform daily functions such as lifting, moving,
writing, and talking. The motor skills an adult possesses begin to develop at
birth and continue through childhood and early adulthood. Motor skills are
categorized as gross motor skills or fine motor skills. A person needs to have
mastered both to acquire solid movement. Gross motor skills involve the arms,
legs, and trunk of the body. Fine motor skills involve small muscle groups such
as movements in the hand or wrist.

Motor skills are important in early childhood development. Mastery of many

motor skills is important for normal daily functions. The five basic motor skills
are sitting, standing, walking, running, and jumping.

Theroitical : These kind of experties solve the problems that is never been
occured before and can not be solved by associational experts.They have
deeper therotical knowldege came from coahing as hands on problem solving
skills .These skills are concerned primarily with theories or hypotheses rather
than practical considerations. A theoretical study or explanation is based on or
uses the ideas and abstract principles that relate to a particular subject, rather
than the practical aspects For example , Study on customer
satisfaction,Research on gender studies.

Knowledge Reservoir :