knowledge management initiative strategy
Thursday, June 7, 2007
Strategic of Implementation Knowledge Management Initiative
In Educational Organization
Organization Overview
Airlangga University is one of well known educational institution in East Java Indonesia. The university was erected in 1948 and has 11 faculties including Faculty of Social and Political Science. In this report I only use one of part of the university faculty as my organization which is Faculty of Social and Political Science (FSPS). This faculty was erected around 50 years ago a few years after the university opened, and until now have seven departments which is Sociology, Anthropology, Politic, Communication, International Relation, Library and Information Science, Tourism, and Library Technician department. FSPS has more than 1500 students, 130 lecturers, and 70 administrative, has approximately 50 classes, labs, library, student rooms, and lecturer offices that divided according to each department. The office hour is from 7 am until 6 pm, from Monday to Friday.
Organization Mission
FSPS has mission to deliver high quality education that supported by competent and credible lecturers.
Building Architecture
FSPS has three separate building but still in the same area. The main building has three floor which is contain of lecture class, in the third floor, library and lecturer room in the second floor, and administrative & labs, student’s activity rooms in the first floor. In the other two building which is smaller contain of classes, lab, lecturer room, and administrative. So there are separated lecturer rooms in FSPS and they are not easily to make contact. The head of faculty is in the main building where the instruction is made and deliver.
Structure Organization
The FSPS is led by a Dean which has three vices, Vice Dean I that responsible with academic, research, lecture and curriculum, Vice Dean II dealing with human resource and administration, and Vice Dean III that have duty to make relationship with other organization and dealing with student activities, student’s parents association (IKOMA) FSPS also has a head administrative (under Vice Dean II) that handle finance, teaching support facilities, maintain classes, and so on. Every department has department coordinator that responsible for teaching activities within their department. For structure organization details, see table below.
FSPS Structure Organization
______ Instruction line
-------- Relationship line
FSPS use hierarchical top-down organization system which is instruction is come from the leader; Dean down to the Vice Dean and course coordinator and finally instruction end in lectures and staff. Feedback from bottom position also need some steps before it reach the organization leader. So lecturer and staff rarely make a contact with the dean.
Staffs
There are two kind of staff that been employed in FSPS, first the staffs with general administration skill which is usually has skill in economic and finance, management, computer, and clerical. Second is staff that categorized as knowledge worker who has different expertise that responsible in teaching. Teaching staff are categorize as a knowledge worker as cited in searchCRM.com that define knowledge worker is anyone who doing their task by using knowledge, and according to Peter Dracker academic professional, researcher, and teacher are include as a knowledge worker. (http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/
sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci212450,00.html). Devenport add knowledge worker is people who have high degrees of expertise, education, or experience, and the primary purpose of their jobs involves the creation, distribution, or application of knowledge. (Devenport, 2005). In this report I only assess knowledge management process among lecturers/teaching staff.
Referring to the statistical data about the number of lecturer in FSPS is 130 on the other hand the administrative staff is 60, it is obvious that the organization is really depend on their knowledge workers. Moreover, the main purpose of this organization is to deliver knowledge through education and training. Organization will die if there are no knowledge workers. However, recently the administrative staff has move to knowledge worker since their working use the information technology such as computer, telephone and fax, and mobile phone to help their task.
Besides high dependency to their knowledge workers, the organization also has high dependency on its market. The market is the high school graduate students who intend to continue their study to higher degree, particularly in East Java and East of Indonesian. This is a great challenge for FSPS since many competitors arrive in East Java and for the future FSPS should manage and maximize their human resource knowledge.
Organization Task
According to Burstein & Linger, (2005) task is a substantially constant organizational activity with outcomes that include tangible output that are central to the organization’s viability and the internal outcomes that are potential drivers of organizational change. The organization task is to deliver higher education in several social science subjects. The teaching method is class based system which is student should be come to the university to be taught, there also laboratory support to develop student’s understanding. Another task are doing research regarding staff expertise, this has purpose to enhance the staff’ knowledge and to enrich the faculty with source material.
The task is quite different in individual level and organization level. In organizational level, there is a policy that define how’s the task should be done, both in technical task such as the teaching duration, teaching material & tools, and knowledge task is about the content of material, teaching strategies. In this organizational level the purposes of teaching activity is to gain organization’s goal as an education organization. Furthermore, in individual task level is about the individual understanding to translate the organization task. Every individual has different approach to understanding the task even though there is a task policy in organization. Those individual have their own expertise and experience that will be combined to achieve organization’s output.
For FSPS the crucial knowledge to reach the goal is the existence of expertise in many social science fields. FSPS need many human resource who expert on such a field of study, and improve the available human source to enhance their expertise by using knowledge management initiatives.
Knowledge management structural
Organizational Design
Organization Design is a formal, guided process for integrating the people, information and technology of an organization. It is used to match the form of the organization as closely as possible to the purpose(s) the organization seeks to achieve. Through the design process, organizations act to improve the probability that the collective efforts of members will be successful.
( http://www.inovus.com/organiza.htm).
FSPS organizational design is viewed in some perspective, there are:
Environmental context
The environmental situation in organization is a bit competitive and individual. They rarely talking about their expertise in particular subject, this is because they do not want other staff know what they have and what they did not have. There is no similar working hours make staff rarely meet each other. Lecturers only came to the office according to their lecture timetable. The relationship between staff and lecturers not well maintain since some lecturers feel that they have more knowledge.
Organizational structure
FSPS use hierarchical structure to deliver the task. This method is used to ensure the uniform of the task. Usually tasks are given in paper based from the Vice Dean and delegated to lower level (department coordinator) organization structure, and finally the course coordinator give the task with some instruction to the lecturers. In this stage both tacit and explicit knowledge involve, when the task is given in explicit way and how the staff capture the task with their tacit capability, and then try to do the task with their tacit and explicit knowledge that they have. Paper-based are chosen because it is quite formal and ensure the task uniform.
Organization Culture
Organizational culture indicates the extent to which the organization encourages formal and informal learning, supports sharing and managing of knowledge. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). This organization not quite support knowledge sharing culture, it is proved by there is no formal approach in knowledge management initiative, and there is no appropriate facility that supports the aim.
Staffs are responsible to upgrade their own knowledge, leader did not give support both material and immaterial. So, many staff still has old knowledge and organization is very poor of ideas. Even though there is some knowledge management initiative in organization but encouragement from the leader is less.
The trust culture also needs to be built among the staff member to increase open and willing to share knowledge. In FSPS the degree of trust is still low, since some staff did not know how to share and what to be shared. Many staff are feel be tested and curious if any staff member who asking about particular knowledge.
Organizational space/physical design
According to Nonaka with ‘ba’ concept, there are three type of space, first is physical space, virtual space, mental space, and combination of them. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). Mostly every staff & lecturer does not have their own individual office, only Dean and his Vices who has own individual office. Every department has a big office that been used for all the staff & lecturer within each department. Staff & lecturer only provided with a desk and filling cabinet and in every office there some computers that will be used collectively. The desk is very close one to each other, it is approximately less than three meter apart. In this condition, the knowledge sharing process is widely open because every staff is easily meet and shares their ideas.
Each department office has a common room where located in the front of the office. This common room is usually used as an informal meeting place during break time and while waiting the before teaching. Every department has their own meeting room and main meeting room in the faculty for all of the employees.
FSPS did not use virtual space for knowledge creation and sharing. Mostly knowledge sharing are done by face to face on the office. This is because there is no support in technology by the faculty.
Reward structure
The reward structure is not well developing in organization. For instance, every creativities including doing research, develop new skills, improvement of teaching strategies, well prepare of teaching material is low and sometimes none rewards. (Taylor, 2006). This is proven by the increasing staff who like to share their knowledge and translate their tacit to explicit knowledge so every staff can use it.
Information Infrastructure
According to (Pironti, 2006) in www.wikipedia.org, information infrastructure as all of the people, processes, procedures, tools, facilities, and technology which supports the creation, use, transport, storage, and destruction of information.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_infrastructure).
Information infrastructure has a strong relation how information organized.
FSPS information infrastructure creation is usually by monthly meeting between the organization management and department coordinator, and administration staff. The meeting discusses improvement in the faculty. The result will be announced by course coordinator and administration to staff by oral.
From external, the faculty management has relation with stakeholder such as customer (student, IKOMA), and other similar organization. There frequently has a informal and formal discussion, involve in particular project, and join in the some club and society to expanse the relation.
Some staff joins in the mailing list that has the same relation with their expertise, but this is purely individual initiative not from faculty management. This method is only done by creative employees. The reason why not many people join in the particular mailing list because they are elder employee and do not know how to use technology.
Technology Infrastructure
Technology may be become the most important tool for knowledge workers to increase their productivity. Technology can solve time and distance problem, so knowledge workers can doing many task in the same time. For FSPS, technology is very important thing too, but the availability is not maximal. FSPS only use a few number of computer. As a comparison, every staff & lecturer office only has 3 or 4 computer that should be used by 15-20 people. And every office has one cable telephone and fax, so if there any call the administration staff called the person first. The fax machine also not integrated, if there is a message delivery by fax, we should go to the main administrative office to grab it.
Internet connection in the faculty is not supported with high speed connection, which is very difficult for advance use. For example of advance use is search for articles to support teaching, use teleconference, IM (instant messenger), and using audio visual. Staff & lecturer mostly use internet for sending email to their colleagues who live long distance, for short distance they usually use telephone.
Faculty web-site is not well maintaining, and very lack of information. Many of the entries are out of date and the web site is rarely up dated.
Meeting room facilitated by white board and a computer, and LCD projector is available by requirement. Classes’ facility is only OHP projector that put in every class and LCD and computer is available on requirement, so not every lecturer uses LCD to present their material to the student.
The most used technology in the faculty is telephone. Some meeting reminder is done by phone as well as gives latest information from the organization management to their employees.
Actually technology is not synonymous with knowledge management (Burstein & Linger, 2005), and knowledge management still can be done without technology. The use of technology is only for support the knowledge management process and it useless if the employee willing less to use it. (Lakin, 2001).
Knowledge Management Functional Design
Organizational Sense Making
Sense making is how people sensory and interpretation about particular information. Every people has different sense making about information and this is involve their action after receive that information. Sense making is more subject matter for individual and likelihood factor is quite strong. (Naismith, 2007). Sense-making also as an action to recognize and define hidden event. (Burstein & Linger, 2005). So every individual should understand the task that been given to them and what is all about. Because through sense making they will know what the next step to do.
In FSPS the individual sense making about their task are quit similar because the task are came from the faculty. After having task the individual try to do the task according their individual knowledge. The difference is the way they to do the task, they implement many different approach and methodologies. For example, a lecturer has task to deliver teaching in particular subject, for this task every lecturer has the same sense making which is ‘they should teach’. However, for the technical, every lecture will use different technique to complete their task. Which technique is the best, nobody knows unless their share the experience and discuss what is the weakness or strength in each technique. So it can be said that sense making influence the learning process for the employee.
Organizational Learning
Actually term organizational learning is only a symbol of learning organization. If organizational learning is a passive so learning organization is a real action of learning activity that been done by organization. Organization itself can not learn, but component within organization who can learn. For instance, we can say that an organization learn if the component in organization always make a changing and learn a new things so the organization can improve their Performa.
The learning process in FSPS including: regeneration program for every new lecturer. Every new lecturer not allowed teaching straight away but they should following the training program. New staff should attend in every class where in the future they will teach that subject, this is approximately six to twelve month. In the class new staff can learn the teaching method & strategies, and much important knowledge according to their specialty.
Monthly internal seminar. This seminar has purpose to enrich the staff with any other knowledge and discuss about the latest issues. One of the expertises in the faculty gives a speech for all the faculty staffs (lecturers) about latest issues in their field of study. Unfortunately this program is not working since there is rarely expertise who likes to present their material. Employees suppose to be learning to each other from this forum.
Send staff for school, seminar, training, and short course. This is formal knowledge management strategy that been scheduled by the faculty, but the implementation of this activities is rarely happen because of the complicated procedures and lack of financial support so some staff feel lazy to do that.
Share ideas within staff in department, this purpose also to enrich lecturer knowledge by sharing their expertise and knowledge. But this is still difficult to realize since lecturers only come to the office when they have class, most of lecturers have their own individual activities
Most of organizational knowledge is in tacit knowledge where the owner is hardly to deliver it for the whole organization. Lecturers usually give their knowledge by oral not in written, sometimes this is useful but mostly people will easily to forget.
Organizational Memory
Just like human, organization also has memory that can be used to keep, retrieve, and forget important knowledge. Organizational memory not only has role as knowledge repository but it more complex. Organizational memory is a set of collective knowledge that been managed and maintained as a guide for the future act by provides basic learning about success and failure from the past. (Burstein & Linger, 2005).
Most of organizational memory FSPS is not recorded well. Some of best practice strategies in teaching technique and teaching material are not recorded properly. This is become a problem when the particular lecturer not coming or there are the lecturer changing. The undocumented those tasks will lead the difference approach in the task, and will influence the outcome.
The expertise detail also hard to detected and human resource department only record very basic information such as name, address, and educational background. Those data are recorded in computer database and also in print version. Print version is for employees purposes that appear in employee directory.
There also very poor records in academic result such as course curriculum, course material, assignments, exam, and so on. As an educational institution those sorts of things are very important to measure the successful of education process.
The good thing in organizational memory is FSPS has internal paper based journal that publish every 3 month period. This publication consists of collaboration articles from lecturers both from FSPS and outer organization. This is very helpful to keep them in the however only in paper based so everybody can use it.
Analysis
Above are six components that build knowledge management initiative in organization. Each component has strong dependency to each other. The successful knowledge management is assessed whether those components working or not. Following this, analytical review will be given according to those six component influence the knowledge management initiative in FSPS.
Overall the organizational design is not support knowledge management initiative. This is because there is no clear policy from the faculty management regarding knowledge management initiative. Leader only give task to the staff and lecturers that should be done in such a way. So staff and lecturer did not feel that they have responsibility in knowledge sharing process in the organization.
The hierarchical organization also increase the gap between leader and employees, however for successful knowledge management initiative the role of leader is important. In department level also has similar problem even though the desk distance is less than 3 meter and theoretically this is can increase the knowledge sharing among employees (Devenport, 2005). In fact this physical design still can not facilitate knowledge sharing because there is seniority in the office, so even physically they are very close but emotionally they can not connect because of senior-junior issues. Another physical design obstacle is building separation, the impact is many people did not know each other because they work in different building, and weekly meeting not guarantee that all of the employees will come.
Those problems are more complex when there are no technologies that support it. Faculty should provide intranet for communication and sharing tool among their employees, intranet can solve the distance problem. Furthermore, because there is no fix timetable for lecturers and they often working from home or other places, it is very urgent to provide an internet portal that can be accessed by lecturers from everywhere. This portal also can be used as a place where they can put their tacit knowledge and translate into explicit so everybody can use it.
The serious impediment came from internal organization it self, where the faculty management and employees not aware that knowledge is very important for organization sustainable. This is because FSPS historical, as a part of oldest university in East Java and very well known to this moment, they feel that there is no potential competitors since the society have a big trust on this university. I think it is a dangerous situation for the faculty since many competitors grow and develop their organizational knowledge to reach a bigger market and FSPS still stood up with old paradigm and use historical glory as their value.
So the solution is FSPS managerial should change their paradigm and start to implement new strategies in organize their organizational knowledge. For instance, managerial can develop formal knowledge management initiative and make all the employees aware by giving a pamphlet or slogan that consist of their new purposes. Managerial should change senior-junior culture into a colleague and family environment, develop reward culture by give incentive for any participation in knowledge management process. Regeneration is important for the faculty, because the senior lecturer should pension on 60 or 65 years old, and on this age most of lecturer has reach Doctoral degree and professor in particular field. If there is no regeneration faculty will lack of credible human resources.
Most knowledge sharing and organizational learning are informal and employees even not aware of this situation. They though that meeting, discussion, and record their task is part of knowledge management initiative. Again the managerial should make their act more formal so the employees know what they should do.
Faculty only use paper based information resource such as reports, employees detail, education materials, that very hard to access. There also database about student detail and lectures timetable but it not online. For who would like to check and look for specific information about student or academic material or result they should go to the administration office to ask or ring them. It takes a few minute or hour to get the information that we need. Of course this information management not supports knowledge management initiative. Once faculty ever asks to the lecturers to document their intellectual knowledge but lecturers hardly do that because they do not know what purpose behind that act.
Conclusion & Recommendations
Conclusion
• FSPS did not implement knowledge management initiative formally.
• Both managerial and employees did not realize how important knowledge asset for organization.
• Organizational design is not support knowledge management initiative.
• Information management in the faculty is not well organized.
• There is no knowledge sharing culture in organization but there is regeneration process which involve senior to junior. It rarely happen knowledge sharing between junior to senior.
• Lack of technology affect the communication process among the employees, especially employees from different building.
• There is no information integrity system that make the information retrieval take a long time and effect of decision making for the leader.
Recommendations
• Need to build knowledge sharing culture among the employees, and change the organizational hierarchical structure become flatter so it can cut the gap between leader and employees.
• Change senior-junior relation and replaced by family and colleague relationship.
• Provide faculty with intranet and internet portal that can be accessed by employees from anywhere and to connect the separate building.
• Made database online for everyone to get faster access to organization information.
• Encourage employees to translate their tacit knowledge into explicit by giving incentive.
• Build the environment that support knowledge management initiative.
• Build trust among employees and remove the individual competitive value, but working together for organization.
• Encourage employees to build community of practice with other employee from different organization to develop their new knowledge, so employee will open minded about the outside world.
• Sharing best practice about teaching methods and solutions.
Word count: 4026
References:
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Posted by noah 12:47 PM
Labels: knowledge management
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