Knowledge Management Organizing Knowledge Based Enterprises Igor Hawryszkiewycz Head of the School of Systems, Management and Leadership at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia macmiuan
Contents List of Figures and Tables Foreword Preface Acknowledgements xvii xxii xxiv xxvi Part I Knowledge Management within Business Communities 1 The Business Environment 3 1 Introduction 3 1.1 Business and strategy 5 2 Processes as a way of doing business 6 2.1 Business process innovation 6 3 The emerging nature of business 6 3.1 Business activities 7 3.2 Processes in business networking 7 3.3 Greater emphasis on knowledge 8 4 The emerging nature of knowledge-based processes 9 4.1 Providing services to customers 10 4.2 Collaboration and knowledge management 10 5 Dynamic environments and complex adaptive processes 11 5.1 Businesses as collections of processes 12 6 Summary. 12 7. Questions and exercises 13 Some further readings 13 2 Business Processes and Activities 14 1 Introduction 14 2 Describing a process as'a set of connected business activities 14 2.1 Business activities and processes 17 2.2 Process emergence 18 2.3 Terminology for describing processes 19 2.4 Processes in business networks 20 3 Introduction to knowledge management and process 23 3.1 Combining knowledge management and business activities 23 vii
4 Technologies to support knowledge-based processes 24 5 Collaboration and team work 25 5.1 Teams and communities 26 6 Communities and knowledge management 27 6.1 Developing social capital 28 6.2 Linking technologies and social communities 30 6.3 Linking technology and process 32 7 Building communities on the internet 33 7.1 Community networks and networked communities 34 7.2 Communities sharing knowledge and information 34 7.3 Building personal communities 35 7.4 Extending to specialized communities of practice 36 7.5 Agricultural developments 37 7.6 Collaborative knowledge networks 37 77 Trends in business application 38 8 Summary 38 9 Discussion questions 39 Case study I - Data collection 40 Some further readings 41 3 Connecting People Within Business Activities 42 1 Introduction 42 2 Connectivity - Keeping track of everything 44 2.1 Improving connectivity - Context and awareness 44 2.2 Context 45 2.3 Awareness 45 2.4 The common options for keeping track of contexts 46 3 Connectivity and interactivity 46 3.1 The role of technology in improving productivity 47 4 Social networking and social network diagrams 48 4.1 Extending social networks to create enterprise social networks 49 5 Types of business activities 51 5.1 Kind of work carried out by people 51 6 Combining social networks and business activities 53 6.1 Leadership roles for transactive work 53 6.2 Coordination role 54 6.3 Facilitator role in collaboration 56 6.4 Advisory or expert roles 58 6.5 Dual roles 59 7 Choosing collaboration structures 59 8 Using the enterprise social network in process design 61 8.1 Simplifying connectivity 61 8.2 Decomposing activities 62
ix 9 Other classifications of work 62 9.1 Management levels 62 10 Summary 63 11 Questions and Exercises 64 Case study II - Brokering in the sales process 67 Some further readings 68 4 Collaboration, Knowledge and Innovation 69 1 Introduction 69 2 The role of collaboration in leveraging knowledge management and innovation 70 2.1 What to change to encourage innovation? 71 3 What is knowledge and knowledge management? 72 3.1 Tacit and explicit knowledge 73 3.2 Describing knowledge 73 3.3 Knowledge metaphors 74 3.4 Knowledge assimilation 74 4 Activities in developing knowledge 75 4.1 Finding knowledge 75 4.2 Retaining knowledge 76 4.3 Transferring and sharing knowledge - 77 5 Directions for knowledge management 78 5.1 Nonaka's knowledge creation process 78 5.2 Davenport and Prusak 79 5.3 Forming perspectives 79 5.4 Enabling knowledge sharing and creation 79 5.5 Nonaka's enablers 81 6 Implementing strategies for knowledge management 81 6.1 Codification and personalization 81 6.2 Steps in managing knowledge 82 6.3 Knowledge officers 83 7 The innovation process 83 7.1 Innovation metaphors 84 " 7.2 Innovation processes ' ' 84 7.3 Adoption of innovation 85 7.4 Strategic communities in planning 86 7.5 Strategies for innovation through open networks 88 7.6 Proactively inn'ovating new strategy 89 7.7 A generic model for responding to situations 90 8 Some guidelines for matching collaboration to business activities 91 8.1 Awareness - The simplest form of collaboration 91 9 Guidelines for collaboration in business activities 91 9.1 Example - Integrative task focused activity - Developing reports 91
10 Combining activities into larger networks 93 10.1 Emergent large-scale activities - Combining planning, coordination and task execution 93 10.2 Example - Assessing emergency situation 95 11 Summary 96 12 Questions and exercises 97 Case study III - Installing and managing back-up power installations 97 Some further readings 99 5 Culture and Knowledge Sharing 100 1 Introduction 100 1.1 Globalization 102 2 What is culture? 102 2.1 Describing culture 103 2.2 Context and time as part of culture 104 2.3 The relationship of community and individual culture 105 3 Institutional cultures 105 3.1 Professional cultures 106 4 Communication and culture 107 4.1 The importance of language in communication 108 4.2 Language and the Internet 108 4.3 The influence of the Internet 108 4.4 Implication for website design 109 5 Culture and knowledge sharing 109 5.1 The influence of social factors 110 5.2 The influence of intercommunity factors 110 5.3 The importance of trust in knowledge sharing 111 5.4 The influence of technology 111 6 Reducing resistance to knowledge sharing 111 7 Changing organizational culture 112 7.1 The role of human relations (HR) policies 112 7.2 Building trust " 112 7.3 Organizing communication across the enterprise 113 7.4 Sharing knowledge across global organizations 113 8 Facilitating intercommunity knowledge sharing 114 8.1 Project coordination 115 8.2 Cross-functional teams 116 9 Organizational problem solving 117 10 Summary 118 11 Discussion questions 118 Case study IV - Global marketing of 'Green' cosmetics 119 Some further readings 121
6 Social Software 122 1 Introduction 122 2 Recreational use - The social networking sites 124 2.1 Early blogsites 124 2.2 Facebook and MySpace 124 2.3 The economies of personal sites 125 2.4 Use of blog hosts 125 2.5 Professional use 127 2.6 Extending to business applications 127 3 Organizing social software for business applications 128 3.1 Maintaining awareness 129 3.2 Communities of practice and social software 129 3.3 Knowledge hubs. 130 3.4 The issue of governance 130 3.5 Capturing best practices 131 3.6 Guidelines for implementation 132 4 Discussion boards 133 5 Blogs 134 5.1 Applications of blogs to business 135 5.2 Sharing knowledge through blogs 136 5.3 What are the standard terms? 136 5.4 Who does the tagging - A governance issue? 137 5.5 Who does the searching? 137 6 Wikis 137 7 Using social software to capture knowledge 139 8 Ultimate goal - Integration of services to support knowledge communities 140 8.1 Sharing knowledge across business activities 140 9 What of the future? - 142 10 Summary 142 11 Exercises 143 Some further readings 144 Part II Current Business Systems 7 Today's Business Applications 147 1 Introduction J 147 2 Traditional business models 148 2.1 Business units in material flow 149 2.2 Achieving competitive advantage 151 2.3 Adding value 151 3 Enterprise resource planning 152 3.1 The impact of ERP systems 153 3.2 ERP systems and knowledge management 154
4 Framework for electronic commerce 154 4.1 Business innovations using knowledge management 156 5 Customer relationship management 157 5.1 CRM processes 158 5.2 CRM services 159 6 Call centers as a way of providing customer service 160 6.1 Call center software and services 160 6.2 Personalized call center services 161 6.3 Web-based call centers 161 7 E-procurement 162 8 Tendering processes 163 8.1 Business processes for managing responses to tenders 165 8.2 Economics of supporting tendering processes with collaborative technologies 167 9 Business networking 167 9.1 Extending to supply chain management 168 9.2 Extending collaboration to supply chains 171 9.3 Disaggregation and vertical integration 172 9.4 Example in telecommunications 173 9.5 Example in electric power generation 174 10 Trading hubs and portals 174 10.1 Extending hubs to the tendering process 175 11 Integrating services into business processes 176 12 Summary 176 13 Questions and exercises 177 Case study V - Building teams for responding to tenders 178 Some further readings 179 Achieving Dynamic Capability Through Business Networking 181 1 Introduction " 181 1.1 Business characteristics and trends 182 1.2 Greater emphasis on collaboration 183 2 Creating value chains 184 2.1 Collaboration and knowledge sharing in value networks 185 2.2 General business process requirements 185 3 Process-oriented collaboration 186 3.1 Where is the complexity? 187 4 Project-based organizations 188 4.1 Extending to partnerships 188 4.2 The importance of trust in business relationships 189
xiii 5 Outsourcing 189 5.1 Deciding what and whether to outsource 190 5.2 Choosing a vendor or provider 191 5.3 Reducing risk 191 5.4 Arranging the contract 191 5.5 Maintaining the relationship 191 5.6 Outsourcing business processes 192 5.7 Managing outsourcing 193 5.8 Collaboration in outsourcing 194 6 Product development 196 6.1 The apparel industry - An example of dynamic capability 196 6.2 Product development activities and processes 197 6.3 ERP systems - Manufacturing resource planning 198 6.4 Collaboration in product development 200 7 Extending product development to services 201 7.1 Services to clients 201 7.2 Delivering dynamic capability to business services 201 7.3 Finding experts or people to work with 202 7.4 Services for fault tracing 202 7.5 Technical services - 204 8 Summary 205 9 Discussion Questions 205 Case study VI - Responding to trouble reports in supply chains 206 Some further readings 207 Part III Organizing for Knowledge Management 9 Modeling Business Activities / 211 1 Introduction 211 2 Revision of business activity model 212 2.1 The importance of roles 213 "2.2 Some examples of BAMs " 214 2.3 Going into more detail 215 3 Modeling the process perspective 216 3.1 Modeling methods for predefined processes 218 3.2 Methods for non-predefined processes 219 3.3 Informal methods 220 4 Modeling the organizational perspective 222 5 Modeling the knowledge perspective 223 6 Modeling as part of system development 224 6.1 System development methods 225 6.2 System development methods for predefined processes 226 6.3 Open methods 227
7 8 6.4 Notification schemes 6.5 Implications for managing system development Summary Exercises Some further readings 227 227 228 228 230 10 Th«: First Design Step: Defining Requirements 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Introduction The evolving business architecture Methods for defining requirements 3.1 Choosing your own design process 3.2 Design choices - Who is the driver 3.3 Cross organizational issues Some techniques being proposed for open design processes 4.1 Metaphors 4.2 Design knowledge and patterns 4.3 The importance of having a vision 4.4 The importance of alternatives Option 1 - A totally open and bottom-up approach Option 2 - A systematic (Up and Down) approach 6.1 The systematic approach - What are the design steps 6.2 Integrating socio-technical analysis into the systematic approach Developing intention (Phase 1) 7.1 Phase 1 Design steps Example - A global marketing services (GMS) organization 8.1 Business activities 8.2 Information 8.3 Social networking 8.4 Alternative 1 - Outsourcing selected non-core processes 8.5 Alternative 2 - Specializing internal operations 8.6 Alternative 3 - A strategic change - Opening branches * or franchises 8.7 Making the decision Summary Questions and Exercises Case study VII - Organising experts Some further readings 11 Creating the Business Architecture: Combining Activities, Knowledge and People 1 Introduction 2 A Blueprint to describe the business architecture 3 The Desien orocess to soecifv new business architecture 231 231 232 234 234 236 238 239 239 240 241 241 242 243 244 246 246 247 251 252 253 253 254 257 258 260 260 261 261 265 266 266 267 268
4 Starting with business activity design 270 4.1 Developing the top-level activity diagram 270 4.2 Refining the activities 271 4.3 Look at alternatives 272 4.4 Including the social perspective 272 5 Designing individual business activities 273 5.1 Questions to ask during activity design 275 5.2 A simple example - Part ordering 276 5.3 Another example - Consulting services 277 6 Designing the top-level structure - GMS example 279 6.1 Identifying and organizing business activities 279 6.2 Defining the enterprise social network 281 6.3 Designing the database and collaborative knowledge base 282 7 Defining scenarios 284 7.1 Scenarios 284 7.2 Scenario for activity in contract development 285 8 Summary 286 9 Continuation of case studies 286 Some further reading 286 Part IV Supporting Technologies 12 Specifying Electronic Workspaces for the Business Architecture 289 1 Introduction 289 2 Networks of electronic workspaces 290 3 Specifying workspace requirements 292 3.1 Specifying workspace components 293 3.2 Workspace dynamics 293 3.3 Managing workspaces / 295 3.4 Workspace governance 295 4 Using business architecture models to specify electronic workspaces 297 4.1 Example - GMS - Marketing organization 297 4.2 Creating the workspace 299 5 Summary 299 6 Questions and Exercises 300 Some further readings I 302 13 Technologies for Business Processes 303 1 Introduction 303 2 Defining Technology Requirements 304 2.1 Technology trade-offs 306 3 The ERP component 307 3.1 Document management systems 307
xvi CONTENTS 3.2 Workflow management systems 307 3.3 Setting up a process workflow 308 3.4 Setting up ERP systems 309 3.5 Extending ERP 309 4 Middleware technologies for knowledge support 309 5 Trends to fully customizable technologies 310 5.1 Web 2.0 310 5.2 Service oriented architectures 311 6 Lightweight platforms for constructing workspaces 312 6.1 Lightweight exchange 313 6.2 Lightweight collaboration 314 6.3 Lightweight workflow 315 6.4 Technologies for lightweight workspaces 316 7 Choosing technologies to support business activities 317 7.1 Example - Marketing organization example 318 7.2 A more detailed specification of the services required for work processes 319 8 Summary 319 9 Continuation of case studies 320 Some further readings 320 14 Connecting Enterprises 321 1 Introduction 321 2 Typical industry wide networks 322 3 Creating the business connections 324 3.1 Virtual organizations 326 3.2 Emerging objectives 326 4 Growing cross-organizational relationships 326 4.1 Strategic engagements, 327 5 Business networks planning 328 5.1 The organizational perspective - Develop a joint vision 329 5.2 Set objectives and priorities by defining projects 330 5.3 Define organizational arrangements 330 6^ The social perspective - Developing a connection plan 330 7 Technical architecture to support enterprise integration 331 8 Summary 332 9 Projects 333 Some further readings. 333 Glossary of Some Often Used Terms in Modeling and Design 335 Bibliography 336 Index 343