Quiz 3

a group culture

'the basic tacit assumptions about how the world is and ought to be that a group of people share, and that determinates their perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and their overt behaviour.

Digitalisation: changes to knowledge intensity

(Example for law firms) Firms are responding to the new demand by delivering scalable legal products via digital platforms, supplying accessible online advice and free access to templates and legal information, rather than producing knowledge-intensive customized services. This has decreased the role of human capital, in favor of technological and/or structural capital, which has consequently resulted in a decrease in knowledge intensity. Increased use of ICT, digitalization has brought increasing opportunities for standardization and automation. --> Human capital to some extent is replaced with technological and structural capital. Consequently, knowledge intensity decreases with the implementation of ICT.

Digitalization: Changes to capital intensity

(law firms) Increased need for capital to make investments in smart technology and ICT. On the other hand, the interviews shows that digitliazation had also enabled start-up business without need fo large investments up-front and with continuously low operating cost. --> display two diverging trends for capital intensity.

Digitalization: Changes to professionalized workforce

(lawyers) Increased demand for new knowledge; IT, marketing, management.

Features of paragrammatic

- Improvise - Combine - Details - Timing - Experiment - Avoid waste - Come in handy - Multitasking

critical perspective on CoP

- It creates a blindness to their potential negative features and the range of ways in which they may inhibit organizational knowledge processes. - Power, conflict, and the internal dynamics of communities (between newcomers and oldtimers) - Blinkered and inward-looking communities: too strong communities may provide a basis for exclusion, where those not part of the community are ignored, and their knowledge not considered to be relevant or important to the community.

benefits of strong culture

-employees clearly understand the key organizational values leads to loyalty and commitment -if employees believe in and accept an organization's culture, they will behave in ways which support and reinforce the culture

KM and leadership two features

1. The claims it makes with regard to the relationship between knowledge management or learning and leadership 2. The claims made regarding the type of style of leadership necessary to facilitate knowledge management and learning.

broker vs boundary spanner

A broker is someone who is a member of multiple communities, and uses their knowledge and understanding of both to facilitate the development of mutual understanding between other members of the communities. Also has the ability to transfer and translate certain elements of one practice to another. A boundary-spanner is someone who is primarily embedded with and identifies with one community, but who plays a strategic role developing relations with, and sharing knowledge with people from other, relevant external communities.

The replication-as Strategy View

A two- phase model of replication in which an initial phase of exploring in the space of possible formats for replication is followed by a phase of exact exploitative replication of the decided-upon format. Key to their thinking is the notion of the Arrow Core: that is, the full and correct specification of the fundamental, replicable features of a business model and its ideal target applications.

relationship management

Actively involves key, strategic individuals in developing the social relationship between the people involved in a boundary-spanning work situation.

Building

Ba represents a potential for knowledge creation that has to be transformed into process. Thus, Ba needs to be built within the organization. While the transformation from Ba to SECI may arise spontaneously out of new and existing working relationships between practitioners, it happens within boundaries set by hierarchy, process, goals, and visions, defined by the next 'structural' layer.

Coaching and mentoring in relation to KM

Can facilitate the informal sharing of knowledge. Both coaching and mentoring is concerned with the sharing of knowledge between a relatively experienced person and someone less experienced.

benefits of CoP (2 areas)

Can underpin levels of organizational innovativeness through supporting and encouraging the creation, development, and use of knowledge. The common knowledge possessed by members of a community of practice, combined with their sense of collective identity and system of shared values, means they have the potential to facilitate the individual and group learning, and the sharing of knowledge within the community.

Power/knowledge and conflict across organizational boundaries

Centralized and localized entities of knowledge may create power/knowledge conflicts between HQ, alliances, and its remote multinationals, or between firms and their external consultants. Organizations should determine whether the development and sharing of its knowledge assets could be risked in the view of the competitive environment.

Providing

Centralized leadership is essential to spanning organizational boundaries, units, departments, groups, and individuals in providing - and to some degree 'control- ling' - the flow of knowledge assets to SECI. Distributed leadership provides softer or more intangible people-related routines and experiential knowledge assets to the core layer, for example through identification, invitation, and selection of participants in the transformation. 'Soft' and 'hard' assets will be aligned with different leadership approaches, similarly to the leadership prescriptions revealed in our literature review.

Engaging

Centralized: Organizational forms impact on participants' engagement by outlining reporting lines, information flows, and decision-making authority. Distributed leadership, on the other hand, is tied to SECI, The engagement in organizational knowledge creation is therefore the result of a mix of participants' repeated exposure to material or immaterial incentives, systems, and organizational forms impacted by centralized leadership, as well as fluid authority and emergent leader-follower relations in the group. To conclude, at the conditional layer, the SECI process occurs on the boundary between centralized and distributed leadership. The outcome of negotiations between group participants and leaders in the hierarchy will provide important conditions for sustaining organizational knowledge creation.

Leadership and culture are

Closely interrelated, adoption of certain leadership style and attempts to manage organizational cultures have some characteristics in common

significance of boundary-spanning control

Collaboration between people with diverse and distinctive knowledge bases creates the potential for knowledge creation and innovation to occur through the insights that can be developed through bringing together and combining diverse bodies of knowledge.

Flexible replication

Combing the advantages of replication with the advantage afforded by being able to adapt and transfer the resulting new knowledge across the MNC. The key to implementing and managing flexible replication successfully lies in treating the format as a hierarchy of more or less flexible features. In IKEAS case: features at the top of the hierarchy - notably, the guiding principles embodied in IKEA's "Idea Concept" - are fixed, whereas features that are closer to the bottom of the hierarchy, product offerings and prices are allowed to vary in response to new learning. In other words, allow for local exploration within the confines of the IKEA concept, alongside the successful sharing of practices and standard operating procedures that embodied experiential learning gained by subsidiaries.

managing CoPs

Communities of practice are not easily amenable to top-down control. They are autonomous, self-managing systems, which can exist and flourish without the need for any senior management support. Therefore, managerial attempts to control these may conflict with a community's system of self-management.

Core activity layer

Distributed leadership, knowledge is being created through direct contact and collaboration between employees.

Why HRM is important to KM

HRM practices can be used to motivate workers to participate in KM activities through positively influencing the type of socio-cultural factors which have been shown to be crucial to employee participation in KM activities. - The more positive consequences, the more likely to participate in KM activities - HRM can provide both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation HRM practices can also be utilized to support and facilitate organizational KM activities through developing employee's organizational commitment, with it being suggested that commitment may be an important variable which mediates the relationship between HRM practices and KM activities.

Characteristics of PSFs

High knowledge intensity: - knowledge embedded in interellectual capital - knowledge and skills of the employees are key for value creation Low capital intensity: - no need for external investor, greater freedom of operation - not much capital needed to start new companies Professionlized workforce: - Closed professional culture sharing same knowledge base and norms - Bontrol knowledge within domain > monopolistic market

types of CoPs (Verburg & Andriessen, 2011)

Informal networks, strategic networks, Q&A networks & online strategic networks on a spectra from low to high formalization, and high to low geographic proximity

Paragramme

Is used to indicate a shifting stock of ideas, routines, images and ingredients which invite improvization and elaboration, rather than copying and adherence.

SECI

KA resulting from SECI need to be captured for value creation and improvement.

Summary of three logics and process for managing knowledge within an organization

Knowledge management logic - knowledge handling - hygiene factor (necessity/basic) - IT/IS, document&templates, processes/org routines Professional logic - knowledge sharing - motivation factor (develop/learn the profession) - experiences, learning by doing/obeservation Business logic - Knowledge development - Motivation factor (develop the firm) - debriefing, product development

Training in relation to KM

Knowledge workers regard the provision of opportunities to undertake formal training by the employers to be crucially important. Training facilitates the development of good inter-personal relations between those undertaking it, which may encourage such people to share knowledge with each other in the future.

2 ways of making CoPs a part of an org's KM initiatives

Management should be done with a light touch: Develop natural knowledge communities without formalizing them. Nurture rather than command and control. Reinforce the essential attributes of communities that make them so effective at facilitating knowledge processes

Cameron and Quinns org. culture typology

One dimension here is flexibility/ adaptability vs. stability/ continuity, the other dimension examines whether the culture is focused internally within the organization, or whether its primary focus is external, on the market and general business environment. 1. Clan: flexible, adaptable and internally focused. Concerned with facilitating collaboration among staff and development of a strong sense of group and team identity among staff. 2. Adhocracy: flexible, adaptable and more market/ external business environment focused. Companies in dynamic markets, emphasizes values of creativity and innovation. 3. Hierarchy: internally focused, stability and continuity. Focus on adhering to organizationally defined rules and norms within organizations that have clearly defined authority structures. 4. Market: externally focused, stability and continuity. Business environments which are not characterized by high levels of change, focus of the culture is with factors such as consistency, incremental innovation or change, and maintaining or developing levels of competitiveness in business markets. Best for KM activities: Adhocracy Worst: Hierachy

Features with transformational leadership

One of the key features of transformational leadership (and all new leadership theories) is that it represents a form of leadership and people management that is distinctive from more traditional forms of management.

identity in boundary-spanning knowledge processes

People from different teams, departments etc., may have a weak sense of common identity or distinctive and separate identities. This complicates knowledge processes through the potential for conflict this creates, as people with differing senses of identity may perceive differences of interest to exist between themselves and others.

Centralized leadership

Planned, directied form of collab. Autocratic beliefs, stable/solid authority in decision making, lead or follow, development through selection of skills

Conditional Layer

Provides the resources and context for knowledge creation. In the conditional layer, distributed and centralized leadership activities shape conditions necessary for the interplay between Ba, knowledge assets, and the SECI process. SECI process occurs on the boundary between centralized and distributed leadership.

recruitment and selection in relation to KM

Recruit people whose values are compatible with those of the existing organizational culture. Select people with personalities that are conducive to knowledge sharing. The importance of language in effective communication in multinationals suggests that in such a context recruitment and selection processes should take account of language competencies and skills.

staff retention and KM

Retaining workers who possess valuable knowledge should arguably be as important an element in an orgs KM strategy as motivating workers to participate in KM activities. This is because the tacit and embodied nature of much org knowledge means that when employees leave an organization, they take their knowledge with them. Developing the loyalty of knowledge workers is problematic due to labor market conditions, where the skills and knowledge of KWs are typically relatively scarce, creating conditions for KW which are favorable to mobility. Having a high turnover rate is a potentially significant problem for KIFs.

link between theory and practice

Some theorists have looked at the precise ways in which theory influences practice, or vice versa, while others have theorized on how it should influence practice, or how itmay be tested through practice.

Distributed leadership

Sponeneuos, intiuative form of collab. participative, fluid authority in decisionmaking, development through diffussion of skills, lead and follow,

Structural layers

Structures that connect knowledge creation con- texts, processes, and knowledge assets throughout the organization. Centralized leadership.

KA

The asset of knowledge. The extent to which Ka can be mobilized through distributed leadership impacts on the extent to which the potential Ba can be transformed in SECI

knowledge differences in boundary-spanning knowledge processes

The greater the degree of common knowledge that exists, the more straightforward knowledge processes are likely to be. Further, the character of knowledge processes in such circumstances are also affected by the degree of epistemological difference in the assumptions and values underpinning the knowledge bases involved, with a high level of epistemological difference likely to significantly increase the difficulty and complexity of such knowledge processes.

Ba

The platform for knowledge creating process (mobilizing) - in core activitiy layes

Discourse, power/knowledge and the legitimation of truth claims

The process via which certain claims to knowledge become established as legitimate and others become marginalized and regarded as having limited legitimacy is a collaborative social process of negotiation and struggle over meaning between actors articulating different truth claims.

Overall understanding of theory

The theoretical framework clearly demonstrates that centralized leadership (understood as a position, process, or activity controlled by some central authority) is necessary but not sufficient for organizational knowledge creation; distributed leadership tied to a practice is complementary and essential for successful knowledge creation.

The critical discourse on KM and the inevitability of power and conflict in orgs

There are contradictory tensions between workers and their employing organizations over the ownership and control of workers' knowledge. Such tensions are amplified by the (potential) fragility of the employment relationship resulting from the ability of both parties to easily remnant the relationship, the worker through leaving or the employer through making workers redundant.

Job design in relation to KM

There is consensus regarding the best way to structure jobs to facilitate appropriate knowledge sharing attitudes. Work should have three key features: 1. Interesting and challenging 2. Workers should have high levels of autonomy with regard to decision-making and problem solving 3. It should encourage and require inter-personal collaboration

reward and performance appraisal in relation to KM

There is not a consensus on how reward systems can be used to support KM activities. Reward systems should reflect the particular KM strategy. There might also be negative consequences to directly linking individual financial rewards to knowledge behaviours.

boundary objects

They provide a focus for negotiation, discussion, or even shared activity between people from different communities, and this can be utilized to help develop and improve the working relationship between people, and the mutual understanding they have of each other types: repository, standardized forms/methods, objects/models, maps can be syntactic, semantic or pragmatic

Trait approach

This perspective suggested that great and successful leaders possess particular personality traits and characteristics that distinguished them from others.

Transformational leadership

Transformational leadership= a mode or style of leadership focused on the development of long-term visions, values, and goals which also involves persuading workers to become attached to them and to work towards achieving them. It is often defined in parallel with management (micromanagement). Long run view, strategic, development and communication of long term vision, Motivate employees by providing inspiring vision and intellectual stimulation. Culture - new values and vision with aim of sustaining LT competitiveness.

trust and social relations in boundary-spanning

Trust-based relations develop strongly in boundary-spanning contexts. The higher the level of trust, the more willing people are willing to engage in knowledge sharing activities, and the more people engaged in knowledge sharing activities, the more levels of trust in team members increased.

Two challanges in existing

View on leaders as few priviligied, no work before dealt with leadership connected to Ba, knowledge assets and SECI

Linking KM intiatives to culture

Visible: Knowledge management initiatives should: -link to existing business problems -reflect existing organizational style Invisible: -core organizational values -existing networks of social relation

Boundary-spanning collaborations

a form of heterogeneous group collaboration involving people who have distinct differences between them such as knowledge base, sense of identity, native language spoken, etc.

communities of practice (CoP)

a group of people who have particular activity in common, and as a consequence have some common knowledge, a sense of community identity, and some element of shared language and overlapping values

behaviors relevant to KM initiatives

active participation in KM initiatives Having continuous employment for significant periods

Other perspectives as critique to the one above

behaviour-based theories, the contingency approach and the new leadership theories.

building blocks of CoP

body of common knowledge/practice sense of shared identity some common or overlapping values

online communities

cultural aggregations that emerge when enough people bump into each other often enough in cyberspace when applying online communities in an org context, one should be aware that a different approach might be needed for online communities than for offline communities

Types of loyalty and strategies for developing them

instrumental-based loyalty: financial strategy identification-based loyalty: institutional-based, communitarian-based and socially integrative strategies

critical discourse of knowledge and power

knowledge is a stable entity/resource that can exist independently of people (power as a resource)

dialogic discourse of knowledge and power

knowledge largely tacit and provisional, being embodies by people and embedded in the activities they undertake

attitudes relevant to KM initiatives

positive attitudes towards KM initiatives level of loyalty and commitment to the organization and the goals it is pursuing

power (resource-based persp)

power is a (scarce) resource whose use allows people to shape the behavior of others.

Power (power/knowledge perspective)

power is produced and reproduced through the evolution of social relations. Power is embedded in language and is implicated in struggles over truth claims whereby the veracity of certain knowledge or truth claims are negotiated.

5 types of power

reward, coercive, legitimate, reference, expert

properties of power resources that make them influential

scarcity, satisfy wants, no alternatives

Carlile's boundary types

syntactic, semantic, pragmatic degree of novelty in collaborative activity (low to high) type of activity involved in facilitating boundary activity (common understanding, differing interpretations, conflicting interests) dominant knowledge process involved (transfer, translation, transformation)

Org. culture

the beliefs and behaviours shared by an organization's members regarding what constitutes an appropriate way to think and act at work. Both behavior and ideas/values.

social capital of the organization

the informal network of relations between employees

2 central premises of CoP

the practice based perspective on knowledge and the group based character of organizational activity

legitimate peripheral participation

the process by which newcomers to a community acquire the knowledge required to be a community member, through gradually increasing levels of participation in community activities, during which time they simultaneously move from being peripheral members of the community to become more central and legitimate members of it.

Organizational commitment

the sense of emotional attachment that people feel to the organizations they work for, which may be reflected in the alignment of individual and organizational values and objectives. The more a worker identifies with and is committed to the org they work for, the more likely they will be to participate in KM activities.