Assignment: Knowledge Management Fundamentals

Objective

A key understanding within Knowledge Management (KM) is to be able to define and differentiate between data, information and knowledge. This assignment will help you to understand the differences among data, information, and knowledge; KM technologies; different types of knowledge and KM capture process; direct organisational impacts of KM.

As part of this assignment, you are to answer the following four questions. The questions are based on the contents of Chapter 2 (The Nature of Knowledge), Chapter 3 (Knowledge Management Foundations: Infrastructure, Mechanisms, and Technologies), Chapter 4 (Knowledge Management Solutions: Processes and Systems), and Chapter 5 (Organisational Impacts of Knowledge Management) respectively of the prescribed textbook.

Question 1

Consider five decisions you have made today. (Those decisions could be simple such as, taking a turn while driving or even choosing books at a library.) In each case determine the data, information, or knowledge that were involved in the decision. Now consider how those decisions would have been influenced by the lack of pre-existing data, information, or knowledge.

Question 2

Consider a high school with which you are familiar. How can Knowledge Management (KM) at this high school benefit from information technologies (KM technologies)? What kinds of KM technologies does it currently use, and how could they be improved?
Note: KM technologies are information technologies that can be used to facilitate knowledge management.

Question 3

Tacit knowledge could be transferred from one person to another in two distinct ways. One possibility is to transfer it directly through socialisation. The other possibility is to convert it into explicit form (through externalisation), then transfer it in explicit form to the recipient (through exchange), who then converts it into tacit form (through internalisation). What are the pros and cons of each approach? If the purpose is to transfer knowledge from one person to one other person, which approach would you recommend? Why? If the purpose is to transfer knowledge from one person to 100 other individuals in different parts of the world, which approach would you recommend? Why?

Question 4

Critique the following analysis: "Our investment on knowledge management seems to be unsuccessful. The return on investment (ROI) decreased from 10 percent to 5 percent at the year of system implementation. Since direct measure of organizational performance decreased, we need to uninstall the knowledge management system right away."

Hints: Is the analysis correct or incorrect? In your critique, you may explain the problem, identify the strengths and weaknesses and consider any possible corrective measures.

Presentation of your assignment (Hints):

• Title Page - clearly setting out the title of your assessment, your name, your student ID, the unit name, unit code and the name of the lecturer. There must be no graphics or pictures of any kind on the title page.

• Format- submit one file in Microsoft Word .doc or .docx format, Times New Roman 12pt. The report must have a header and footer as follows: in the header put your student number on the left side of the page and your name on the right side of the page. The footer should have a page number that is centred on the page. The header and footer should appear beginning with the ‘Body' of the report and continue throughout the rest of the report. There should be no header or footer on the ‘Title page' or the ‘Table of Contents'.

• Table of Contents - auto generated using the word processor. The title page and table of contents itself should not appear in the table of contents. The table of contents should be on its own page.

• No need to provide ‘executive summary'.

• Body- this is where you discuss your answers in detail, where appropriate, headings and sub-headings should be included with the logical progression of your answers from one idea to the next. Do not use the word 'Body' as a heading - identify words that relate to the questions for the heading.

• References - this is a list of all the books and articles you have cited in your assessment. Use Harvard (author-date) referencing style for your in-text citations as well as your list of references. For each of your answers, use at least two recent academic references (journal, conference, book chapter papers, the prescribed textbook etc.) those are published between 2011 and 2018. Contact your library for assistance in proper referencing. Use of Wikipedia and other similar websites is strictly discouraged.