Knowledge Management in Organizations

Assignment Worksheet
Introduction
In this individual assignment, you are going to pick one knowledge management topic from the following list. You need to produce written report. A five-minute individual presentation session will also be required. Please note that you need to have the balance of both IT-based and non IT-based solutions in your assignments.

Assignments
• A final report (at least 2000 words) to include your major findings and comments (45%).
• A five minutes presentation together with PowerPoint slides (5%) for final report.

Available topics
1. Community development can be easily observed in our society and organizations. Communities of Practices (CoPs) are good examples in organizations for sharing best working practices for problems solving. Please identify (or suggest) any formal or informal communities in your work environment. Analyze their objectives, member characteristics, formation, and transformation, etc. according to their establishment history. Evaluate their performance and suggest ways to improve them. Propose a plan to sustain the life of the communities you identified. Critically evaluate whether and how existing social media / software and knowledge management technologies (e.g. portals, document / content management systems, expert systems, etc.) can be used for the communities.

Expected Outcomes:
From all of the above topics please ensure the following outcomes can be found from your project.
1. A critical literature review of some selected articles on knowledge management and its applications should be produced. This will satisfy ILO1.
2. Understand the background and management problems of the organization you are now serving and appreciate how knowledge management can be related to solving those problems. This will satisfy ILO2.
3. Provide solutions of how the impacts of these organizational problems can be reduced with the knowledge management methods and technologies / tools proposed recently in literatures reviewed. You can search from the Internet or library on these areas. This will satisfy ILO3.
4. Compare and criticize those problems with / without using knowledge management in your chosen organizations. This will satisfy ILO4.

Notes on the presentation sessions:
The objective is for the students to present their major findings from report to the tutors. The following criteria would be used to evaluate the performance of the students:
• Command of language and presentation organization (25%)
• KM knowledge (25%)
• Business Knowledge (25%)
• Solution Effectiveness (25%)

Report Format

1. Cover Page (with project title and your personal information)

2. Description of your suggested knowledge management frameworks and tools (20%)

Describe your chose KM frameworks with reference to your organizational issues.
References can be found from the following link:
http://www.apo-tokyo.org/publications/ebooks/knowledge-management-tools-and-techniques-manual-pdf-2mb/
Please note that you need to have a balance of both IT-based and non-IT based KM tools.

3. How can the KM frameworks and tools help solving the organizational issues (20%)

Explain and justify how your chosen knowledge management frameworks and tools can improve the business performance or reduce some impacts of problems. You also need to include the description of the explicit and tacit knowledge in your company and the associated activities to generate and preserve the knowledge.

4. Risk and impact analysis of using KM tools in your organizations / plans (20%)

Spot any possible risks (e.g. job security, royalty, morale, etc.) and business problems triggered by your initiatives to introduce knowledge management tools and frameworks to your organization. Discuss any potential impacts from the risks together with any possible corrective actions.

5. Personal Reflection (10%)

Indicate what you have learnt in this project at your personal level. If everything can be restarted again, would you still adopt the same approach? Why and why not?

6. Conclusion (10%)

Summarize the essences of your report here.

7. Discussion and Further Development (10%)

Any other problems spotted or enhancements needed

8. References (10%)

Some academic or professional references can be stated here. Remember to insert in-line references too. Around five good quality journals or textbooks would be recommended.