Knowledge Management in Innovative Companies 1

Understanding and Deploying a KM Plan within a Learning Organization

Pierre Saulais, Jean-Louis Ermine

• Publisher: Wiley-ISTE
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9781786303202
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119681144
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Management
• Index: Business

The status of knowledge management (KM) as a mature science has long been recognized in the academic world. However, in the economic arena, its connection with companies and organizations has been more gradual. Jean-Louis Ermine established a theoretical and practical framework for KM in his book, Knowledge Management: The Creative Loop – issued by the same publishers as this book. In this latest tome, practical examples are illustrated with real case studies. Modeled on the four-step operational approach inspired by ?the creative loop?, this book includes four sets of real case studies – each one following the basic presentation of the fundamental material per step. Knowledge Management in Innovative Companies 1 is especially useful for practitioners, as there are numerous illustrations based on best practices for each specific KM step and for global project implementation. Indeed, the last chapter is dedicated to the implementation of a global KM corporate project.

1
The KM Project in an Organization

1.1. Articulation of Chapter 1

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the concepts of knowledge management (KM) in organizations, the concepts of operational methodology, as well as the need for a global and shared vision of a company’s KM project.

In section 1.2, we recall the foundations of KM in organizations.

Section 1.3 is dedicated to the reference framework for a knowledge-based KM, which is based on the daisy model.

In section 1.4, we show how to obtain an operational instantiation of the daisy model in the form of the virtuous cycle of knowledge.

The four steps of the MASK method (Method for Analyzing and Structuring Knowledge), which will instrument the virtuous cycle of knowledge, are described in section 1.5. This operational approach will structure the rest of the book: the four steps (MASK I to MASK IV) of the method are respectively at the heart of Chapters 2–5, while the design and deployment of a global KM project based on these four steps constitute the heart of Chapter 6.

Section 1.6 illustrates how a KM project can be fed by a process repository dedicated to the organization’s knowledge capital.

The study of the critical success factors relating to the design and operational deployment of a global KM project is discussed in section 1.7.

Finally, section 1.8 summarizes Chapter 1.

1.2. Knowledge management

Every company has always managed its knowledge and expertise by explaining it in documents and procedures, by disseminating it, for example through training, by organizing all kinds of exchanges with their employees, etc. In the case of know-how (the ability of an agent to carry out an activity based on the application of methodological knowledge), for example, the interest of KM is threefold: formalize, memorize and reuse. Formalization makes it possible to reach a stage of maturity in the field of the know-how concerned, by compelling the agent to structure thinking or to observe the physical elements manipulated and to describe them through models. The memorization function allows the formalized know-how to be preserved from a temporary or permanent unavailability of its owner. The reuse of expertise is the economic argument for the knowledge management approach, because, once formalized and memorized, this know-how can be implemented by other qualified agents, but in the absence of the person who possessed it.

C. Sargis-Roussel confirms that, although knowledge management is at the heart of a recent craze, it is nothing new in companies [SAR 02]. “Industrial families” passed on their knowledge from generation to generation: master painters trained apprentices and workers exchanged their expertise [HAN 99]. In the more recent past, specialists in armaments, nuclear or civil aviation have been implementing KM practices for several decades. However, it was only in the early 1990s that the term “knowledge management” truly emerged in the literature and that business leaders and researchers began to question the place of knowledge in the organization and how to manage it. Alongside the emergence of these questions, we can observe the development of information systems (which make it easier to codify, store and transmit certain information and knowledge), as well as the increase in questions on the possibilities and conditions of KM [FER 06].

For J.-Y. Prax, KM should meet four specific expectations of organizational agents seen as information users, the answers to these four expectations being constitutive of efficiency:

• – providing at the right time the information that agents need, without their having to request it;
• – satisfying requests, because knowledge management adopts a user-oriented logic, while the information system approach focuses on the accumulation of information;
• – building a process for the creation, enrichment, capitalization and validation of knowledge and know-how involving all agents;
• – contributing to collective performance and its sustainability [PRA 00].

However, KM also consists of providing employees with the necessary support for knowledge exchange, an exchange that allows them to go beyond their intrinsic cognitive limits, to value and develop individual and organizational knowledge. Knowledge management is therefore constructed at the crossroads of decision support systems, human resources management and the formal information system. It therefore comes to ask questions about organization. Moreover, particularly in recent decades, knowledge has suddenly taken on a crucial and decisive importance (particularly in its market dimension) in our society, which has been described as post-industrial and largely intangible, as a new driving force of growth, combined with the unavoidable imperative of innovation [BOU 12]. As a result, in recent years, with both sudden and unexpected force, knowledge management has emerged as a major challenge in companies. A new dimension has emerged, the strategic dimension of knowledge, as a resource for competitiveness, performance and risk prevention. A set of strategic elements contributes to this emergence: knowledge is an economic capital [FOR 09]; knowledge is a strategic resource, whose control is an attribute of the company [TAR 98]; knowledge is a factor of company stability, because it is slowly changing [TAR 98]; knowledge brings a decisive competitive advantage, etc.

According to [FOR 09], since the late 1990s, we have been moving into a knowledge-based economy. In this context, the production of knowledge becomes, first of all, a challenge to construct a new industrial policy capable of combating the deindustrialization of many Western countries. Thus, at the Lisbon European Council meeting in March 2000, European leaders decided “to make the European Union the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”.

At the same time, companies are gradually becoming aware of this economic evolution: knowledge is becoming a crucial resource. They understand this all the more acutely as the entry into the knowledge economy coincides with the emergence of organizational dysfunctions linked to the loss of knowledge held by retiring baby boomers. Some industries, such as aeronautics, are finding it difficult to maintain their aircraft. Others, such as the steel industry, see technical know-how disappearing completely in a few years, creating risks for the safety of installations. The management of this resource then becomes an imperative to ensure the company’s competitiveness, as well as the quality of service and the safety of the installations. These situations make it clear that KM and production are no longer solely the responsibility of research or innovation centers. The company’s knowledge in all its fields of competence (research and development or R&D, production, marketing, accounting, finance, etc.) becomes a resource to be managed in the same way as an industrial park or the skills of employees. To face this challenge, companies are often required to implement specific management approaches (KM approaches).

However, knowledge is not a resource like any other. By becoming a key resource for companies, it will obviously lead them to change their organizational methods. In-company knowledge is often inseparable from the individual. It develops according to a particular process (Nonaka and Takeuchi’s spiral of knowledge, associating the individual with the organization [NO 95]). It is very largely tacit [POL 67], integrated into work situations and practices [WEI 95], [WEN 98]. It is this property that creates the value of a company’s knowledge and also makes it neither controllable nor manageable according to traditional business resource management methods. While companies have greatly evolved the classic organizational model (Taylorian and Weberian models) to adapt it to changes in the economic and competitive environment, they remain organizations built around the “myth” of rationality and control. The organization of collective action, i.e. the planning of each actor’s tasks and the use of resources, is based on a rational and optimal decision that makes it possible to achieve the collective objective. The corollary is that any organizational resource, whatever it may be, must be controlled by the organization. Knowledge, which has now become crucial for organizations, but cannot be controlled, obviously disrupts this organizational logic. Beyond that, in this traditional organization, hierarchical legitimacy is based on this capacity to control resources and on the rationality of the resulting division of tasks. As the “knowledge” resource...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1 The KM Project in an Organization
• 2 Strategic Analysis of an Organization’s Knowledge Capital
• 3 Capitalizing on the Organization’s Knowledge
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement