Knowledge Management Case Study
Give your views on the failure of implementation of knowledge management at a global company based on five distinct stages of knowledge management:
Firstly, knowledge management is based on the idea that the experience and expertise of officers, employees, and managers are the most critical asset for an organization. In this case, the contribution of various parties within the organization is deemed important in the implementation process. Therefore, failure to base the implementation on the five stages results in the omission of some critical stages. During the initial stage of the implementation, the organization is able to learn from the experiences of other organizations. Thus, the lack of the advocate and learn stage denies the organization to assess its chances of succeeding with its knowledge management (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2014).
The failure to adhere to the five stages also impairs the establishment of the required relationships among employees or groups. As s result, this makes it challenging to share knowledge across various groups within the organization. Additionally, it deters the organization from establishing clear goals and objectives. The lack of proper allocation of manpower and financial resources makes it difficult for coordination within the organization. Notably, it becomes difficult for the organization to release money for financing its projects due to a lack of planning.
Organizations that fail to base their implementation on the five stages fail to develop an expansion strategy, thus limiting the knowledge management to the existing procedures. The situation in the pharmaceutical company case involved the absence of an expansion strategy to aid the extend of the scope and operate beyond the existing procedures. Given that global companies have an extensive range of workers, thus making it essential to communicate and market the knowledge management strategy.
Also, discuss the failure and your views with respect to the implementation of KM components and the knowledge management framework.
In the given case, it is evident that various components of the knowledge management framework were not followed. In this case, the organization failed to identify its needs, thus leading to the development of irrelevant knowledge management projects like “warehouse”. According to the case, the project “warehouse” could not be adopted by each group. As such, this failure can be attributed to the sharing of knowledge across various groups as well as identifying knowledge resources. Since the implementation framework advocates for sharing of knowledge, the exclusive access to “café” result in the acquiring of limited ideas. The reason behind this occurrence was the lack of enough workers to contribute to knowledge management projects.
The knowledge management framework promotes the availability and interconnection of all the key elements of knowledge management including accountabilities, technologies, processes, and governance. The most critical aspect of the framework is ensuring the free flow of knowledge within the organization. Thus, the lack of accountabilities introduces confusion within the organization. This confusion, therefore, causes the workers to ignore the tasks. Additionally, without processes, workers may lack knowledge on how to perform various tasks. In this case, ‘warehouse” failed because workers in various groups lack awareness.
Among the major components of the knowledge management implementation framework are preparation and infrastructures. In this step, the organization makes decisions regarding the conditions and quality of the knowledge management systems. The issue of inappropriate team members was therefore identified during the implementation. The lack of adequate knowledge about the relations of the organization can result in the development of knowledge management projects that cannot be implemented in the existing organizational structure. This occurred during the implementation of the “warehouse” due to the current organizational structure (North & Kumta, 2018).
Reference
Becerra-Fernandez, I., & Sabherwal, R. (2014). Knowledge management: Systems and processes. Routledge.
North, K., & Kumta, G. (2018). Knowledge management: Value creation through organizational learning. Springer.