Preventing Corporate Amnesia
In modern business environments, knowledge is a critical factor for success. Therefore, businesses must handle and utilize knowledge in an effective manner to guarantee a competitive advantage in the global market. Such facets have become applicable in the oil and gas industry. For instance, in Malaysia, the oil industry has witnessed a massive change in the past decades. As a result, the gas industry has managed to influence its composing sectors (production, drilling process, and refining) to have effects on various economic environments within Malaysia. Specifically, this has had effects on marketing strategies, research, production and development.
Under PETRONAS, the Malaysian oil and gas industry has managed to penetrate over 30 countries, thus becoming one of the world’s leading oil and gas extractors. All this has happened in four decades, which is attributed to an impressive knowledge management. Such effectiveness in knowledge management is the heart of an organization’s success. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing and discussing knowledge management in association with the Malaysian oil and gas industry. The article is a literature review examining factors and issues affecting knowledge management within the Malaysian oil and gas industry.
Literature Review
With the need for improved productivity and increased demand for oil, organizations have been forced into adopting new and state-of-the-art methods as a way of improving knowledge management (Uden et al., 2015). Such methods are intensive. For instance, the application of information technology has become an integral part of oil production and distribution. It has become a norm to collaborate with multidisciplinary teams. Malaysian oil and gas companies have been utilizing real-time information as a way of communicating from remote reservoirs, thus processing data in collaborative environments. The result is the involvement of multiple teams, as well as encompassing vendor locations as a vital part of making decisions to assist in achieving business objectives and missions.
An organization driven by technology is required to leverage the process of knowledge management in becoming productive and competitive. Professionals are meant to play a vital role in managing the knowledge in curbing challenges that may face Malaysian oil and gas companies. As advised by Bolisani et al. (2018), a country’s capability to successfully make use of knowledge management does not take place instantly. Instead, it is a process that is cultivated in a slow but sure process, whereby it becomes a culture, whose success is witnessed by PETRONAS in Malaysia. The process has been successful for the country, whereby knowledge management covered both the sharing and distribution of knowledge.
Issues That Knowledge Management Addresses
1) Ageing Workforce: Since PETRONAS was established more than 30 years ago, most of its staff are nearing retirement. It means that the organization will be faced with a drastic impact on its performance. Thereby, swift knowledge management policies are needed to make sure the culture of effective oil production is still available (Yong et al., 2020). The older employees are to teach their younger counterparts, which protects PETRONAS’ efficiency. Despite Malaysia’s young and youthful workforce, if the right policies are not put into place, the country risks losing its reputable oil market share.
2) Attrition: Other than a young workforce, the Malaysian oil and gas industry has been facing the challenge of losing its highly skilled staff. That is, the global oil industry is a very competitive one, and in the process, countries tend to poach Malaysia’s highly competent employees, which leaves void in PETRONAS’ efficiency as a whole (Bahadori, 2017). Hence, to remain competitive, the region has no alternative but to retain its skilled workers, which requires an improved version of their already impressive knowledge management. In such a context, the aspect of trust plays a significant role in retaining a reliable workforce. PETRONAS needs to apply the 5Cs (competence, commitment, conflict, communication and caring) in recognizing and convincing skilled workers from taking the route of moving away from the Malaysian oil industry.
3) Thirdly, the international and global competition has implied that effective knowledge management needs to be indispensable such that Malaysia does not lose its core attributes that make its oil and gas industry effective. As illustrated by Tang et al. (2017), the right policies are efficient in simplifying the “PETRONAS way” whereby knowledge is smoothly transferred from one organization to another, and from one generation to another. Initial stages of PETRONAS’ knowledge management focused on information technology whereby the sharing of information was open and liberal. However, there have been technical issues, thereby a recommendation to make the right changes in knowledge management.
Knowledge Mapping
Regarding the mapping of knowledge, the focus is usually centred on MPM (Malaysian Petroleum Management), which is an arm of PETRONAS focusing on ownership of oil companies and contract management. MPM’s knowledge mapping entails assembling employees from a successful business group to document assets (Cetiner et al., 2018). Historically, the MPM has managed to conduct manual mapping such that employees write ideas on a flip chart, which acts as a representation of focus area and critical activity. Better yet, under PETRONAS, the MPM uses online software tools in knowledge mapping, which allows for analysis of a team’s performance. As a result, objectives and missions are achievable at a faster pace, and much quicker than competitors.
It does not matter if knowledge management is based online or offline; the team facilitates various sessions to explain company goals as a reminder to team members to remain focused (Shangle & Solaymani, 2020). The MPM leverages the wheel of knowledge mapping into six (6) categories, namely: skills, explicit documents, natural talent, experience-based knowledge, methods of working, and networking relationships. Also, as participants add their assets to the map, each is supposed to colour-code their diverse contributions to the company’s intended goal to achieve its goal (How et al., 2019). The members mark both the existing and non-existing knowledge assets, which, in the process, enables the team to document a significant knowledge gap.
Minimizing Downtime
The importance and effectiveness of knowledge management is the aspect of sharing some of the best practices and various lessons oil companies learn. An organization like PETRONAS has improved its efficiency by making sure it has institutionalized its culture of sharing knowledge. Nonetheless, despite its willingness to share information, the process of accessing content becomes difficult, and thus a pressing issue (Inkpen & Moffett, 2017). That is, the magnitude of the content collection has significantly increased, but it has become even more challenging to find time to analyze and understand the new information. Therefore, the next step is for knowledge management to create a way of successfully analyzing and interpreting useful info. As reiterated by Gaghman (2020), this tends to save time between problem finding and solving of issues affecting the Malaysian oil and gas industry.
It is worth noting that the process of managing knowledge offers a context for intensive content management. In essence, systems meant to help with the management of content (people, technology, etc.) are instrumental in translating the meaning of collected information. In the process, this helps in creating an identity, and thus collect and categorize content by utilizing standard taxonomies (Borousan, 2017). The content intends to include databases, competitive data, audio clips, publications and presentations. With such info, users have the opportunity to access both external and internal contents from similar systems. The advantage of such information sharing is to help reflect on growing and strategic online services, as well as better, analyze delivery systems within the Malaysian gas industry.
Preventing Corporate Amnesia
In addition to various acquisitions, the PETRONAS has undergone significant internal redeployments, restructuring, and growth. All of this happens in an environment where an ageing population poses a challenge to the preservation of expertise (Islamgalieva & Simonova, 2018). Creating and maintaining systematic solutions to knowledge management is the only way to keep useful information in the face of depletion or downsizing. Malaysian oil organizations are integrating their information retention strategies into their knowledge management plans by guaranteeing the following: risk management, recognition of lack of expertise, interviewing of managers, and conducting project reviews.
As noted by Ismail et al. (2018), an efficient and successful way of combating the lack of information is to identify, preserve, and transfer essential expertise in the workflow. Good management companies also collaborate closely with HR to formulate and execute plans for the acquisition of knowledge, including recruiting staff who can work well in an information-sharing atmosphere (Maslova & Savkin, 2017). PETRONAS is a center of innovation such that general managers tend to be responsible for their divisions and established developments. The management is also responsible for Malaysia’s growth and future follow-ups, which ensures consistency of succession, planning and personnel management.
Communities of Practice
As a way of implementing and improving its knowledge management, PETRONAS has established a community-based initiative. The organization implemented CoP (or Community of Practice) to start a knowledge management program across the Malaysian oil and gas industry. The CoP helps different divisions in transferring information in a smooth, swift and efficient manner (Lim & Goh, 2019). Currently, the Malaysian industry comprises 50 CoPs with more than 30 members. Each team picks a leader based on performance, who will then lead the team in implementing many knowledge management solutions. At the same time, the CoP teams become competent in promoting collaborative values.
In making sure of efficiency, leaders of each CoP team carry out regular monitoring, whereby operations have to run swiftly and smoothly (Gallyamova, 2016). At the same time, the leaders are encouraged to keep sharing their individual success stories on their online newsletter platform. Moreover, PETRONAS’ management team has the role of continuously offering rewards to help the CoP teams to provide their best performance. As a result, this results in an excellent performance by the Malaysian oil industry. Such positive results are encouraging to other companies within the industry, which also supports the younger generation, thus protecting the industry’s reputable performance.
Lessons Learned from PETRONAS
For an organization like PETRONAS, regular auditing of knowledge management is key to a better understanding of its overall positive performance. Such regular audits are also crucial in making sure the organization adapts to a fast flow of information and, in the process, determine areas of improvements (Burnett & Williams, 2016). Therefore, continued management is imperative, and no matter how little time and resources are spent in guaranteeing such productivity. In essence, some of the lessons learned by analyzing PETRONAS’ knowledge management include the following:
- It is significant to make a realization of the importance of both knowledge and content management as tools in helping achieve a company’s goal and missions, and that these are not solutions themselves
- Organizations need to craft solutions that are applicable in adopting evolutionary approaches that will be cultural, and that they cannot be one-time solutions
- Apart from technology, the personnel is equally important, and that one cannot function without the other
- Initial cost of content migration is substantial, and that frequent revisits will be needed
- Organizations should expect lost time and money due to failed technologies
Basically, the Malaysian oil and gas industry is a clear example of quality improvement as a reliance on knowledge management. Therefore, companies that have found success in applying principles of knowledge management can take advantage of established infrastructure in further using useful ideas. It helps the oil companies address challenges like globalization, acquisitions, and downtime. Regentova et al. (2019) also notice that decentralized companies will always be challenging in achieving a consistent performance, especially in sharing knowledge; however, the critical aspect is to view the difference in opportunities and deficiencies. Such lessons learned from Malaysia’s management of experience can be replicated in other areas. Still, the PETRONAS needs to find new and improved ways of dealing with its emerging challenges on attrition and an ageing workforce.
Conclusion
From the literature review, Malaysia’s success in the oil and gas industry is attributed to its effective implementation of knowledge management. The practices are crucial in better understanding and analyzing any challenges an organization may face. Knowledge management in the Malaysian oil and gas industry has been critical in guaranteeing continued competitive growth. That is, it helps facilitate effective reuse of various organizational resources, which is imperative in not only creating new ideas but also in cost-saving. In a high-tech and highly knowledge-intensive organization like PETRONAS, the management of knowledge helps promote easy ways of sharing information.
At the same time, it helps improve collaborations between various multidisciplinary teams. As a result, companies avoid costly delays and repetitive mistakes. Malaysia’s current knowledge management concepts such as Community of Practice have shown high acceptance among its staff, which is very vital for effective management. Nonetheless, the paper has successfully examined and discussed Malaysia’s oil industry in terms of how it effectively applies various principles of knowledge management and how the industry deals with emerging challenges.