Is knowledge management a fad? Essay

comp remnant intimacy counselling is a broad shape that includes tools and theories from various fields. T.D. Wilson had been impeaching the hold for cognition focussing and he had cope to the conclusion that tie-up heed is just a fad started by consultancy companies and IT/ICT departments. This paper examines the functioneousness of this declaration and provides explanations and limitedations of some conclusions that had T.D. Wilson provided in his scarper The nonsense of intimacy trouble.Is companionship anxiety a fad?1 The get hold of of KM in learning baseb tout ensemble clubWith the instantaneous global discipline overlap is arising the fill of intimacy attention. This is based on the evolution and transformation of orderliness. Every socio-economic class the bar of the whole human intimacy is doubled. The role of training in current organization has transferred from peripheral and incidental to central and fundamental. trouble is no longer supervi sing their employees, entirely instead is prioritizing feedback from the employees and therefrom the function of the bus has tiped from pure decision making to study processing (Brunet-Thorton, 2010).Information society is characterized by the interconnection of teaching sources, the ease of transferring categorizing and saving education with the supporter of applied use of selective instruction digitalization. In the definition of development society has the large immenseness the fact that inner telecommunication structures be more and more dependent on outer telecommunication systems. An example of this interconnectedness seat be the internet, which is for our society nearly indispenscapable. And therefore is enabling the fulgurous growth of communicational and informational business organizations. With the beginning of the 21st century we behind observe strong globalization tendencies huge net lends if users, which be able to egest and share information withou t the presence of third persons.This way the volume and nub of experience information and data is astonishingly expanding. The communication infrastructure is lento becoming the infrastructure used for association manduction. The information society is indirectly enabling smaller companies and businesses to get involved in global mint market. For accomplishing their business objectives, these companies stack get advantage in using red-hot paths for trading such as on time production and delivery, online publishing, teleworking and network based virtual teams. The rapid evolution of information-globalized market is reenforcement the transformation to perfect market from the economical perspective. New businesses opportunities are acclivitous form these technology shortcuts.Specific examples from the stick in can be Google or Facebook, which draw so far used the information globalization most prospectively. Information society can bring new paths to advance the miserl iness and contri exclusivelye to increasing the number of highly skilled jobs, but at the expense of reducing the number of working positions with lower or no qualifications. A key factor is the role of education and retraining of humble workers, especially in government and public administration.This is closely related to new(prenominal) difficulties emerging from information society safety and protection of information. You pass on need to modify the legislation together with the burstment and emergence of new information technologies. The fight against cyber-crimes, data protection, information privacy, i.e., to prevent fraud with the certification administration and prevent the spread of malicious code should be a abstract priority in the developing information society.2 Data, Information, cognitionWe can define data as a crude facts relating to things and events that have non been processed or organised (Thorton, 2010). An example can be database fill up with numbers. Without knowing the con textbook what the abbreviations describing each column mean we can non get each information from these data. An new(prenominal) example can be a text in a foreign language. Without knowing this language we are not able to transform data (characters) into any information ( essence of whole linguistic communication and sentences) and consequently we are not able to obtain any cognition from this text. Data be acclaim information, when they havebeen manipulated permitting its meaning to be understood. (Thorton, 2010) One of the tons of definitions of fellowship is acquaintance is directly related to understanding and is gained through the interpretation of information. intimacy enables us to interpret information i.e. derive meaning from data.The interpretation of meaning is framed by the perceivers association. (Mark Sharratt & Abel Usoro, 2003, p.188). The definition of knowledge guidance becomes more interesting then definition of knowledge, because of the various views on this stipulation as Wilson aims out (Wilson, 2002, What is knowledge commission?, para. 1). Despite the recent overlook of agreement on what is meant by knowledge management, the definitions of knowledge management plan at trio core comp atomic number 53nts of knowledge management knowledge/information reppositories, communities and networks and experts and knowers. (Chatti & Jarke & Frosch-Wilke, 2007, page 406)3 Tacit explicit and implicit knowledgeWilson has besides raised the question about explicit knowledge. He is literally intercommunicate the reader Does it invite any difference to the argument if, in the diagram, we renew tacit knowledge with knowledge and explicit knowledge with information? He is not answering his question, so it may seem unanswered, but maculation reading the whole paragraph, which is quite critical to the established distinction in the midst of explicit knowledge and information, I s realiseped looking for the answ er, because it quite unornamented that this question is just rhetorical.Other authors are fairly more specific about the enclosure of explicit knowledge. One of the views is offering Stenmark The fact that routines, procedures, rules, manuals, books, blueprints, and all the other examples given above are useful does not make it knowledge. They all need knowledge to be decoded and are therefore not knowledge but information, albeit interwoven with the knowledge required to create it. friendship, which carcass tacit, is also needed to interpret the information. Although some argue that knowledge may be embedded in a text (e.g., a agreement sheet where columns and totals have predefined meanings), the reader cannot appreciate it without bringing the required personal knowledge (2002, page 6). As a conclusion I ring a can cite that the term explicit knowledge can be used synonymously with information.4 Knowledge in VSE plysIn order to show the importance and purport of knowledge management I am presenting here the syllabuses of few crosss from The University of Economics, Prague that engaged with knowledge.4IZ210 Information and Knowledge touch onAims of the course To familiarize students with basic methods for both information storage and retrieval, as well as for acquisition and processing of formalized knowledge. Furthermore, the aim is to highlight the interrelationship of these areas and outline anticipated evolutions. acquirement outcomes and competencesFind and process information about companies and present the processed information, especially for analysis of the competitive environment. The violence is put on working with electronic information resources. Apply the selected method for knowledge discovery in databases on a given data and publish acquired knowledge to an expert. The emphasis is put on working with association rules. Understand the basic methods selected for processing information and knowledge within presented subjects. lin e of merchandise bailiwicks The method for storing and retrieving information, methods of obtaining and processing of formalized knowledge, solving practical problems. (4IZ210 syllabus, n.d.) This course is dealing with all free levels of intelligence produced by humans data information and knowledge. Student should be able to denounce between these three easily and they should also be capable of transforming one to another. 3MA661 Management of Knowledge WorkersAims of the courseIntroduce students to modern tools and methods of management convenient for management of knowledge workers. Demonstrate those tools and methods in real life corporate situations. Learning outcomes and competences distinguish between tacit and explicit dimension of knowledge, use basic tools for work with explicit and tacit knowledge, identify knowledge workers in organization and carve up them to groups in relation to their importance for organization and style of work, manage and develop knowledge wor kers in relation to their personality type, manage personal development of knowledge workers, initiate and manage process of knowledge sharing among knowledge workers, create visions and get the support of knowledge workers for them.Aims of the courseExplain importance of knowledge for business and management. Present key concepts and processes of knowledge management and read them on case studies. Explain the term tacit knowledge and school students to work with it. (3MA661 syllabus, n.d.) This syllabus is quite unspecific about specifying knowledge management tools used for managing knowledge workers. It seems, just from the text of this syllabus that this course is coincide with majority of the topics with the Knowledge management course. 4SA320Information Management BasicsAims of the course Course offers basic theoretical background as well as practical application of information management. It presents information management as multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary science , which integrates knowledge in three areas modern management, system approach and informatics. The content of the course accents global overview of the information society, its development and presents main topics of managerial work in conditions of actual information society. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to know the legal frame of information society in conditions of the CR, work with components of Integrated Management System, actively know how to use fundamentals of knowledge management in the area of enterprise informatics. (4SA320 syllabus, n.d.) I shrive this course utmost year.From the syllabus it seems that student will have to do lots of with knowledge. So thought I, and although I wasnt really able to tell much difference between information and knowledge, my expectations were aimed on knowledge from my todays point of view. But this course is purely pore on Information management. It peeks more into techno system of logical and l egal fields than in management of knowledge itself.And as the last I would like to present not a course of The University of Economics, Prague but a students site called vseborec.cz. Its not primarily a knowledge management tool, but kinda an information sharing site. But from simple sharing site for students notes to lectures it has developed to a database of student knowledge. Its quite interesting that has expanded to todays proportions convey to the sharing and unselfish naturel of students on a school which aim is to give lessons its student to compete and not to share. You can decide out what will be the professor and his lectures like even before enlisting in the course.5 Web searches analyseTo support or refuse the formulation of Wilson that knowledge management is just a fad (2001, death, pa. 1) I made an analyse of web searches on Google in the completion of the last six eld. If the term knowledge management is in the business existence used just as a synonym for the term information management the total measurement of searches for the term knowledge management should be increasing to the prejudice of the term information management. The absolute amount of web searches for both, the information and knowledge management, has been obviously decreasing in the period of the old age 2004 and 2007.The drop of searches is simultaneous for both of the terms, therefore we cannot say that knowledge management is replacing information management, at least in the compass of web searching. Among the most popular places around the world for searching the term knowledge management in the period of last 12 months is booster cable to the south Africa followed by Kenya Malaysia and India. But in the year 2004 in the top ten places for web searching Knowledge management we can find countries such as United Kingdom, Italy and Australia. The shift of popularity from westbound countries to African and Asian areas is evident. (Google Insights, 2010) Graph 1 Web search worldwide (Google Insights, 2010)This is the conclusion that has T.D. Wilson come up with The inescapable conclusion of this analysis of the knowledge management stem is that it is, in large part, a management fad, promulgated mainly by certain consultancy companies, and the probability is that it will fade away like front fads.(Wilson, 2002, Conclusion, para. 1). And according to my web searches analysis it really looks like that knowledge management is just a fad.The interest in knowledge management has been decreasing for the last six years. But I think that this is moreover due to the acceptance of knowledge management as such in western cultures and the simultaneous inception of knowledge management consciousness not just in business world but also at universities and in a public sector. And due to this conclusion I arrogate that the growth of interest in knowledge management in South Africa, Kenya, India, Malaysia and other south Asian and African countries is because of the lack of general awareness about knowledge management and not because of the late arrival of stylish knowledge management to less developed countries.6 Reasons of knowledge management popularity rocketingWilson presented in his paper five arguments, why he thinks that knowledge management has been experiencing such a boom in the past decade. Here are they First, and largely because of a fixation on internal organisational data, the term information has become almost synonymous with data in the minds of organizational heads. For example, Ive been told that the National Electronic Library for Health uses the term Knowledge because in the NHS information=data and a different term was needed. We have to lay this, I think, at the feet of the information systems profession whose focus for years was data and data definitions, etc. In fact, they dealt not with information systems but with data systems. (Wilson, 2001, pa. 2)This is, of course, misinterpretation of data and info rmation. If is somebody using this terms falsely in one organization, that doesnt mean that alwaysybody else should take these terms as synonyms. Information systems are by definition computerized tools that assist people in transforming data into information (DiBiase, 2008) but data systems are just groups of facts presented in a specific order (pixels forming a picture, radio waves broadcasted at one frequency). Secondly, and opportunely for the software houses and IT firms, km came along just as they were macrocosm hit by the wave of scepticism over the possibility of IT ever delivering more than problems and certainly never likely to deliver productivity and performance. Whoops, weve loony it cried the IBMs and MSofts of this world We should have been dealing with knowledge all along, and now we are Lotus Notes is no longer groupware and personal information management, its KnowledgeWare So they are happily marketing the same product under a new name. (Wilson, 2001, pa. 3)A s I mentioned earlier, the term knowledge management is on its raise, not because of marketing strategy of IT/ICT companies, but because of its popularity increasing with the needs for discontinue entitlement of the information society. Thirdly, the organization and management boys finally began to realise that all this text that people were creating on word-processors, etc., needed to be managed effectively and, indeed, organized, shared and disseminated more effectively, but they couldnt use information management because that was information systems and data, wasnt it? So it must be knowledge, right? If we can entirely get people to share their knowledge performance must repair because it is the communication barriers that are preventing the free flow of knowledge (i.e., information). So, now, every font of organization and management theory has to have a knowledge dimension, other than you arent in the game.In the literature, of course, this amounts to the token use of the t erm knowledge management and the use of knowledge as a synonym for information. (Wilson, 2001, pa. 4) Knowledge shouldnt be used synonymously with information and I hope that this is not happening, at least at academic level. as well as Wilson is not differentiating between data and information system which definitions are noted above. Fourthly, at the forefront of all this were the management consultancies why? Because BPR and Organizational Learning were running out of steam. Amusingly, all organizational learning work appears to come under the heading of km more search and replace marketing. So, the consultancies grabbed at km in order to have something to sell at the end of the 90s. (Wilson, 2001, pa. 5)The consultancies are always looking for the needs of business market and therefore they should be reflecting the needs of this market, at least to some point, so this point might be valid on a small effect of a scale. Finally, most (or at least many) departments of informat ion management or information science, and departments of information systems in academia, are somewhat low on the totem pole in most of their institutions, and each needs to differentiate itself from the other in order to try to work its way up that unctuous pole, so both have seized on km as an back up in the struggle.I foresee turf-wars over which department, where there is one of each, has the right to run degrees in km. Where only one of the kind exists, it will hear to make km all-embracing of management, computer science, information systems, etc., etc. because the logic leads nowhere else If we deal with knowledge then how can anyone else presume to do so? (Wilson, 2001, pa. 6) The logic of Wilson leads nowhere else, because that is exactly what knowledge management is about people, culture, technology, processes. The knowledge management is closer with its aim to the management and organization and the departments of information management are rising from IT/ICT field s so the need to go up should be also emerging from management places and not from information management departments.7 ConclusionWith the development of new technologies in information and communication sector the new term knowledge management has begun to be used in business sector. The term as such is not useless and meaning less as suggested by Wilson in his research. Wilson is asking the readers in the conclusion of his paperIf getting promotion, or holding your job, or finding a new one is based on the knowledge you possess what incentive is there to reveal that knowledge and share it?(2002, Conclusion, pa. 2). And my answer to this probably rhetorical question is Your working experience, your social and pagan background and most importantly your education. From all of these you can predict the amount of knowledge one possesses. Although it cannot be evaluated by any empirical measures, the be society is surviving without these accurate measurements and surprisingly she is doing quite well.This is not to say that enabling people to contribute effectively to the management of organizations is impossible and that sharing knowledge and enabling people to use their creativity in sophisticated ways in organizations is impossible simply that it is very difficult, and that it does not center to some simple concept of knowledge management It demands a transfigure in business culture, from the macho Harvard Business School model, to something more advertent and understanding of what motivates human beings. Organizations need to learn to think about problems, rather than grab at proffered solutions which often turn out to be costly side-tracks away from the main issues (Wilson, 2002, Conclusion, pa. 3).And thats why knowledge management isnt just a simplistic concept. It includes tools from various fields such as and uses them for improvement of knowledge culture within the organization. The slight decline in popularity of knowledge management in the la st six years shows not the recess of knowledge management as a fad, but it rather shows the wide acceptance of knowledge management in the western society. The views presented by Wilson are shocking and very easy to understand and thats why I find this view presented by Wilson too simplistic and demagogic to some extent.References3MA661 Management of Knowledge Workers FPH WS 2010/2011 course syllabus, (n.d.), The University of Economics, Prague, Retrieved from https//isis.vse.cz/auth/katalog/syllabus.pl?predmet=68577 4SA320 Information Management Basic FIS WS 2010/2011 course syllabus, (n.d.), The University of Economics, Prague, Retrieved from https//isis.vse.cz/auth/katalog/syllabus.pl?predmet=68886 4IZ210 Information and Knowledge Processing FIS WS 2010/2011 course syllabus, (n.d.), The University of Economics, Prague, Retrieved from https//isis.vse.cz/auth/katalog/syllabus.pl?predmet=69183 Brunet-Thorton, R. (2010) Knowledge management. Presented at The University of Econo mics, Prague 3MA624 Knowledge Mangement lecture. 11th November Chatti, M.A. and Jarke, M. and Frosch-Wilke, D (2007) The future of e-learning a shift to knowledge networking and social software. Int. J. Knowledge and Learning, Vol. 3, Nos. 4/5, 2007 Retrieved from http//citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.141.3202&rep=rep1&type=pdf DiBiase, D. (2008) Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access Glossary. Retrieved from http//www.pasda.psu.edu/tutorials%5Coutreachglossary.asp Google Insights (2010) Retrieved from http//www.google.com/insights/search/q=knowledge%20management%2Cinformation%20management&cmpt=q Sharratt, M and Usoro, A. (2003). Understanding Knowledge-Sharing in Online communities of Practice. Page 188. Retrieved from http//www.thestep.gr/trainmor/dat/%7B7a8f15e0-b7eb-404e-864a-ef0eb1403751%7D/article.pdf Stenmark, D. (2002), Information vs. Knowledge The Role of intranets in Knowledge Management, Proceedings of the 35th Hawaii