Knowledge explosion and management

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT - Enabling business growth: Ganesh Natarajan and Sandhya Shekar; Tata McGraw Hill Publishing Co. Ltd., Sucra Mansion, First FLoor, 158, Arcot Road, Vadapalani, Chennai- 600026. Rs. 350.

WHAT IS knowledge? Knowledge in simple terms means ``awareness or familiarity''. The sociology of knowledge, although a recognised speciality since 1920, is often regarded as atypical. Kant argued that there cannot be perception without conception. Empirics of various persuasions have maintained that knowledge is warranted by direct experience. Marx can be stated to be the precursor in this field though there are others like Durkhiem, Shcler etc., who have done yeoman work in this area. Mannheim believed that it plays a major role in intellectual and political life, particularly in an age of dissolution and conflict, by examining sociologically the conditions which give rise to competing ideas, political philosophies, ideologies and diverse cultural products.

In the Indian context acquiring knowledge or Gyan (Gnana in Sanskrit) is the ultimate and the Upanishads talk of this knowledge in various terms. What indeed is knowledge management (KM) technology? What does the market have to say about whether one technology is better than another while implementing KM solutions? Somehow the term, KM, has become a synonym with IT and technology management is considered as knowledge society.

As with technology management, knowledge management becomes crucial since managers spend a lot of time, energy and money in understanding the way knowledge industry is developing ways to channel its power and methods to cut down wastages in its use. Knowledge management is the ability to harness and build an organisational intellectual capacity.

Gathering and putting together all the best practices or leveraging the experience in a particular environment elsewhere is a critical area in knowledge management. Knowledge sharing (we already have imbibed it in our culture) is another key area. Knowledge management is the key to creating wealth and wealth pyramids in spite of its potential problems like information leakage and risk management requirement. Knowledge management is thus far more than technology to handle e-mail or sharing reports across offices. A couple of years ago, the Harvard Professors, Thomas Davenport and Laurence Prusak in Working Knowledge: How Organisations Manage What They Know gave the basic tenets of KM. Amrit Tiwana, in The Knowledge Management Toolkit, claims that KM is the only thing that will matter in IT in the coming years.

``The nascent state of the art and science of KM can be gauged from the fact that there are less than half-a-dozen enlightening books on the subject today. We hope this book will add to that body of knowledge'' avers Ganesh, the head of Aptech and his co- author Sandhya, the researcher on KM of his company, in their book under notice in 232 pages divided into 10 user-friendly chapters, written in an unusual style for a computer related book.

In a recent research by the Wharton Business School, one of the factors contributing to business success is stated to be ``Good luck''. That good luck seems to be the knowledge-based managment system (KBMS) is akin to believing what data-based management system (DBMS) is to Information System (IS). The book's focus is on software and technical systems available to put in place the technology required for KM and they do familiarise one with a veritable treasure trove of jargons and it is loaded with charts, tables and a whole lot of knowledge phrases. For the readers' information KBMS, DBMS and IS are the jargons for the acronyms above.

The authors have proceeded on the basis that ``an orgnisation can evolve its knowledge solutions based on various approaches basically determined on business needs.'' They have suggested a methodology to the befuddling terms and terminology used and they aver that the processes, if understood properly can pave the way for successful knowledge managment initiatives.

The example is the recent tie-up of Lotus and Macromedia in meeting the knowledge gaps through acquisition of complementary capabilities.

The three key challenges in the service delivery business today viz., how to change its method of attracting customers and servicing them in the new world of Internet and electronic commerce, how to transform its processes and implement IT enablement to build the market facing enterprise, how to re- engineer the mindsets of its employees and enable individual and corporate learning to happen in an institutionalised manner which are issues of finding the correct method of sharing and disseminating knowledge across the enterprise and to transform the customer satisfaction capabilities of each and every member of the organisation through timely availability and use of the collective knowledge base is answered well by the authors through this advice: ``Do not look to the market for providing answers. It is more likely to confound than clarify. The market talks about every technology form a database to expert system, to be a KM technology.'' Quite simply because it is fashionable to associate oneself with KM today.

Where does KM fit into the Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) scheme of organisational transformation? Knowledge networks in service industry, ``the ability to capture information about best practices and enable benchmarking'' which the authors say, is the starting point of any scientific BPR exercise. The premise is ``what cannot be measured cannot be managed or improved''.

The authors are, however, quite clear that the ``common interface for both KM and BPR is the usage of groupware and collaborative computing approaches which uses business intelligence capture and dissemination, and the use of a host of document management approaches to leverage knowledge through sharing at all levels within and across organisations.''

Do they simply mean that a flat organisation and good communication channels are the other words for KM. Of course, the authors have analysed the answers for the questions. What are the implications for an organisation aspiring to implement KM and does it mean that it has to have investment in inbuilt skills in all these technologies or at least in some of them very well. They have rightly advised: ``We clearly need to tread slowly and much more accurately since we have gone overboard in our excitement and now have an information fire-hose''.

Aligning to E-business, enterprise integration, have a whole array of tools, capture knowledge, integration of knowledge/learning are some of the panacea they advocate for KM in the organisational context.

A recent poll by Lotus, manufacturers of Lotus Notes, found that only 28 per cent of corporate managers believed that technology had made teams work better together. So, obviously, KM is not all it is hoped to be.

The authors do deal with complexities of KM as if these obstacles are easy to surmount. They do, however, deserve credit for identifying the major grey areas and the work that goes on though one would expect some crystal gazing on the technology standards front since the authors are the pioneers in the field.

India, with its traditional knowledge base for millenniums have a number of places like Kurukshetra, Panipat, Rishikesh, Haridwar, Varanasi for analysis on KM and it is not known why the authors have chosen Pondicherry which cannot be said to be the sole seat of learning. Also would there not have been more human resource focus, more concrete examples of companies who have dared?

In his dedication of this book, Ganesh Natarajan states ``to my daughter Karuna, whose knowledge streams are so diverse that they totally defy management.'' This perhaps sums up what this newest fad in the IT field is all about. Ganesh and Sandhya have successfully analysed to come to the conclusion that ``There is no one size-fits-all with knowledge management solutions. They can be used as the pivot around which overall knowledge solution falls in place. If business and societies have to survive in an open technology-driven global economy, they have to be able to provide real value through their inherent strengths. They have to quickly manage the dual imperatives of looking inwards and staying connected to be competitive.''

Call it by any name - business wisdom or knowledge management - or coin any other new jargon, the phenomenon has come to be a static dynamism.

N. RAMASWAMI

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