Knowledge Management Strategy- Codification Vs. Personalization

Before selecting a Knowledge Management strategy for your organization it is always good to learn which strategy suits more_ Codification or Personalization. There is no general agreement that one strategy is better that the other. It all depends on the nature/ culture of your organization. So before deciding which strategy suits you more, lets have a clear understanding of what each strategy is about;

Codification		Personalization
People to Documents		People to People
Usually high quality, reliable and fast information systems are needed		Provide, creative, analytically rigorous advice on high level strategic problems by channeling individual experience
Typically includes databases of information, previous presentations and reports.		Knowledge workers use each other as resources through brain-storming sessions, networking, one-on-one conversations and team projects where the focus is on individual knowledge and experience.
The knowledge workers experience are stored in documents, either on hard or electronic copies.		This method is particularly used when information cannot be codified and stored electronically
Knowledge is not connected to a specific person and reused for multiple projects
Advantages	Disadvantages	Advantages	Disadvantages
Explicit knowledge can be reused and approached easily	High investment in IT	Highly customized solutions	Higher chance of ambiguity occurrence
A large amount of knowledge can be stored and accessed	Highly IT literate workforce	Moderate investment in IT	Difficult to be communicated and understood due to different levels of experience each possesses
Easy to understand and make use of	The reuse of knowledge which is applicable to many projects hinders the quality of the outcome of a performed task.	Staff does not need to be highly IT literate but should possess skills in dealing with ambiguity and problem solving	High use of facilities needed (conference rooms, etc)
		One to one monitoring	Time consuming

Things to be considered when selecting a strategy;

• The type of products- Standardized and mature (Codification)/ Customized and innovative (Personalization)
• What type of knowledge do employees rely on? Explicit (Codified)/ Tacit (Personalized)
• Which primary strategy best fits competitive business strategy?

The best results are achieved when a firm focuses on one strategy; however a secondary strategy can be employed to support the primary, but with less emphasis.

Read more on Harvard Business Review "What's Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge"

Knowledge Management Processes- SECI Model

As discussed in the previous article  "Knowledge Management Defined" Beccerra et al. define knowledge management in terms of discovering, capturing, sharing and applying knowledge. This article is on what these processes mean. The SECI model illustrated int the diagram below explains the movement of knowledge within these four processes.

The following sub sections briefly discuss the four processes;
Knowledge Discovery (KD)- is the development of new tacit and explicit knowledge from data, information or synthesis of prior knowledge. (Beccerra et al. 2010). KD occurs as following;

• Socialization-  Socialization takes place when converting tacit into tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge resides in people and it always works more effectively between people who have common cultures and successful working groups. 
• Combination-  Combination takes place when converting explicit into explicit knowledge. (Marwick, 20010). This can happen during the meetings in the form of emails, documents etc. Further education, training and data mining are also forms of combination.

Knowledge Capture (KC)-is defined as "the process of retrieving either explicit or tacit knowledge that resides within people, artifacts or organizational activities"(Beccerra et al. 2010). KC occurs in two distinct ways as 'Internalization' and 'Externalization'. The sole purpose of KC is to optimize exploitation and distribution of knowledge by people and organizations.

• Externalization- Involves in conversation of tacit into explicit knowledge, which is difficult.Through conceptualization, elicitation and articulation, typically in collaboration with some proportion of one's tacit knowledge maybe capture in explicit form.
• Internalization - Involves in conversation of explicit into tacit knowledge. Internalized knowledge must be understood, which involves creating tacit knowledge. Internalization is comparatively challenging because information grows exponentially every day.

Knowledge Sharing (KS)-Sharing of knowledge is takes a vital focus in KM. It is defined as "the process through which explicit or tacit knowledge is communicated to other individuals". KS involves in socializing (Refer KD section) and exchanging gathered knowledge by any individual or by groups with other individuals. 

• Exchange- Communicating knowledge in the form of explicit to explicit. This means sharing captured knowledge such as manuals, mathematical expressions, reports, graphs etc. "Once an individual articulates his or her knowledge in a document, process description or other form of explicit knowladge repository, it is possible to quickly disseminate that knowledge throughout an organization or indeed anywhere int the world via Information Systems"(Sanchez, 2004).

Knowledge Applying (KA)- Depends on the available knowledge which in turn depend on the process of knowledge discovery, capture and storage. (Beccerra et al. 2010). The better these processes take place, chances are that knowledge for effective decision making is available to enhance organizational performance. KA takes place in following ways.

• Direction- Individuals possessing the knowledge direct the action of another individual without transferring to that person the knowledge underlying the direction. For example, an implementation engineer directs his subordinates to solve a problem in an IS. The subordinates execute the task without having the knowledge to solve a similar problem.
• Routine-Exploitation of knowledge embedded in procedures, rules and norms that guide the future behavior. Routines economize on communication more than directions because they are embedded in procedures  (Beccerra-Fernandez  et al., 2004). They take time to develop, hence cannot  take place within a short period like direction. For example, new employee is given a set of tasks which needs to be performed after going through and understanding previous manuals/ documentations of lessons learned. 

Knowledge Management Defined

Beccerra Fernandez, Gonzalez and Shaberwal define knowledge management as 'Performing the activities involved in discovering, capturing, sharing and applying knowledge so as to enhance, in a cost effective fashion the impact of knowledge on the unit's goal achievement'
The book also claims that there is no general agreement on a definition for knowledge management.


However according to Jashapara, A. in his book 'Knowledge Management- An Integrated Approach'defines KM as 'The effective learning process associated with exploration, exploitation and sharing of human knowledge (tacit and explicit) that use appropriate technology and cultural environments to enhance an organization's intellectual capital and performance'

But analyzing the fundamental attributes of the two words, 'Knowledge' and 'Management' KM can also be defined as,

"The process of planning, organizing and controlling explicit and tacit knowledge that reside in various knowledge resources, with the use of activities involved in knowledge discovery, capture, sharing and applying, in order to minimize the knowledge loss in an organization and improve its performance"

As aforementioned this definition was derived by understanding the basics of the two words;

Knowledge- can be introduced in two types:

• Tacit- Knowledge that resides in individuals' mind.
• Explicit- Knowledge that resides in documents, artifacts, manuals etc

Management- Planning, organizing and controlling resources in order to perform a set of tasks and achieve the goal.

Therefore, in terms of managing knowledge, a set of  tasks needs to be performed:

• Knowledge Discovery- discovering new knowledge.
• Knowledge Capturing- Storing/ capturing discovered knowledge.
• Knowledge Sharing- Exchanging the knowledge with other entities.
• Knowledge Applying- Applying the gathered knowledge to perform activities.

Finally, by performing these tasks KM strives to achieve a goal: 

• Minimize the loss of knowledge resources in an organization due to employee retirement and leaving the organization and
• Improve organizational performance. 

Importance of Knowledge Management in the Current Economic Environment & its Drivers (Abstracted from Beccerra et al)

It is said that the knowledge is the "Key Resource" for a nation's military strength and economic strength.  It is fundamentally different from the traditional key resources of the economist_land, labour and capital. The performance capacity/ survival of any organization in terms of knowledge depend on how well it has been managed_Quality of the Knowledge and Productivity of the Knowledge.

The neglect of knowledge based on people and ideas can result in reduction of corporate market place's capability and sustainable competitiveness. Therefore it is important that an organization manages its people and ideas/ knowledge resources in order to successfully manage the core of the business.

Today, organizations rely on their own decision makers to make "mission critical" decisions based on inputs from multiple domains. The following four underlying trends increase the stakes in the decision making scenario in today's economical context.

1. Increasing Domain Complexity- The complexity of underlying knowledge is increasing. As a direct consequence, the complexity of the knowledge that is required to complete a specific business process task has increased.

2. Acceleating Market Volatility- The pace of change or volatility within each market domain has increased rapidly, increasing competitiveness and rate of innovation in the market place.

3. Increased Rate of Responsiveness- The time required to take actions based on changes within and across domains is decreasing. Rapid advance in technology continually changes the decision making landscape, making it imperative that decisions be made and implemented quickly before the window of opportunity closes.

4. Diminishing Individual Experience- High employee turnover rates have resulted in individuals with decision making authority having less tenure within their organizations than ever. 

In short, KM is important for organizations that continually face downsizing or a high turnover percentage due to the nature of the industry. KM is important for all organizations because today's decision makers face the pressure to make better and faster decisions in an economic environment characterized by high domain complexity and market volatility. 

Difficulties In Handling Tacit Knowledge Rather Than Explicit Knowledge

Before discussing the difficulties of handling tacit knowledge, let's come to know what tacit and explicit knowledge mean.  As discussed in the book "Knowledge Management- Challenges, Solutions and Technologies" by Becerra-Fernandez, Avelino Gonzalez and Rajiv Sabherwal;

Explicit Knowledge: Knowledge that can be expressed in to words and numbers. It can be shared formally and systematically in the form of data, specifications, manuals, drawing, audio and video, computer programs, patents etc. For example, basic principles for stock market analysis contained in a book or manual are considered as explicit knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge: Insights, intuitions and hunches. Tacit knowledge is difficult to express and formalize. Thus it is difficult to be shared. For example, through years of observation on a particular industry, stock market analysts might gain knowledge that help them make recommendations to the investors in the stock market.

As aforementioned definitions for tacit and explicit knowledge, knowledge that has been/ can be articulated or documented or stored is called explicit whereas knowledge that resides in an individual's mind is called as tacit. Tacit knowledge of an individual could directly dependent on one's experiences and practices. In other words, it is more likely to be personal and based on experience and activities. This being the reason for several companies to continually seek ways to retain knowledge  that might be lost because of individual retiring or leaving the organization (Beccerra et al.), such knowledge is critical to handle.



By definition, management of tacit knowledge is managing "People" whereas  management of explicit knowledge is managing "process and information". Therefore managing tacit knowledge can also be defined as planning, organizing and controlling the intellectual capital of an organization. Sharing of knowledge can fundamentally be based on factors such as "People, Culture, Organizational Structure and Technology". Management of people/ intellectual capital/ tacit knowledge can be difficult due to the following reasons;

• One being unable to express/ transfer the knowledge gathered through experience and practice/ activities, in away that can be understood by the receiver.
•  One being unable to acquire/ understand the shared tacit knowledge of another individual due to different level of intelligence, experience and exposure.
• Lack of trust or confidence, i.e. "credibility" on another being capable of understanding and using that knowledge in an appropriate manner.
• Lack of time and conference places/ facilities to share or transfer knowledge between individuals.
• The organizational culture in which it has no encouragement or commitment to share one's knowledge among the rest of the employees. Lack of leadership skills that encourages communication between levels of workforce and open discussion of organizational issues and the solutions implemented.
• Lack of ICT usage which result on level of knowledge sharing and enthusiasm to share/ acquire knowledge.
• Competitions with the other parties of the organizations which can take place due to the knower (the individual perusing the knowledge) trying to protect his/ her status in the organization.