Week 5 : Tutorial 4

On 2nd of July we had our Tutorial 4 of TKM 1291 Introduction to knowledge management , which related to chapter 4 topic : Knowledge Capture and Codification .

At the beginning we have discussed what is Knowledge Codification is , which be defined in brief by the first phase of the KM cycle which could to transfer :

- Tacit (Undocumented) - to - Explicit (Documented).
- Explicit (Draft) - to - Explicit (Document).

 

Also we can say that the aim for Knowledge Codification is to make the knowledge more accessible, transferable, manageable and retrievable.

 

Then we proceed to discuss about the advantages of interviewing an experts to capture and codify tacit knowledge in an organization. which we said in brief that promoting knowledge sharing , primary source of knowledge and clarifying the knowledge might be good advantages.

Then we proceed to discuss about the key features of the cognitive maps and the decisions trees. we discussed a few points about them which as follows :

Cognitive Mapping :

- Captures conceptual interrelationships.

- Simple to understand.

Decision Tree :
- Representative of decision process.
- Suites  procedural knowledge.
- Easy to produce and understand.

 

Then we proceed and discussed a short scenario about Bessemer who sold a patent for his advanced steel making process and was sued by the purchasers who couldn't get it to work. In the end Bessemer set up his own steel company because he knew how to do it, even though he could not convey it to his patent users. Bessemer's company became one of the largest in the world and changed the face of steel making .

So our task was to figure out Which type of Knowledge capturing technique did the purchasers adopt? and Why did the technique fail? . So Basically the technique over here is Learning by being told. The reason why this technique fails because the patent description is very brief.

Then we have discussed some of the examples of Learning by Observation techniques which in general Tacit - to - Tacit. 

 

At the end of the class we have list out some of the pros and cons of the single experts and multiple experts which in brief as follows : -

 Single Experts Pros : -

- Ideal when building a simple KM system.

- With a single expert conflicts are easier to resolve.

 

 

Single Experts Cons : -

- Kind of risk if the knowledge of the expert is not easy to capture. 

- Single experts are more likely to change scheduled meetings than those who are a part of a team.

 

Multiple Experts Pros : -

- A pool of experts tend to enrich the quality of knowledge captured.

- During discussions experts extend the one another courtesies based on mutual respect.

 

Multiple Experts Cons : -

-Working with multiple experts may require more than one knowledge developer.

- Leads to a " process loss" in determining a solution.