The Knowledge Management (km) Definition
The knowledge management (KM) group of Informs first thought that by promoting he Shop with Knowledge Currency Units (KC), which could be accumulated and exchanged for monetary rewards, would Increase the knowledge sharing on the portal. But this led to over contribution which resulted In employees experiencing information overload and consequently, higher search costs for reusable knowledge. Secondly, the explosive growth in the no. Of contributions began to place a heavy burden on the limited number of volunteer reviewers. This lead to a lax In the quality control of the shared knowledge, which resulted In knowledge degradation.
Also hen questionable articles began to be rated consistently higher, the credibility of the rating system itself came into question. There was also a fear that one of the core values of the organization involving the company’s asking culture would deteriorate. Q. What steps did the KM group at Informs take to improve participation in the KM system? Why were some of these initiatives counterproductive? The KM group responded with corrective initiatives. Do you think these will succeed? Why or why not? To increase participation in the in the KM system, the KM group at Informs introduced the knowledge currency unit (KC)” Incentive.
According to the scheme, the employees who contributed or reviewed contributions to Shop would be awarded Sucks which employees could accumulate and exchange for monetary rewards and prizes. Also to motivate the employees, their cumulative Sucks were displayed on a scoreboard on Shop which increased their visibility and hence their standing In the organization. This served to be counterproductive as an extremely large number of employees started contributing material due to the monetary gain which got published irrespective of its quality thus leading to higher search costs and deplorable quality.
The most Important of corrective actions was to distance the knowledge sharing from the monetary incentives to protect the split of community In the company by reducing the number of Sucks awarded for reviewing contributions and increasing the minimum standard for cashing the KICK points. They reevaluated reviewers and colleagues, but also by the end users. They also began to demand tangible proofs for any high ratings to increase the accountability of the reviewers. These initiatives would work as this would lead to contributions and reviews by only serious employees who genuinely wanted to share knowledge.
Second set of corrective actions focused on improving the knowledge management practices within project teams and practice communities. These initiatives would work as they enabled the codification and extraction of knowledge automatically and without much effort, even as the teams carried out their project related tasks. Q. What change management initiatives should the KM group have initiated at Informs before attempting to develop and implement knowledge management at the company?
Defend your proposals, paying particular attention to the final quote in the case by a long-time KM manager at Informs. The most prominent cause for the unsuccessful implementation was that the employees were unprepared and unaware of the new system of sharing knowledge. They were also unaware of the potential advantages an organization wide integrated knowledge repository might bring to their team and individual knowledge enhancement. As human tendency is to resist change, unprepared employees were ore comfortable with their old systems of doing things on their own or asking someone they know.
