Social Technical Theory in Knowledge Management

Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction (3rd ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

The superior capabilities of knowledge management systems provide an opportunity for the business to engage the most effective components and recognize the importance of communication to make informed, accurate decisions (McGrath, 2001). This system can organize the company’s knowledge resources, knowledge obtaining, organizing, and applying to make a sound routine the will enforce effectiveness (Niu, 2008). The dynamic function of knowledge management to create, capture, and apply knowledge to achieve an organization’s objective will allow them to be more profitable and successful (Zucker, 1986). In addition to increasing profits, the system can be also used to reduce costs and enhance research and development (DeTienne & Jackson, 2001). With all of these advantages, it would be wasteful for a company to not employ knowledge management. As seen in the Discovery Communications, Inc. example, the company can attribute their new productivity levels and increase in ease of securing documents to the knowledge management system that put into place by Carefree Technology. Like Discovery Communications, Inc., knowledge management is so popular today because companies can collect, process and share knowledge to ignite employees ' creativity which in turn will make the business grow. Wenhong and Jianhua (2009) explained the core of knowledge management is to convert company’s knowledge resources into an increased company

(2) Designing a stakeholder survey using that was sent to individuals holding positions in public, private, and non-profit organizations with interests

Knowledge is defined as “an understanding and one that gains knowledge through experience, reasoning, intuition and learning” (Cong, & Pandya, 2003, p. 2). Individuals can inflate their knowledge when they share their knowledge with others, and when knowledge is combined with other people’s knowledge they will begin to build new knowledge. It is also considered as a mixture of values, experience, background information, grounded intuition and authority insight that offers a framework and environment for integrating and gauging new information and experiences. It “is applied in the minds of knowers and in organizations, where it is often embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices and norms” (Cong, & Pandya, 2003, p. 2).

With the benefit of hindsight, it is apparent that in the knowledge era, creating and leveraging knowledge is the business of business. By all available measures, the stock market is already providing handsome rewards to companies that successfully leverage their knowledge--a phenomenon that will almost surely grow in significance as knowledge-based organizations increase in size and number. A number of firms are anticipating this and looking to knowledge management to enhance, measure, and manage the knowledge of their employees and organizations more effectively.

In 2002, Groupe Danone decided to increase “Knowledge Management” sharing across all of their business units within the group through their initiation “Networking Attitude”. It focused on connecting employees across the business unit with each other and sharing the best practices horizontally peer-to-peer instead of relying on the hierarchy. It was the first Phase but in 2007 management want to extend it to the their employees and the customers in the second phase. For that Danone considered three different strategies go wider, go deeper, go richer. Let's analyse all three strategies and pick a suitable one.

Our rational for using Surveys as our primary research method is because of the of the statistical data that is collected, which allows us to evaluate which factors are most important. In addition to this it also permits us to ask specific questions needed for our research. For instance, we thought it was of importance to know

Knowledge Management (KM) is described as a systematic process of sharing, reusing and managing the knowledge only when it is made available and recorded (Jashapara, 2005). This helps an organization to gain insight and understanding for own experience (Remus, 2012). Most of the KM activities

In a knowledge organization, defined by Bergeron (2003) as “corporations that take a systematic approach to capturing information”, knowledge and knowledge workers are treated as the organization’s most valuable asset. Therefore, the sharing of knowledge between employees is essential in knowledge management. But how does an organization make this work? In order for a knowledge management program to be successfully applied, several key factors must be considered: employees, leadership, application of information technology (to be discussed in later section), and most important of all, knowledge.

In order to understand knowledge management, it is important to start by defining what knowledge is. Knowledge is the full utilization of information and data, coupled with the potential of people's skills, competencies, ideas, intuitions, commitments and motivations. In today’s dynamic and complex business environment, the desire for knowledge has increased even more with the scope and content changed dramatically, often spreading outside the organization.

Like many emerging business processes rooted in technology, knowledge management is defined somewhat differently by different organizations, and by different individuals within those organizations. Some organizations see knowledge management as

A knowledge is defined as a valuable intangible resource that need to be managed properly in order for an organization to gain advantage over their competitors, Birkinshaw and Sheehan (2002); Zyngier (2006). Knowledge transfer emphasized as “the movement of knowledge within the organization, it is a distinct experience not a gradual process of dissemination, and depends on the characteristics of everyone involve”, Szulanski (1996).

Nesheim, Olsen, and Tobiassen (2011) completed a study to determine how knowledge communities contribute to the application of knowledge within an organization. The firm selected is located in Norway and exists as a result of the merger

Many large companies have resources dedicated to Knowledge Management, often as a part of 'Information Technology ' or 'Human Resource Management ' departments. Knowledge Management is a multi-billion dollar world wide market.

Fortune 500 companies lose roughly “$31.5 billion a year by failing to share knowledge” (Babcock, 2004, p. 46), a very scary figure in this global economy filled with turbulence and change. Social issues in knowledge capture and its reuse will result in decreasing chances of success. Those issues could increase costly mistakes and failure in services to clients. Some of the consequences of the social issues in knowledge management can be described as follows: