Knowledge Management Strategy in Malaysia
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UUM Repository Knowledge Management Strategy in Malaysia Badruddin A. Rahman Faculty of Business Management University Utara Malaysia, 06010 Sintok, Kedah Tel: 04-9285049, E-mail: [email protected] ABSTRACT A study on Knowledge Management (KM) initiatives was conducted on a sample of various categories of organization in Malaysia. The categories were companies listed in the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange (300 of a total of 500 companies), government Ministries and Departments (30), educational institutions (80), small and medium size industries (100), the electronic industries (150) and government-owned agencies (10). About 303 questionnaires were returned and the preliminary findings showed nearly half of the respondents were reporting that they already established formal knowledge management initiatives in their respective organizations. This was evident amongst organizations in the education sector, government own organizations and government departments and/or agencies. Nonetheless, the findings also showed that the Malaysian private sector was slowly catching up to meet the challenges of the competitive business environment. Keywords Knowledge Management, Business Strategy, Value Creation 1.0 INTRODUCTION The key characteristics identified from leading discovering relationships, abstracting, companies that have successfully leverage synthesizing, and sharing; and (4) their assets provide a fertile ground for Disseminating: Getting knowledge to the developing a knowledge management strategy. people who can use it. Companies that want to leverage this asset must approach knowledge management with a Knowledge management is crucial because it focus on their core competencies and tie those points the way to comprehensive and clearly in very tightly to the business strategy and understandable management initiatives and vision (Tiwana, 2000). The decades of the last procedures. When companies fail to utilize century saw corporations locked in a struggle tangible assets, they suffer the economic to out-do one another and in the 21st century consequences, and this failure is clearly will see organizations in a struggle to out- observable to markets and competitors alike. know one another. More than half of the Although knowledge assets are harder to organizations listed in the Fortune 500 in 1993 quantity, they are just as critical for long-term are no longer in the list today. Even icon survival and growth of the company. The names such as Sears and McDonald find success in today’s competitive marketplace themselves in a slump. “What are we doing depends on the quality of knowledge and wrong?” asked some corporate leaders and knowledge processes those organizations apply shareholder. Whilst they are comfortable to key business activities (Housel & Bell, discussing the management of people, 2001). For example, maximizing the efficiency products, financial resources and operations, of the supply chain depends on applying they are not comfortable when discussing the knowledge of diverse areas such as raw management of knowledge! But as of today materials sources, planning, manufacturing and most would realize that knowledge distribution. Likewise, product development management is a way or concept of doing requires knowledge of consumer requirements, business that revolves around the following recent scientific developments and new four processes: (1) Gathering: Bringing technologies and marketing. information and data into the system; (2) Organizing: Associating items subjects, 2.0 DEFINING ORGANIZATIONAL establishing context, making them easier to KNOWLEDGE find; (3) Refining: Adding value by Knowledge as the insights, understanding and Given the importance of knowledge in practical know-how that the individuals virtually all aspects of daily and commercial possess have two basic definitions of interest. life, Wiig (2000) lists two knowledge-related The first is regarding the body of information, aspects that are vital for viability and success which might consist of facts, opinions, ideas, at any level: knowledge assets - the valuable theories, principles and models. This could knowledge available to be used or exploited also be referred to a person's state of being must be nurtured, preserved, and used to the with respect to some body of information. largest extent possible by both individuals and Second, knowledge is the major factor that organizations; and knowledge-related make personal, organizational and societal processes - to create, build, compile, organize, intelligent behaviour possible. In this regard, transform, transfer, pool, apply, and safeguard knowledge provides the ability to respond to knowledge. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) new, unusual and interesting situations. In identifiy four kinds of knowledge creation in simple terms, knowledge is regarding the full organization known as socialization - the utilization of information and data, combined exchange of experiences whereby personal with the people's potential skills, knowledge is being created in the form of competencies, ideas, intuitions, commitments mental models; externalization - personal and motivation and the ability and wisdom to knowledge is made explicit in the form of use a pool of information in a way that achieve metaphors, analogies, hypotheses, and models; the objectives of the individual and internalization- a process in which explicit organization (Tan, 2000). knowledge become part of tacit knowledge; and combination - notions are synthesized into Knowledge is very complex and come in many a knowledge system. forms and types. The most common distinction is that between explicit and tacit knowledge In view of the above scenario, it could be (Nonaka, 1991). Explicit knowledge could be concluded that the whole perspective of expressed in words and numbers and shared knowledge management become as a central from data, scientific formulas, product productive and strategic asset where the specifications, manuals, universal principles success of the organization increasingly and so forth. Tacit knowledge is highly depends on its ability to gather, produce, personal, hard to formalize, difficult to maintain and disseminate knowledge. communicate or share with others. It is something that is not easily visible and The six core processes of knowledge expressible, and rooted in an individual's management are: knowledge identification, actions, experiences as well as ideas, values or knowledge acquisition, knowledge emotions the person embraces. In fact, there development, knowledge sharing and are two dimensions in tacit knowledge -- the distribution, knowledge utilization, and technical dimension which consist of informal knowledge retention (see Figure 1). According and difficult skills often captured in terms of to Probst, Raun & Romhardt (2000) once 'know-how" and cognitive dimension consisted knowledge objectives are set and existing of beliefs, perception, ideas, values, emotion knowledge assessed, a management system and mental models that the workers occupied. could be constructed which would give a helpful start to all knowledge managers. Knowledge is being recognized and well Knowledge management could be applied to known as the main and crucial organizational individuals, groups, or organizational resources that give market leverage (Skyme, structures. It has a strategic and normative 2000). Knowledge become the one sure source aspects as well as the operational use. of sustainable competitive advantages and it is Identifying external knowledge would mean also associated with the driving force of analyzing and describing the company’s change. In fact, knowledge has to be seen as a knowledge environment. A surprisingly large key asset in organization as it becomes the number of companies now find it difficult to most important determinant of organizational maintain a general picture of internal and growth. In business terms knowledge is vital external data, information and skills. This lack to the continued operation and development of of transparency leads to inefficiency, organization and their plans. In other word uninformed decisions and duplication. knowledge must be managed effectively to Effective knowledge management must ensure that the basic objectives are attained to therefore ensures sufficient internal and the greatest extend possible. external transparency, and helps individual employees to locate what they needed (Probst et al., 2000). Knowledge Knowledge goals assessment feedback Knowledge Knowledge identification retention Knowledge Knowledge acquisition utilization Knowledge Knowledge development sharing/distribution Figure 1: Building blocks of knowledge management Theorists and practitioners alike are struggling This can result in a long-lasting competitive to find a common set of principles to apply in advantage and can actually benefit successfully managing knowledge. Principles organizations and their employees. have been categorized according to how to create, collaborate, disseminate, reuse, embed, But when knowledge assets are not properly store, monitor and measure knowledge to meet deployed in a situation of competitive a variety of organizational goals. The environment, the following disastrous events principles have been derived from practice, may occur: (1) Lost of marketplace due to theory and various combinations of the two. declining rate of innovation; knowledge not Customer knowledge, deploying knowledge