Presently, the practice of knowledge management in the context of development work is still new and focuses more on knowledge brokering. Development agencies, like World Bank and SDC have initiated projects that retrieve knowledge from their partners and collaborators and making them available to the global public in a variety of venues and a variety of forms 

However, in view of improving, SDC (2009) will focus its attention more on (1) remembering experiences made, (2) drawing general lessons and diffusing them across the organisation for replication elsewhere and (3) providing access to the lessons and experiences for outsiders. Moreover, (4) competencies have to be managed in a most efficient way, this through highly qualified staff, strong partnerships with centres of competence, as well as institutionalised core competencies.

SDC’s knowledge management focuses on the key aspects of a “learning organisation”. For its practical work, SDC defines five main thrusts:

(1) Placing the people - collaborators, partners - their knowledge and competencies at the centre (Time, space and incentives for development of individual competencies and knowledge sharing)

(2) Valorising practice of knowledge development and learning (Key processes are knowledge processes; learning framework, including “communities of practice” and “learning partnerships”)

(3) Opening-up access to knowledge and experience (Access to people, experiences, action, documents)

(4) Caring for a learning culture (Internal communication; enhancing environment for learning internally and with partners)

(5) Developing and securing organisational competencies related to key roles (Core competencies and division of roles and responsibilities; rendering tacit knowledge explicit; management of competencies, including securing knowledge of collaborators leaving)

With this shift in strategy by SDC, there is promise in the increased and improved use knowledge management in development work.

What organizational support /enablers can help facilitate a KM environment?

KM enablers can abound in the organization. These enablers include organizational culture, infrastructure, technology and measurement. Creating a balance within these enablers is important to sustain the KM system.

Organizational culture

Organizational culture involves unwritten rules (or expectations) of behavior in an organization. O’Dell and Grayson state that “culture is the combination of shared history, expectations, unwritten rules, and social moves that affects the behavior of everyone, from managers to mailroom clerks. It’s the set of underlying beliefs that, while never exactly articulated, are always there to color the perception of actions and communication” (Carlson, 1999).       

Culture is where true learning occurs among individuals interacting together who must be willing to share their tacit knowledge to enable an effective KM system (Carlson, 1999). Organizational culture is a KM enabler if it encourages knowledge sharing.  The table (Carlson, 1999) below may be helpful in finding out if one’s organizational culture supports knowledge management:

Vision and Trust

Clear organizational vision and trust are key elements of organizational culture in facilitating knowledge management. Organizational vision provides clear organizational purpose towards goal achievement while trust opens communication frontiers leading to knowledge sharing and collaboration.

The adapted checklists below will provide insights or challenges on one’s organizational culture:

Organizational Infrastructure

Organizational infrastructure involves essential operation components such as human resources, equipment, processes, technology, policies, data, and external contacts.  Organizational infrastructure is important in providing the (required) organizational structure or set up supportive of the organization’s knowledge management program. Structures that promote flexibility encourage communication, knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Training equips people in the workplace with skills to generate out-of-the-box ideas, acquire new perspectives and imbibe proactive work attitudes. 

A useful training for workers involved with highly technical jobs, would be on technical language literacy, which will help them articulate their ideas better. Workers can also be trained to monitor, evaluate, creatively adopt and disseminate new ideas and processes.  Integration, however, is basic in making training efforts effective.

• Rewards and incentives

To create an environment that encourages the generation, sharing and use of knowledge, the company can consider providing rewards and incentives for efforts espousing these practices. Giving rewards and incentives can also combat the problems of knowledge hoarding and the “not-invented-here” syndrome.

Recognitions, rewards and incentives can be in the form of cash or as some companies believe, in the form of expanding a worker’s sphere of communication, influence and responsibility through promotion.

People - Knowledge Workers

Knowledge worker, a term coined by Peter Drucker in 1959, is one who works primarily with information or one who develops and uses knowledge in the workplace.

A world of knowledge workers are minds not hands. They are educated and have experience. They are hired for what they know. At work they need information and knowledge as they apply theoretical and analytical knowledge. They see work as a source of satisfaction; a place to create and produce. They must continuously learn and they will probably have several careers over the course of their lives.

Due to the constant industrial growth in North America and globally, there is increasing need for an academically capable workforce. In direct response to this, Knowledge Workers are now estimated to outnumber all other workers in North America by at least a four to one margin

A knowledge worker's benefit to a company could be in the form of developing business intelligence, increasing the value of intellectual capital, gaining insight into customer preferences, or a variety of other important gains in knowledge that aid the business.

Technology

Technology is the most visible support for knowledge management processes. It provides the tool to connect users together to share knowledge (Carlson, 1999).  Forms of technology support include Intranets, document management systems, information retrieval engines, relational and object databases, groupware and workflow systems, electronic publishing systems, electronic mail and messaging systems, and data mining tools, among others.

Through these enabling tools, technology reduces communication and collaboration costs, and makes knowledge more accessible and available to wider users. Technology:

• Technologies that support KM

Although technology alone does not make KM, technology is a critical tool in achieving great strides in KM. It helps accelerate the speed of knowledge transfer and the creation of knowledge (Carvalho and Ferreira , 2001).

The table below lists the KM processes that technology supports.  They are matched by technologies identified by Carvalho and Ferreira (2001) as contributing to the transfer, sharing and creation of knowledge.

A description of these technologies will provide better understanding:

Intranet-based systems

Intranet is a private computer network using Internet protocols, network connectivity, and the public telecommunication system to securely share the  organization's information or operations with its members, employees, or others with authorization. It can be understood as a “private version of the Internet,” or an Internet confined to an organization.

Its most visible service is the internal website where employees can “pull” information instead of being overloaded with information generated by emails.

“An intranet's Web sites look and act just like any other Web sites, but the firewall surrounding an intranet fends off unauthorized access. Secure intranets are now the fastest-growing segment of the Internet because they are much less expensive to build and manage than private networks based on proprietary protocols.” (www.webopedia.com) 

An example of a company using intranet is Ford Motor Co.  Its 175,000 employees in 950 locations worldwide can access information about benefits, demographics, salary history, general company news and human resources forms from the company’s intranet, called Myford.com. (www.wikipedia.com)

Groupware

A set of software that helps groups attached to a network do their activities.

Groupware, sometimes called workgroup productivity software, typically supports the following operations: scheduling meetings and allocating resources, e-mail, password protection for documents, telephone utilities, electronic newsletter and file distribution.

There are two main categories: 1) asynchronous, where users of the groupware are working at different times and 2) synchronous where users work together “realtime” or at the same time.
Applications under asynchronous groupware include: email, newsgroups and mailing lists, hypertext, workflow systems, group calendars and collaborative writing systems.

Synchronous applications include shared whiteboard and videocons.

Electronic Document Management (EDM) System

An Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) is a set of programs designed to provide support for a range of processes related to data capture, storage, tracking and retrieval of electronic documents and other media.

EDM systems deal only with the explicit dimension of knowledge. However, documents which are an efficient way to exchange explicit knowledge can lead to new knowledge when organized and combined (Carvalho and Ferreira, 2001).

Knowledge Map

The knowledge map provides an expert locator feature to match people’s expertise with the organization’s requirements (for work, training, project, study and others).  The organization’s expertise is categorized into searchable catalogs for easier identification of people in terms of whom and what they know and of their proficiency in given tasks.  A knowledge map creates opportunities for knowledge exchange.

Workflow

Workflow systems are "systems that help organizations to specify, execute, monitor, and coordinate the flow of work cases within a distributed office environment."  The system contains two basic components:

1) workflow modeling component which enables administrators and analysts to define process and activities, analyze and simulate them, and assign them to people; and

2) workflow execution component which most often consists of an execution interface and a workflow engine, an execution environment that assists the coordination of processes and activities. (www.wikipedia.com)

The objective of workflow systems is to establish and accelerate the process flow, following its steps and tracking each activity that composes the process. They make explicit the knowledge that is embedded in standard processes, mainly supporting the formal codification of existing knowledge. (Carvalho and Ferreira, 2001).

Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) is a set of data management tools and systems that extract essential data from business operations. (Carvalho and Ferreira, 2001).

These systems allow a company to gather, store, access and analyze corporate data for trends and patterns that can aid decision-making. Business intelligence is generally illustrated in the areas of customer profiling, customer support, market research, market segmentation, product profitability, statistical analysis, and inventory and distribution analysis. (www.webopedia.com)

Knowledge Portals

Knowledge portals provide a directory of information already available elsewhere. With the incorporation of knowledge management tools, they are becoming single points of entry through which end-users and communities can perform their business tasks. As a result, knowledge portals are evolving into virtual places where people can get in touch with other people who share common interests. In the process, they may support the transfer of tacit knowledge.

What makes technology work?

Making technology work will depend on a lot of things. Steve Denning (2004), in his paper, Technology for Knowledge Management, provides some factors to consider in the use of technology:

Measure

As a KM enabler, measure is important to show KM program results that will justify for the continued organizational support for the KM program.  Measure is useful in providing information on the efficiency and effectiveness of people, processes and programs in the KM initiative and in identifying desired behaviors and results. Among the benefits of the performance measure, according to the U.S. Department of the Navy, are:

• Provide a target or goal for KM efforts;
• Develop benchmarks for future comparisons and for others to use
• Guide and fine-tune the implementation process by providing feedback;
• Measure, retrospectively, the value of the initial investment decision (in terms of time, staff, and other resources) and the lessons learned;
• Aid learning from the effort and developing lessons learned;
• Make a business case for implementation

Because some knowledge is tacit, it is not easy to measure KM benefits or results. The most important consideration is to determine what the organization needs to measure from the KM program results. Measurement often focuses on two aspects: 1) whether there has been a generation, sharing, transfer or use of knowledge that is of value to the organization and 2) an analysis of the KM strategies.