Whilst every care has been taken in developing and compiling this Publicly Available Document, BSI accepts no liability for any loss or damage caused, arising directly or indirectly in connection with reliance on its contents except to the extent that such liability may not be excluded in law.

Copyright

Copyright subsists in all BSI publications. Except as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, no extract may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means – electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise – without prior written permission from BSI.

If permission is granted, the terms may include royalty payments or a licensing agreement. Details and advice can be obtained from the Copyright Manager, BSI, 389 Chiswick High Road, London, W4 4AL, UK.

Foreword

This guide has been prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of BSI and is not to be regarded as a British Standard. It will be withdrawn upon publication of its contents in, or as, a British Standard.

Acknowledgement is given to the members of a specially constituted panel, KME/1 Knowledge Management, who were consulted in the development of this guide.

The authors:

Mr Dominic Kelleher, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Director Knowledge Management
Mr Simon Levene, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Director Knowledge Management

The panel members were:

Mr Neill Allan, Director, Partners in Performance
Mr Mark Field, Professional Advisor, The Library Association
Mr Nigel Oxbrow, Chief Executive, TFPL Ltd.
Mr Paul Pedley, Head of Research, The Economist Intelligence Unit
Mr Tony Sheehan, Knowledge Manager, Arup
Mr Dave Snowden, Director, (EMEA), IBM Institute for Knowledge Management
Mr Ron Young, CEO, Knowledge Associates

This guide is published by BSI which retains its ownership and copyright. BSI reserves the right to withdraw or amend this guide on receipt of authoritative advice that it is appropriate to do so. This guide will be reviewed in time with respect to its becoming a British Standard and the result of this review will be published in Update Standards.

This publication does not purport to include all the necessary provisions of a contract. Users are responsible for its correct application.

Compliance with this guide does not of itself confer immunity from legal obligations.

Reason for this guide

This guide aims to provide its readers with a practical introduction to mainstream thinking in the field of Knowledge Management (KM), as well as providing an indication of some the emerging new thinking in KM, and to stimulate interested readers to join a public discussion on KM. The authors⁽¹⁾ have therefore produced:

a discussion document which will help readers develop their own plans for getting started in KM;
a synthesis of good KM practices from around the world – from commerce and academia;
a reflection of their own experiences in KM;
an indication of some of the new thinking in this fast evolving field.

A fast track through this guide

The guide comprises four main chapters and a number of supporting annexes:

1. Why should organisations care about KM? This chapter sets the overall context for the rapid growth in interest in KM globally, focusing upon the emergence of the so-called “knowledge economy” and of the increasing recognition, both within organisations and by the financial markets, of the value of intellectual capital/intangible assets. Examines the KM challenges that organisations – large and small, and across industry sectors – are facing.
2. How should organisations approach KM? This chapter looks at the range of specific KM activities that organisations might undertake. Such activities could include: setting a direction for a KM programme; creating an organisational culture favourable to KM; measuring and rewarding success in KM; capturing, sharing and maintaining knowledge; assigning KM roles and sustaining momentum in KM programmes.
3. Benefits anticipated from investing in KM. This chapter identifies some of the benefits that organisations might expect from investing in KM, in terms of: better services/products for their clients; faster generation and application of ideas and innovation; access to good practices; improved access to external intelligence and internal networks of expertise; enhanced ability to deliver continuous learning; greater (cultural and linguistic) geographic reach; reduced loss of knowledge through staff turnover etc.
4. Moving towards a deeper understanding of KM. This chapter shows readers how to deepen their understanding of KM, by examining emerging KM trends, media and educational opportunities etc.
Annexes. The annexes A–E provide some sample KM self-assessment tools, examine the links between KM and other organisational functions and management disciplines and point the interested reader towards further KM reading materials.

This guide also includes:

a Glossary and Index, which introduce the key KM terms that readers will encounter in the text and point to the principal sections in which each term appears;
a short in brief summary at the end of each section (see boxes marked );
close to 100 real-life examples of KM good practice (see boxes marked ), with practical ideas from organisations that are already creating value through KM;
extensive supporting notes and references.

Future BSI guides covering KM

Readers should also note that this broad introductory guide to KM good practice is intended to be the first in a series of KM-related guides from BSI. Subsequent guides are likely to focus in depth both on emerging practices and on established sub-sectors of KM – topics are likely to include Communities of Practice, Content Management, knowledge sharing and innovation, and Intellectual Capital Management. This guide may also serve as the first milestone on the way towards an eventual British Standard on KM. BSI will also be providing a framework for feedback, ideas and questions relating to this guide. Readers who would like to get involved with further KM projects should contact BSI at knowledge@bsi-global.com.

Glossary and Index

1 Why should organisations care about KM?

1.1 What is KM?

1.1.1 Introduction

This guide aims to answer the above question – why should organisations care about KM? It is certainly clear that an ever increasing number do care: for example, a major recent survey of 158 large organisations found that 80% already engage in KM and 96% predicted that they will do so within the next five years3, and the take-up rate of KM within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is also accelerating fast.

But why? Perhaps because, as organisations have evolved over time, the skills and experience of their owners, managers and employees have traditionally been passed down through informal processes. They have relied upon the personal relationship and proximity between the “storyteller” and the “listener”, whether through a skilled person talking to his or her apprentice or, more recently, through a gathering of colleagues around the coffee machine. In parallel, and ever since the earliest recorded writings, attempts have been made to codify knowledge in documents, whether it be the experience of tribal elders on parchments, or latterly, the experience of employees through databases, intranets and portals.

In other words, KM is not a new phenomenon. Many organisations have in fact successfully managed much of their knowledge – both through personal exchange and codification – for many years.4 The reason that KM is appearing formally on management agendas now is that business models have become more complicated. Organisations have moved from a world in which sharing knowledge meant sticking your head out into the corridor and shouting, to a world of multiple corridors and multiple buildings in multiple countries, and to a world in which the accelerated rate of change means that any explicit body of knowledge (such as an instruction manual) is often already out of date at the moment it has been copied, bound and distributed.

This accelerated rate of change impacts all organisations, from the smallest company through to the multinational corporation. Indeed the tiniest “cottage industry”, which might once have only served customers within a few miles of its door, can now, through the opportunities offered by e-business, serve a global client base – but this will depend on its ability to effectively share knowledge about its products, suppliers and processes to a diverse and distributed community.

In the past, organisations turned traditionally to classroom-based training in order to try and improve the business “intelligence” of their employees, but now KM-enabled e-learning tools – e.g. training courses delivered and administered on-line across an intranet – play a crucial role in making learning opportunities more widely accessible.5 At the same time, an effective KM intranet or knowledge community can play a major role in making individual employees better informed and more effective, e.g.:

by streamlining internal business processes for the individual (e.g. HR and other administration)
by reducing the time and frustration involved in searching for content
by helping new employees integrate quickly into an organisation.

1.2 There is wide interest in KM in organisations around the world

1.2.1 Introduction

In recent years, interest in KM has taken root around the world. The idea that organisations should make better use of their knowledge – everything from methodologies and patents, to processes and information about their customers – has been gaining ground steadily since at least the early 1990s. By the millennium, KM was already firmly established on many organisational agendas.10

1.3 What is the knowledge economy and why is it important?

1.3.1 Introduction

In today’s economy, competitive advantage results from combining different assets, such as people, money, learning, flexibility, and knowledge. In fact, many people now believe that knowledge may be more vital for sustainable success than capital, labour or land, yet paradoxically it often remains the most neglected asset.

1.4 Organisational challenges which require a KM response

1.4.1 Introduction

The knowledge economy is subject to many forces, perhaps the most powerful of which are those collectively called “e-business”. All organisations, large and small, are facing major challenges adjusting to the new economic realities, but the good news is that many of these challenges can be tackled by adopting a KM response. For example:

2 How should organisations approach KM?

2.1 Initial approach to KM

2.1.1 Introduction

Chapter 1 focused on what KM is, what the knowledge economy is, on some of the KM-related challenges that organisations are already facing. This second chapter focuses on practical implementation issues: how an organisation that is completely new to KM might get started (2.1); how to create a culture favourable to KM (2.2), how to measure and reward progress (2.3); how to manage knowledge content systematically (2.4); how to create a KM “architecture” which will encourage the free flow of knowledge (2.5); what level of human resources to invest in KM (2.6) and how to sustain impetus in KM once under way (2.7).

It is important for any organisation to gain an understanding of the different approaches to KM that exist35, because while to some extent it is possible to pick good practice examples from amongst the many methods, there are some fundamentally different approaches possible. For example, some practitioners argue that KM requires radically new ways of working and reject the conventions of management science (hypothesis-based consulting, best practices etc.) This document, however, largely reflects mainstream thinking, whilst providing some indicators to developing areas that may either contradict or be compatible with such thinking.

2.2 Establishing the right culture for successful KM

2.2.1 Introduction

What is culture in the context of KM? According to one KM practitioner in a leading consulting practice58, it is the general pattern of thousands of daily actions (or non-actions!) and responses largely forced on people by the realities of what is easy versus hard, safe versus risky, difficult versus straightforward, or rewarding versus demotivating. Cultural considerations seem often to be left out of KM programmes for the simple reason that it is usually easier to build an intranet or hire a Chief Knowledge Officer than it is to influence behaviour. Yet an understanding of culture should play a large role in any KM strategy, because knowledge sharing occurs in the interaction of people – with or without technology. Human networks are the most essential element of KM – knowledge is not simply information in a database; it is the ability of an individual or an organisation to act meaningfully on that information.

Technology certainly now makes transmitting information easier, but organisations have to create the right environment and incentives to persuade individuals to share what they know. The real issue has often been perceived to be how to persuade individuals to hand over their know-how, when they believe that it is the source of their power and the guarantee of their continuing employment. Successful KM is therefore often highly dependent on cultural change – one survey estimated that such change requires up to 70% of a KM implementation effort and that failure to change culture accounts for at least 50% of KM project failures. This section therefore looks at some of the change behaviours that organisations should be encouraging in order to overcome barriers to successful knowledge sharing.

2.3 Aligning measurement and reward with KM

2.3.1 Introduction

A recent survey83 found that 92% of UK executives already think that knowledge is extremely or very important to their companies and that KM can deliver them efficiencies such as improved communications, better innovation and product development, improved processes and decision-making, lower costs and a stronger corporate culture. Yet a key challenge for such companies is how to actually measure such efficiencies. In a manufacturing environment, production output can be assessed against benchmarks, but in a knowledge economy dominated by intangibles, output is harder to measure. This section looks at how organisations can quantify KM’s contribution.

2.4 Managing content within a KM programme

2.4.1 Introduction

Once an organisation has decided that it is going to embark upon a KM programme, has defined its KM strategy and has considered the key issues of culture and reward, one of its highest priorities may become the identification and active management of the explicit knowledge (i.e. content) in its existing and planned knowledge repositories. This section and the next therefore take a more technical angle, looking at the processes that organisations may need to put in place for good content management92 within their electronic repositories.

2.5 Use and exploitation of knowledge

2.5.1 Introduction

Under traditional models of education, copying the knowledge and experience of a fellow classmate was generally considered to be a bad thing; however, in the new economy, re-using or “leveraging” a colleague’s knowledge and experience should often be vigorously encouraged! If an organisation is to make optimal use of its knowledge assets, it should set as its target the outright exploitation of its knowledge base.

The content management ideas described in 2.4 are not zero-cost solutions, so to obtain maximum payback from any investment in this area, organisations should consider how their knowledge will actually be used. In fact, a key measure of KM return-on-investment (ROI) is ensuring that all content that is captured can actually be found, because if users cannot find content when they need it, then it might as well not exist. (See figure 7 – the process of finding knowledge content normally occurs at the Viewing Layer.)98

2.6 Roles and responsibilities in KM

2.6.1 Introduction

In the knowledge economy, will jobs evolve from management-directed assignments with documented tasks, towards self-directed, flexible assignments? Some claim that this trend is already visible and that organisations can no longer rely solely on written procedures and documents that capture only a percentage of job activities (explicit knowledge) and should instead integrate tacit knowledge transfer and reuse it in their learning processes.103

If this is a real trend, then there perhaps exists a vanguard of workers who can point the way ahead. These are the so- called “KM professionals”, people whose primary role is to manage knowledge on behalf of others. This section identifies and examines the full-time and part-time professional KM roles that are now starting to emerge within some organisations, so that others can decide whether to invest in dedicated KM professional roles.

2.7 How a KM-enabled organisation can evolve

2.7.1 Introduction

Sections 2.1 – 2.6 reviewed how organisations that are completely new to KM – particularly SMEs – might get started. In this section, attention turns towards the organisation that might already have made a start in KM, but does not know where to head next. This is important, since according to one major survey114, 56% of UK businesses already claim to be learning organisations, but 76% admit that they do not yet reward people specifically for sharing knowledge.

3 Benefits anticipated from investing in KM

3.1 How to deepen client relationships through collaborative KM tools

3.1.1 Introduction

As seen in chapter 2, the use of technology in a KM context – crucial as it often is – can never replace the need for human relationships between colleagues or between representatives of one organisation and another. In this third chapter the focus shifts to the benefits that organisations can expect to see from taking a balanced (i.e. explicit and tacit) approach to KM. The chapter begins by showing that, for cases in which a relationship and level of trust already exists, judicious use of KM tools can help such relationships deepen and can also allow such relationships to evolve even when physical proximity between individuals is neither possible nor cost-effective. It then goes on to examine other benefits that can accrue from KM, in such areas as teamwork (3.2), innovation (3.3), learning (3.4) and across an organisation’s entire stakeholder base (3.5).

3.2 How investing in KM can lead to more effective employees and teams

3.2.1 Introduction

Many, perhaps most, people have a great capacity to learn, create and innovate and are motivated by the challenge of unsolved problems, competitive environments and new frontiers. Yet human experience, education, analytical ability and passion for challenge have reached a level where the gap between entry-level and expert employees is too wide for organisations to easily close, and too time-critical to wait for individual expertise to develop.122 Furthermore, in many fields, such as IT, there is an ever-deepening shortage of experts, and as a result, true experts’ financial and intellectual value is rising rapidly. In short, organisations need to close their “expertise gaps” in a quick, reliable, and risk-friendly way whenever new employees are added, whenever trying to capture and retain the knowledge of employees who leave (see 3.5.4) and whenever trying to bring the collective knowledge of the organisation to bear on issues and opportunities. This section looks at some of the practical steps that organisations can take in order to make their employees and teams more effective, more “expert”.123

3.3 How KM can help lead organisations towards sustainable innovation

3.3.1 Introduction

Speed of change, reduced time to market, and shorter product lifecycle are key challenges faced by nearly all organisations today. To stay ahead of customer demand and competition, companies need to adapt their financial and business models, structures, processes, and capabilities to be more flexible, creative, innovative and aware of their customers’ needs. The key question for many therefore becomes: how do we maximise the knowledge created by our people and how do we create innovation-enhancing environments?

In the end, knowledge-based innovation may represent the only hope of sustainable competitive advantage. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that the most successful businesses are built on distinctive knowledge that competitors find hard to emulate. Yet however innovative the genius who comes up with an original idea, such an individual often has neither the vision nor the instinct to realise the idea’s commercial value – hence the reason so many long-term successful companies are built upon knowledge-sharing cultures, in which the inventors, the investors and the commercial managers operate in unison.

Continuous, rapid innovation may be as important a basis for competition as quality, reliability, or cost – and the key to innovation is knowledge.137 The key value-creating asset of organisations in the future may indeed be how well they exploit their knowledge to create alliances, and use both electronic channels and communities to try and capture more customers. A recent study138 identified effective idea management to be an essential element of success. In other words, KM does not only act as a catalyst for innovation and creativity, but can also provide the means by which innovative ideas can be captured, shared and leveraged, leading to more new ideas.

3.4 How KM enables continuous learning

3.4.1 Introduction

A key objective of any KM effort should be to ensure that all organisational learning can be leveraged when serving the customer and to minimise effort required to relearn what has already been learned elsewhere. In other words, organisations should strive to attain a state of “learn once, use anywhere”.

3.5 How to benefit from sharing knowledge with all stakeholders

3.5.1 Introduction

The overriding knowledge sharing challenge for any organisation with more than one business unit or physical location is how to ensure that anybody, anywhere in the world can contribute to the solution of any problem, no matter where it occurs. This guide aims to stress that, as difficult as knowledge sharing often seems, it should remain a hugely important goal within organisations.144 In fact, the establishment of a successful knowledge sharing programme often requires senior management to lead a vocal and highly visible effort to ensure that all employees understand the benefit of sharing experience and expertise. This can help create a situation in which, because of an announcement by the CEO, everybody becomes anxious to share. In other words, to get the benefits of knowledge transfer, an organisation must invest in it like any other change-related programme – if you want culture change in a department, the head of that department has to lead it, but if you want culture change in an organisation, then the head of that organisation has to lead it top-down.145 For example, does senior management use the latest internal communications channels? If they do not, then others may also think that such channels are not so important and may not use them either (see also annex C2).

Once again, it is important to stress that any really successful KM programme is almost always driven by employees as well as by senior management, and employees should be given multiple channels, both formal and informal, via which to share ideas. Yet it is also important to remember that, in addition to top managers and shop-floor employees, nearly all organisations also have a wide range of other stakeholders. This section takes a brief look at some of the benefits achievable from extending KM principles and practices across an entire stakeholder base – to customers and suppliers, to alliance and joint venture partners, to recruits and alumni, to shareholders146 and across geographic, cultural and linguistic boundaries.

4 Moving towards a deeper understanding of KM

4.1 Alternative approaches to KM that organisations can adopt

4.1.1 Introduction

The majority of vendor organisations claiming today to be “KM” experts appear, in reality, to be offering products or services in one or more of the following areas:

Competitive Intelligence; Content Management; Data Mining; Data Warehousing; Document Management; Intranet Development; Management Consulting; Mobile Communications; Networking Connectivity; Portal Development; Recruitment; Strategy Consulting; Technical Consulting; Training; Workflow; and XML.

Clearly, this would suggest that the young KM industry seems already to be evolving naturally into a number of distinct sub-sectors. Research indeed shows that relatively few management innovations get past their fifth birthday, since they tend to follow a natural lifecycle of enthusiastic early adoption, moderate mass experience, disillusionment and decline. Depending on when one dates its birth from, KM as a conscious management approach is either well past or just approaching this milestone, so is it destined to become established like Total Quality Management, or just wither away like Management Information Systems?151

4.2 How to find out more about KM

4.2.1 Introduction

Over the past few years a huge range of KM-specific media has sprung up, accessible both hard copy and electronic vehicles. This section identifies some of these resources, so that readers of this guide can, if they wish, carry out their own further research into KM.

4.3 The KM educational market

4.3.1 Introduction

While for many organisations – including most SMEs – the range of KM information sources referenced in 4.2 and annex E provide more than enough support in the early stages of a KM programme, there will doubtless be some individuals within these organisations who would like to obtain a still deeper grounding in KM. Such individuals should research the small, but fast-growing market for KM education that is now emerging in the UK and elsewhere. Most of the courses are very new, so it is still far too early to tell whether the quality of the teaching is really going to help launch large numbers of new KM experts into the market.

Once again, then, caveat emptor should apply; before undertaking any kind of education or certification in KM, individuals should always ask themselves such questions as:

why would I want to be formally educated in KM?
what are the requirements for education?
where are the most reputable places to become educated?
what does the education cost?
how have the professional experiences of those already educated benefited as a result?

4.4 Trends in KM

4.4.1 Introduction

This section highlights some of the emerging trends that may give an indication of where KM is headed. Understanding such trends may be a vital consideration for those organisations considering investing in KM, but still needing further reassurance that it is not the latest “here today, gone tomorrow” management fad.

PAS 2001:2001

Knowledge management

Published:

30 Jul 2001

Withdrawn:

6 Nov 2018