{"id":6496,"date":"2019-10-29T03:04:57","date_gmt":"2019-10-29T03:04:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/arielsheen.com\/?p=6496"},"modified":"2019-10-29T03:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-29T03:05:12","slug":"notes-on-european-guide-to-good-practice-in-knowledge-management-part-1-knowledge-management-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arielsheen.com\/index.php\/2019\/10\/29\/notes-on-european-guide-to-good-practice-in-knowledge-management-part-1-knowledge-management-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes on European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework"},"content":{"rendered":"
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European Guide to Good Practice in Knowledge Management – Part 1: Knowledge Management Framework<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Successful KM implementations in business settings prioritize attention on soft issues – including human and cultural aspects, personal motivations, change management methodologies, new and improved business processes enabling multidisciplinary knowledge sharing, communication and collaboration – and see technology as an enabler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite this, most efforts so far at addressing the challenge of KM in business environments have typically taken a “technology-push” approach, concentrating major effort on putting in place IT tools that will \u201csolve the knowledge creation, sharing and reuse problem”.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The overall intention has been to provide meaningful and useful guidelines to companies, and notably SMEs (see below), as to how they might align their organizations culturally and socially to take advantage of the opportunities of knowledge sharing within and beyond their organizational boundaries.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If the Framework helps an organization achieve a common understanding of KM, align and focus its actions, identify what KM aspects are relevant to that organization, understand what is the right combination of these aspects, which processes should be tackled and how to develop KM both an organizational and individual level – then it has value.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why KM in SMEs?\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n

Owners and managers of SMEs differ in what they term success. Survival and continuity, profit, return on capital employed, numbers of employees and customers, pride in product, skills and service, employment for family members, and enjoyable work life, are frequently mentioned criteria.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This European KM Framework <\/b>is designed to promote a common European understanding of KM, show the value of the emerging KM approach and help organizations towards its successful implementation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Framework should be considered as a starting point for developing, if appropriate, an organization-specific framework that serves best the needs of a particular organization\u2019s KM approach.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The KM Framework considers three layers as most important for KM:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

a) \u00a0The business focus <\/b>should be in the centre of any KM initiative and represents the value-adding processes of an organization, which may typically include strategy development, product\/service innovation and development, manufacturing and service delivery, sales and customer support.<\/p>\n

b) \u00a0Five core knowledge activities have been identified as most widely used by organizations in Europe: identify, create, store, share and use.<\/p>\n

c) The enablers represent the third layer and comprise two main categories, called personal and organizational knowledge capabilities, which complement each other. These capabilities should be seen as the enablers for the knowledge activities outlined above.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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Core value-adding processes<\/b><\/p>\n

In addition to supporting the improvement of the core processes of an organization, KM methods can also be applied within its supporting processes: competence management is one such example from the HR arena; developing best practice databases to capture and exchange knowledge about optimum procedures throughout the organization is another example from the area of continuous improvement processes; methods for intellectual property management (e.g. patents, copyrights) is a further example from the area of management of financial and non-financial assets.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Small and medium sized enterprises(SMEs) in particular are increasingly building networks to supply their products, to share their resources and to learn from each other. Long-term partnerships are established in order to develop new products and services that a single organization could not cope with alone. Therefore partners and suppliers, as well as clients, should often be involved within the scope\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Empirical research, practical experiences and the analysis of more than 150 KM frameworks worldwide have shown that the following areas are, in most cases, the most important to address:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

1. describe how knowledge is used
\n2. raise awareness about the required KM activities
\n3. reduce complexity
\n4. design a KM solution.<\/p>\n

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The five core knowledge activities are:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n