Knowledge Management Cycle: Meyer and Zack Model

• Effective knowledge management requires organizations to identify the advantages of developing, acquiring, disseminating, and using knowledge.
• True knowledge assets are only in intelligent systems and must be distinguished from digitizable information.

Major Approaches to the KM Cycle

• There are four major KM cycle approaches by Meyer and Zack (1996), Bukowitz and Williams (2000), McElroy (1999, 2003), and Wiig (1993).

Meyer and Zack KM Cycle

• Michael Meyer and Michael Zack developed the Meyer and Zack KMC in 1996 from their experience designing and developing information products.
• It includes internal and external electronic (i.e., information systems) and printed information.
• The cycle evolved from work on information products and can apply lessons from the physical product cycle to intellectual asset management.
• Databases, news synopses, and consumer profiles are examples of information goods in this cycle.
• This cycle uses product platform (knowledge repository) and information process platform (knowledge refinery) as analogies, highlighting value-added operations.
• KM cycle creates a higher value-added knowledge product at each stage, using a basic database as an example.
• The model has logical and standardized network stages, where physical goods are tracked for knowledge asset management.
• This cycle recommends extending research and development into the intellectual sphere
• It stresses value-added processes to exploit an organization’s knowledge and includes manufacturing technology, facilities, and procedures.
• The repository becomes the company's family and knowledge goods but, though it focuses on physical goods, it may be expanded to intellectual assets.
• Meyer and Zack’s primary steps of a knowledge repository include acquisition, refinement, storage/retrieval, dissemination, and presentation.

Steps in the Meyer and Zack KM Cycle

• Acquisition: The acquisition phase gathers data and controls its quality, where high-quality data sources ensure life cycle integrity.
• Raw materials are acquired from many sources.
• When collecting data one must focus on intensity, accuracy, scope, cost, relevance, management, and appropriateness, with the premise "garbage in, garbage out."
• Refinement: Value is added through rearranging, relabeling, and indexing, either physically (translation across media) or logically (restructuring, relabeling, indexing, integrating).
• More flexible content storage and retrieval is achieved by standardizing data and sanitizing information to guarantee anonymity.
• This phase creates useful data and stores it in various media, including information analysis, interpretation, integration, synthesis, and standardization.
• Storage/Retrieval: Storage connects upstream acquisition and refinement to downstream product-generating stages
• Physical (file folders) and digital (database/KM software) repositories are used for storage.
• Distribution: Distributes information to consumers through various media (print, telephone, radio, television, email, fax, letters), showing the link between medium and content.
• The procedure yields a result.
• Presentation: All KMC stages culminate in presentation, which defines the value of information based on its usage context.
• Identification of suitable utilization means the KMC has produced value, and previous value-added stages' performance is reviewed.
• It emphasizes knowledge sharing via technology, rather than pooling or gathering material.

The Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle

• Ruth Bukowitz and Wendi Williams, in 2000, defined knowledge management as how companies develop, maintain, and utilize a right pool of knowledge to create value.
• The model shows how businesses create value by generating, maintaining, and using strategic knowledge.
• The phases align intellectual capital to strategic needs across time.
• It includes sources, connections, technology, communication infrastructure, functional skill sets, and process know-how.

Stages in the Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle

• Get: Making choices, solving issues, or innovating is the intial step with the problem is no longer in discovering information, with effectively managing the massive amount of data available
• The consequent information overload necessitates sifting through the material, identifying valuable knowledge, and managing it effectively and efficiently
• KM differs from information management (IM) by including explicit and implicit material (a physical or electronic document)
• Organizes knowledge material, maintaining timeliness and completeness, and teaching users new knowledge repository technologies.
• Use: Deals with combining information in novel ways to promote organizational innovation, so individuals come first, followed by groups.
• Suggested strategies are to foster serendipity and creative thinking and focuses on building an organizational memory foundation for best practices and lessons learned.
• Learn: Usually refers to the formal process of learning from experiences to get a competitive edge, so when an organization has a memory, it may learn from both successes (best practices) and errors (lessons learned).
• Organizational learning is vital because it bridges the gap between applying ideas and generating new ones, without it, information is useless for future use.
• Contribute: Workers posting their findings to the repository, preventing errors, and making individual expertise visible and accessible throughout the business.
• A mechanism for retaining organizational learning and rewarding contributions should be implemented. Employees are encouraged to put their expertise into a knowledge base to connect personal and organizational memory.
• Assess: Group and organizational-oriented, for brainpower and implies comparing current intellectual or physical assets (knowledge) to future intellectual demands.
• The organization must also establish measurements to increase its knowledge base and profit from intellectual capital investments such as human, consumer, organizational, and intellectual capital (the relationship between human, customer, and organizational capital).
• Build/sustain: Assures the organization’s future intellectual capital will be sustainable and competitive.
• If present intellectual assets fail to meet future demands, new intellectual or physical assets are created, or existing are maintained through knowledge development and maintenance.
• Employees should be able to utilize existing knowledge inside the company and have the right information at the right moment.
• Failure to identify and use the information at the tactical level leads to missed opportunities.
• Divest: The KMC ends stating that if the company can better employ its intellectual capital abroad, it should have the tools.
• Considerations include the cost/benefit of retaining and disposing of data to then sell it.
• Evaluation of an organization's intellectual capital is regarding the necessary resources and whether they may be better spent elsewhere.
• The KMC incorporates gaining knowledge of content and deciding whether to keep it or divest it for both tacit and explicit knowledge, unlike Meyer and Zack.

The McElroy KM Cycle

• McElroy's (1999) knowledge life cycle describes feedback loops to organizational memory, beliefs, claims, and the business-processing environment.
• Organizational knowledge is retained subjectively by people/groups and objectively in written form in the company's dispersed organizational knowledge base.
• Consequences of using knowledge in corporate processes vary, mismatches lead to alterations in business processing behavior through single-loop learning, matches reinforce knowledge and lead to reuse (Argyris and Schon, 1978).
• Mismatches lead to skepticism and rejection of old information, triggering knowledge processing to develop and integrate new knowledge through double-loop learning (Argyris and Schon, 1978).
• A knowledge life cycle consists of knowledge production and knowledge integration.
• Includes individual/group learning, knowledge claim construction, information gathering, and knowledge validation
• Knowledge integration introduces new knowledge claims and retires old ones
• Encompasses knowledge transmission activities such as teaching, information sharing, and social activities, conveying/integrating previously created organizational knowledge.
• It emphasizes that organizational knowledge is subjectively and objectively in people and groups and this iterative approach catalogs organizational demands and identifies solutions to knowledge gaps.
• Mismatches lead to changes in business processing behavior through single-loop learning.

Key Processes in the McElroy KM cycle

• Individual and group learning

• Knowledge claim formulation

• Information acquisition

• Codified knowledge claim

• Knowledge claim evaluation

• The cycle describes how information is reviewed and assimilated into organizational memory separating KM from document management.

• Addresses more than 'as is' preservation/management, and discovers knowledge material for the company and personnel.

• Knowledge development/integration outcomes are explicitly stated, and is criticized for focusing on KM activities rather than implementation.

The Wiig KM Cycle

• It focuses on three conditions needed for organizational success.
• Business (products/services) and customers.
• Resources (people, capital, facilities).
• The ability to act
• Karl M. Wiig produced a series combining management themes, covering how people/organizations build and utilize knowledge.
• Tackles the whole company/ business sectors and the cornerstone is creation, utilization, and manifestation of knowledge in culture, technology, and processes.
• According to Wiig, the goal is to enable the organization to behave intelligently by simplifying generation, communication, distribution, and use of high-quality information.
• Four sequential stages include building, storing, pooling, and using knowledge, tasks can be conducted concurrently/in reverse.
• The cycle is organized around identifying/correlating knowledge workers' roles/activities to create goods and services.

Stages of Knowledge per the Wiig KM Cycle

• Building knowledge: Gathering, analyzing, reconstructing, synthesizing, organizing, codifying, and modeling data from personal experience (experiential learning), and official education/training, and sources like books/peers. Finding answers to FAQs or market research are examples of knowledge development. Knowledge acquired through recruiting/research/development.
• Receiving information is activities like R&D, individual invention (experimentation), reasoning, and field observation (site/field trips)
• Analyze knowledge suggests extracting potential knowledge from collected material, abstracting extracted materials, identifying extracted patterns, explaining interactions, and checking materials preserved their meetings. Structured for certain purposes according to standards/classifications and Create hypotheses to explain observations and conformity between new and old information, and update the knowledge pool with know-how.
• Know-how is codified/modeled mentally, in books/manuals, and encoded before posting to a repository, gathered from numerous sources, and requires experts/advisors and training courses/processes.
• Holding knowledge: Involves recalling, acquiring, and storing information like reports/recommendations/studies and creating a computer-based knowledge base, and encoding information for organizational memory, assuring knowledge.
• Corporate method for assuring knowledge, removes obsolete/false/useless data by archiving obsolete data on less expensive/bulky media for retrieval and tacit information in practical recommendations, and know-how.
• Intellectual property, patents, research reports, technical papers, or tacit knowledge can be elicited from the brains
• Pooling knowledge: Organizations collect, access, and retrieve knowledge, denoting knowledge coordination, a 'who knows how' network, assembling knowledge into a library or repository. Social activities like apprenticeships, brainstorming sessions, and colleague consultations or access and retrieval may contact competent persons to resolve difficultie. All workers must collect information in papers, databases, and expert networks, along with experts/consultants, training courses, procedures/instructions, research/literature/media, inspections/observations.
• Contacting others is done for sharing and to discover similar challenges or an expert directly via the expertise finder network.
• Using knowledge: Using practical knowledge is for decision-making, to explain situations and identify issues, and to synthesize solutions and execute them through completing activities to create standard goods or handle routine operations.
• Utilize the expert network to discover experts to address issues, analyze solutions, and plan/execute them.
• Two Wiig cycles include institutional and personal knowledge evolution to assist companies in organizing.

The Institutional Knowledge Evolution Cycle

• It is divided into five phases:
  • Learning, invention, creativity and outside influences.
  • Knowledge Capture and retention
  • Knowledge refinement includes knowledge in textual material and Knowledge bases.
  • Knowledge is disseminated to points of action through education, training programs, automated knowledge-based systems, and expert networks, and incorporated into technology and processes.
  • Applying or leveraging knowledge, used to further learn and innovate

The Personal Knowledge Evolution Cycle

• Depicts how knowledge evolves from barely seen thoughts to more understood and valuable knowledge.
• Tacit subliminal knowledge: unconscious and poorly understood initial exposure
• Idealistic vision and paradigm knowledge: operate with some subconsciously available knowledge
• Systematic schema and reference methodology: Underlying systems and problem-solving procedures are explicit
• Pragmatic decision-making and factual knowledge: Practical and explicit decision-making knowledge is intentionally used for tasks.
• Automated routine working knowledge: Well-known, tacit knowledge used for things without thinking.
• Wiig also highlights the role of knowledge and talent, the business application of that knowledge, restrictions on use, alternatives, and projected value.

Integrated KM Cycle

• They uses various terminology to describe each step but often refer to knowledge processing
• Stages are logical and some processes make it possible to reuse or knowledge (Dalkir, 2017). There are 10 key knowledge processing phases:
  • Knowledge capture/creation/contribution
  • Knowledge filtering/selection
  • Knowledge codification
  • Knowledge refinement
  • Knowledge sharing
  • Knowledge access
  • Knowledge learning
  • Knowledge application
  • Knowledge evaluation
  • Knowledge reuse/divestment
• An integrated KM cycle is derived from major approaches; this cycle incorporates most covered above and divides them into three stages:
  • Knowledge capture and/or creation.
  • Knowledge sharing and dissemination.
  • Knowledge acquisition and application.
• Knowledge is appraised it moves from capture to exchange and dissemination and contextualizing is helpful.
• The stage updates material and feeds back, and it consists of identifying/codifying internal/external knowledge
• Knowledge creation is the development of new knowledge/know-how but it must be evaluated against selection criteria
• After selection new/freshly recognized material goes to be contextualized via knowledge, experts, integrating it into business operations.
• Repeated with verification from users on value and it creates a repetition which adds fresh material.
• A knowledge architecture must be planned and executed for staged knowledge to retain and exchange it.

The Knowledge Discovery

• Explores tacit and explicit knowledge from disciplines, relying on combining and socializing.
  • Combination combines multiple bodies of explicit knowledge to generate new, more complicated sets.
    • Communication, integration, and systemization of streams of explicit knowledge forms descriptive information and knowledge from past offers for integration into a new proposal
    • Data mining methods form used to links between facts to develop new knowledge.
  • Socialization facilitates integrating sources for new knowledge via synthesizing knowledge (unlike education) and creating apprenticeships.

Knowledge Capture

• Retreives explicit and tacit knowledge from sources to be shared with others and the world
• Knowledge capture promotes externalization and internalization.

Forms of Knowledge

• Externalization converts tacit information into forms (e.g. metaphors), helping express tacit knowledge achieved by comprehending/experiencing one thing in terms of another
  • Ex. Team generates a paper on the client, client executives, and the ways to work with it.
• Internalization signifies education, by reliving or in simulations Ex. Software consultant reading book.

Knowledge Sharing

• It is a prerequisite to organizational innovation and performance.
  • Depending on if knowledge is being conveyed, procedures are employed and facilitated through socialization or face to face meetings.
  • Exchange focuses on communicating explicit knowledge (like exchanging a product design handbook).

Knowledge Application

• Is to make choices and accomplish activities the best and it depends on knowledge of discovery, capture, and sharing.
• Can guide choices benefits but benefits from routines and directions.
  • Direction, the delivery of instructions rather than knowledge, and routines retain expertise, without knowledge (Conner and Prahalad 1996).
  • Procedures, regulations, and norms steer conduct and technology reduce communication, automating help, even if they need repetition (Grant 1996).

Theoretical KM Models selected due to critical characteristics (Dalkir, 2017)

• Reflects a full KM strategy, which considers people, process, organization, and technology.
• Well-documented in KM literature.
• The reliability and validity is field-tested

The von Krogh and Roos Model of Organizational Epistemology

Knowledge is distinct from individuals from social knowledge. Difficulties to address: - How and why do individuals become acquainted within an organization? - How and why do companies, as social entities, learn? - What qualifies as individual and organizational knowledge?

• What are the barriers to organizational KM? Cognitive System learning: People are transparent to external information in organizational epistemology and it accepts logic from surrounding areas of data-gathering Cognitive competency: Mobilizing individual cognitive resources. Connectionist approach: Holistic processing, creating learnings from familiar sources, linking components, linking individuals for emergence, creating collective mind. KM Fragility comes from individual thinking, communication, structure, member relationships, and resources and it is important to have trust in employees because senior management will not value them if one doesn't.

Implement knowledge enablers

• Encourage and connect and dialogue beyond limitations.
• Connectionist is better to connect information from individuals who absorb KM.

The Nonaka and Takeuchi Knowledge Spiral Model

• Japanese Firms Achieve creativity and innovation due to KM paradigm is based on a comprehensive view of knowledge generation and serendipity because of knowledge exchange and dissemination. more tacit approach to knowledge management more fundamental by Japanese and to make it simpler managers connect with things via self-involvement and they integrate self with knowledge. Hypertext organization can create firms with high efficiency.

Knowledge Creation

Can happen in individual as well as in group setting (sharing personal with colleagues so it is also social). Takeuchi and Nonaka Claim this concept ( conversion) is motor of knowledge.

• The model does not cover all phases of management and fails to account for how certain decisions

Nonaka and Takeuchi's model about knowledge conversion has four forms of knowledge

• Tacit Knowledge
• Internalization ( explicit to tactic or vice versa)
• Socialization exchanging through social interactions).
• Combination: Synthesizing Explicit or tactic for databases

Choo sense-making

Emphasizes on knowledge/understanding of activity.

1. Change environment
2. Implementation
3. Retention

Knowledge

In certain conditions knowledge should be structured

• For those not retaining in semantic networks for retaining, perspective is necessary
• Knowledge can be assessed and retrieved by the below
• Completeness -Connectedness Congruence/Purpose

Degree or knoweldge

There is a continuum starting with beginner to expert

• There are three knowledge types

1. measurement 2 ) stability/ balance 3 ) when demand exceeds demand.