The Importance of Strategic Management of Knowledge and Organisational Learning
“Knowledge Management”, “Organisational learning” and “intellectual capital” are some of the terms that are very commonly used in the current business environment. These terms are usually associated with some of the big budget projects that are conducted by different companies who are convinced by the idea that the only competitive advantage that an organisation in the future would have is its potential and ability of learning faster as compared to its competitors. The strategic management of organisational learning and knowledge has become one of the significant element in the fields of management and business (Rosemann & Vom Brocke, 2015).
The condition is so mainly because of the fact that strategic management of organisational learning and knowledge is capable of delivering the organisations all over the world, the strategic results in relation to competitiveness, capacity enhancement and profitability. It is to mention that both organisational learning and knowledge management play a very important part in the process of orchestration and designing of the organisational strategy, processes and structures which influence the survival of a company, resulting in the accomplishment of the goals, objectives and vision. However, this paper shall elaborate on following a line of notion- “inventing new knowledge is not a specialized activity…it is a way of behaving, indeed a way of being, in which everyone is a knowledge worker”.
It shall discuss the approach of a chosen company to strategic management of organisational learning and knowledge management with reference to some relevant theories and literature. With the same, it would also evaluate the use of strategic frameworks and tools of the chosen organisation comprising of the vitality of knowledge in the process of strategic marketing, strategic development, competitive advantage, sustainability as well as managing the strategic corporate change. It is to mention that the chosen company for this purpose is Transparency International Mauritius. It is a non-governmental organisation operating in Mauritius.
This paper aims to examine the strategic framework and tools that the organisation use in the management of knowledge management and organisational learning. The tools and frameworks would include Soft System thinking, Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, Balanced Scorecard Communities of Practice and Knowledge Management.
To Transparency International Mauritius’s ability to grow and become competitive in this contemporary rapidly growing business environment of developments and social changes, Balanced Scorecard, Soft System thinking, Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, Communities of Practice and Knowledge Management play the role of some important catalysts, with knowledge being the main point of focus. According to Bryson (2018), “organizational learning is the process of change in individual and shared thought and action, which is affected by and embedded in the institutions of the organization”.
When group and individual learning becomes institutionalised, as systems, strategy, routines, culture and structures. As of the fact that it is the intrinsic notion of change, the organisational learning research deal with the questions of how the companies develop, transform and develop further. They renew themselves so as to face the different challenges of the rapidly changing business environment. Moreover, according to Girard and Girard (2015), knowledge management is the “collection of systematic approaches to help information and knowledge flow to and between the right people at the right time (in the right format at the right cost) .
Strategic Frameworks and Tools for Knowledge Management
so they can act more efficiently and effectively to create value for the organization”. It is to note that the knowledge management in literature is divided in many different branches. Pauleen & Gorman (2016) in this context have stated that “Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied in the minds of knowers”.
One of the most significant branch of the academic work is in studying in the organisational knowledge because the resource of an organisation and as the source of the competitive advantage is rooted in the research on the resource-based view of the company. There are many authors who claim that the knowledge based theory of an organisation is a theory which “explains the organizational advantage of firms over markets”. As per Ronald Young, the CEO of the Knowledge Associated International, Knowledge management can be referred as “the discipline of enabling individuals, teams and entire organizations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge, to better achieve their objectives” (Young, 2016).
Transparency International Mauritius belongs from the humanitarian sector (Lakatos, 2017). It is an international civil society organisation that leads the fight against the issue of corruption. While applying the knowledge management to the humanitarian sector, it is to state that knowledge management in this regard can be explained as the management process, utilisation and acquisition of the knowledge and disaster information for the support of Humanitarian Assistance. It is also to mention that the concept of Knowledge management as well as that of the organisational learning is a very new phenomena for Transparency International Mauritius.
This organisation is at present working towards the adoption of Knowledge Management Manager and the Knowledge Management Coordinators whose roles would be further discussed in this paper for addressing the organisational learning gap present within this organisation as well as to keep abreast in this rapidly changing business environment. It is also to state that Transparency International Mauritius is also working towards adopting the position of learning as well.
It has an Anti-corruption Solutions and Knowledge (ASK) programme that is a strategic knowledge exchange and one of the significant learning initiatives towards the facilitation of the adaptation, dissemination and creation of the leading anti-corruption knowledge, expertise and experience all over the international anti-corruption community (Hope, 2017). It is also to note that the ASK network of experts are known to be a pool of many experts and practitioners with a recognised and high level expertise on some key geographic and thematic areas all over the world.
In the year 2016, the Transparency International Mauritius develops its strategy named “Together against Corruption” as one of key frameworks for the Transparency International’s collective actions and ambition for the years 2016-2020 (Rose-Ackerman & Palifka, 2016). This strategy was developed and designed for implementing all over the Transparency International movement comprising of the Transparency International’s members, secretariat and the national chapters. However, it is to mention that over the last one year, the Knowledge Management has become one of the hottest topics in the contemporary business scenario.
Transparency International Mauritius- Approach to Strategic Knowledge Management
There has been a significant growth in the rate of interest and the activities as seen in many new conferences, new publications, job advertisements and IT products. The different professional groups, notably the Human Resource professionals, librarians and IT products are staking their claims, seeking the Knowledge Management as one of the greatest opportunities for moving the centre stage. The individuals often describe the librarianship as one of the organisation of the recorded knowledge. The concept of Knowledge Management is not new. It has grown and developed from the prevailing practices and it is already established in most of the organisations- significantly the “Know-how” services in the big city law firms (Paulin & Suneson, 2015).
Knowledge Management can be presented as the convergence of the ideas that are promulgated over the last few decades, comprising of the core competencies and the resource based theories of the company, “info mapping” and information resource management, the “balanced scorecard”, “communities of practise” and the intellectual assets. The Balanced Scorecard of Transparency International Mauritius is both a performance management systems as well as the strategic approach which allows the entire organisation to translate the vision and the strategy of the organisation into the operational and tactical management reality. The Transparency International works from four different perspectives and they are learning and growth, business process, customer and financial.
There is a very high realisation of the vitality of the customer satisfaction and focus in any business. If the customers are not happy with the products and services of the company, they then seek out for the other suppliers in the market who would meet their demands and needs successfully. Transparency International Mauritius manages their customers from both the internal and external point of view. The measures are the same but they indeed have some form of difference and variance from the other INGO organisations. It is to mention that Transparency International Mauritius are based on the community volume consigned including the quality.
Poor performance from this point of view is therefore a lead indicator of the possible future decline and downfall, even though the current financial measures might look good. Furthermore, the business process refers to the work activities which comprise of value chain of the company. As stated by Epstein (2018), the most important issues is the correlation in between the set of mission and metrics of the company. All these metrics should therefore be very carefully designed by the ones who know both the support processes and the internal mission oriented processes.
According to Dumay (2016), Intellectual Capital is “the sum of everything everybody in your organisation knows that gives you a competitive edge in the market place”. It is also referred to as intellectual materials like information, experience, knowledge and intellectual property that could be put to use for creating wealth. It is to note that Intellectual Capital is a knowledge based concept. Knowledge is considered to be a subjective and personal process that emerge from earlier experiences and from the current events. On the other hand, the information is regarded to be an objective statement regarding the environment.
The Role of Anti-corruption Solutions and Knowledge Programme (ASK) in Strategic Knowledge Management
Measurement of the Intellectual Capital is still lagging in the present scenario. It is illustrated by the discrepancy in between the market value and the book value that need the idea of intellectual capital for making some sense. One of the best examples in this context is that of Ericsson. Ericsson has been estimated to be or approx. 80% more than the total value of its assets. This means that the present day accounting comprise of near about 20% of the market value of the Ericsson. According to Secundo et al. (2016), there are a total of ten principles of Managing Intellectual Capacity. The first is that the organisations do not own the external and human capital. They should identify the shared nature of all the assets which a company could manage and then gain profit from such assets. Secondly, for creating human capital to use, the organisation should encourage teamwork, communities of practise and all the other social forms of developing and learning.
Thirdly, the organisational wealth is formed around the talents and skills which are scare and proprietary. For managing and developing the human capital, companies should recognise the fact that people with skills and talents are asset for investing in. The other people should be managed very closely with very little or no investment. Thirdly, the structural assets are the easiest principle to manage but the ones that the customers are not interested in care least about. The fifth principle is that of moving from collecting the knowledge for “just in case” situations for having the information and details which the customers need ready to hand and that they might need within a reasonable time frame.
Next come the notion that knowledge and information could and should substitute for some expensive financial and physical assets. Knowledge works in the custom works. It is to note that the custom works are the work where mass produced solutions would not yield much high profits. It is also to mention that each of the organisations need to reanalyse the value chain of the industry and it participates in for seeing the information that are most important. The ninth principle is the notion that the company should focus on the information flow in the business processes and not on the flow of the materials. The customer, structural and human capital work together. It is to mention that not enough for investing in systems, people and customer separately. They could support and detract from one another.
Moreover, the communities of practise of interest is evolved from the informal networks. As per Langmead (2017), it is a new organisational form that is made of informal group that is united by the shared passion and expertise for the combined efforts. They share the experiences and knowledge in smooth flowing and creative manner for threading the novel approach to the issues. It is to mention that it is not simply a community because of the fact that it possess the potential of developing the professional skills of the people as well as open up new streams of businesses. With the same, it also helps in driving the strategy and promoting the best practices.
Evaluation of Transparency International Mauritius’ Approach to Strategic Management of Knowledge and Organisational Learning
Along with this, it help in retaining and recruiting the top talents as well. It is to mention that the main elements of Communities of Practise are the community, practise and domain of interest. This concept is being applied in the associations, organisations, government education and international developments. All these are the potential knowledge creating avenues. Transparency International Mauritius use the Communities of Practices in their Operational Excellence strategy that helps its business units to close the gaps in the performance and for meeting the potential of the corporate. It is also to note that the communities of practices possess high potential for the development of knowledge because of the focus on the shared activities.
This is due to the fact that they are not restricted to the formal and general structures. They give the practitioners enough room for the self-management of the necessary knowledge. With the same, they could also tackle the tacit, explicit and the dynamic aspects of the knowledge sharing. It is they who create a direct link in between the performance and learning as because of the fact that the same people in the communities of practise could also be in the business units and in the teams. The members of the team could meet in regular basis in no rigid location and with the same, they are not constrained by the time.
Furthermore, it is to mention that by social network, (Ataseven, Nair & Ferguson, 2018) have termed it a “Social Collectivity” as it include presence of people in a company or in an “intellectual community”. In this setting, there are bound to be link and bonds that are developed both externally and internally termed “social capital”. It is comprised of cognitive, structural and relational dimensions. It helps in creating Intellectual Capital. It is also to mention that it is one of the major categories which create the balance in between the different Intellectual Capitals. The several others are- Customer Capital, Structural Capital and Human Capital.
The Customer Capital is something that is the value of the external relationships and how the customers around the organisations are treated and are valued in the organisation- “Good will”. Secondly, the structural capital refers to the operations and processes of the organisations. It is also about the cultural set up as well as the innovativeness in its operations. Thirdly, the Human capital can be defined as the people working within a company. It is their quality, core competencies, skills, learning ability as well as their knowledge base.
Intellectual Capital is also called Intangible Assets or IA. It is due to the fact that Intellectual Capital considers the assets of the organisations which cannot be touched but they make the company rich. Hence, Rossi et al. (2016) have regarded them as intangible assets of an organisation as they have no physical existence but yet are of a great value to the companies. Moreover, Kianto et al. (2014) have defined the Intellectual Capital as holistic prowess as it is the potential of a company for creating business value. As per Osinski et al. (2017), the Intellectual Capital is “the difference between the firm’s market value, and its book value of entity”.
Conclusion
It means that a company is more than just a stated result, it is the relationships, ideas, skills, people, experience and many things that create more value for the firm. All these, along with the strategic knowledge base combine into the notion of system thinking. Zambon (2017) have defined the concept of System Thinking as a wide range of resources that is organised in a way that the desired outcome are gained owning to the company of their designated functions. In such cases, system thinking is possible only with a strong knowledge base. It helps in advocating, interacting, interconnectedness as well as in the holistic enhancement and improvement that is what all the themes that are addressed in this paper are all about, i.e., the Soft System thinking, Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, Balanced Scorecard, Communities of Practice and Knowledge Management.
Hence, from the above analysis it is clear that the main aim of this paper was to clearly demonstrate the concept of conceptual confusion in the learning field by means of providing a synthesis as well as by integrating the three very closely related constructs- the intellectual capital, organisational learning, Soft system thinking, social capital, Communities of Practice, Balanced Scorecard and knowledge management. The paper has very critically reviewed the earlier research with an effort for understanding how the literatures fit in together and how it can be aggregated into much more meaningful conceptual model for the practitioners and academics. It is to state from the above analysis that intellectual capital and knowledge management concepts could be integrated into one construct.
Also, there is a very strong relation in between the processes of learning and knowledge management. It is to mention that Knowledge Management is a strategy that cannot be end within a small time frame. It is a long term strategy. The balance scorecard could be used as one of the mechanism for storing and managing the knowledge as well as by the management of this knowledge, a firm could easily measure its performance.
This helps in getting management focus that refined the performance measures that is contained in the scorecard that create more skills and knowledge. Balance scorecard helps the firms to get aligned with the processes of management and focuses the whole organisation for implementing it but by means of using the ten principles mentioned above for the management of the Intellectual Capital, the organisational managers could focus on good performance and knowledge management systems which takes into the account of Intellectual Capital.
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