3rd European Knowledge Management Summer School 7-12 Sept, 2003 San Sebastian, Spain

Capitalizing Knowledge in Research

Organizations through Quality
Management
Astrid JAIME1, Mickaël GARDONI 1 and Dominique VINCK 2
1
Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, Laboratory GILCO,
46 Av. Felix Viallet, 38031 Grenoble, France
Tel: +33 476574333, Fax: +33 476574695; Email: jaime@gilco.inpg.fr
2
University Pierre Mendès France, Laboratory CRISTO,
UFR DGES, B.P. 47 - 38040 Grenoble Cedex 9 - France
Tel: +33 476825535, Fax +33 (0)4-76-82-58-43; Email: dominique.vinck@upmf-grenoble.fr

Abstract. The research activity aims at the production of new knowledge. It is then
desirable to use mechanisms to support the knowledge production process. Quality
management could be used for this purpose. We have noticed that this methodology
has two principal motivations: To organize the activities and to manage data. The
quality systems turn, then, around activity formalization and document management.
This formalization is a form of making explicit tacit knowledge. Also, document
management helps knowledge capitalization. Therefore, quality management could
contribute to the increase of the knowledge base of the research organization.

1. Introduction

The research activity implies the handling of information and knowledge. It’s on this basis,
that new knowledge is produced, to become, itself, the resource of new research processes.
How can we know if this knowledge is reliable? How to ensure that all the actors taking
part in a particular research activity used “good” information and “good” knowledge with
the “good” methods?
Quality management wants to answer these questions. This is the reason why, during the
last years, some research organizations have invested a part of their efforts to quality
management like means to face the multiple concerns of their activity. Nevertheless, the
introduction of this practice into the scientific environment is not clear. In fact, quality
management has traditionally been used by the industry for increasing its effectiveness.
However, the research activity requires more scientific rigor than effectiveness in industrial
terms. Moreover, the general characteristics of the scientific activity are different from
those of the industrial activity in terms of working conditions, goals, resources, tasks
performed, etc.
For this reason, we have started a research process that aims at clarifying the real
problems to which the research organizations face when implementing a quality
management system and the role it plays for the transmission of knowledge. The goal is to
obtain lessons helpful to the laboratories interested in the establishment of their own quality
management systems.
In the first stage, we have study research organizations, in particular some trying to
establish a quality management system. At a second stage, the construction of a theoretical
model of the establishment of quality management systems in research organizations is
considered.

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2. The Context of the research project

2.1 The role of Quality Management

Several motivations originated deliberations on the subject of quality in research. The

considerations carried out on the subject indicate that the key word in this context is
“confidence”. Confidence between the laboratory and the external actors: “How can the
totality of actors implied confide in the scientific knowledge produced by the research
entities?” [5].
A possible answer to this question is the application of quality management to the
research process. The principle is to establish mechanisms to manage the scientific
production process as a way of keeping scientific rigor and obtaining valid results. These
aspects of the research activity are far from being considered as intrinsic to it. In fact, the
organizations undertaking research must show that their results are valid, which means that
the processes followed to arrive at the shown conclusions were rigorous.
The implementation of quality management in the research organizations is shown like a
possibility to answer the current concerns in scientific, economic and financial, societal and
environmental terms, for the research organization as well as for its researchers [2].
Nevertheless, the process of introduction of quality management in a research organization
is not yet well defined. In the research activities, the product developed is knowledge,
usually capitalized as documents that should be well managed for succeeding this
capitalization.

3. Research Methodology

We have started our research process by a field work that has allowed us gaining
knowledge on the reality studied. This phase has two sub-phases:
1. Collection of information on the current functioning of a research organization.
This collection has been done by observing a research organization during 4
months.
2. Realisation of interviews with the people responsible for quality management in 7
research organisms, already engaged in this methodology.
The objective is to know the real problems that the research organizations encounter
when implementing quality management, and the role this methodology plays for the
transmission of knowledge. In a future phase we will work on the development of tools to
help address these problems, with the objective of facilitating the implementation process.

4. Re search organizations and quality management

4.1 The Reality of research organizations

The field work allowed to note that there are several situations present in the research
organizations that make difficult their management: The diversity of activity fields, the
great deal of records to be managed, the multiplicity of working methods, the regular
change of personnel and the diversity of activities that must be developed in parallel, with
different deadlines, and which, often, must be coordinated to lead to valid results.
In addition, one could note some characteristics of the research activity: The goal to
reach could be defined as the augmentation of knowledge. Then, our assumption is that
quality management should contribute to its enrichment by allowing the capitalization of

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experiences and knowledge held by people.

Nevertheless, in the organism observed, we noticed that there are managerial habits that
affect the results obtained: one of the main ones is the freedom given to researchers for the
documentation or the traceability of their production in the form of information concerned
with their activity. Therefore, the contents recorded in the working papers are very
disparate. However, knowledge is partly formalized in the contents. Thus, knowledge
sharing is affected and in consequence, knowledge is not well capitalized for the benefit of
the research activity.

4.2 Some Experiences of Implantation of Quality Management

To enrich the vision of the problems and to have sufficient elements for the analysis, we
carried out several interviews in seven research organisms, already engaged in quality
management. The interviews were carried out in important organisms located at Grenoble
(France), attached to CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research of Franc e) which have
a quality system already established or in process of being established. They are all research
laboratories, except for a service that works for the research laboratories as supplier of
special equipments needed in research projects. The majority of the other organizations
combine activities of applied research and basic research. Nevertheless, quality
management is established in the administrative activities and/or the technical activities.
The activity of basic research is not yet part of ht e quality system because it is perceived, in
general, as a more advanced stage.
The basic orientation of the established systems is that of the standard ISO 9001 [1] and
the result has been the establishment of information systems that aim at facilitating the
realization of repetitive processes. In addition, the basic difference among the quality
systems is the type of activity carried out: two of the organizations work in applied research
(or the quality system is used only for this activity) while the others work mainly on basic
research. This difference originates divergences in the ways of establishing the systems: the
first ones followed a traditional process for the establishment of a quality system according
to the standard ISO 9001 [1], while the second group has been forced to carry out an
analysis on the way the directives of this standard could be applied to research and have
made an adaptation to its own operating mode.

5. Knowledge management in Research organizations

As we have mentioned, our interest is the quality management within research

organizations. We see them as institutions dedicated to the production of knowledge.
Knowledge management, in a process that aims at producing new knowledge is thus central
for our subject of interest. For this reason, we will present, hereafter, some elements that we
consider fundamental for our subject of research.

5.1 The functioning by projects

First of all, it is necessary to remember that the research activity is usually developed in the
form of more or less structured research projects. Vinck [8] writes:
"The activities at the laboratory are structured by projects…The project does not
correspond to an observable sequence of activities…The methods and the research
protocols do not account for the effective sequence of the activities… The prescribed
method is based on the tacit competences supposed to belong to a common practical
sense… Lastly, although the various tasks of a project can be carried out by different

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people, work is often carried out by only one person ". i

A whole set of significant issues results from these assertions: The importance of project
management; the gaps between what is written and what is done; the use of tacit
competences supposedly shared and, lastly, the failures in knowledge sharing. The cause
mentioned on "the need for having access to the history of the procedure by which the
phenomenon is made visible" implies failures in the documentation and traceability system,
which would not transmit in suitable form knowledge, information and the data of the
projects. This is why it is important to study the problems of knowledge management using
as support the management of documentation and trying to work out ways of improvement.

5.2 The barriers to knowledge capitalization

Know ledge must be capitalized through the various projects carried out by the research
organism while using, at the same time, the knowledge developed outside its walls.
Therefore, research organizations should know how to manage and capitalize the
knowledge it produces and find mechanisms to identify and capitalize crucial knowledge
produced externally.
Mahé [7] shows that "the barriers opposing to the re-use of knowledge created on a
earlier project on a project in progress that could profit from it" are mainly the change of
personnel (either because there are people who leave, or because the person who holds
knowledge is not the one who is responsible for carrying out a project) and the lack of
information (because it has not been kept, or because it has not been produced or
formalized). Mahé summarizes these barriers by saying that it’s a matter of "lack of
metaknowledge". In research institutions, one finds the same barriers, but increased because
this metaknowledge must relate not only to knowledge to the interior of the organism, but
also on the knowledge held by the scientific network.
Mahé proposes a methodology and a tool that start by the characterization of the projects
for being able to make a comparison with the preceding projects. Nevertheless, in research,
it is not at all clear that such a characterization be possible. For this reason, one must find
mechanisms that will make possible to re-use knowledge, while taking into account the
characteristics of research.

5.3 The tools to control the research organizations’ memory

In the research organizations, one observes that the situation described by Gandon [4] about
the use of Intranets and of the Web as means to control their memory is real.ii In fact, we
verified that research organizations, when implanting quality management, realize the need
of tools for the management of documents and scientific data. Then, usually, quality
management is materialized as an information system, often in the form of an Intranet.
Their purpose is the management of documents. Their level of development does not yet
reach higher levels like "the management and the circulation of distributed knowledge" like
projects like CoMMA [4] foresee. For the surveyed laboratories, the approach chosen has
been to start by identifying and organizing the data and information they use. This
organization includes the definition of families of documents, like scientific documents and
administrative documents. The intrinsic idea is to facilitate the realization of the activities,
by providing a tool that makes possible to find documents or information and to organize
those produced. The principle of re-utilization is implicitly present, but is not explicitly
expressed. In other words, the systems are conceived to organize more than to re-use.
Anyway, they give elements that make possible to find documents for its use.

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5.4 The knowledge management itself

In spite of the condition of laboratories as knowledge producing entities, quality

management systems have started with the objective of controlling the organizational
aspects, mainly the management of documents (scientific and administrative). The issue of
knowledge management itself has not been developed yet. The origin of this situation
seems to be double:
1. On one hand, it already exists a methodology known to address documentary
organizational management. In other words, traditionally, quality management has
been used for this kind of management, which is easily adaptable to the
organizational aspects of laboratories. Conversely, it does not exist a defined
methodology to make knowledge management in scientific organizations, or to
apply quality management to scientific research activities.
2. On the other hand, the results obtained by making document management are easily
perceived by the personnel.
A third cause could be inertia . The laboratories undertake their research activities by
following the traditional practices used in research. Within this framework, to implement
quality management in the research activity or to introduce knowledge management
touches directly the central activity of the organism. It is also important to know that the
implantation of quality management in the laboratories started recently (most of them
started in 2001). It is thus comprehensible that the systems address first the aspects
perceived as easily accessible. This allows them to get familiar with the notions of quality
management.
Nevertheless, today, some laboratories start to wonder about the role of the knowledge
management for their activity. The integration of this principle is made within the
framework of quality management like an evolution of this methodology that starts by the
management of the organizational aspects and integrates quality management into the
scientific activities.

6. Conclusions

We wanted to study the issues encountered by research organizations when they engage
into quality management. For this reason, we made a field work in order to know their
reality and to gather information about the problems encountered when implementing
quality management.
The field work allowed us to notice that even if the main activity of the organisms
analyzed is the production of knowledge, the personnel expresses a lack of structuring of
the activity and is affected by very practical situations of the activity carried out day after
day. It is not surprising then to observe that research organisms have mainly three
motivations for starting a quality management process: External demands (only one case),
structuring of activities and data management. Therefore, the systems turn around the
formalization of administrative activities, that are easily structured, and document
management, which contributes to data management and supports the development of
activities.
The formalization of administrative activities could be seen as a formalization of know
how. In fact, there is a part of tacit knowledge that is written in documents, facilitating its
sharing. This formalization starts by the easier aspects. In general, the administrative
activities, which are repetitive and, therefore, easily formalized. Afterwards, technical
activities are addressed allowing their analysis and formalization. For the moment, only a
laboratory has succeeded at introducing some structuring to the research activity. However,

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even there, the mechanisms introduced have not been adopted by all the researchers of the
laboratory.
Regarding document management, we verified that, despite the various types of research
activities carried out by the organisms observed (technological research, fundamental
research or applied research), the documentary aspect is always fundamental. Document
management plays a very significant role for the quality management and for this reason, it
should include provisions related to their organization, their circulation and their protection.
Nonetheless, the quality management systems observed do not truly address the aspect
of knowledge management. The cause seems to be the lack of methodologies and real
experiences that can give the guidelines on the way of setting up a quality management
system. Though, the perspective of using this methodology as a means to manage
knowledge and improve performance is encouraging.
We must now address the question of how quality management can be established in a
research organization. The application of a traditional methodology is improbable
considering the existing constraints and the experiences observed. We consider that when
implanting quality management, it is necessary to set up mechanisms to support knowledge
management and, at the same time, satisfy the needs of the team in terms of structuring of
activities. We think that the continuation of the efforts made by some laboratories, the
greater concern of laboratories and official organisms about the role of quality in the
context of research and our own research project will all contribute to provide elements to
answer this question.

References

[1] AFNOR, 2000. NF EN ISO 9000 – 2000 «Système de management de la qualité – Principes essentiels et
vocabulaire ». AFNOR, Paris.
[2] AFNOR, 2001. Fascicule de Documentation FD X 50 – 550 « Démarche qualité en recherche – Principes
généraux et recommandations ». AFNOR, Paris.
[3] BARTHÈS, Jean-Paul, DIENG, Rose et KASSEL, Gilles 1999. Mémoire d’Entreprise. Dossier paru dans
le bulletin de l’AFIA n° 36 en janvier 1999.
http://www.irit.fr/ACTIVITES/EQ_SMI/GRACQ/COMMUNAUTEF/DOSSIERME/dossier_ME_intro.h
tml
[4] GANDON, Fabien, DIENG, Rose, CORBY, Olivier, GIBOI N, Alain. 2002. Web Sémantique et
Approche Multi-Agents pour la Gestion d’une Mémoire Organisationnelle Distribuée. In Actes de la
Conférence IC’2002 Rouen, 28 – 30 mai 2002. 13ème journées francophones d’Ingénierie des
Connaissances. P. 15 – 26. Rouen
[5] Groupe de travail français «QUALITE EN RECHERCHE ». 1997. Guide expérimental pour la qualité en
recherche. http://www-dsm.cea.fr/Qualite/MENRT/page.html. France.
[6] Grundstein, Michel. 2000. Le Management des Connaissances dans l’Entreprise. Problématique, Axe de
progrès, Orientations. (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/michek.grundstein/References/RR05/RR050010.htm)
[7] MAHE, Sylvain, 2001. PUMEO : un modèle actif pour la gestion des connaissances tacites et explicites
dans l’entreprise. Identification et intégration des connaissances dans les tâches de tous les jours. In J.
CHARLET Actes de la Conférence IC 2001. 25-27 juin 2001, p. 21 – 39. Leibniz – IMAG. Paris: PUG.
[8] VINCK, Dominique. 1995. Sociologie des Sciences, p. 154 – 155. Paris: Armand Colin Editeur.

NOTES:
i
Translation by the author.
ii
"Given the increasingly rapid renewal of personnel, the globalized and changing environment requiring a
perpetual reorganization and a management oriented by projects, and also because the growing
infrastructures, the organizations need tools and methodologies to control an active and persistent memory of
their former experiences. This memory rests more and more often on an internal use to the organization of the
technologies of the Internet (Intranets) and Web (internal Webs or intrawebs)." Translation by the author.