Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Moving to Strategies
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advance these concepts even further, engendering the rise of social
responsibility.
The change strategy suggested here is holistic, and not
bounded by the organization. Indeed, it encourages interactions
across large relationship networks and sharing and learning across
organizational boundaries. The DON implementation strategy was
viewed in terms of orchestrating and implementing 12 specific
elements: creating a shared vision; building the business case;
demonstrating leadership commitment; facilitating a common
understanding; setting limits; sharing new ideas, words and
behaviors; identifying the strategic approach; developing the
infrastructure; measuring and incentivizing; providing tools;
promoting learning; and visioning an even greater future (Bennet
and Bennet, 2004; Porter, Bennet, Turner & Wennergren, 2002).
KM as a discipline
Several thought leaders in the KMTL Study see the field as
still seeking a set of principles, guidelines, theories, laws and so
forth by which one can operate. For example, Steve Weineke
states, “A common framework would allow the community of
knowledge practitioners to appreciate the complexity of KM. If
constructed using ontological techniques, we would all be able to
see and understand the depth and breadth of disciplines, the
relationships between each discipline, and any interdependencies.
The framework becomes the taxonomy or the ontology to enable
sharing the knowledge of knowledge.”
Several thought leaders see this diversity of thought as a
benefit in terms of the ability to use any of a dozen acceptable
definitions dependent upon the specific focus of work and the
comfort level of clients. For example, Ramon Barquin states that,
“The ability for KM to be accepted by organizations is called out
in terms of its nebulous and loose nature, specifically, its lack of
focus and the difficulty in answering hard management questions
such as: What will it do? What’s the payoff? What’s the ROI?”
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Yet another thought leader noted that the diversity of views on
what KM or even knowledge is and how it can be used in an
organization is probably healthy at this stage . . . it’s a bit too
early to standardize on one particular curriculum in the field. As he
points out, “There’s still room for a lot of creativity that emerges
from tensions that exist between different viewpoints.”
But many early KM
leaders searched for There’s still room for a lot of
creativity that emerges from
commonalities. Associations
tensions that exist between
began developing and different viewpoints.
delivering certification
courses. And for academic
leaders, a primary outcome of their passion for KM was to create a
discipline out of the field. By the year 2000, The George
Washington University had begun a degree-granting program with
a concentration in KM.
More than 25 doctoral students signed up that first year, with
several transferring from other doctoral program. Under the
leadership of Michael Stankosky, this group of students began the
task of creating a body of knowledge for what they call the
discipline of KM. As demonstrated in Table 2, they grouped all the
key elements of KM into four pillars, similar to “Newton grouping
his observations about gravity under the laws of motion”
(Stankosky & Baldanza, p. 269 in Barquin, Bennet, & Remez,
2001). Built across multiple disciplines, the four pillars are
leadership, organization, technology, and learning. The sub-
elements of these pillars, as can be seen in the 14 learning
objectives developed for the Federal sector that explore many of
the same themes, demonstrate the breadth of the field. In the sub-
elements (and in the 14 learning objectives introduced in Chapter
7) both technology and learning are closely linked to KM.
By 2004, there were more than 100 universities world-wide
that offered concentrations and/or degree programs in knowledge
management.
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Table 2: Explication of the four pillars of the GWU KM Model
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