knowledge acquisition and application

Knowledge Acquisition and Application

Chapter 6

Knowledge Management Cycle

• Knowledge Acquisition: Reuse– Promote efficiency– Lead to Innovation

• More effective ways of doing things

• Knowledge Application– Application of knowledge is filtered through

human brain and applied to job tasks

Knowledge Reuse• Most jobs require certain amount of knowledge

creation but we don’t want everyone creating new knowledge– Want to apply existing knowledge in new or unfamiliar

situations– Want “small ideas” from individuals, not reinvention of jobs

• Example:– Lawyer reuses knowledge created in another case– Programmer employs a subroutine that someone else

created

• Effective knowledge workers reuse their own knowledge all the time

Individual Level

• Personal (Individual) knowledge acquisition and application– Personalization and Profiling– Cognitive Styles and MBTI– Bloom Taxonomy of Learning Objectives

i

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Cognitive Styles and MBTI•Cognitive differences

•We all have preferred habits of thought that influence how we make decisions, how we interact with others and how we prefer to learn•These are neither good nor bad•They emerge early in our lives and tend to remain fairly stable through the years•People tend to choose professions that reward or correspond to their preferred cognitive styles

•Myers-Briggs Type Indicator•an example of a widely used tool to assess cognitive styles

Meyers Briggs Personality Type Indicator

• Four Dimensions of Personality Type

• How we interact with the world and where we direct our energy

• The kind of information we naturally notice

• How we make decisions

• Whether we prefer to live in a more structured way or a more spontaneous way

Will B. Good, University of Iowa, www.education.uiowa.edu/html/eportfolio/phd/clinical/.../mbti.ppt

Extraversion IntroversionInterest Orientation

E IOuter world of actions,

objects, and people

Inner world of ideas and concepts


Sensing iNtuitionPerception

S NImmediate reality and

direct experience

Inferred meanings

and relationships


Thinking FeelingJudgment

T FReliability of logical order – cause and

effect

Priorities based on personal

importance and values


Judgment PerceptionEnvironment Orientation

J PJudging attitude – Control of

events and systematic planning

Spontaneity – Curious, awaiting

events and adapting to

them


ISTJ“Take Your

Time and Do It Right”

ISFJ“On My Honor,

to Do My Duty…”

INFJ“Catalyst for

Positive Change”

INTJ“Competence + Independence =

Perfection”

ISTP“Doing the Best

I Can With What I’ve Got”

ISFP“It’s the

Thought That Counts”

INFP“Still Waters Run Deep”

INTP“Ingenious

Problem Solvers”

ESTP“Let’s Get

Busy!”

ESFP“Don’t Worry, Be Happy”

ENFP“Anything’s

Possible”

ENTP“Life’s

Entrepreneurs”

ESTJ“Taking Care of

Business”

ESFJ“What Can I Do

For You?”

ENFJ“The Public

Relations Specialist”

ENTJ“Everything’s Fine – I’m in

Charge”

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Bloom’s Hierarchy of Learning Objectives

• Conceptual systems theory that describes progressively complex levels of learning achievement – as evidenced by learner behaviours

• Prerequisite structure– Need to master lower level before moving up to the next

level– E.g. your course objectives

• Good model for knowledge acquisition

B. Bloom (1956) Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: Cognitive Domain

13

Bloom: Cognitive Learning Objectives (continued)

KnowledgeComprehension

ApplicationAnalysisSynthesisEvaluation

14




•Define•Memorize•Repeat•Record•List•Recall•Name•Relate

15



ApplicationAnalysisSynthesisEvaluation •Restate

•Discuss•Describe•Recognize•Explain•Express•Identify•Locate•Report•Review

16




•Translate•Interpret•Apply•Employ•Use•Demonstrate•Dramatize•Practice •Illustrate•Operate•Schedule•Sketch

17




•Compose•Analyze•Differentiate•Appraise•Calculate•Experiment•Compare•Contrast •Inventory•Question•Solve•Examine

18




•Distinguish•Plan•Propose•Design•Formulate•Arrange•Assemble•Construct •Create•Collect•Set up•Organize•Manage

19




•Judge•Evaluate•Rate•Value•Revise•Score•Select•Assess •Prioritize•Justify•Debate

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Example: Course Objectives

1. Use a framework and a clear language for intellectual capital and organizational memory concepts

2. Model the flow, sharing and leveraging of intellectual assets

3. Identify some of the principal cultural characteristics that are necessary to encourage organizational learning and innovation

4. Describe the links between individual and organizational learning

5. Monitor, value, categorize, report intellectual capital

Knowledge Reuse

• Knowledge management projects have pursued many approaches to capturing and reusing knowledge. – These include creating document repositories; recording

meetings, conversations, and email exchanges; organizing discussions in document databases; and providing annotation systems.

• Key obstacles to success are:– Digital objects are difficult to find.– When found, objects are difficult to assess.– Systems are not strong at identifying people who can help

find or assess objects.

Organization Size• Small organizations focus on knowledge acquisition

– with few people and limited dispersal of knowledge, they seem to face relatively few obstacles sharing or reusing knowledge.

• Large organizations, in contrast, have difficulty finding and reusing knowledge. – Even determining whether the knowledge exists within the

organization can be difficult.– For example, a pharmaceutical company found that although

clinical tests of a compound are expensive, searching for possible past test results of a compound would be more expensive than retesting some of them.

Knowledge Reuse• Document management systems, directories

of personnel identifying areas of expertise, and other repositories are constructed and used in some circumstances

• KM systems that focus on gathering, recording, and accessing reams of “knowledge” at expense of person-to-person interaction have been expensive and unsatisfactory

Successful Internalization of Knowledge

• Individual must access and understand available knowledge

• And consciously decide this is better way of doing things– Apply knowledge to real-world situation

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What is a Learning Organization?

• A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.– New ideas are essential if learning is to occur– Sometimes they are created from scratch (flash)– At other times they come from outside the organization– Triggers for organizational learning but by themselves, ideas

do not bring about organizational learning: needs to be accompanied by changes in the way that work gets done – otherwise, no potential for improvement

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Management: Building Blocks

• Learning organizations are skilled at 5 main activities:

1. Systematic problem solving e.g. use scientific approach2. Experimentation with new approaches3. Learning from their own experience & past history (lessons

learned, project reviews)4. Learning from the lessons learned and best practices of

others (benchmarking, networking)5. Transferring knowledge quickly and efficiently throughout

the organization (training, lunch and learns…)

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Steps Leading to a Learning Organization

• Foster an environment that is conducive to learning– Time for reflection, analysis, to think about strategic plans,

dissect customer needs, assess current work systems and invent new products

• Open up boundaries and stimulate the exchange of ideas – destroy the silos & ivory towers with conferences, meetings, project teams

• Create learning forums: programs or events designed with explicit learning goals e.g. study missions, committees, symposiums, etc.

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Lessons Learned and Knowledge Inventories

• Whenever an exceptional situation occurs – opportunities for best practices (creative innovations) and lessons learned to be drawn from them– Need to be captured, described and

preserved to be accessible again when needed

– Continued learning of employees, communities and of the organization

knowledge acquisition and application

Documents

existing knowledge

knowledge acquisitionb

knowledge creation

university of iowa

lawyer reuses knowledge

cognitive domain

peopleinner world of

profilingcognitive styles