This is the fourth installment of a five -part series on global corporate leadership. This article focuses on Information Technology
Economics (Debt)
Environmental Factors
Political Factors
Technology
Social Factors
The series taken as a whole should help you define the answers for your company to these nine questions:
Who are the customers of the future?
How will my company distribute its product or service in the future?
Who will be my competitors in 10 years? 25 years?
What will the source of my company’s competitive advantage be in the future?
What skills or capabilities will make my company unique?
What role will strategic alliances/ mergers/acquisitions play in its strategy?
How will my firm alter the nature of competition in its industry?
How will my organization redefine the boundaries between industries?
What can my company do to create a new industry?
The Opportunity
For many years, companies have devoted more than half of their capital budgets to information technology, and have acted under the simplistic assumption that ‘improved information’ results in increased productivity. The same companies have not based their computer investments on careful calculations of returns or added value, but rather on cultural and political concerns. Successful information systems must focus more on relationships and interaction than on the information itself.
The Solution
Tomorrow’s strategic technology investments will present more choices for organizations than they will know what to do with. Companies will be able to set up the technology that best fits their organization rather than the other way around. The value that organizations gain from these investments will depend on the foresight and intelligence that go into determining how their people will use technology.
There is a cliché that goes something like the following: If organizations only had greater quantities of cheaper, faster, and more useful information, they could increase their profitability and enhance their competitive positions in the global marketplace, etc., etc. On the surface, that seems to make sense. If you offer employees greater quantities of better information more quickly and at a lower cost, you should reasonably expect their performance to improve as a result.
Although in many situations where better performance resulted, even the improved information access often had little or no impact on people’s behavior. Most of us are aware of the risks of smoking. Yet millions of people still pick up the habit. Though there should be strong links between information and behavior in the enterprise, the real problem most executives face isn’t inadequate information, it’s the organization’s unwillingness to change behavior in the face of good information.
On an industry-wide level (micro level), some companies get strong returns on their digital technology investments. What seems true, however, is that on a macro level more money has been wasted on computerization than has been created.
No one denies that computerization and networking can add enormous value. But when we look at the numbers, it is clear that companies are not basing their computer investments on careful calculations of returns or added value. Other factors such as culture, politics, fashion, and competition also come into play. Best-practice methodologies often are irrelevant benchmarks for many companies investing tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in computers and networks.
There’s a fundamental difference between managing an information system and running a business on information, just as there’s a difference between operating a rivet gun and making airplanes. Managers intent on establishing technical systems subscribe to different values and practices than managers trying to set up productive business environments for their workers. Operating a business on information has a much broader array of interaction and interdependence than managing an information system.
When managers try to fit inflexible, mechanistic systems into organic contexts, they need new vocabularies to explain how people in organizations really use these systems.
Indeed, the word information loses its edge when redefined in business contexts; culture and politics and relationships may generally become at least as important.
Does the organization want to use its networks to centralize or decentralize responsibility? Does the enterprise want to make every bit of data accessible to everyone all the time? Or does it want to build a new information-access hierarchy into its intranet? Should individuals be rewarded for sharing information? Should people be encouraged to strike up electronic relationships with employees in other departments? Or should interdepartmental fraternization be deemed an inappropriate use of the network? For now, these rhetorical questions provide food for thought, however some of us encounter them in our daily business lives.
Conclusion
If an organization does decide to improve the way it shares information, it should focus first on changing the culture of sharing. Most information managers know little about designing incentives for enterprise collaboration, much less invoking it. That’s why responsible information departments have to insist from the beginning that effective enterprise computing and groupware don’t depend on transparency, replication, and semi-structured databases. They depend on how individuals are rewarded and punished for sharing and withholding information. They are about behavior, culture, and politics.
By: John F. Williams
Posts Tagged ‘Increased Productivity’
Innovations in Education – Knowledge Management
November 24th, 2009
INNOVATIONS IN EDUCATION – KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
ABSTRACT
This paper seeks to identify knowledge management concepts that relate to the implementation of Knowledge management Practices in education and also in collaborative arrangements. It also discusses about the challenges facing in higher education in India and the concept of Knowledge management in education and the new trends of education. It also explains about the Knowledge management and types of Knowledge management and their trends and new innovations of Knowledge management in current education scenario. Educational trends and tasks are towards more learner- centered materials. In response to these trends, colleges and universities are offering new courses at a distance and forms traditional delivery. The effort to share the most recent understandings about Knowledge management in education is the changing roles and challenges for higher education. The increased productivity required by faculty are driving forces for the development of more diverse and efficient teaching method.
INTRODUCTION:
Knowledge management in education is the collection of processes that govern the creation, dissemination and utilization of knowledge. In one form or another, knowledge management has been around for a very long time. Practitioners have included philosophers, priests, teachers, politicians, scribes, Liberians etc., Knowledge management is not “A technology thing” or a “Computer thing” if we accept the premise that Knowledge management is concerned with the entire process of discovery and creation of knowledge then we are strongly driven to accept that Knowledge management is much more than a “Technology thing” and that elements of it exist in each of one Jobs. Knowledge management comprises a range of practices used by organizations to identify, create, represent and distribute knowledge. It has been an established discipline since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals dedicated to it. Knowledge management is frequently linked to the idea of the learning organization .Knowledge management refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify the higher levels of innovations in education. The sharing of knowledge in industry, colleges , universities and, almost any institution in this country will make reference to the capturing of knowledge.
DEFINITION
“Knowledge management is the discipline of enabling individuals, team and entire organizations to collectively and systematically create, share and apply knowledge to better achieve their objectives”
Knowledge management education is the process of constructivity using the information and knowledge that is inherent to any organisation –be it a school, university or multinational company. In order to enhance its performance, its management and its operations. This process of learning to know what we know is one that has brought great benefits. Particularly to many commercial organizations.
MAARTEN SIERCHUIS: -
Knowledge analysis: In knowledge analysis we model a knowledge source in such away that we can analyse its usefulness, its weakness and its appropriateness within the organization. Knowledge analysis is a necessary step for the ability to manager knowledge. Within knowledge Analysis we can use knowledge modeling and knowledge acquisition techniques.
ROBERT TAYLOR:-
The vital importance of knowledge in business has always been recognised but, up until now, organisations haven’t felt able to manage it because they understood neither the problems and the opportunities nor the strategies and solutions. This picture is gradually changing as models, methods, tools and techniques for effective knowledge management are becoming available and as organisations realise the importance of knowledge and thinking to their capacity to adapt to the changing world.
WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT? : –
A proposition that responsiveness and innovation can be improved through the leveraging of collective wisdom and experience.
“Knowledge Management (KM) is an effort to increase useful knowledge within the organization. Ways to do this include encouraging communication, offering opportunities to learn, and promoting the sharing of appropriate knowledge artifacts.”
This proposition is supported by:
New process specific to the management of knowledge Organizational structures that create accountability for km Applications that support km processes Enabling technologies
THE CHALLENGES FACING HIGHER EDUCATION IN INDIA : –
Expansion of Higher Education in India :
The success stories of ‘green revolution’, ‘space technology’, ‘nuclear energy’ and ‘information technology superiority India has achieved’ - we owe these all to the higher education system as it evolved during 60 years of India’s independence. It can not be denied that it is Indian higher education system that to a significant extent has contributed to India rising to become the World’s second fastest growing economy, the World’s third largest economy, fastest growing mobile phone market, owner of the largest bandwidth capacity and contributing second largest portion of scientists and engineers in the world.
Expansion with Equity :
India has experienced appreciable growth in the number of institutions of higher education during last six decades and particularly since 1990. This growth has already been because of expansion of number of State Universities and institutions deemed to be Universities. The period since 1990 has also seen the emergence of private Universities. The expansion of central universities has rather been slow and skewed in terms of regional distribution. It also mentioned that a significant majority of Universities, particularly managed by the state governments ate affiliating in nature. Given the current number of universities in the country the burden of affiliating colleges per University is unmanageably high and incongruous, in some cases the number of colleges affiliated to a University runs as high as many hundreds. Thus despite appreciable growth in number of universities there is scope rather need for further expansion in the number of universities and also colleges.
Inclusiveness and Equality :
The participants in the Diversity, Inclusiveness, and Inequality track represented a great deal of diversity themselves and included faculty and students from a rich variety of research institutions, private liberal arts colleges, and community colleges. While participants engaged issues and strategies in each of the three substantive area—diversity, inclusiveness, and inequality in education (DIIE)—the bulk of our conversations focused on diversity and inequality.
Quality and Excellence :
Ensuring quality education demands structural and institutional reforms in addition to committing enhanced financial resources. Imparting quality education would entail better infrastructure; greater use of ICT; teaching and learning in smaller groups; granting autonomy to the faculty, department and individual teachers. But more than that, imparting quality education requires ‘faculty development’ or what many call ‘faculty recharge programmes’ so that the faculty does not go stale, it retains its vibrancy and dynamism in doing research, in learning, and innovating and in devising new methods of teaching.
In the modern technological world quality education has become a necessity. Governments all over the world are appointing committees and commissions to bring in excellence in education. Curricular are being revised and improved to include more and more relevant knowledge in the curricula of schools and colleges.
Funding of Higher Education :
The importance and need of setting up these new institutions of higher and professional education can hardly be ignored, but investing in existing facilities and institutions should be no less a priority.
Fee hike suggested by many can hardly bring the required resources. We by no means are suggesting that fee need not be rationalized. In addition it is suggested that there is need for building a robust and strong private – public partnership for funding and improving the quality of higher education. We have no hesitation in endorsing the suggestion as we see the practical and mutual advantages to private houses, industries on one hand and the higher education institutions and recipients of higher education on the other. For example, the Universities and research institutions can do the research and innovations which may provide competitive edge to Indian industry and industry may provide on the site based experience to students.
Academic and Administrative Reforms :
Unlike expansion, equity/inclusiveness and quality/excellence, where efforts are in making, the policies concerning reforms in the arena of academics, administration and governance are already well formulated and publicity announced.
While these recommendations about credit system, semester system, more of international assessment and less written examination component, teachers evaluation by students, inter-institutional mobility etc have been generally accepted, quite a few of them have not been implemented and operationalised as yet. Some of these have been tried and failed while some others have been implemented on selective basis. As a result there is a lot of institutional variations in admission, examination, faculty and governance related practices.
Role of Private Education :
The spread of higher education was achieved through active state support whereby public funding was considered necessary in order to provide equitable opportunities of higher education to all. It has, however, been a proclaimed policy of the country to also encourage private investment in higher education so long as they are driven by charitable and non-profit motives. While universities have largely been in the public domain, India has had a history of having large number of colleges established and maintained by private management. In recent times, the private self-financing institutions colleges and other degree awarding institutions have gained prominence. At the same time, there has also been witnessed a tendency among the public funded institutions to start and run courses on self-financing basis. More recently, the private universities, either under state legislature or through the deemed university mode have also come to be established.
Internationalization of Education :
The issues concerning internationalization of higher education can be discussed into two broad heads, which represent two broad dimensions of the issue. The first aspect deals with the demand for opening Indian higher education for international service providers while the second aspect deal with the internationalization of Indian higher education. Going abroad for higher education has long been the most cherished goal for students of underdeveloped and developing countries. While most foreign students were known for their diligence and dedication and were often a source of pride for their universities, they were seldom seen as a source of revenue. But things have changed a great deal in the post WTO/GATS regime.
Developing countries are now seen as a market for higher education and foreign universities from other countries are competing each other to increase their market share. As the demand for opening the higher education sector in India for international service providers is increasing, the issue of providing appropriate regulatory framework for international education providers is under consideration of the government. Effective regulatory mechanism is required to ensure quality higher education with equity and accountability. It was also felt that Indian universities and colleges should be permitted to form strategic alliances with international universities and other institutions of repute and that universities in India should be permitted to take up collaborative research with foreign universities but the arrangements should be such where Indian counter parts share Pattern Rights and copyrights.
CONCEPT OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN EDUCATION: –
Education for Knowledge Education for Information Education for Skills Education for Employment Education for Livelihood Education for Empowerment Education for Social and National Development
KEY TASKS INVOLVED IN EDUCATION FOR:
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
A. MICRO-LEVEL MANAGEMENT OF TASKS:
Course structuring and study material preparation Distribution and presentation of study materials Communication between educational actors (student-faculty, student-student) Performing instructional assignments, either alone or group-based Performance assessment
B. MACRO-LEVEL MANAGEMENT OF TASKS:
Organisation of the whole educational process Organising and managing information and knowledge flows within the educational organisation Keeping track of performance of students, faculty, courses, curriculum, and of the (allocation of) available knowledge resources Monitoring results in terms of goals and standards Dynamic changing of the educational program as feedback to discrepancies between goals and standards and obtained performance results.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT FOCUS :
“The focus on knowledge management is on ‘doing the right thing’ instead of doing things right’. It provides a framework within which the organization views all its processes as knowledge processes and all business processes involve creation, dissemination and application of knowledge towards organizational sustenance and survival”.
KNOWLEDGE TYPES:
It contains two types they are ;
Explicit knowledge Tacit knowledge
EXPLICIT KNOWLEDGE
Objective, rational, technical Easily documented Easily transferred / taught / learned
TACIT KNOWLEDGE
Subjective, cognitive, experiential learning Hard to document Hard to transfer / teach / learn Involves a lot of human interpretation
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROCESS : -
The process of Knowledge Management applicable to schools, colleges and universities. Some would argue that sharing knowledge is their reason of being. If that is the case, then the higher education sector should be replete with examples of institutions that leverage knowledge to spur innovation, improve services, or achieve operational excellence. However, although some examples exist, they are the exception rather than the rule. Knowledge Management is not a new field, and experiments are beginning to mature in higher education.
I believe there is tremendous value to higher education institutions that develop initiatives to share knowledge to achieve business or organizational objectives. What are the basic concepts of knowledge management, how the trends, and how it might be applied in higher education and whether higher education is ready to embrace it or not, we will know through this article.
NEW TRENDS IN KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT: -
Several trends will shape the field of knowledge management in the not-too distant future (even now):
Emerging technology solutions The convergence of knowledge management with e-business The movement from limited knowledge management projects to more enterprise wide projects Increasing use of knowledge management to enhance innovation Increasing use of tacit knowledge (rather than explicit knowledge)
INNOVATIVE SKILLS OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT IN CURRENT EDUCATION SCENARIO: -
Using knowledge management techniques and technologies in higher education is as vital as it is in the corporate sector. If done effectively, it can lead to better decision-making capabilities, reduced “product” development cycle time (for example, curriculum development and research), improved academic and administrative services, and reduced costs. Consider the number of faculty and staff who possess institutional knowledge. For example, what institution does not have a faculty member who has led successful curriculum revision task forces? Or a departmental secretary who knows how to navigate the complex proposal development or procurement processes? Or a researcher who has informal connections to the National Science Foundation? Or a special assistant to the president who has uncovered (or generated) useful reports that individual deans or department chairs could use to develop their own strategic plans?
Relying on the institutional knowledge of unique individuals can hamper the flexibility and responsiveness of any organization. The challenge is to convert the information that currently resides in those individuals and make it widely and easily available to any faculty member, staff person, or other constituent. An institution wide approach to knowledge management can lead to exponential improvements in sharing knowledge—both explicit and tacit—and the subsequent surge benefits.
Is higher education ready to embrace knowledge management? A key ingredient in an institution’s readiness to embrace knowledge management is its culture—the beliefs, values, norms, and behaviors that are unique to an organization. Informally, it is the unwritten rules or “how things really get done.” Higher education is moving from the old culture that considers, What’s in it for me?” to a new culture that says, “What’s in it for our peoples?” And it is developing a culture that is ready to embrace knowledge management.
CONCLUSION: -
Innovations in knowledge management will improve the standards of all the institutions, develop the performance of students in all faculties and by which the progress of a nation can be viewed nakedly. Knowledge management refers to a range of practices used by organizations to identify the higher levels of innovations in education. The sharing of knowledge in industry, colleges, universities and, almost any institution in this country will make reference to the capturing of knowledge. By developing the knowledge management, the nation’s economy increases and can compete in the global scenario.
Article by:
X.Queen Shanthana Mary
M. Phil Scholar,
Department of management studies & research,
Karpagam University,
By: X. Queen Shanthana Mary
