THE KNOWLEDGE WORKER AND THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION

The Knowledge Worker and the Learning Organization

The Knowledge Worker and the Learning Organization

Introduction

Knowledge Management is better understood when the concepts of organizational memory (OM) and organizational learning (OL) are incorporated. Jennex and Olfman (2002) found that the three areas are related and have an impact on organizational effectiveness. Organizational effectiveness is how well the organization does those activities critical to making the Organization competitive. OL is the process the organization uses to learn how to do these activities better. OL results when users utilize knowledge (Örtenblad, 2004). That OL may not always have a positive effect is examined by the monitoring of organizational effectiveness. Effectiveness can improve, get worse, or remain the same. How effectiveness changes influences the feedback provided to the organization using the knowledge. KM and OM are the processes used to identify and capture critical knowledge. Knowledge workers and their organizations “do” KM; they identify key knowledge artifacts for retention and establish processes for capturing it (Dierkes, 2001). OM is what IT support organizations “do”; they provide the infrastructure and support for storing, searching, and retrieving knowledge artifacts. Figure 83.1 illustrates these relationships and the following sections expand on these concepts (Cyert, 2003).

Discussion

In this view, organizations learn through individuals acting as agents for them. Individual learning activities are seen as being facilitated or inhibited by an ecological system of factors that may be called an OL system. Learning in this perspective is based on (Bapuji, 2004) model of experiential learning where individuals learn by doing. (Bapuji, 2004) believed an organization learns if, through its processing of information, its potential behaviors are changed. Huysman, Fischer, and Heng (1994) as well as Walsh and Ungson (1991) believed organizational learning has OM as a component. In this view, OL is the process by which experience is used to modify current and future actions. (Argyris, 2008) considered four constructs as integrally linked to OL: knowledge acquisition, information distribution, information interpretation, and organizational memory. In this case, OM is the repository of knowledge and information acquired by the organization. OL uses OM as its knowledge base.

One of the most commonly cited KMS success factors (Jennex & Olfman, 2005) is having an integrated technical infrastructure including networks, databases/repositories, computers, software, and KMS experts. KM designers are using the Internet to obtain this integrated network and are using browsers as common software. Various approaches are being utilized by KMS designers to achieve common databases and repositories. Common taxonomies and ontologies are being used to organize storage of unstructured knowledge files and to facilitate knowledge retrieval while other Internet-based KMS serve as interfaces to large enterprise databases or data warehouses (Örtenblad, 2004). Some Internet KMS are being used to facilitate communication and knowledge transfer between groups. Knowledge portals are being used by organizations to push knowledge to workers and by CoP to facilitate communication and to share knowledge between community members (Argyris, 2008). The following section describes some examples of Internet-based ...