Chua & Banerjee, Cook & Brown, and Tsoukas

What is Organizational Knowledge? -Tsoukas

Tsoukas starts this article out well. He clearly identifies his purpose, which is to examine the "links between individual knowledge, organizational knowledge, and human action undertaken in organized contexts" (pg. 973). From here he presents the definitions that others have developed to explain what exactly knowledge is and then addresses what he believes to be the flaws in their explanations. From here he highlights the point that in order to understand what organizational knowledge is there has to be both a theory of what knowledge is and what organization is. Tsoukas brings up Polayni and his belief that all knowledge is personal and Wittgenstein's statement that all knowledge is in a way collective and combines the two to examine how "...how individuals appropriate knowledge ...and how in organized contexts becomes organizational ..." (pg. 975). The article goes on for awhile explaining the difference between personal and organization knowledge and ultimately decides that personal knowledge is "...the ability to draw distinctions within a domain of action based on an appreciation of context or theory." Organizational knowledge is the capability members of an organization have developed to draw distinctions in the process of carrying out there work..." The article was good and made some interesting observations.

Customer knowledge management via social media: the case of starbucks -Chua and Banerjee

This article I found to be the most interesting of the three I read for this post. It looks at how companies are using social media as a tool for the management of customer knowledge. It acknowledges that many businesses need to develop relationships with the customers and the ones that are able to have a competitive edge. If a company is effectively able to tap into their customers knowledge base they are able to provide them with the necessary offers, services, etc... that will keep them buying products and it will also give the customers an inside look into how that company operates and how to better use their products and services. The article does acknowledge that their are some issues that can arise such as the customers being able to voice their opinion without any filters or editing process. It can also be a challenge at times to tap into their knowledge base if they are unwilling to divulge any information. The article looks t Starbucks as a company that was able to successfully use social media to increase sales, their customer base, and the overall happiness of the customers by allowing them to voice their opinions and contribute ideas. Social media also allowed Starbucks to gather information directly from the customers by asking them questions through twitter and Facebook. I found the article to be very interesting and thought that it really highlighted the power that social media can have.

Bridging Epistemologies -Cook and Brown

I liked this article in that it looks at knowledge not as one entity but rather a number of different ones. Cook and Brown argue that not all knowledge is the same and that looking at it like it is "...severely limits the current work on epistemologically relevant organizational themes..." Cook and Brown claim that their are four types of knowledge; tacit, explicit, individual and group, and each one is on equal footing with he other. There is also the need to look at the "...epistemic work done by human action itself..." which mean that we need to look not only at the knowledge a person possesses but also to the actions being done. Polanyi is again brought up in this article which makes me come to believe that he is the father of all things knowledge in modern times. His name is synonymous with tacit knowledge. The article then proceeds to distinguish the differences between the four types of knowledge among other things which go on for awhile, so for the sake of time and space I will just get to the conclusion. They conclude the article with asking how much more could be know about knowledge if we also looked at how groups use and out into practice the specific knowledge that they have acquired and urging that their is a need for more case studies looking into this.

Grace, Jantz, and Townley

The first article I read was "Knowledge management and academic libraries: special tools and processes to support information professionals " by Ron Jantz. I was interested from the beginning when he compared modern day librarians working in this digital world to clerical assistants and pharmacists who simply monitor the patrons or customers. I also agreed with his assessment that, "In a large, multi-campus university, library operations are as complex and distributed as many business enterprises." Working in a university library myself, I see firsthand how spread out things can be. The idea of a Common Knowledge Database i find to be a wonderful idea. One of the themes that keep coming up in discussions I have with other librarians is that things are changing to the point where librarians are now looked to for a variety of tasks and responsibilities. Just because you are a cataloger does not mean that you will work exclusively with cataloging. Some days you may be asked to where different hats and having a resource like a CKDB would make performing these duties much easier. I also liked how he distinguished between the different types of knowledge and explained how each one is useful in a library setting. I found this article to be informative and contain some good ideas about how to consolidate all the different librarians knowledge within an organization.

The next article read was "Knowledge Management and Academic Libraries" by Charles T. Townley. My favorite quote from this article was by Lew Platt, the CEO of Hewlett-Packard when he said, "If Hewlett-Packard knew what Hewlett-Packard knows, we would be three times more profitable. I thought that line summed up what the advantages of knowledge management can be for a company or institution. To think about the amount of knowledge that is contained within a single university library compared to what is actually known by the whole is astounding. These articles and this class are my real first introduction to knowledge management and from what I have learned so far it is a shame to think that many organizations are still lacking in this field. This article overall seemed to reinforce the ideas that were presented in Jantz's article. Having a location that allows everyone to access the knowledge of their peers would make for a much more effective and useful organization. The one problem I can see arising from this though is that some employees may not want to share their knowledge from fear that it may make them less valuable and useful to their employer. I find this thought a little childish, as it would allow them to preform their duties more effectively, but some people do not think like that.

Tay Pei Lyn Grace's article, "Wikis as a knowledge management tool" was also very interesting. Grace presents the argument that wikis is a much better form of knowledge management as opposed to the previously used "cumbersome management systems." Due to the fact that wikis is so user friendly and allows the expertise presented on it to, "...no longer be in the hands of the few, but rather...from the combined efforts of many." Each user has the ability to add, delete, and edit anything they feel a need to do so with. I knew this article was a solid one when Grace also presented the problems that can be associated with using a service like wikis. Security, training, and catagorizing information all pose potential problems, but so does a lot of other things. Overall I would say that wikis is definitely something an organization should look into if they have recognized a need for knowledge management and are looking for something that is fairly easy to implement and could be used successfully by those who will be using it.