Unwillingness to Help (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

Another barrier to collaboration is the unwillingness to collaborate.   This occurs when people refuse to share their knowledge or expertise to assist someone who is in their own unit or organization.  This can be due to pride, competing to stay on board, competing to get a promotion, etc.  Whatever the cause it results in hoarding-of-expertise.  When  acompany has a an enviroment reinforced by policies that pressure employees to compete with other co-workers expertise sharing tends to cease or is delayed.  This can cause the organization's left hand to be complete oblivious to what the right is doing.  Unecessary set backs and confustion can occur.  In addition, the hoarding-of-expertise can result in stunting the organizations potential by limiting knowledge growth, creativity, and innovation.

The hoarding-of-expertise can be very costly to an organization and cost it its competive advantage.  To combat this problem many companies are reorganizing their system for awarding performance. Those who have provided signifcant help while performing their own duties are the first considered for promotions, rather than those who hoarded their expertise to gain an advantage.

Inability to Find Expertise (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

The inability to track and find expertise can be linked to an insuffcient communication structure.  This communication structure can be either caused by the lack of social connections, long distances, improper database tracking, etc that cause a break down in communication.

To solve this problem new connections can be made between existing parties to form a close knit network, that allows knowledge and expertise to be more readily available.  Also, individuals who have had positions in several parts of the network can be used connectors to bridge the gap and coordinate new connections between different parties who are unfamiliar with each other.

Unwillingness to Collaborate (Barriers to Interunit Collaboration)

The unwillingness to collaborate is a big obstacle to interunit collaboration.  This stems from normal human nature or tribal instinct. Many times people believe that they or those who are apart of their particular group are superior to others outside or they feel like its them against the world.  This natural behavior is called in-group bias and must be discouraged and people must be taught to value outside help.  People with in-group bias may see a perfectly valid soultion to a situation and view it as wrong if it came from outside of their peer group. 

To resolve the unwillingness to collaborate among management and organziational departments, BP monitor managers and departments and hold them accountable to insure that they are cooperating and sharing knowledge to provide solutions to their problems. 

In addition many companies conduct evaluations in which they also check to see if a possible recruit is willing to be a team player and ask for help rather than trying to resolve the situation on their own.

Interunit Collaboration

Interunit Collaboration is important among corporations and large organizations that own the large chunks of the market in the particular service or industry they are in.  The large organizations realize the importance of collaborating to achieve common goals. The goals might pertain to cost saving, better decision making, increasing revenue, innovation or enhancing their current capacities.  In many cases these companies have already acquired all of the the physical assets that exist that do not already belong to one of their large competitors. In these cases the companies change their attention to knowledge managing, creating, and sharing.  Interunit collaboration is done between a two companies or maybe a few others but the number has to be kept low.  This in order for the organization to gain a competive edge over another competing company.  If a company analyzes their situation and find that they are better alone than in collaborative unit than they should participate in one.  Organzations should only participate if it will give them an edge.

( ( (OC) ) ) Organizational Culture

The four basic organizational sub cultures were identified as involvement, consistency, adaptability, and mission.

Involvement cultures are great for organizations focusing on a bottom up structure for their business to foster new ideas. This type of culture inspires everyone on the team by making everyone feel like their contribution is valued. People in this culture are like stockholders who have invested their time and knowledge who expect a return on their investment cause they co-owners in organizations joint venture.

Consistent cultures are cultures that emphasize less freedom in the spontaneity of ideas and focus on more control. These cultures stress values to earn member commitment, since involuntary commitment is lost in the process of implementing greater control. These organizations are very rigid and not very susceptible to change. This type of culture exists more where a top down structure is in place.

Adaptive cultures are more likely to relate to involvement cultures rather than consistent cultures, because change is welcome. Except with adaptive cultures adaptability to existing external conditions is emphasized for the organization's survival. Adaptive culture can also exhibit mix of consistent culture because it may have a strong central management that constantly pushes the organization towqard change to insure a competitive edge, etc.

Mission cultures could be a mix of the previous three, but this organization is more mission biased in its approach to its goals. However this organizations are less likely to emphaaize change and adaptability. This type of organizational culture would probably not be a great structure to follow in the realm of informatiion systems since the external environment is always changing and advancements in knowledge management are constantly arrising.

Its important for organizations to implement a mix of the cultures and not focus on a specic one. The two most important organizational cultures in the realm of informations systems are probably adaptibilty and involvement. This is because these are the basis of knowledge management. You must have involvemnt to pool knowledge from all sources and adaptibilty to allow for the ease of flow of information.

Limits of Knowledge Sharing

Knowledge sharing is important as it relates to not communities of practice and individuals coming together combining everyone's puzzle piece to form a picture. That is very important to the accumulation of knowledge and the ability to trigger new renaissances in knowledge management. However it also important to place limits on knowledge sharing. This is particularly true in the realm of competing businesses and countries to maintain a competitive advantage. The importance of of limiting knowledge sharing is seen in the laws and regulations companies and governments uphold when confidential information is leaked. This is because knowledge is not just an abstract intangible concept, but an asset.

Knowledge is neutral like money; it just depends on whose possession it is in, that makes it good or evil (bad). It can be used for good or enrich the human experience, or can be used to do wrong and oppress. Because knowledge is an asset that can be used for bad it is not always bad to limit knowledge sharing.

Communities of Practice

Communities of practice in relation to knowledge management, are composed of individuals and groups that come together to find, share, transfer, and archive acquired knowledge for the greater good of the community or to accomplish a goal or task. The universe is full of an infinite amount of information waiting to be captured and converted to knowledge and then converted to wisdom. Individuals because of their experiences, backgrounds, and encounters have accumulated large amounts of knowledge that is useless when kept to one's self. However when these individuals come together to create a community of practice they build a bank of knowledge, where knowledge can store and archived for a greater good of the community as a whole.

Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is not expressly available. It is knowledge that is implied, that is gathered indirectly through the pursuit of related information or knowledge. Tacit knowledge can also manifest itself it the form of skills that someone may posses. For example, the ability of someone to do a certain dance is tacit knowledge. That knowledge of how to move one's different body parts and stay in rhythm with the music and stay balanced is implicit knowledge. That knowledge is not explicit and can not be taught through words or written instructions. Though tacit knowledge cannot be taught through regular means it can captured by through words in conjunction with learning from experts or experienced individuals and through observation.

Time management is another key to innovation and the growth of knowledge. Many organizations and companies spend a lot of time developing new products, manufacturing a product, providing services, or selling their product, but little time is invested in creating , managing, and sharing knowledge. This ironic considering a wealth of knowledge can lead to new and bold innovations in their field. Investing time in knowledge management does not have to be done on top of existing tasks by an organization but can be done simultaneously which saves time and reduces the need for extra resources.

But investing time in knowledge management does not have to be done alone because it could be more taxing on an organization. It can be done as a collaborative effort with other organizations with an invested interest in the same area.

Key To Innovation

For Hallmark they proposed that the innovation has a formula. They suggest: Connectivity + Content + Culture = INNOVATION.

CONNECTIVITY
The level of connectivity depends on how well a network individuals are communicating with each other internally and externally. Good connectivity allows for the seamless flow of information from one are to another. Connectivity is important on all levels whether it is interpersonal, through technology, or the structure of an organization and its rules.

CONTENT
Innovation is also dependent on the quality of the content no matter it's form. This content must be relevant and up to date, and must be maintained and expounded on to create innovation.

CULTURE
The culture of organization very key to innovation. This deals with the type of atmosphere and ease of a particular organization. If the atmosphere more of a hierarchical structure the flow of ideas is strained and therefore innovation is limited. However if the structure of an organization is more level between different departments and individuals the flow of ideas is much better and these ideas are the foundation for great achievements in innovation.

Another important source of knowledge not only comes from the organization itself. Sometimes knowledge and ideas come from the top-down, the bottom-up, but other times the source of knowledge and creativity can from outside the of the organization. This is important because the goal is to obtain as much knowledge as possible, because knowledge becomes capital. By easing the barriers within an organization and the barriers that separate the organization from the outside it allows for an easier flow of knowledge, resulting in a large accumulation of knowledge.

Building a Knowledge Community at Hallmark:

A major point that was emphasized was the importance of grass roots as the source of creativity and knowledge. Most of the time when people want to credit an organization they always look to the people at the top who usually make the calls on big decisions. But many companies are beginning to recognize the importance of a bottom-up structure, rather top top-down structure to facilitate to the creation of ideas. There are more people at the bottom of the organization and many of them are newer to the organization with fresh ideas. And when management eases rules and regulations it gives employees more options and be able to operate and think out side of the box. When managemnt steps back and allows for more freedom in decison making it inspires the rest of the organization to want to particpate. Participation rises significantly because lower employees feel empowered and that there ideas and contribution to the organziation actually matter. This changes the team dynamics within an organization and creates a whole new level of potential for the organization.

At Nucor Steel executives wanted to put Nucor at the spear of creativity and innovation in it's field. Their answer for this was focusing on social ecology. They wanted to create a social environment for Nucor employees at all levels of the company that promoted a creative atmosphere. They also wanted to create an environment that invited employees to share information between each other to create a network effect. Employees would bring their ideas together to solve tough issues and provide the answer for difficult decisions.

One way Nucor was able to do this was because it allowed employees to have more freedom in there decision-making without having to consult with higher-ups. Employees had more freedom to consult between each other and with others who were outside of the organization, as well.

The second issue that Partners Healthcare faced was the issue of medical errors due to the lack of knowledge management. Many of the patients were being misdiagnosed or given the wrong medication for their condition. This resulted in a big contrast between the image that Partners Healthcare presented the community and the reality of what was happening under their care. These medical errors were complicating the health of patients who were already sick. The solution for this was an IT system that centralized all of the knowledge from doctors and staff and combined in large database that made that knowledge readily available. This order entry system kept track of patients's medical histories and provided up to date information on advances in the field.

In the case of Partners Healthcare there problem was that a solution for two key issues that they faced. The first was that Dr. Goldszer needed to stay up to date all the latest discoveries in his fields and have knowledge of all the changes that were occurring in the field and on top of that he had to be mindful of all the disesases and conditions he would encounter. However this was not the case alone. Dr. Goldszer had to do all those things while doing his job as a doctor and caring for patients. For him this was an overwhelming task but he to do it. The solution was "to bake specialized knowledge into the jobs of highly skilled workers - to make the knowledge so readily accessible that it can't be avoided." In other words an IT system was created that turn all of Dr. Goldszer's complex jobs into one simpler operation.