First, the nature of knowledge management
In the past 30 years, there are two main views on the competitiveness of enterprises: one emphasizes market share, and the other emphasizes core competence or excellent resources. The first view emphasizes the need to seize market opportunities and create competitive advantages; The second view focuses on the valuable resources (such as ability, knowledge and skills) needed to remain competitive. This idea of improving the competitiveness of enterprises from the inside out is knowledge management.
Nowadays, knowledge management is becoming more and more popular in knowledge-intensive enterprises and rapidly changing businesses. Knowledge management refers to transforming ideas into knowledge and knowledge into added value. [1] (P36 ~ 38) It can be said that knowledge management refers to all practical activities that consciously change, create, spread and store knowledge with knowledge as the center. The purpose of these practical activities is to introduce appropriate knowledge into appropriate places and make it work when necessary. Knowledge management can help individuals and organizations discover, share and use information, strengthen knowledge creation and master innovation and creativity.
According to the concept of knowledge management, studying intellectual capital is more valuable for the future than reading the current quarterly report. It is a study of the company foundation and a measure of hidden dynamic factors. It is these factors that support corporate entities, because capital exists in organizations in six forms.
1. Human capital, that is, the integration of basic education, personal skills and other individual characteristics. The latter includes team work ability, sharing the same values with others, coordination and self-control ability under the same thinking mode. On the other hand, they influence corporate culture and ideas. They are really invisible, because companies can't have human capital. Employers can pay for vocational training, but when employees leave the company, knowledge goes with them.
2. Structural capital, namely hardware, software, database, organizational structure and intellectual property rights. They are tangible results of effective use of human capital, most of which can be owned and traded.
3. Customer capital, that is, customers and their consumption habits. Companies can't do without customers. Customers are also commodities, because more and more companies are acquired not because of superior technology, but because of market coverage. The most natural reason comes from the famous empirical theory, "the cost of acquiring a new customer is six times that of retaining an old customer."
4. Organizational capital is the internal source of competitiveness. In today's world, money is hardly an obstacle to turning whimsy and wisdom into excellent products and services. Greedy international funds are always looking for opportunities to create profits. People with smart plans will soon find that they are making ends meet. Therefore, it is very important for the management department to have the ability to constantly update and lead the team to innovate.
5. Procedural capital, that is, the effectiveness of internal processes. A procedure is any process within an organization, and broadly speaking, it refers to how the matters within the organization are completed. It can also be an external activity, such as annual price negotiation with customers and suppliers, handling complaints, financing and coordinating public relations.
6. Innovation capital, that is, the self-renewal ability of the system. The model of innovative growth company has the following characteristics: (1) The company is committed to becoming the absolute best company. They are willing to improve the overall structure and actively and even ambitiously renew the driving force for growth. (2) They have the ability to improve rapidly. (3) In companies with excellent performance, employees are full of motivation. This motivation is not only the result of success, but also the internal factor of success. (4) They have planned the growth curve, and they are far-sighted rather than reactive when formulating the strategic policy, so that they are comfortable in the rapidly changing environment. When 10 or 15 first entered the market, few companies achieved rapid revenue growth.
It can be seen that knowledge management involves more knowledge-related activities, and intellectual capital mainly reports and evaluates these activities. JohanRoos has a unique exposition: knowledge management is usually associated with core competence, learning organization and knowledge creation process; The concept of intellectual capital is more attractive to managers because it can be directly applied to business strategy from the beginning. Today, many successful companies use intellectual capital to compete. The key to competition is not what the company has, but what the company can do. As a strategic tool, knowledge management can help all kinds of organizations to deal with and use the skills and information of employees, thus building a fortress of the company and meeting the challenges of the market. [2]
Second, ways to enhance organizational creativity
The core of knowledge management is to enhance the creativity of the organization. Knowledge organization is a living organism composed of people, people's abilities and interpersonal relationships. It constitutes an innovative formula together with creativity. Creativity is the most changeable element, and it is shrouded in mystery. It is the ability to create new things, to combine known facts in new ways, or to provide new answers to old questions. In fact, people with the same IQ have the same creativity, but some people are too lazy and some people's creativity is not encouraged, so the following two points are particularly important.
(A) to stimulate the ability of employees
Ability is a collection of basic education, vocational training, experience, internal drive and other characteristics. Basic education is very important, it is the basis of future behavior and attitude. Vocational training can make people adapt to the working environment, learn to use instruments and equipment, and understand the logistics situation.
At the same time, experience is an important aspect of ability. Some people think that experience seems to be a ubiquitous obstacle. Long-term experience will give people the impression of being conservative and unwilling to adapt to change. But for the knowledge economy, only the latter is a short board. Deliberately conservative is a virtue. Financial prudence or respect for company value is usually understood as conservatism, but in fact they are not obstacles to success. In addition, experienced people make fewer mistakes than inexperienced people.
Internal drive is the most important part of ability. If there is insufficient or no internal drive, even the most skilled and experienced employees will accomplish nothing. Of course, they can make the machine work to some extent, but when it comes to reform and innovation, these employees lose their position. What's more, depressed emotions can easily spread and pollute the atmosphere of the organization. In the study of internal drive, when researchers ask employees what makes them most motivated, the answer is often puzzling. According to these studies, the things that can motivate employees are arranged in the following order: interesting work, tacit cooperation, bright prospects and effective vocational training. Although the salary ranks 1 1, the person who provided this answer will quit next month because he earned 50 yuan more. The fact is that no one can inspire others, and the only thing employers can do is to keep a positive atmosphere and let employees motivate themselves.
Sharing tacit knowledge
Knowledge can be divided into explicit knowledge, tacit knowledge and new knowledge, which is one of the core findings of modern knowledge management. Explicit knowledge can be easily understood without further explanation. Its recipients can add this knowledge to their own experience background and apply it without any special help. Tacit knowledge is all knowledge that cannot be written in words or explained only in words. Under the same language and characters, the information and skills that a person has and can use cannot be easily passed on to others, which is tacit knowledge. There are also many obstacles to the transmission of tacit knowledge. The most common difficulties are: experienced employees are unwilling to share tacit knowledge with others; There is no system to share tacit knowledge; Lack of time or environmental changes.
Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiroko Takeuchi have conducted in-depth research in several international organizations. [3] (P99 ~ 127) They summarized discovery as a spiral of knowledge innovation, just like a flywheel with four wheels. In the first stage, people share each other's tacit knowledge. This process is called socialization. This is probably the most common way to exchange information and experience. However, socialization is a slow way to spread tacit knowledge throughout the organization. In order to transmit information outside the inner circle, a second stage is needed, which is called externalization. Old employees share their knowledge with colleagues who are not in the same group. Experience and tacit knowledge are contained in anecdotes and metaphorical models, which are easy to understand and can spread quickly among a large group of people. The third stage is called combination. Tacit knowledge will be combined with existing explicit knowledge, which occurs in daily work and formal meetings. This is a typical way to create new information through discussion at the organic level of an organization. As a result, the organization gained new knowledge, which soon belonged to only a few people. Explicit knowledge exists in recessive form, which is called internalization stage.
It is estimated that more than 80% of the information is hidden. So only a small part can be recorded or transmitted simply, which is the tip of the iceberg. Many writers and knowledge management experts are easy to get into trouble and don't know how to dig out all the tacit knowledge of the organization and spread it to each member. It is obvious in any public discussion platform that if there is no guidance and control, the discussion will jump from one topic to another, leaving a lot of opinions, jokes and strange ideas, from which no one can benefit. Another obstacle is that everyone has more knowledge than he uses in the organization. Therefore, only a small part of their information can be used.
In addition to the explicit and tacit knowledge mentioned above, there is a third category, namely new knowledge. As Jean, a senior expert of Intel, said, "Intel's main task is not to share existing information, but to create new knowledge." However, the creation of new knowledge is the most difficult part of knowledge management, because it requires a deep understanding of the dynamic environment of modern organizations.
Third, a successful knowledge management model
In the fierce market competition, various organizations have realized that sustainable wealth and development can only be achieved through intellectual capital. However, under the situation of global economic integration, traditional factors of production, such as cheap labor and reasonably priced capital, can be used by most organizations. In the near future, these factors will no longer be the main source of wealth creation. But there are still many institutions that turn a blind eye to this. People tend to think in a straight line: if the business is unimpeded, then the growth will definitely last forever, with little or no improvement.
If there is no clear goal, it is impossible to build a suitable knowledge management framework, so knowledge management is always a topic closely related to top managers. Of course, the new management method can start from the basic level of the organization, but without the support of the board of directors and CEO, the new method is doomed to fail.
Knowledge management also faces three dilemmas. First of all, the current generation of managers are mostly technical experts. They inevitably regard organizations as mechanical systems and employees as extensions or substitutes of machines. Changing this attitude is not as easy as imagined. For example, many companies hang huge banners in the entrance hall, which impressively say "employees are our most valuable assets", but these are mostly out of formalism, because only quarterly profits are important. Second, many managers can't convince investors that future profits depend on today's behavior, and short-term gains may lead to long-term losses. Third, sometimes top managers are too busy to pay attention to emerging and complex management concepts. Therefore, successful knowledge management must include the following elements:
(A) the top management's clear vision for the future
Managers of some companies have firm beliefs and personal charm, and the best effect of implementing knowledge management can be seen in such companies, including world-class knowledge management companies, such as Lucent, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, 3M and IBM. The CEO of these super winners firmly convinced stakeholders that the real wealth does not come from outside the organization, but from the human capital of the organization. Professional managers who jump from company to company always pursue short-term personal interests. If a method helps to make profits after they leave the organization, they will definitely not use it. Therefore, all knowledge management organizations have stable CEOs who can undertake and implement decisions that will take effect after three or five years. This is the foundation of knowledge management system.
(2) Create the same organization language.
The future mission of the company should be effectively communicated to all employees, so that they can clearly define the goals and direction of the organization. If they can't reach an agreement on this, then their respective directions will be different. As we all know, only the components in the same direction can produce the maximum resultant force.
Continuous innovation at all levels is the foundation of an organization's success, but innovation must be feasible and bring added value. If employees don't understand the basic framework of the organization, they may look for unrealistic methods, which are worthless if they can't be realized in the organization. To convey the company's future mission and basic framework, it is necessary to use a language that the recipient can understand. There is a common misunderstanding that all employees understand each other in a similar way. In fact, due to different educational backgrounds, people's understanding of jargon and metaphor varies widely. Therefore, it is very necessary to establish a * * * language, so that everyone can reach a * * * knowledge of core vocabulary.
(3) Everyone has the responsibility to provide information for the organization.
Information network constitutes the dynamic environment of organizations, and all organizations have a large number of potential contacts and information sources. The problem is that organizations won't use them. The organic level of an organization often lacks the function of collecting, filtering and distributing information, so it is necessary to establish an effective mechanical environment that can transform information into innovative products and services.
(D) Cohesion of the strength of employees
There are two types of internal knowledge management teams. The first is a formal group, where they discuss problems that can be improved in their work together and are also responsible for dealing with all kinds of opinions and ideas that can be transformed into innovation. The group has a leader, but he doesn't stand on it, but acts as a lubricant, encouraging everyone to speak freely and contribute new ideas to the discussion. Again, innovation is not necessarily an invention that can be patented. It can be any improvement, no matter how insignificant it seems, as long as it can add value to the organization, it is commendable.
The other is not a formal group, but it is not completely informal, so it can be called a semi-formal knowledge management group. Many successful large organizations find that if the physical distance between two employees increases, the number of contacts between them will decrease rapidly. If the working distance between two employees is 2 meters, then two or three times a day, that is 40 to 60 times a month. With the increase of distance, the number of contacts decreases linearly. When the distance reaches more than 50 meters, the number of contacts per month is zero. Therefore, a large non-enclosed office is not very helpful for communication, and two employees on the diagonal can never meet. People can only get together in other ways, such as luncheons or knowledge tea parties. In addition to gathering people who don't meet often, the knowledge tea party has other advantages: compared with employees studying by themselves during office hours, learning here is more concrete and effective.
(5) everyone gives advice.
Employees of all knowledge-based organizations should know their own organizations in order to participate in the process of organizational innovation. However, less than half of the information comes from formal meetings or corporate networks, so only by involving employees in the planning process can they really understand the organization. For this reason, Robert Kaplan and David Naughton suggested the comprehensive management method of balanced scorecard in Harvard Business Review 1992. [4] Balanced scorecard is a planning and budgeting system based on traditional financial figures, but the financial-centered management method has been extended and expanded from three aspects: customer performance evaluation, internal processes and innovative learning. The first step of the balanced scorecard is to express the target with accurate figures, which is the same as the ordinary budget process so far. The second step is to plan and explain these goals from the customer's point of view. The third step is to consider what impact these goals will have on organizational procedures and what aspects of the organization need to be improved. Finally, decide what the above requirements are for organizational innovation and learning ability. Importantly, these four aspects are interrelated, and each step affects the other three aspects. It is impossible to try to change one aspect while keeping the other three unchanged.
In a word, knowledge management will bring the following changes to enterprises: (1) The efficiency of product development, production, sales and service can be effectively measured; (2) Better contact with relevant knowledge to promote the decision-making process; (3) the internal driving force is enhanced; (4) Find important new partners and build a bigger network; (5) High expectations enhance the loyalty of consumers. Successful knowledge management really helps to improve the return on investment.
Fourthly, the enlightenment of knowledge management to the development of enterprises in China.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that no country or organization can maintain its competitiveness if it relies entirely on the injection of external innovation. Future products are similar to services and are intangible. Only the most proactive suppliers can truly participate in the world competition. The era of mass production through the competition of traditional production factors is outdated, and organizations must make full use of their strategic reserves, that is, intellectual capital. The first step to start this capital is to look at the organization from the perspective of intellectual capital. Most organizations are deeply puzzled by this because they have witnessed the emergence of the information economy, which is the third change in human history. Knowledge management provides an idea for seeking prosperity in today's chaotic situation, and it is also a tool to change oneself in the face of opportunities. Organizational innovation is the golden key to sustainable development and wealth, because even in difficult times, innovative organizations can still remain competitive.
A common misunderstanding of domestic enterprises is that they can stay out of globalization. For them, it seems that there are two choices: to enter the international market or to stay at home. This is actually a very dangerous misunderstanding. No matter which choice the enterprise makes, foreign competitors will knock on the door sooner or later. At that time, the most vulnerable enterprises were those with their heads buried in the sand. Besides international competition, the real threat comes from consumers. If the quality is the same, consumers will not hesitate to choose the lowest price or the most effective and best service. In addition, consumers are very willing to accept the temptation of international brands. They are always willing to pay high prices for famous brands to improve their own value or send a signal of prosperity and success to people around them.
Therefore, managers must understand what organizations need to survive in the era of change. This is also the theme of long-term management research: managers should understand that no one can escape globalization, which will have a far-reaching impact on our lives. Although this is a challenge, it also provides opportunities. Organizations that sit in the corner and watch can only be eliminated, while organizations that are willing to unite can collect all relevant information and feasible opinions, participate in future development with the help of the power of the network, and fully mobilize the intellectual resources of the organization.
(a) All employees must know the ultimate goal of the organization and the organization's plan to achieve it.
Practice shows that most employees are vague about organizational goals, not to mention the strategy and plan to achieve them; However, managers overestimate employees' understanding of the company's strategic policy and long-term planning, so they naturally ignore internal communication. Either there is no communication or there is communication, but the understanding between them is very limited. This will cause employees to become monks one day, which will not contribute to long-term planning.
(b) Employees should know the knowledge base of the organization.
Employees may know exactly what information they need, but there is no way to know who can provide it. In order to solve this problem, some of the most successful knowledge management organizations have used the following tools in practice and achieved obvious results, which are worth learning from.
First of all, ability mapping: establish electronic business cards for employees and record all personal information. It should include basic education, vocational training, special skills and a brief description of the projects involved. This information must be easy for keyword search. Any member of an organization can search for competency maps when information or support from other employees is needed. In addition, competency maps can also be used to find suitable candidates for new projects.
Second, bestpractices: enterprise consultants and consulting companies provide a lot of services every day to solve various complex problems. Although similar cases happen from time to time, not everyone knows the solutions used in the past. Therefore, ArthurAnderson and other consulting companies have launched an ambitious international project to collect new cases and their solutions and build a large database. [5] The ideal database of "best examples" should be easy to search by appropriate keywords, including not only a brief introduction of problems and solutions, but also the contact information of employees who can provide more information.
Third, projectlog: Some companies did not leave enough records after completing a complex project. Or because the project participants leave or retire, the information is weakened into data, and no one can explain these data. So even if the information is saved, there will be problems if we must rely on the support of tacit knowledge. However, large engineering companies, such as Kone Elevator, will attach the project log to the drawings. The log includes special problems, and records the progress of the project and the person in charge. This practice is worth learning from.
refer to
[1][ Finland] Stahlep, GRNROOSM. Dynamic intellectual capital: knowledge management and practice [M]. Wanta: WSOY, 2000.
[2][ America] John Ruth Exploring the conceptual real capital [J]. Long-term planning, 1998, (1): 20 ~ 37.
[3][ Japan] Nouchi Kai, Takeuchi H. Knowledge-creating enterprises: how Japanese enterprises create dynamic innovation [M]. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
[4][ America] Northrend Kaplan Balanced scorecard measures driving performance [J]. Harvard Business Review, 1992, (January and February): 7 1 ~ 79.
[5][ America] Bukowitz. Know the inside story /Archive/04 1596ins.html， 1996-04- 15。
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