Project – Development of knowledge management framework for a library of an academic unit in a university
CHAPTER ONE
1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.0.1 General Overview
In our world today, university education transits from industrial revolution to information revolution where new thoughts, ideas, innovations and technology are shaping and reshaping the world. This new platform creates a global economic development for both institutions and organisations. Although, in recent times, university education in Nigeria has become a complex, challenging and arduous task because of the rapidly changing and competitive environments, as a result there are greater expectations from the universities as a training point for high level manpower.
This is why organizations like universities have sought competitive advantage that will allow them beat the steady increase of the industrial market by making institutions think like business organisations and behave like educational markets. Therefore, universities need to increase their ability to excel in the competition since they no longer lie in the physical and financial capital assets they own but lies in their intellectual capital empowerment. According to resource-based view of an organization, sustainable competitive advantage can only be achieved with what is termed ‘strategic resources’.
Strategic resources are characterized as rare, valuable, imperfectly imitable and non-substitutable (Meso and Smith 2000 and Wickramasinghe and James 2003). Hence, knowledge is introduced as that which is valuable and non-substitutable resource which is the most imperative asset/property to improve the performance of the university as a training centre. This is why Drucker (1994) asserts that the performance capacity, if not survival, of any organisation will depend more and more on the quality and productivity of knowledge in the organisation.
Thus, this assertion informs Keursten et al’s. (2003) view that the application of knowledge adds more value than the traditional factors of production like capital, raw materials and labour. Also, supporting Civi’s (2000) assertion that knowledge is the most important resource a company/institution has, that is worth more than land, labour and capital because it does not diminish in value like other traditional assets. Conway and Sligar (2002) submit that knowledge, not money or technology is the primary economic unit of business in the 21st century, and its management is essential for any company that hopes to compete effectively.
This underscores the need for proactive administration in universities where institutional leaders adopt measures aimed at adjusting themselves in developing knowledge management strategies for the purpose of benchmarking and internationalizing their curricula. However, universities in Nigeria has been bedeviled by institutional inadequacies engendered by poor governmental support, curricula that fall short of the expectations of the labour market, dilapidated infrastructure, administration that is more interested in pleasing the powers that appointed them than fulfilling the mission of the university, poor incentives for teaching and non-teaching staff and weak academic culture.
Thus, the universities seem to be operating in such a way that their core missions, which are knowledge generation, dissemination and management, are not pursued appropriately. The consequence is that universities exist in name other than in quality. However, there is a paradigm shift in university administration with the advent of information and communication technology (ICT) fourteen years ago in Nigeria. Universities are today making substantial investments in ICT to meet their goals with a view to increasing the effectiveness of their operations. They are striving to, if not to meet up with their peers in other parts of the world, but at least, to stay not too far away from them. Even at that, the emphasis on change in the global environment puts knowledge management at the heart of what universities need to do to cope with today’s fast changing environment.
1.0.2 Definition of Knowledge
Knowledge is obviously not something new but something very old-as old as man. It is constantly changing and it is constantly being reborn. According to Webster dictionary, knowledge ‘is the act or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association’.
In organisational context, knowledge is the sum of what is known and resides in the intelligence and the competence of people. It is also ‘the capacity to act’ (Karl Sweiby).
Cognitive scientists have gone to quite a bit of trouble and debate to at least classify knowledge into four categories, they are; perception, reason, memory, and language. Each of these categories relate quite well to the way the human brain seem to work. We perceive or sense through sight, touch, smell, sound and taste. We remember by drawing upon our mental store- some recent activities/programs, some distant. We reason through processes which often confound us but are largely based upon drawing analogies to what has worked in the past. And we declare, through verbal and written language (or many other symbol systems), the results of the mixing of perception, memory and reasoning.
There are two types of knowledge; explicit and tacit knowledge.
Explicit Knowledge: includes things that you can easily pass on to someone else by teaching it or putting it into a database or a book. Explaining your company’s safety protocols to a new team member, use of operation manuals, documents on technical standards and drawings belongs to explicit knowledge. Furthermore, it involves document management, intelligence gathering, data mining, text mining etc.
Tacit Knowledge: it can also be called ‘embodied knowledge’ which includes tools/practises such as acknowledgement surveys, questionnaires, individual interviews, group interview, focus groups, network analysis and observation. It is therefore, less quantifiable, this kind of knowledge is often learned by experience (it’s the stuff you know, but don’t necessarily know that you know).
Often time’s words like ‘data’, ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’ are used interchangeably, to understand knowledge management; it is helpful to examine the differences between data, information, and knowledge.
Data: is a specific fact or figure, without any context, it is the raw material for creating information. By itself it carries no judgement, interpretation or meaning. For example, the number 2000 is a piece of data, as is the ‘Christopher Smith’. Without anything else to define them, these two items of data are meaningless.
Information: is the data that’s organized, patterned and/or categorized. It has been sorted, analysed and displayed, and is communicated through various means. Information changes the way a person perceives something, thus, affecting judgment or behaviour. So, pieces of information are ‘Christopher is the manager’ and ‘2000 platinum sheets’. We have more details, so now the data makes more sense to us.
Knowledge: then, builds on the information to give us context. Knowledge is is what is known. It is richer and more meaningful than information. Knowledge is gained through experience, reasoning, intuition, and learning. Because knowledge is intuitive, it is difficult to structure, can be hard to capture on machines, and on machines, and is a challenge to transfer. Knowledge is ‘Christopher is the manager of company’s biggest competitor and his company ships 2000 platinum sheets every day’.
The key difference between knowledge and information is that knowledge gives us the power to take action and it is usable as defined above. Also, we often speak of a “knowledgeable person,” and by that we mean someone who is well informed, and thoroughly versed in a given area. We expand our knowledge when others share theirs with us. We create new knowledge when we pool our knowledge together.
The working council of the federal chief information council in its publication; ‘Managing knowledge at work; an overview of Knowledge management’ illustrates these differences in simplest terms:
Table 1.1: Difference between information and data
| Data | = | Unorganized Facts |
| Information | = | Data + Context |
| Knowledge | = | Information + Judgment |
If service firms can transfer tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge formally, then everyone can understand the questions of what, how and when. But this is where the problem lies, because most universities cannot capture and transfer knowledge explicitly as a formal practise, on the hand, it is done in an informal manner (lack of a defined or structured base for knowledge management).
One of the most important objectives of knowledge management is to make a system to formally transform tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge effectively and efficiently in daily workings. This situation is then helpful for creating organisation awareness of its knowledge, individually and collectively, and to shape itself so that it makes the most effective and efficient use of the knowledge it has or can obtain” (Bennet and Bennet, 2003). According to Wiig (1997), knowledge management aims at making university libraries act as intelligently as possible in order to secure its viability and also to realise the best value from its knowledge assets it stores.
1.0.3 Definition of knowledge Management
According to the e-knowledge centre (2005) it wrote that knowledge management;
Is a disciplined approach to managing all the knowledge processes found in collectives (a set of people with common goals). It is therefore what we do to accomplish our goals faster and more effectively by delivering the right knowledge to right person at the right time and in the right context. In addition (KM) is therefore touted as a sustainable strategy for organizations to survive and maintain their competitive advantage in the present global economy.
In general, it is known as a discipline for identification, collection, organization, storage, sharing and application of knowledge (Akhavan, 2009). Invariably, knowledge management has secured an important position in this new era of education, Because of this ever increasing global competition and change the traditional organizational management is no longer considered as an appropriate strategy. In 1993, Drucker pointed that the concept of knowledge workers in the academic unit will have the most vital asset in a knowledge based institute. In this regard the KM helps in the management of information, knowledge and expertise through maintaining knowledge and transferring knowledge within an organization.
Barclay and Murray (2004) highlight seven reasons why organisations (universities) would need to manage knowledge. These include:
1.The need to replace informal knowledge with formal methods because of reduction in staffing.
- Increasing competition in market places and the rising rate of innovation.
- Reduced size of work force that holds valuable business knowledge due to competitive pressures.
- Diminishing amount of time available to experience and acquire knowledge.
- Loss of knowledge due to early retirements and increasing mobility of workforce.
- The need to manage increasing complexity due to the fact that small operating/service companies are transnational sourcing.
- Loss of knowledge in specific area as a result of changes in strategic direction of an academic unit.
The performance of knowledge management should be evaluated to determine the university’s ability in converting knowledge in human into structural assets. Knowledge as structural asset is defined as knowledge that remains as the property of the university when lecturers are transferred or retired. Therefore, knowledge management enables universities to operate better in a new and challenging environment, Becerra-Fernandez (1999) asserts that organisations that implement KM benefit from fewer mistakes, fewer redundancies, quicker problem-solving, better decision-making, reduced research and development costs, increased worker independence, enhanced customer relations and improved service.
In particular, knowledge management skills are required in universities as institutions for knowledge generation and dissemination, and the extent these skills are applied determines the effectiveness of their administrations in realizing their missions. The essence of knowledge management is to create new knowledge and timely apply such to maintain strategic and competitive advantage. Organizations, whether education or business that succeed in knowledge management are those that view knowledge as an asset and most important resource for developing organizational norms and value, which support the creation and sharing of knowledge.
The critical success factors for KM implementation rest on four enterprise engineering pillars (Bixler, 2002). In application, these pillars are: leadership, organization, technology and learning, all four pillars must be addressed to achieve a formal basic entry level KM framework in an academic unit. Therefore, its successful implementation requires a champion or leader either at or near the top of an organisation like the head of department who can provide the strong and dedicated leadership needed for the change. Leadership develops academic and operational strategies to ensure survival of the department and to position the University for Success in today’s dynamic environment.
1.1 PROBLEM STATEMENT
There are many papers related to knowledge management in universities that considered processes, influencing factors and outcome to improve quality in teaching and learning, innovation. However, discussions on the formal development of knowledge management in an academic unit are limited. Furthermore, despite the informal practise of KM in universities and its identified benefits, limited research has been reported about developing KM framework in universities.
Buttressing this, it is imperative to investigate efficient knowledge transfer within an academic unit and ascertain the benefit of having a defined structure of knowledge base that encourages the flow of knowledge between lectures/staff (teaching and non-teaching) and students. It is important to know that a considerable proportion of loss of books, re-training of staffs and loss of data stored which lead to an increase in operational cost, cost overruns and waste of time is due to poor knowledge management. Hence, this research surveys the needs and benefits of an academic unit in a Nigerian university to have a structured nature of existence developing knowledge management framework which will provide an adequate statistics of registered textbooks, library users and tracking of materials borrowed from the library.
1.2 KNOWLEDGE GAP
It’s no doubt that the academic unit (department of industrial and production engineering) has its own knowledge-based on both past and recent textbooks and projects which are stored in the departmental library. But the fact is that having a data base of all textbooks and projects written by graduating students is just a minute part of developing KM framework in the library unit. This is because there is no proper framework of tracking how many books are borrowed at a particular time interval or who enters and leaves the library and also what necessary information is left for others to use.
The basic factor of developing this framework is that it ensures that knowledge is identified, captured, stored and shared so that the right knowledge will be available to the right person, at the right time and for the right job, that is making the knowledge available to everyone that needs it which saves time and improves the efficient use of the departmental library.
1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
1.3.1 AIM
The aim of this project is to develop a knowledge management framework for a library of an academic unit in a university.
1.3.1 OBJECTIVES
- Investigate the current practice of knowledge management in a selected academic unit of a university.
- Develop and appropriate knowledge management framework.
- Tracking of materials/textbooks borrowed or still on the shelf at any given time.
- Make necessary recommendations.
1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
What are the common tools utilised in developing KM framework.
What are the common strategies in adopting a formal practise of KM framework?
What are the processes of carrying out KM practise in a library of a university?
1.5 SCOPE OF PROJECT
The study surveys the existing use of KM in an academic unit with the mind-set of bringing to the fore a structured development of KM framework to be use in the library as the selected academic unit of the university with respect to the knowledge strategies and tools employed to formally develop its framework.
1.6 JUSTIFICATION
The finding(s) of this study are expected to reinforce the existing knowledge management in the library and bring to the fore the need of having a defined system to incorporate data management and information management in the library by developing a KM framework that reduces the time it take to search for information on books and project retrieved and returned at different time interval and this then enables the departmental library to appropriately handle the volume of books and project it stores.
1.7 DEFINITION OF TERMS
For the purpose of a better understanding and to avoid uncertainty of the terms used, the following terms have been re-defined to suit the context of the study.
Library: according to American libraries, a library is a collection of resources in a variety of formats that is organised by information professionals or other experts who provide convenient physical, digital, bibliographic or intellectual access and offer targeted services or programs with the mission of educating, informing or entertaining a variety of audiences and the goal of stimulating individual learning and advancing societal knowledge as a whole.
Knowledge: data, information, ideas, innovations, expertise, skills, etc. created, generated, acquired, owned, etc. by individuals, departments, units, etc. in manufacturing companies.
Knowledge management practices: These are activities, processes, strategies, systems, formal or informal, related to knowledge creation and sharing in universities.
KM influencing factors: These are factors supporting, promoting and enabling knowledge management practices in service industries. They include technology, organisational culture, organisational structure, management support, etc.
Academic unit: can be defines as a department whose mission is preponderantly teaching and/or for research purposes.
University: is an institution of learning of the highest level with various disciplines/degrees that are authorized.
Project – Development of knowledge management framework for a library of an academic unit in a university