Sharing contextual knowledge in today’s workplace environments

Due to an evolution of business models compatible with networked economy, office environments of this age need effective support for collaboration among office workers. This article demonstrates that existing Extended Office Systems (EOS) are not specifically designed to maintain awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of the collaborating actors of many of today’s networked office environments. Using an awareness framework for sharing of contextual knowledge in collaborative business processes, this article provides general design directives for a CollaborationAware EOS (CAEOS) system that facilitates sharing of the contextual knowledge among office workers in networked offices. In order to assess its effectiveness, this framework is applied to a network management case study with the aim of identifying the awareness requirements of the actors within that process. The results confirm effectiveness of the framework. The components of the framework, that is the process model and the awareness model, are then used as analytical tools as input to the design of CAEOS for achieving its collaborating goals. It is suggested that the process model component of the framework to constitute foundation for the knowledge-base component of the CAEOS, whereas the awareness model of the framework to constitute foundation for the inference engine of the CAEOS’.

ISSN 1479-4411 1 ©Academic Conferences Ltd

Sharing Contextual Knowledge in Today’s Workplace

Abstract- Due to an evolution of business models compatible with networked economy, office

environments of this age need effective support for collaboration among office workers This article demonstrates that existing Extended Office Systems (EOS) are not specifically designed to maintain awareness and knowledge-sharing requirements of the collaborating actors of many of today’s networked office environments Using an awareness framework for sharing of contextual knowledge in collaborative business processes, this article provides general design directives for a Collaboration-

Aware EOS (CAEOS) system that facilitates sharing of the contextual knowledge among office workers

in networked offices In order to assess its effectiveness, this framework is applied to a network management case study with the aim of identifying the awareness requirements of the actors within that process The results confirm effectiveness of the framework The components of the framework, that is the process model and the awareness model, are then used as analytical tools as input to the design of CAEOS for achieving its collaborating goals It is suggested that the process model component of the framework to constitute foundation for the knowledge-base component of the CAEOS, whereas the awareness model of the framework to constitute foundation for the inference engine of the CAEOS’

Keywords: awareness, extended office systems (EOS), collaboration support systems, knowledge

sharing, knowledge representation, groupware, business intelligence

1 Background

1.1 Introduction

The term Extended Office System (EOS)

has originally been described as a system

that allows users to make enquiries about

concepts in the domain (Cordingley 1987)

Based on this idea, the architecture of a

system called AEI-3 that manages

administrative knowledge has been

introduced by Amaravadi (1998)

Administrative knowledge is the

knowledge needed to perform the support

operations in an organization and can

include such things as the date a contract

will expire or a customer’s idiosyncratic

preference to be billed in instalments The

acronym EOS also emphasises the fact

that this variant of Knowledge

Management system is the result of an

outgrowth of existing office technologies

(Ibid) The main motivation for

development of the AEI-3 was that as

office systems become more

sophisticated, it will be necessary to

enhance their capabilities with knowledge

management features Thus a Word

processing system could be equipped with

the capability to answer questions about

budgets, clients and schedules EIS-3 was

a starting project for arriving at the above

A summary of the two systems is provided

in Table 1

Due to its collaborative nature CAEOS must also maintain additional contextual knowledge regarding the collaboration among the office workers called in this article as the collaboration/contextual knowledge, or awareness For example, knowing who is doing what; how and for whom they do it? Etc Such awareness knowledge is represented in the proposed framework by a set of collaborative

semantic concept including the roles of persons, the tasks that these roles perform

(both in isolation as well as in collaboration with others), and the

artefacts/resources/knowledge that are

used by roles in order to perform those tasks

Moreover, in defining the operational and

administrative knowledge, AEI-3 adopts the assumption that the nature of such knowledge is limited to explicit task-specific knowledge only Such limited non-collaborative view is expanded under

CAEOS and incorporates both knowledge

of domain (as before) as well as the

additional awareness knowledge of

context including knowledge of roles,

tasks, and artefacts, as defined in the

previous paragraph

A thorough discussion about the proposed

framework and its components is

presented in Section 2 Section 3 is allocated to the objectives and characteristics of the CAEOS In Section 4 the Network Management Case Study is presented This will lead to Section 5 where conclusion and future work are presented

Table 1: Main Features of the AEI-3 and CAEOS

Existing Version (AEI-3) Proposed Version (CAEOS)

Main Function

To facilitate sharing of operational and administrative knowledge among those who need it

To facilitate sharing of operational and administrative knowledge among collaborating office workers (see Section 1.3)

Knowledge repository consists

of a linked set of structures linking the roles, tasks and artefacts (see Sections 1.2 &

2)

Process Model

Representation Intuitive; no formal framework used

A formalised awareness framework is used (see Sections 1.2 & 2)

Participants are: Both producers and consumers of

knowledge (hence dual roles)

Potentially, all the collaborating office workers (hence uniform roles)

The Scope

restricted to the explicit administrative/operational knowledge only

restricted to the knowledge (explicit/implicit) that exists in the pre-defined/non-emerging business processes (see Section 1.3)

In daily dialog the word awareness is

generally defined as “being conscious + in

possession of information + cognisant +

informed” The word information on the

other hand is defined as “knowledge or

facts acquired or derived as from study,

instruction, or observation + act of

informing + being informed” (Halsey

1986)

With few exceptions, awareness has been

regarded by researchers in the field of

CSCW (Computer-Supported Cooperative

Work) as a kind of information that is

made available to (or targets) certain

people for a specific purpose For

example, in co-located work, peripheral

awareness is an awareness that is gained

by implicit monitoring of the local work

environment (Robinson 1993) Two

examples are (Suchman 1986) and (Heath

et al 1996) who describe the way in which

workers will immediately re-orient their activities to support a critical situation simply on the basis of overhearing a phone call or noticing a change in another's voice tone

Bentley et al (1992) on the other hand note the importance of a standardised display of the airspace to support air traffic

controllers gaining at-a-glance awareness

of the airspace others are controlling

Media spaces are promoted as supporting informal shared awareness across distributed offices (Gaver et al 1995) Also, significant work is being undertaken in the CSCW community looking at ways of defining different types of awareness and supporting awareness (Fitzpatrick et al 1998) Most of these studies represent awareness as identified in ethnographic studies

In majority of the above studies, the

primary meaning of awareness implies

that an individual becomes aware by

perception of a given information about an

object, and not by just receiving that

information This is the way the

interactionists in the field of social

psychology approach awareness The

writers of this chapter have extended the

interactionists' approach to awareness to

include office workers when involved in

today’s collaborative office activities

According to this approach, awareness

between objects in a given medium is

manipulated via focus and nimbus, which

are subspaces within which an object

chooses to direct either its presence or its

attention (Benford et al, 1993) The more

an object is within your focus, the more

aware you are of it; and the more an

object is within your nimbus, the more

aware it is of you As a result of this

definition, awareness levels can be

derived from a combination of nimbus and

focus: "The level of awareness that object

A has of object B in medium M is some

function of A's focus in M in relation to B's

nimbus in M" (Ibid)

In order to operationalise the above

concept of awareness levels within the

context of collaborative business

processes, an existing awareness

framework (Daneshgar 2004) is extended

here that maintains awareness levels of

office workers at appropriate levels while

performing various office works as

explained in 4.2

1.3 Structured collaborative

business process vs

Administrative knowledge

The structured business process is

defined in this article as a collection of a

set of collaborative semantic concepts,

that is, roles, tasks and artefacts, as well

as the relationships among these

concepts Moreover, these concepts and

relationships among them must either be

stable over time (that is, must be defined

beforehand), or must be defined at any

given time with no uncertainty The above

implies that it will be problematic to use a

pre-defined business process model if the

actual process would need to deal with

emerging/unexpected tasks The reason is

that the presence of an emerging task may

require unplanned resources, resulting in

contradictory and inconsistent outcomes

and possibly a process failure As a result,

systems designed for task support under a

predefined process discipline will allocate

little resources if any (in the form of intelligence, algorithmic procedures, internal memory, etc.) for dealing with emerging tasks In reality, however these systems let the human users of the system deal with such emerging situations In our view, a majority of the administrative tasks are repetitive by nature, and can easily fall into the category of predefined tasks in the sense that both the steps of execution, task outcomes, roles, and artefacts can be predefined to a great extent

The proposed process model is primarily based on pre-defined knowledge about known relationships among roles, the tasks that these roles perform, and the artefacts that they use in order to perform their tasks Such relationships seem to be quite relevant, applicable, and consistent with the context of the day-to-day and routine administrative and operational processes characteristic of the office life

1.4 Need for a formalised process model

Traditionally, two groups of techniques have been used for representation of

process models These are graphical techniques and the declarative techniques

(Amaravadi , 2001) Graphic specifications are usually variations of Petri-Nets, Data Flow Diagrams, State Transition Networks

or Activity Networks (Amaravadi et al

1992) Semantic nets have been widely

used for knowledge representation particularly in connection with natural language processing

In order to avoid limitations associated with the semantic nets we make use of Graph Theory in this article A collaborative business process model is introduced that has roots in the Applied Mathematics Compared with the semantic nets, the Graph Theory allows use of already existing mathematical-oriented constructs for producing more sophisticated search/browse algorithms This is partly demonstrated in Section 4 when identifying the awareness requirements of the roles by walking through the ‘process graph’ and expressing the results using the notations

of Set Theory

2 An awareness-based

framework for representation

of the Collaboration Aware

Extended Office System

(CAEOS)

Our proposed framework consists of the

two components: a process graph, and an

awareness model These components are

discussed in this Section

2.1 The process graph:

Figure 1 shows one such representation

using a connected graph It shows a

predefined collaborative business process

that consists of a set of collaborative semantic concepts that are related to one another in a pre-specified manner In this

Figure, the roles X, Y, T and V are shown

by filled circles and each perform one or

more tasks Tasks are shown by normal

circles A role typically uses either tacit or explicit know-how in order to perform a

simple task (as opposed to the collaborative task) This will allow different actors who play the same role for performing the same simple task (perhaps

because they are different shift workers) to use their own tacit knowledge that may differ from others when performing the same task

f

a

b

7

Figure 1: Examples of a Process Graph with four roles and 14 tasks

Performing a simple task means executing

those steps of the tasks that do not

compete with the steps of other tasks in

terms of utilisation of the available limited

resources/artefacts; hence the name

‘simple’ (Daneshgar 2000) On the other

hand, if a role is to perform a collaborative

task in conjunction with one or more other

roles within the process, then the pair of

simple tasks that constitute a collaborative

task will have certain steps within them

that will compete with (and must share)

the available resources/artefacts Ideally,

such knowledge must be publicly

accessible (and therefore, explicit) before

the task can be executed successfully

Collaboration between a pair of roles

means that they use some kind of explicit

knowledge in order to perform certain

steps that exist within the pair of simple

tasks that together make up a single

collaborative task In this paper, the

business process is shown by a Process

Graph that shows collaborative semantic

concepts (roles, tasks, and artefacts) and

their relationships

Another commonly practiced method of demonstrating a business process is to

use workflow languages (Hawryszkiewycz

1997) However due to the limitations that these tools impose on the sequence of task executions they are not used in this article

In the following paragraphs collaborative semantic concepts used in this article are defined:

Role: a set of norms expressed in terms of

obligations, privileges, and rights On the Process Graph of Figure 1 roles are shown by filled circles X, Y, T and V

Role Artefacts: This object carries how of a simple task Role artefacts can

know-be either tacit or explicit That is, they can

be either within the mind of the actor who

performs the role (eg, skills, experience,

etc.) or they can exists externally but in private locations (eg, personal databases, spreadsheets, etc.) On the Process

Graph, the role artefacts are shown by

thick lines

Simple and Collaborative Tasks: Simple

Tasks are objects with a set of attributes

and actions/steps to achieve a specific

goal On the Process Graph simple tasks

are shown by twelve circles labelled ‘1’ to

‘8’ and ‘a’ to ‘f’ A collaborative task on the

other hand is composed of two simple

tasks that have a common goal; and as a

result, they have certain actions/steps in

common These common actions/steps

compete with one another in using

available resources allocated by the CBP

for execution of the tasks, and therefore

must be shared effectively through the

common task artefact discussed below

Task Artefact: An object that carries

knowledge about how various

actions/steps associated with a

collaborative task are executed Contrary

to the role artefacts where they may or

may not exist within organised knowledge

bases, it is assumed here that task

artefacts are ideally kept within the

organisational knowledge bases so that

they can be accessed and used by

multiple actors when they enact various

roles for performing their collaborative

tasks On the Process Graph task

artefacts are shown by thin lines linking

two tasks together

2.2 An awareness model for the

office workers

Following is a summary of some of the

main characteristics of today’s office work

from the perspective of the researchers in

the field of CSCW (Computer-Supported

Cooperative Work) who are frontrunner

designers of today’s networked-oriented

business models (Hawryszkiewycz 1997)

1 Office workers may work at different

times and at different places and yet,

they all belong to the same business

process and must collaborate through

sharing documents, artefacts,

resources, workstations, etc

2 Office work can range from being fully

structured and predefined, to fully

unstructured and emergent

3 Office work can range from fully

personal to fully collaborative

4 Instead of repetitive simple tasks, an

office worker may now have a portfolio

of tasks and select the task that need

most attention

One universal requirement of all the above

types of office tasks is that actors who

perform tasks need to have certain level of contextual knowledge in the form of process awareness that is referred to in

this article as process awareness This is

a level that is expected from office workers

in order to perform their collaborative task successfully Below a summary of five such awareness levels are introduced For more details refer to (Daneshgar 2004)

Level-0 awareness: A role is at level-0

awareness if it possesses knowledge about the objects that lead the role to an understanding of the tasks that the corresponding actor performs within the process As an example, level-0 awareness for a casual university lecturer may include the following ‘task’ and ‘role artefact’ objects:

̇ Task 1: ‘delivering lectures for the subject’

̇ Role artefact 1: ‘resources/artefacts required for such delivery’

̇ Task 2: ‘preparing tutorial and exam questions’

̇ Role artefact 2: ‘textbook and other references, etc.’

̇ Task 3: ‘marking exam papers’

̇ Role artefact 3: ‘exam papers, answers

to the exam questions, etc.’

A role’s level-0 awareness will enable the corresponding actor to initiate lowest level

of knowledge sharing transactions with other roles within the process (in this case nil, as the role knows nobody else within the process yet) In the Process Graph of Figure 1 level-0 awareness for ‘X’ is a set

of paths that include the role vertex ‘X’, the tasks vertices ‘1’, ‘2’, ‘3’ and ‘4’, and the arcs that link ‘X’ to these tasks In this article notation from Set Theory is used to demonstrate various levels/path of awareness within a business process Level-0 awareness for the role X is:

A0('X') = {{X}, {X, 1}, {1}, {X, 2}, {2}, {X, 3}, {3}, {X, 4}, {4}}

Level-1 Awareness: This is the role’s

level-0 awareness plus a knowledge about all objects that lead the role to an

awareness/understanding of some of the

other roles within the process The ‘some

of the roles’ here means those with whom

the role has a direct task dependency In

Figure 1 role ‘V’ happens to have task dependency with one other role, that is, role ‘X’ Level-1 awareness allows ‘V’ to initiate a limited level of knowledge-sharing transactions with others (here, ‘X’

only) The mathematical representation of

level-1 awareness for the role V is:

A1(‘V’) = {A0{V}, {d, 1}, {1}, {1, X}, {X}}

Or, alternatively,

A1(‘V’) = {A0(V), {d, 2}, {2}, {2,X}, {X}}

Level-2 Awareness: A role’s level-2

awareness is his/her level-1 awareness

plus knowledge about objects that lead the

role to an understanding of all other roles

within the process whether the role has

task dependency with them or not

According to Figure 1, the mathematical

representation of level-2 awareness for the

role X is:

A2('X') = {A1 ('X'), {4, 6}, {6}, {6, b}, b,

{b, V}, {V}}

Notice that from its level-1 awareness the

role ‘X’ already knows ‘Y’ and ‘T’ The only

remaining role to be known to him/her is

‘V’

Level-3 Awareness: A role’s level-3

awareness is his/her level-2 awareness

plus knowledge about the objects that lead

the role to an understanding of all the

interactions (that is, all the task artefacts)

that occur between any pair of roles within

the process In Figure 1, the mathematical

representation of the role Y’s level-3

Level-4 Awareness: A role with level-4

awareness will possess the highest level

of process awareness It is the knowledge

of objects that lead that role to an

understanding of how all the objects within

the process (that is, all the roles, tasks,

role artefacts and task artefacts) fit

together to make the process graph

Graphically, the process graph in its

entirety can represent this level of

awareness

3 Objectives of the CAEOS

In this article the term Collaboration-Aware Extended Office System (CAEOS) refers

to an extended version of the IEA-3 that maintains awareness requirements of its collaborating users As a result of the CAEOS’ capability of enhancing collaboration of the office workers, the following two objectives are added to the previous objectives of the IEA-3 extended office system:

The first objective is to enhance collaboration among the office worker The two components of the proposed

framework, that is, the process graph and the awareness model, are the main

analytical tools used for both representation of the collaborative business process, as well as for identification of the awareness requirements of the collaborating actors within the process and were discussed in previous Section

The second additional objective of the

CAEOS is related to the nature of the task artefacts It is only natural to expect

CAEOS to facilitate creation, acquisition, capture, access and reuse of the task artefacts One may claim that

management of these artefacts corresponds to the document centred

strategy for knowledge management,

whereas management of the actors and tasks correspond to the community-based

strategy of the knowledge management See Hansen et al (1999) for a thorough discussion on these two approaches As mentioned before, task artefacts are public artefacts that are shared by various office workers in order to perform their collaborative tasks For this reason, task artefacts must ideally be always accessible and sharable by relevant collaborators In other words, knowledge within a task artefact must ideally be codified and stored in an integrated manner in a way that office knowledge can

be shared on demand By this CAEOS is playing the role of knowledge facilitator that brings knowledge source and knowledge user together in a variety of modes This is so because while it has the capacity to separates knowledge from its sources, due to the integrated nature of the process map, it is also capable of tracing the knowledge back to its origin and to further keep track of its originator’s

context (that is, for performing which task)

did the originator issued/created/modified

certain task artefact

The role artefacts on the other hand are

more personal They either reside in

people’s minds or, in certain situations

they may reside in personal databases or

private workstations A third objective for

CAEOS would therefore be to assist office

workers in creation, organization and

utilization of process awareness

knowledge that is needed to perform

tasks This we call the ‘knowledge

utilization role of the CAEOS’

4 An example of applying the

awareness framework to the

office business processes: A

network management case

study

4.1 Background

In the previous discussion it was

mentioned that awareness-provisioning is

one of the main objectives of the CAEOS.This Case Study demonstrates application of the proposed awareness framework in a typical office environment, and that how the framework can be used

to enhance collaboration in this office process

Several interviews were conducted with the actors involved in the process in order

to derive the Process Graph for this collaborative process, as shown in Figure

2 In this Figure, roles are shown with filled circles and tasks are shown with normal circles The actual and required levels of awareness for various roles is shown in Table 2 Columns of this Table were derived from the interviews made with various actors as well as additional task and problem domain analyses performed

by an actor with level-4 awareness

Table 2: Association between the actors' satisfaction level and the awareness gap

Inter-action #

Co 1

Pair of roles involved in this interaction Col 2

Required Level for the roles Col 3

Actual Level of each role Col 4

ness Gap

Aware-Col 5

Satisfactio

n Level

Col 6

1

Technician

- Test Controller

2

Technician

- Change Manager

3

Change Manager- User

6

Technician

- Operator

Column 1 of the Table 2 shows various

interactions within the process, and are

numbered 1 to 6 These interactions

always involve a collaborative task (or, a

pair of related simple tasks) related to a

pair of roles

Column 2 of the Table 2 shows the pair of actors involved in each of the 6 interactions Columns 3 and 4 show the required and actual levels of awareness respectively for each actor and for each task separately It must be mentioned here that the actual level of awareness is the level that an actor of a role actually posses

and is an attribute of the role; whereas the

required level of awareness is the level

that is attached to a particular task (an

attribute of the task object) and is the level

of awareness that is expected from the

actor/role who performs that particular

task The existence of awareness gap for

each interaction is indicated in column 5 of

this Table Awareness gap for a role is the

excess of the required level of awareness

of the task that the role plays over the

actual level of awareness that the role

already possesses For example, in

interaction 3, actual level of awareness 3-0

means the actual level of awareness of the

Change Manager is 3 whereas that of the User is 0 In the same transaction, the

required level of awareness 4-1 means that Change manager requires level-4

awareness for the task Impact Control

whereas the User requires level-1

awareness for the task Impact Analysis

This indicates that there is a definite awareness gap in this interaction, hence the entry "yes" in column 5 For similar token, no awareness gap exists for the interaction 1

Change Mangr User

report the problem

receive problem

Operator assign

T-Ticket

try solve problem

receive T-Ticket

Technici

an

implmnt change request

arrange meeting

Test Coordin ator

place change request

approve time for meeting

IWP

impact analysis impact

control

Figure 2: Process Graph for the Network Management Case Study

The actors' satisfaction levels

corresponding to each interaction were

also recorded in column 6 of the Table 2

The method used to arrive at the

satisfaction levels in column 6 is as

follows:

Each interaction in column 1 involves a

pair of actors These actors were

interviewed Since some actors participate

in more than one interaction, more than

one interview was held for these actors A

total of twelve interviews were conducted

with the actors participating in the 6

interactions All the actors, with the exception of the “User”, are called by the

‘role’ that they play (eg., “Technician”,

“Test Coordinator”, “Change Manager”, and “Operator”) In the case of the “User” where up to five actors plays this role, the actors are referred to as “User1” to

“User5”

The purpose of the interview was to obtain qualitative information about the details of each interaction/scenario Such qualitative information was then used to provide the actor in one side of the interaction an

opportunity to rank their satisfaction of the

services provided by the actor on the other

side of the interaction, and vice-versa

More specifically, lists of the problems that

the actors have been facing in each

interaction were collected, summarised,

and structured For each interaction a

‘Satisfaction Ranking Scheme’ for that

particular interaction was used by the

actors to decide on a satisfaction rank

between 0 to 10 for the services that were

provided by the actors on the other side of

the interaction To avoid repetitive details

results of the application of the

“Satisfaction Ranking Scheme” to the

interaction 3 are reported below:

Interaction 3: Change Manager explains

to, or notifies the, affected Users of a

possible need for network shutdown

Problems that led to low level of the

actors’ satisfaction (that is, five Users’ and

the Change Manager) are:

̇ There is no automatic change impact

notification All concerned need to be

informed manually and hence the

chance of omissions Four out of five

“Users” have expressed such

nonsatisfactory experience at least

once in the past The average rank for

the “Satisfaction Level” given by the

five Users to this interaction act was

2.8 Each User’s rank carried a

statistical weight of one Change

Manager was not allowed to provide a

rank for the “Satisfaction Level” for this

item since he was considered to be

the provider of this service

̇ “Change Manager” reported another

problem: Some Users do not respond

at the time of notification Currently,

there is no means for the Change

Manager to chase the Users A

“Satisfaction Rank” of 3 was given to

this interaction by the Change

Manager This rank carried a statistical

weight of five so that the actors in both

sides of the interaction carry the same

weight when deciding on the

“Satisfaction Level” for that interaction

Users were not allowed to provide any

rank for this interaction act

̇ Quite often, both Users and Change

Manager cannot be located (no mobile

computing facilities were available for

mobile actors) Both the “Users” (each

with weight 1) and “Change Manager”

(with weight 5) provided ranks for this

interaction The overall average was

2.8 The average value rounded to the nearest whole number for this and other interactions are shown in Column 6

Results in columns 5 and 6 indicate negative association between the actors' satisfaction (represented by high values of satisfaction level) and the awareness gap between actual and required levels of awareness of the actors involved in each interaction

4.2 Statistical test of significance

of the correlation between the customer satisfaction and the awareness gap

In order to prove the existence of a strong negative correlation between the awareness gap and the actor's satisfaction with significant level of confidence, the differences between the actual and required levels of awareness are calculated for each interaction and then correlated with the satisfaction level Following results were obtained:

Coefficient of Correlation,

r = - 0.732 SE(r) = 0.41

r/SE(r) = - 1.04/0.41 = - 1.78 The above value can be accepted at a 2% confidence level We can therefore conclude with 98% certainty that there is a negative correlation between the level of satisfaction of the actors and the awareness gaps

4.3 Further analysis: Identifying improvement priorities

On the basis of the above findings, the designers of enterprise network management process can now work on the right type of collaboration support for various interactions within the process Similar results were obtained in a number

of scenarios studied at this organization Further investigations revealed the following reasons for the existence of the awareness gaps in the above interactions These in turn, can be translated into various functions of the CAEOS:

1 Since there is no automatic change impact notification, all concerned need

to be informed manually, and hence, there is a chance of omission There is

a need for the system to automatically create a notification list based on the network topology (what we refer to in

this paper as focus) so that required

level of awareness are maintained on a

timely basis (referred to as nimbus)

2 Although all users are notified, some

users do not respond at the right time

Therefore it is necessary to include the

impact information in the interaction to

the user so that in the case of some

users not responding, it may be

necessary to chase them up; hence the

need for a "to do list" for every change,

as a minimum Ideally, an integrated

coordination subsystem within the

CAEOS would be ideal Another

alternative would be to assign a

software agent with at least level-3

awareness, to monitor every

interaction, and ensure a quick reply for

some of the time-sensitive types of

notifications

3 System workflow should take care of

interlocks This will require agents to

(automatically) remind users of some

information either periodically or after

certain number of transactions

4 Often, Users and Technician cannot be

located, meaning that either level-1

awareness does not effectively exist for

those who try to access these actors,

or, perhaps such level-1 awareness is

out of date Hence, there is a need for

mobile communication solution so that

level-1 awareness can be maintained

for all actors who want to access Users

and Technician at all times

5 Conclusion and future work

In today’s networked economy office

environments need effective support for

collaboration among office workers at

anytime and anywhere This article

demonstrated that the existing EOSs are

not specifically designed to maintain

contextual/awareness knowledge

requirements of the collaborating actors of

today’s collaborative office processes An

awareness framework was applied to a

network management case study and

effectiveness of the framework in

identifying the awareness requirements of

the actors within the collaborative process

was assessed with positive results The

framework was then used as a conceptual

tool to derive general design directives for

a Collaboration-Aware EOS (CAEOS)

system that facilitates sharing of the

contextual knowledge among office

workers It is suggested that the above

awareness framework be automated

within the CAEOS as an inference subsystem in order to facilitates identification of the actors’ awareness requirements, as well as their awareness gaps, if any

More specifically, CAEOS ideally consists

of a pair of inter-related components: (i) a knowledge-base that defines, represents and stores the domain knowledge in terms

of the collaborative semantic concepts provided, as well as their relationships It also consists of methods/rules of calculating various awareness levels using the domain knowledge The other component, the inference engine/model provides foundation for inferencing the awareness gaps for each actor

Some possible functions of the CAEOS are:

1 Dynamically constructing the office process maps as a reference points for those involved in these collaborative processes

2 Measuring the actual levels of awareness of the office workers before performing certain tasks, and identification of their awareness gaps

3 Automation of the flow of the office tasks based on the awareness levels of the workers This can also be a partial solution to management of the task flows in emerging processes in situations where unexpected actors may have to take up the task

4 CAEOS can also be used as a project management tool for allocating various tasks to the office workers on various processes/projects, on the basis of their relative actual level of awareness

of each business process/project

And as a final point, as the number of roles and tasks increases, the traditional database technology will be ineffective in creation, organization and utilization of awareness knowledge; more advanced techniques need to be investigated for these situations Integration with other Extended Office Systems will also remain

an important issue that needs be addressed in future studies

References

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and Nunamaker J.F (1992): ‘AEI:A Knowledge-based to integrated office

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Spatial Model of Interaction in Large

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Extended Office Systems1,

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(1999) ‘What’s Your Strategy for

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Underground’, in Cognition and Communication at Work, Yrjo

Engestrom and D Middleton (editors), Chapter 5, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 96-129

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Unanticipated Use’ in Proceedings of the 3 rd European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, Milan, Italy, pp.187-202

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Engestrom and D Middleton (editors), chapter 13, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp.35-60

ISSN 1479-4411 13 ©Academic Conferences Ltd

Managing the Corporate Zoo: A Knowledge

Abstract: This paper presents a 2x2 matrix which focuses on individual knowledge and knowledge

sharing There is a vast amount of literature that has acknowledged that the management of knowledge

is an important strategic and tactical approach to improve organizational performance Knowledge sharing between individuals in an organization has also been recognized as a sound strategy to increase the value of the knowledge within a firm The model presented in this paper proposes a typology of individuals that contributes to the literature both from an academic as well as a practitioner perspective; it extends the literature on knowledge management, and provides suggestions on how to aid individuals adopt a more desirable behavior that is conducive to firm survival

Keywords: Knowledge, knowledge management, knowledge sharing, employee classification

1 Introduction

At a weekly meeting, we are all too familiar

with that individual who seems to talk a lot,

to constantly bring up lots of ideas, but as

we head back to our office, if we really

think of what that colleague contributed,

we most often come up short-handed

How about that other colleague who

seems to stick around a lot, who listens

attentively, but when you really think of it,

how much did that person contribute?

Though they may never really give their

two-cents worth, you can’t help but think:

although they made no contribution, what

ideas did they get from all of us who were

discussing openly? Wouldn’t corporate life

be better with fewer of these types of

individuals?

In the short scenario above, what is it that

bothers us? Most likely it is that these

individuals contribute neither to the

knowledge nor to the learning of the firm;

contributing translates into the survival of

the firm Knowledge is a firm’s most

valuable resource (Grover & Davenport

2001; Kogut & Zander 1992; Nonaka

1994), a resource that is created, rather

than given or discovered (Tsoukas 1996)

Knowledge in an organisational context

stems from people; the concept of

organisational knowledge is a metaphor

because it is not the organisation but the

people in the organisation who create

knowledge (Bhatt 2000; Grover &

Davenport 2001) The role of management

is to coordinate purposeful individuals who

can apply their knowledge in a specific

situation In this paper, we present a

typology that focuses on individual

knowledge and knowledge sharing Following the presentation of the typology, suggestions on how to help individuals adopt a more desirable behaviour that is conducive to firm survival are provided Although there are many different definitions of knowledge management (KM) (for e.g., Alavi & Leidner 1999; King 1999), what they have in common is their focus on organisations and the people who make up the organisations These definitions emphasise that the organisation plays a critical role in the knowledge management process (Shin, Holden & Schmidt 2001); however, the knowledge itself is developed by individuals, and although many people know pieces of information, no one knows it all (Stauffer 1999) What accelerates the creation of ideas are the interactions between individuals, and these interactions occur in

an organisation whose role is to support creative individuals and provide an environment that can articulate and amplify that knowledge (Nonaka 1994) Information can be generated by computers and technology; knowledge is created by people (Coleman 1998) In other words, the emphasis in KM is on people, not technology (King 1999; Remez 1999) For KM to be successful, organisations need to create a corporate culture that promotes and encourages collaboration and rewards individuals who contribute and share their knowledge (Costa 1999) Knowledge creation, which takes place through knowledge sharing, is critical for a company because through this process creative ideas can be

translated into innovative technologies and

processes (Grant 1996; Sumner 1999)

For firms to survive, both in the short- and

long-term, they need to reuse existing

knowledge and they need to be innovative

(March 1991) Although innovation often

seems enticing to firms, if a firm engages

only in innovation, it is likely to incur costs

from the innovation process while not

gaining from its benefits Following only an

innovation strategy would lead the firm to

have many underdeveloped ideas that do

not get followed through If, on the other

hand, organisations only support

knowledge reuse, they will most likely

survive in the short-term but will not be

able to sustain survival (March 1991) Old

ideas only go so far In fact, these old

ideas can be likened to mirages that

appear in the desert: they seem to

promise a source of water and cool

shelter, but at the end of the day all that

surrounds you is the desert Just as this

mirage seemed so promising, so is the

reuse strategy for long-term survival

illusory

Firms need to maintain a proper balance

between innovation and knowledge reuse

in order to survive (March 1991) However,

innovation and knowledge reuse compete

for the same scarce resources The

people in the organisation represent a

large part of those resources To support

innovation and knowledge reuse,

individuals in a firm need to communicate

and share what they know Therefore, in

considering the individuals that make up a

firm, the employees, it is possible to

categorise them according to their

knowledge sharing behaviour and the

extent of their knowledge, their

competence (Durcikova & Everard 2002)

Figure 1: The Employee Typology (ET)

2 The Employee Typology

The first dimension represented in the

Employee Typology is knowledge

Knowledge is operationalised as

competence as in Bassellier et al (2001),

Covey (2000) and Sandberg (2000)

Individuals can be categorised into one of two groups, those with high competence and those with low competence These are represented in the figure above as

“high knowledge” and “low knowledge,” respectively

Much of an individual’s experience, intelligence and overall competence resides in his or her head; as a result when an individual leaves a company, these attributes are lost For this reason, the transfer of an individual’s knowledge to other individuals is vital to the continuing successful performance of a firm In order

to ensure that knowledge is not lost, before an individual leaves a firm his or her knowledge needs to have been shared with at least one other individual in the firm

With respect to the second dimension, an individual can be categorised as either

“high knowledge sharing” or “low knowledge sharing.” Individuals are classified as high knowledge sharers if they provide knowledge to others in the organisation Low knowledge sharers are individuals who do not provide any knowledge to others This category includes those who seek help, advice, and suggestions from others, but who do not provide knowledge to others Let us look

at the four cells depicted in the figure above in more detail

2.1 Seeing eye dogs

Individuals in the upper left hand cell have knowledge and share it, and are identified

as seeing eye dogs Individuals who fall in this cell are of the greatest importance for

an organisation They are, in essence, the pillars of the organisation, which in turn give the organisation its knowledge-based advantage An organisation that is made

up mostly of individuals who fall in this cell

is likely to be a firm with a culture that emphasises learning and teaching and that has knowledge-based advantages, which are not easily replicated by competitors Seeing eye dogs are very important to the organisation because they are the innovators and play a major part in the long-term survival of the firm

There are several examples of this type of individual, or groups of individuals, in both the academic and practitioner literature For example, Stewart (2000) describes a technique launched at the consultant

company Viant Top consultants from this

firm are called off their work and for

several months are placed in a position of

“agitator.” The agitator’s or

“project-catalyst’s” responsibility is to approach

others who are working on specific

projects and to give them advice, show

examples of possible solutions, and so

forth The seeing eye dog analogy can

also be found at Buckman Laboratories

and the World Bank The seeing eye dogs

are those individuals who use storytelling,

analogies, and metaphors to share their

tacit knowledge This technique allows the

context of important information that was

gained by individuals through their

expertise to be established Further, we

can find the concept of seeing eye dogs at

BP Amoco Kent Greenes, head of

knowledge management, says:

“knowledge guardians constantly probe

the unknown and bounce it off project

teams to get them thinking about new

ideas” (p.27) (Wah 1999) Similarly, at

Ericsson seeing eye dogs are referred to

as “knowledge brokers” and are

responsible for tracking which problems

are being dealt with in various offices and

bringing together the people who are able

to solve them von Krogh, Nonaka & Ichijo

(1997) introduce the notion of a knowledge

activist as a knowledge sharer They

identify a knowledge activist as some

individual, or some group or department,

who takes on the particular responsibility

of energising and coordinating knowledge

creation efforts throughout the corporation

The authors identify people in

organisations who can act as knowledge

activists, for example, employees from

R&D centers, strategists, or individuals

from knowledge and technology transfer

units While these individuals are in

positions that allow them to be easily

identified as knowledge activists, the most

efficient and effective knowledge activists

are those based on assignments to that

role (von Krogh et al 1997) Such an

assigned position is in line with the

definition of an “agitator” (Stewart 2000) It

is important that those in the seeing eye

dog position are rotated from time to time

as this position entails a significant amount

of mental exertion and thus requires new

individuals to come in and renew the batch

of ideas

As can be seen from the above

discussion, seeing eye dogs play a critical

role in the performance of a company;

therefore firms that wish to be successful require this type of individual

2.2 Ants

Individuals who have low knowledge and are not willing to share fall into the lower right hand cell of the matrix Such individuals are able to use the explicit knowledge of others but their competence

is unconscious (Covey 2000), that is, although they are able to perform certain processes or procedures, they are unable

to make informed adjustments as to the performance of their tasks Just as ants work hard at maintaining the proper functioning of the ecosystem, these individuals are essential to the organisation Without them, routine tasks would not be performed and the everyday workings of the firm would come to a standstill

During the hiring process, firms look to fill

“ant” positions, for example call center employees, by individuals with qualifications such as basic reliability, problem-solving skills, and so forth (Jarvis 2000) These qualifications represent the top qualifications for such positions Timeliness and responsibility are also required of such individuals for them to perform their duties properly Schultz (1999) reports that a one percent error rate in basic business operations results in

a ten percent increase in logistics’ costs This is representative of the critical importance of ants in any organisation

Since organisations often do not recognise the value of their work, ants are frequently compensated poorly The work of ants is,

in most cases, taken for granted until they fail to perform their responsibilities and tasks It is then that the organisation comes to realise ants’ importance

Ants play a significant role in the effective and efficient functioning of any firm Therefore, in hiring ants, organisations must ensure that the individuals have the competence to adequately perform their tasks If they fail to do so and do not pay enough attention in ensuring that individuals filling ant positions are qualified

to do so, the organisation may suffer and the work of others may be negatively affected

These two categories of individuals, seeing eye dogs and ants, can be mapped

onto the two desirable strategies for firm

survival, innovation and knowledge reuse,

respectively Two other types of

individuals with whom at some point in our

working environment we have had most

probably to deal and who were portrayed

in the short scenario at the start of this

article can be likened to foxes and

peacocks These types of individuals are

discussed in the following paragraphs

2.3 Foxes

The cell in the lower left hand side of the

matrix represents individuals who have

knowledge but who do not share it with

others Such individuals hoard their

knowledge; this, however, does not

preclude them from seeking knowledge

from others This behaviour is analogous

to the behaviour of foxes – sly and crafty

Organisations need to be aware of

individuals who fall into this cell as they

represent a weak link and can lead to a

knowledge breakdown in the organisation

Even if self-determined and

demand-driven mutual learning increases

individuals’ competence and flexibility

(Hoffmann, Loser, Walter & Herrmann

1999), individuals are often resistant to

share their knowledge One of the reasons

why people do not want to share their

knowledge is because unique knowledge

can be a source of power (Goodman &

Darr 1999) According to Cook (1999) KM

will suffer if knowledge is equated with

power As a result, individuals often

choose to keep knowledge to themselves,

to not share it; they keep it in store One

problem with this is that knowledge that is

not used loses its value This can be

detrimental to an organisation’s source of

value, since the knowledge in the

organisation is not used and therefore

loses its timeliness value (Nonaka 1994)

Because much of a firm’s intellectual

capital is shared through informal

networks, also known as the ‘grapevine,’

individuals who do not partake in such

informal structures and relationships do

not have access to the knowledge In fact,

an organisation’s grapevine is a conduit

through which skills and experience are

easily and efficiently transferred and

shared (Cook 1999)

2.4 Peacocks

Finally, individuals who fall in the upper right hand cell have low knowledge yet are willing to share This is best represented

by peacocks, which use their tail to inflate their size so as to appear larger and more powerful to would-be predators In a similar manner, in some instances individuals who are less competent are willing to share whatever they do know in order to appear more competent than they actually are Often this behavior backfires

as the true level of competence of the individual is then exposed

It is important for firms to recognise the

“peacocks” among them In some cases, the firm must even take precautions so as not to create peacocks, which can be done

by not implementing reward systems based on the number of contributions by someone When individuals are rewarded based on the quantity of contributions as opposed to the quality of contributions, they may tend to contribute for the sake of contributing This behaviour, however, does not lead to an increase in an organisation’s knowledge base

3 Creating desirable behaviours

Although foxes and peacocks are less desirable to have in an organisation, to simply fire them is not a viable solution as the firm has already invested time and money in these individuals Furthermore, the firm hired these people based on their expertise in a particular domain that is valuable to the firm, therefore making them potentially contributing forces of the firm Foxes have the basis for innovative behaviour, as they possess much knowledge Peacocks, on the other hand, have the potential to reuse existing knowledge

The question that then arises is how to make seeing eye dogs and ants out of foxes and peacocks, respectively This can be achieved by introducing changes in the environment that will lead to a change

in behaviour of these individuals Since we know that changes in the environment can lead to changes in behaviour, we now look

at what can be done to enable foxes to become seeing eye dogs and peacocks to behave like ants

3.1 From Fox to Seeing Eye Dog

If foxes, who possess knowledge, can be

taught to share they then would become

seeing eye dogs In terms of knowledge

that is operationalised as competence,

foxes belong to the same category as

seeing eye dogs They possess the

expertise and the creative thinking skills

that are crucial to innovative behaviour

What they are lacking is the motivation to

share According to Amabile (1998)

creative thinking skills, expertise and

motivation lead to creativity, which in turn

leads to innovation While these three

factors can be affected by workplace

practices and conditions, motivation,

however, is the easiest to influence by

even subtle changes in a firm’s

environment

For foxes to become seeing eye dogs,

they need to be challenged yet feel free to

approach a problem in their own way For

example, placing them in an environment

where they are put in charge of providing a

solution to a problem and for which they

need to collaborate is one way of getting

them out of the fox cell and helping them

to act as seeing eye dogs Fox-type

individuals can be made to behave more

like seeing eye dogs by making them

responsible for more than one project at a

time, by asking them to prepare more than

one solution to a problem (this will boost

their creative juices), by setting deadlines

to challenge them, and by showing by way

of example that everybody shares

everything (Foster 2001)

3.2 From Peacocks to Ants

In terms of knowledge, peacocks belong to

the same category as ants, and therefore

have the potential to support the firm’s

short-term survival through knowledge

reuse From the initial blurb, peacocks are

portrayed as individuals who make a lot of

noise, who make sure they are noticed,

who want to be recognised as innovative

and knowledge sharing However, they

aim to be recognised for something that

they are not and for which they lack the

personal resources The reason they

behave in the manner they do is perhaps

mainly to be noticed, to be recognised, to

be heard The root of the change in

behaviour for the peacocks lies as with the

foxes: in their motivation

Peacocks feel a need to be heard and seen by those around them Therefore, it

is important to provide them opportunities where they can shine, where they feel a certain level of ownership in reusing knowledge in a new solution, where they feel valued and praised for their efforts (Foster 2001)

Although making seeing eye dogs out of foxes and ants out of peacocks may sound somewhat like an attempt at New Age Darwinism, by not attempting such an endeavor the costs may cause the demise

of a firm Innovation and knowledge reuse represent different strategies of firm survival, each equally important in nature Each of these strategies also uses the same set of resources, namely the individuals in the firm It is therefore imperative to address, no matter how subtly, the motivational needs of the different types of individuals in firms so as

to support both innovation and knowledge reuse

References

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“Knowledge management systems:

Issues, challenges and benefits,” CAIS,

1:7, 2-36

Amabile, T M (1998) “How to kill

creativity,” Harvard Business Review,

September-October, 77-87

Bassellier, G., Hormer Reich, B and Benbasat, I (2001) “Information Technology Competence of Business Managers: A Definition and Research

Model,” Journal of Management Information Systems, 17:4, 159-182

Bhatt, D.G (2000) "Information Dynamic, Learning and Knowledge Creation in

Organizations." The Learning Organization 7(2):89-99

Coleman, David (1998) “Knowledge management: Brining value to

information,” Computer Reseller News,

Costa, Dan (1999) “Knowledge is power,”

Computer Shopper, July, 19:7, 252

Covey, Steven R (2000) “Teaching

Organizations,” Executive Excellence,

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Employee Typology: A Knowledge

Management Perspective,”

Proceedings of the Americas

Conference in Information Systems,

Dallas, TX

Foster, J (2001) Ideaship: how to get

ideas flowing in your workplace San

Francisco, Berrett-Koehler Publishers,

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Goodman, P and Darr, E (1999)

“Computer-Aided Systems and

Communities: Mechanisms for

Organizational Learning in Distributed

Environments,” MIS Quarterly, 22:4,

417-440

Grant, R M (1996) “Prospering in

Dynamically-Competitive

Environments: Organizational

Capability as Knowledge Integration,”

Organization Science, 7:4, July, 1996,

pp 375-387

Grover, V and T.H Davenport (2001)

"General Perspectives on Knowledge

Management: Fostering a Research

Agenda." Journal of Management

Information Systems, 18(1): 5-21

Hoffmann, M., Loser, K., Walter, T and

Herrmann, T (1999) “A design process

for embedding knowledge

management in everyday work,”

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King, William, R (1999) “Integrating

knowledge management into IS

strategy,” Information Systems

Management, Fall, 70-72

Jarvis, Steve (2000) “Call centers raise bar

on hiring criteria,” Marketing News,

September 11, 4

Kogut, B and U Zander (1992)

"Knowledge of the Firm, Combinative

Capabilities, and the Replication of

Technology." Organization Science

Remez, Shereen G (1999) “Growing the

tree of knowledge,” Government Computer News, August 16, 18:126,

41

Sandberg, J (2000) “Understanding human competence at work: An

interpretative approach,” Academy of Management Journal, 43:1, 9-25

Schultz, R (1999) “One percent error rate

= 10 percent of logistics’ cost,” Material Handling Engineering, August, 93-97

Shin, M., T Holden and R A Schmidt (2001) “From knowledge theory to management practice: towards an

integrated approach,” Information Processing & Management, 37:2, 335-

355

Stauffer, D (1999) “Why people hoard

knowledge,” Across The Board,

September, 16-21

Stewart, T (2000) “The house that

knowledge built,” Fortune, October 2,

278-280

Sumner, M (1999) “Knowledge management: Theory and practice,”

Von Krogh, G., Nonaka, I., and Ichijo, K

(1997) “Develop knowledge activists!,”

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475-483

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Management Review, May, 24-29

ISSN 1479-4411 19 ©Academic Conferences Ltd

Combining Knowledge and Change Management at

Abstract: Knowledge is a strategic resource of knowledge-intensive organisations, its effective

management is critical for competitiveness Choosing any kind of KM approach, organisations has to face changes even introducing, or even developing their KM practice This paper analyses the relationship between change and knowledge management processes, between change management supporters and KM enablers The research of consulting companies presents, that neglecting any part

of supporters or enablers has negative impact on the whole knowledge management practice

Keywords: knowledge management, change management, knowledge enablers, knowledge-intensive

organisations, knowledge management strategy

1 Introduction

Knowledge became strategic resource of

organisation, as the basis of competitive

advantage Since the mid 1990s,

knowledge management (KM) has been

developed into a strategic practice of

knowledge-intensive companies

Several theories exist to create a

framework of knowledge management

activities Early models concentrated on

one subtask of KM activities by an

explanatory approach (Heisig, 2002) In

the past few years the development and

justification of integrated, holistic

frameworks have started These models

present not only the dominant KM

processes, but also their environment and

influence factors

Tissen et al (1998) identifies the operative

level of knowledge management beside

strategic level At operative level, human

actors and knowledge distribution systems

are connected, while the goal of strategic

level is to synthesise the relationship

among the business strategy, knowledge

workers and supportive organisational

structures and processes

Wiig (1999) concentrates on the strategic

level, and identifies 4 strategic approaches

of knowledge management efforts that are

rarely combined The four areas are the

information management/information

technology (IM/IT), intellectual asset,

people and enterprise effectiveness focus

The IM/IT and people focused approaches

clearly determine the used tools and

solutions, while the other approaches are

open for every possibility

In the model of Stankosky (1999) the internal and external success factors of

KM are identified Based on Bixler (2002) all of the presented 4 factors have to be implemented in order to provide successful knowledge management practice Researches emphasise the role

of supportive IT solutions, organisational structures and processes, leadership, climate and business culture and organisational learning possibilities Similarly Lai and Chu (2000) analysed the influence factors of knowledge (especially distribution) processes The research identified technology as the most powerful factor, but the different management solutions (metrics, incentive system, leadership, values and culture) are also important

The common of the holistic models is the combined analysis of different KM tasks and possible influence factors Rubenstein-Montano et al (2001) emphasised the importance of the system thinking approach, in which case KM efforts have to support business goals

1.1 Socio-technical roots of KM

There is an endless discussion about the role of technologies (especially IT) in knowledge management between researchers and practitioners While Daugherty denies the determinative role of technologies, Michael J Turillo argues for the basic role of it (Hildebrand, 1999) Some researchers are trying to synthesise the different opinions, by emphasising the importance of technologies, but also pointing out that technology itself is not able to create working processes and

behaviour (Junnarkar and Brown, 1997;

Gubley, 1998, B gel, 1999)

Based on partly this discussion Sveiby

(1998) identified the human-focused and

IT-focused KM approaches In a research

of consultancies Hansen et al (1999)

realised the practical appearance of these

approaches in KM strategies that were

identified by personalisation (emphasis on

face-to-face knowledge sharing) and

codification strategies (emphasis on using

IT and representation efforts) The

research presented, that consultancies

have to concentrate either on the

strategies, and efforts of equal

combination can lead to failure

The research of Truch and Bridger (2002)

presented, that organisations, which have

successfully implemented knowledge

management practice used a combination

of personalisation and codification

strategies Other authors also argue that

combined strategies effect higher

efficiency (Wiig, 1999; Adelmann and

Jashapara, 2003), and pose the question

whether this obligatory choice is only the

specialty of consultancies? Or, having

both side right, organisations have to start

with either strategies, and later they are

developing the other side, and achieving

the balanced practice?

The combination of technological and

organisational solutions has an origin of

labour researches in the 1950s, when the

Tavistock Institute studied the English

coal-mining industry, in which there were

problems with productivity after introducing

new technologies (Trist, 1978) The

research presented, that using

technological solutions is not independent

of human and social aspects The problem

is that both technological and social sides

ignore each other, while the combination is

required Rubenstein-Montano et al (2001)

argues for the importance of system

thinking approach of knowledge

management practices, where every factor

is counted The question is, whether the

theory of socio-technical systems is also

working in the case of modern technology

supported KM practices?

1.2 Change management and KM

In the research of Tavistock Institute the

introducing of new technology has strong

impact on the organisation, working life

and excepted behaviour Knowledge

projects are also changing organisations: introducing a knowledge management practice requires the change of daily routine, behaviour, and often the processes and organisational structures Therefore, it is required to take the theories of change management into consideration There are several researches that analysed the different approaches and success factors of changes

The classical research of Kotter (1995) analysed the possible failure factors of change processes, and identified 8 steps

of the change management process The required condition is the feeling of urgency for change that is able to start the change process by giving power to step out of the status quo The other steps are the followings: forming a good team (supportive coalition), create a vision of change, communicate the vision, remove obstacles, change fast (create short term wins), consolidate results and keep on changing while embedding changes into culture

Employees usually resist change, because they have to give up the usual processes

of work and behaviour, and they have to form a new personal contract with the organisation In order to achieve the commitment of employees, executives must define new terms of employment relationship in 3 dimensions (Strebel, 1996): formal dimension (job description, tasks and processes, relationships, compensation), psychological dimension (equity of work and compensation) and social dimension (unwritten rules, values) Employees have to be persuaded to accept the changes in these dimensions, otherwise they will resist, block the changes or leave the organisation

The changes of the environment pressurise organisations for renewal, adaptation, but in continuous change employees become exhausted, that can destroy organisations Abrahamson (2000) the approach of dynamic stability, in which organisations change by little steps, based

on the development of existing practices and processes

Hirschhorn (2002) suggests, that change processes should be organised not as one big task, but divided into three tightly linked but still different approaches: the

political approach includes the coalition

forming and change of the organisational

structure; the marketing approach involves

key employees and listens their ideas, and

the military approach provides the

attention and the commitment of

managers by building insurgent initiatives

These approaches should run

simultaneously in order to achieve

success

To summarise the recent researches of

change management, beside the

important role of managers of

organisations to conduct change, the

importance of the employees themselves

increased Especially in the case of

knowledge intensive companies,

knowledge workers want to be part of

decisions and changes, they want to

understand the reasons and possibilities

(Kim and Mauborgne, 2003; Tampoe,

1993) To involve employees, the role of

fair communication and trust increases,

and by achieving the support of

employees, culture is more likely to

change

2 Research framework

For successful competition, based on the

knowledge assets of an organisation, the

conscious management of this strategic

resource is required (Zack, 1999)

Knowledge management strategy of

organisations defines the utilisation of

knowledge required for supporting and

accomplishing organisational strategy (von

Krogh et al, 2000) It includes the goals of

knowledge management together with the

tools, methods and approaches to

accomplish it

Developing knowledge management

practice of an organisation can be based

on either the threats of external factors

(increasing competition, better practice of

competitors, etc.) that pressurise the

behaviour of the organisation or internal

initiatives that provides opportunities to be

the best in the market, or to prepare

proactively for future threats Knowledge

management strategy consists of either

external factors or the internal possibilities

of organisations (Zack, 2000) Nonaka and

Toyama (2003) argue that a knowledge

management strategy is the reflection for

the internal possibilities and external

position of an organisation

Knowledge management processes can characterised by their purpose: assessing and mapping knowledge assets (Stewart, 1997; Sveiby, 1997; Klimkó, 2002), leverage knowledge (sharing, transfer and use – Szulanski, 1996; Weggeman, 1999)

or developing knowledge (creating new knowledge, organisational learning – Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Argyris, 1992; Pemberton and Stonehouse, 2000)

Knowledge management strategies can be developed based on different approaches: existing knowledge of organisation can be exploited or new knowledge can be acquired and developed (von Krogh et al, 1994; Hedlund, 1994; Volberda, 1996); personalisation or codification (Hansen et

al, 1999); conservative or aggressive strategies (Zack, 1999) Earl (2001) and Klimkó (2001) organised the different approaches into schools Independently of the used approach, knowledge management strategy of an organisation has to appear in organisational and technical architecture (Zack, 1999)

Technological solutions provide the possibility of effective management of codified (store, process, transfer) knowledge Information and communication technologies (ICT) decrease the barriers of knowledge sharing and transfer (Hendriks, 1999) Although IT solutions (knowledge management support systems - KMSS) have a key role of supporting KM practices, management understanding of their possibilities and limits is also required (Liebowitz, 2001) There are several possibilities to support KM processes: creating knowledge by data-mining systems (Fayyad and Stolorz, 1997); discovering knowledge by intelligent agents (Malone et al, 1997); supporting cooperation, coordination and communication (Gábor, 1997); using knowledge repositories (Simon, 2001) or applying expert systems (Liebowitz and Beckman, 1998)

The several possible supportive factors of organisational solutions are widely discussed in the general management, and KM literature Researches presented, that even each of the general management factors can have affect to

KM practices: Organisational structure can

be a barrier of effective use of KM efforts, therefore conscious reorganisation, new

structures and new roles are required

(Spender, 1996) Human resource

management activities have to face the

more important selection of valuable and

appropriate employees, the different

motivation factors of knowledge workers,

and also the increased requirements of the

management (Woodruffe, 1992; Tampoe,

1993) Banks (1999) emphasises the

importance of the supportive culture of KM

processes, which hardly have to be based

on trust (Huemer et al, 1998) Guns (1998)

argues for the role of leadership, the role

of the managers, their behaviour that

employees can follow, and what is able to

motivate them

In order to measure the effectiveness of

any practice or process, a well-defined

measurement system is required, with

feedback possibilities (Ahmed et al, 1999)

Measurement can include the monitoring

of performance indicator, analysis of

process effectiveness, questioning

workers in the KM system

Reviewing the literature of Knowledge Management several factors can be identified, which has impact of the effectiveness of KM activities (figure 1.)

Lai and Chu (1999) identify them as knowledge influences, Handzic and Jamieson (2001), likewise Chauvel and Despres (2002) name them as enablers of knowledge management activities

Based on the presented research framework this paper analyse, which of the presented factors have impact on knowledge management practices in consultancies and what is their relationship with each other, with special regard to the technology-management relations The paper explores the connection between supportive factors of change management and knowledge management practice, in order to discover whether the factors those are required for change projects are also required for continuous KM practices

Figure 1: Enablers of KM - Research framework

3 KM practice development at

consultancies

This study is part of a research, which

examines the knowledge management

practice of some consultancies in Hungary Consulting companies are typically knowledge-intensive organisations, transferring external

knowledge to their customers by providing

solutions (Apostolou and Mentzas, 1999)

Consultancies sell the expertise and

knowledge by their well-educated

employees, which are based on the past

experience, competence and knowledge

of newly hired employees, and newly

gained experiences from accomplished

tasks at the customers Consultants not

only provide knowledge for customers, but

also develop the knowledge base of their

own companies by processing

experiences Consultancies were not only

the pioneers of popularisation of the idea

of knowledge management, but also the

first investors to knowledge management

solutions for themselves (Wiig, 1997)

In this part two consulting companies are

presented, which have been selected by

their characteristics The selection of

organisations is not accidental: these

companies used radically different

approaches to introduce their KM

practices Although there are similar

companies, the presented organisations

have some unique and interesting

features Information gathering has been

accomplished by personal interviews of

members of organisations, observation

and document analysis Owing to the

request of organisations for anonymity,

names are altered During the

presentation of cases, the different

aspects of organisations are compared

and later discussed

3.1 Overview of the researched

cases

Both companies are dominant players of

Hungarian IT and Management consulting

sector, and therefore they are competitors

of each other IT-Consult 1 is an

international consulting company, of which

IT-consulting department at the Hungarian

office were examined, that provides

different IT and management solutions

(information and e-business strategy, IS

audit, selection, etc.), beside classical

consultant activities The organisation is

the result of the merger of two

international consulting companies in the

1

In the research, four organisations (having both

personalisation and codification KM strategies) were

deeply analysed, and some other to complement

findings For this paper two characteristic cases were

selected in order to prevent repetition of very similar

features of some cases that were based on applied

KM strategies In some aspects the similarities are so

strong that cases are easily interchangeable by

accident

middle of 1990s One of the former companies was among the pioneers introducing their own KM system, and this – mainly technological – approach became the basis of the common system of the unified organisation The goal of knowledge management practice is to support the project works, and the personal education

The history of MR Consulting started like

many of the privately owned consulting companies It was founded just before the merger of IT-Consult, with around 10 experienced employees and with a charismatic leader, who formerly worked for international consulting companies – now competitors The organisation focuses on the IT and Management consulting activities (strategy, system development, selection), and it is a viable competitor of IT-Consult Over the years the company became a dominant player of the Hungarian market with over 100 employees The vision of the founder was

an open, tolerant culture, where employees can count on each other The goal of the not totally conscious knowledge management approach is to share experience based knowledge to support the work of each others

3.2 KM strategies

In the case of IT-Consult one of the two merged companies started to develop its knowledge management practice in the mid-1990s In its approach, the organisation standardised and centralised the processes The knowledge management approach was characterised

by a very intensive use of technological solutions: building centralised knowledge base, to support the geographically dispersed employees by providing the possibility to log in to the global network

Both before and after the merger, it was highly important to consciously manage the knowledge assets of the company By having a knowledge management program, this company was among the pioneers involved knowledge management

to their daily, operative practice Having a

KM practice provided the possibility to strengthen the competitive status of the organisation The knowledge base stored the formalised experiences of employees, detailed project and tendering information, and external information about markets,

industries, tendencies and solutions,

provided by international researchers

The knowledge management practice was

not so conscious in the case of

MR-Consulting: starting from the foundation,

the company relied on the expertise of its

employees Almost all of the employees of

the new organisation had experience at

consulting companies and had outstanding

personal skills and competences Because

of the starting size of the company,

personal knowledge sharing was the most

efficient solution: everybody knew not only

everybody, but also the work they were

doing

Over the years of expansion this approach

was applied generally, coordinated by the

HR department Personal communication

and knowledge sharing had priorities The

management of MR Consulting knew, that

expertise was required to be a viable

competitor on the local market, and later

on the international market, and

emphasised the development of every

employees

3.3 Technological issues

IT-Consult has built a central knowledge

base that is in fact a centralised document

management system, using the very

popular Lotus Notes solutions, and

accessible through intranet from every part

of the company, and also for executives

even from outside In this system

databases store industry, market and

service specific project and personal

experience, solutions Beside international

information, regions and even countries

have also local information Databases are

searchable by different conditions and

refreshed regularly Employees receive

information about the continuous renewal

of databases

Because of the followed approach of

MR-Consulting, there was no heavy

investment into technological solution

Projects were partly documented in

structured directories on a central server

of a company, but it was only reachable in

the HQ office There were also some

prepared templates to support the

tendering process Unfortunately the

widest information source, the access to

the Internet was restricted to employees:

the company gave preference for using

the existing external knowledge

3.4 Organisational issues

3.4.1 Organisational structure

As a common practice of consulting companies, both analysed organisations have a project-oriented organisational structure Although the hierarchical structure of them builds up as the carrier way of employees (junior and senior consultant, manager and partner – or similar equivalent positions) the project structure is temporary, and partly independent

IT-Consult organised its basic structure as

a matrix organisation: groups of services and groups and industries In the case of

MR Consulting neither this matrix solution, nor any formal grouping solution did not exist Since the beginnings, the company acted as a big family, without formal divisions

While IT-Consult emphasised the formal presence of KM activities in the structure,

MR Consulting had neither formal supportive, nor co-ordinating unit In MR Consulting every KM related task belonged to the HR department, based on the nature of the tasks IT-Consult organised a central knowledge group, to support KM activities by structuring and developing existing knowledge, and providing training possibilities The task of this group was the promotion of the use of the KM solution

The only supportive solution in MR Consulting was rather communication than structural solution: in order to have the actual information about ongoing projects and works, weekly/2- weekly organisational meetings were conducted The role and effectiveness became questionable, because the number of employees was increased and participation became voluntary

3.4.2 Culture

Although one of the most basic values of IT-Consult is the importance of knowledge and knowledge sharing, this value was rather noticed in the Hungarian office Employees accepted the use of the knowledge base, but they have no motivation to submit new documents, formalised experiences As in many other companies, spending time with formalisation of documents was rather like

punishment than accepted and honoured

work

Having a knowledge-base provided an

easier possibility of work: employees

searched and find the required

documents, and used these documents to

create their own documents It was easier

just to “copy and paste” parts, than

process the information combined by

personal ideas and experience to provide

a unique and tailor-made solution This

behaviour is very common although not

everybody does it: “To start a new work,

the easiest way is to check past works,

finished projects It is quite common to

rewrite or to specify old documents, which

is simpler [than creative work] Personal

ideas used in the work, but personal

experiences sometime have the impact

This process is the combination of existing

sources, but the result is unique”, argues

an employee

In the case of MR Consulting, the above

mentioned problem does not exist,

because there is no common knowledge

base, and possibility for stowaway

behaviour The basis of the culture is

openness The HQ is a huge open-plan

office, where parts are separated by

glass-walls, but except executive there are

neither personal offices, nor stable desks

or computers Therefore employees can

work surrounded by other persons every

day, that supports knowledge sharing,

although employees on same project are

working together

Not only the office, but also employees

have openness: if an employee has a

problem, he is free to ask every other

person (even an executive), and surely will

receive answer or help This kind of

behaviour, as value deeply embedded in

the organisational culture that supports

true knowledge sharing Because of the

expansion of the company, a lot of

employees are working outside of HQ

office, and not often visits at all, that make

this personal communication with the

required persons hard, even impossible

3.4.3 Leadership

Executives of the Hungarian department of

IT-Consult accept the knowledge

management solution, and they are

satisfied, and ready to promote it It is a

common belief, that the technological

solution solves everything, therefore there

is no need of additional heavy management commitment Although executives encourage employees to use the system, there is no monitoring of use,

or transparent support

Comparing to this passive behaviour, MR Consulting CEO is a very charismatic and very committed person, likewise other executives Openness and open offices are not only empty phrases for employees, but a living practice Employees can see this behaviour and they are ready to follow

it Although executives are always ready to help, to provide support, they are also the persons, who resist changes

3.4.4 Human research management

As at many big, international companies, the fluctuation rate is rather high in IT-Consult, and it is the continuous danger of

loosing expertise and required skills “This

is a sensible problem for our company”,

realised an employee IT-Consult recruits new employees from universities, mainly fresh graduates with good abilities in learning and adaptation Employees are developed by group trainings and through e-Learning solutions The promotion of employees based on hierarchical and self-assessment, but the carrier way is either promotion or leaving the company (up-or-out solution), that provides a very hard internal competition and encumbers cooperation

People at MR Consulting believe in long employment, and the fluctuation rate

life-is lower than at other consulting companies The organisation is looking for fresh graduates and also for experts One very important condition of offering a job is the acceptance of the existing organisational culture Employees are developed continuously by having a more experienced mentor, but also with tailor made trainings Promotions are based on very detailed 360° appraisal solution, but there is no direct pressure for compulsory advancement There are very valuable employees, who do not prefer the management carrier way (to become manager or partner), but there is a possibility to have a carrier as experts

3.4.5 Motivation

Neither of the companies has additional incentive system to motivate their employees to use the available knowledge

management solution In the case of

IT-Consult it is not even part of the

performance appraisal, and there is no

measurement The motivation is only the

challenging job, honour of society and

experience MR Consulting offers an open

culture, in which the basic value is

knowledge sharing Beside this, personal

behaviour, and openness and knowledge

sharing is measured in performance

appraisal, and basis of advancement

3.5 Performance analysis

Neither of the presented companies have

a conscious performance monitoring

solution for the knowledge management

processes that is a main problem The

miss of process assessment and feedback

generates a long-term problem: the

solutions can be wrong or can become

outdated without control or review In the

case of IT-Consult, the employees realise

the problems relating to the KM

processes, but there is no direct platform

or channel to give feedback In the case of

MR Consulting, the charismatic, but less

flexible leader could be a barrier of faster,

comprehensive development Because the

presented KM solutions are successful at

present, there is no motivation the deeply

change the system, and the miss of

performance analysis is a long-term

problem that will arise years later

knowledge management

The analysed cases are presenting pure

codification and personalisation strategies

(table 1) During the development and use

their KM solutions, problems were

identified at both companies, and harder

pressure to change In fact, problems were

not easy to identify, because there was no monitoring and assessment system for KM applied in either companies Despite of every problem, both companies are absolutely successful in competition, and has good image among customers

The history of IT-Consult is started with a change: a merger The merger was a several year long process by integrating the business, organisational and IT systems, customer-base and provided services This change was initiated at the top, and the highest levels of the merging organisations were committed, and employees also accepted it as an answer

to the market pressures The change continued by the firm wide introducing of the central knowledge management system (knowledge-base) In this case, although the local management was committed, this commitment was not transparent enough to act, and employees were not involved into the introduction process Even, this solution was centrally developed and the introduction was centrally conducted, therefore employees

in the local office did not feel, that this solution belongs to them The change process of introducing the KM system did not defined new formal terms of employment in any dimensions (cf Strebel, 1996), therefore employees did not feel high pressure to change, while the only effort was the marketing campaign of the central KM group Another possible problem was the overlapping changes of merger and introducing company-wide

KM Despite of every problem, employees believe and accept that the existing KM system is good, but they do not see how they can be the part of it, and there are no signs and support to show them

Table 1: Comparing cases

KM Strategy Codification

Exploit Internal and external knowledge Pioneer

Voluntary

Personalisation å Combined Exploit

Internal knowledge Follower

E-learning, group trainings

“Up-or-out” promotion Hierarchical and self-appraisal

Low level of fluctuation Selection both graduates and experts Personalised internal and external trainings, mentoring

Alternative carrier-way for experts 360° appraisal

IT-Consult MR-Consulting

- Motivation

No incentives Challenging job, experience, honour

of society Not part of performance appraisal

No incentives Motivation by leadership and culture Part of performance appraisal

- Structure

Projects Groups of Industry and Service Matrix

Projects Organisation as a family

Off-work relationships

management Technological Issues Intranet

Marketing campaign

No new terms of employment Passive management commitment

No involvement of employees Overlapping changes

Change: developing KM practice

External and internal factors to change Initiated by employees

Passive opposition of management

The KM practice of MR Consulting was

stable for many years But as the company

expanded old solutions became harder to

perform: face-to-face communication is

hard if the expert of a problem should be

searched among over 100 employees,

even if most employees are in HQ office

only for a few hours a week Although

there was the constant need for

knowledge change, the existing system

could not provide the same efficiency, as

before MR Consulting was changing, but

was not consciously changed Originally

formulated processes and organisational

structure is not suitable any more for a

bigger company, and employees realised

it during their daily activities Changes

initiated in the low level of organisation in

order to develop new solutions, but there

was no central coordination of these

activities, and any initiative was judged

separately One initiative was to develop

the internal IT system of the company, and

beside the project controlling system the

roots of a future expert competence map

solution was developed

MT Consulting had to face stronger

competition during recession, and as the

company realised the bigger and bigger

need to maintain its critical knowledge

more effectively, after heavy arguments in

the management the organisational

structure changed: the technological and

management consulting profiles was

formally separated, under different

management and divisions of services were created In these organisational forms the formerly less respected experts had a bigger role The management had to realise, that the half-conscious management of knowledge is not enough any more, further steps are required The daily use of competence map and the collection and codification of existing internal knowledge started MR Consulting applied suitable organisational solutions to support personalisation KM strategy The practice is dominated by an extremely strong and deeply embedded organisational culture It is questionable, that this culture is able to support another approach, because in the case of codification solutions, there are no direct feedback and honour from colleagues that could be a lowering factor of motivation for knowledge sharing These changes were mostly conducted by the lower level of organisation, but supporting employee initiatives was already part of the organisation, although it was not common

to change the principles of the company

In both cases there is a strong barrier the lack of using conscious change management in order to support new and changing knowledge management processes The applied change management solutions are not exactly efficient, there are several barriers in both cases (lack of management support, lack

of feedback, lack of employees

involvement, etc) Until now, the presented

companies are successful; therefore there

is no motivation of deeper changes The

danger of this comfortable behaviour is

that the reactive solutions could be more

expensive and difficult In the case of MR

Consulting, the firs slowly changes were

indicated by external factors, which is

already an example of this danger

5 Conclusions

Both companies had very characteristic

KM approach Either of the companies

concentrated mostly on one side of the

presented framework (figure 1), while

neglected the investment of the other side

of the model IT-Consult has a very strong

codification strategy, and realised it by

using a well developed IT solution

Unfortunately there was no focus on

organisational issues MR Consulting is

almost the inverse: although the

personalisation approach of managing

knowledge was only half-conscious, the

supporting organisational solutions were

almost perfect: knowledge sharing culture,

open leadership, good HR politic and

motivated employees

In order to remain competitive and to have

a more efficient (or at least suitable) KM

practice, it seems that both companies

need higher emphasis on the other side of

the model These enablers are able to

support other solutions The expansion of

KM enablers is a change process and it is

focusing on the less used side of the

model, which could have the risk of

neglecting the already good working

solutions At the time of the research, both

companies were successful, therefore the

applied KM strategies were successful, but

there are hidden problems in the working

of KM practice, that were explores in this

research, and that could endanger the

long term efficiency

5.1 Review of research framework

related to cases

Hansen et al (1999) argued for the

compulsory option of codification and

personalisation strategies These cases

present that it is easier to start a KM

practice by using only one strategy and

focusing on one side of the research

framework, while it is hard and risky to

involve the alternative approach The

cases also present that neglecting other

solutions, or only just neglecting the other

side of the model is not suitable for term

long-Using the codification approach means emphasis on technological solutions, but

as the experience of socio-technical systems presented, organisational factors are also important IT-Consult needs to concentrate on organisational solutions (culture, behaviour, HRM) in order to support existing practice that can lead to stronger communication and cooperation between employees, which are the roots

of personalisation approach Using the personalisation approach means emphasis on organisational solutions, especially personal communication, culture and trust, but technological solutions can even support this strategy, e.g by using knowledge maps MR Consulting needs to develop IT solutions

in order to support geographically dispersed employees, which are unable to communicate in an effective way It is clear, that the rule of socio-technical system is true in these cases: even if a company concentrates on technological solutions, it has to create the organisational background of the usability

5.1.1 Assessment

The different enablers in the research framework are usable to analyse different cases, in order to compare them, how these enablers have been used, and what

is their impact The presented two cases allowed to understand and deeply explored the working of these enablers, as required in an explanatory research

There are also several problems in the change management practice of organisations First of all, neglecting the principles of change management: managers are not committed, not really leaders of changes, not involving employees Leadership and cultural change are basic factors of change processes that are also basic enablers of

KM activities Without good change management, there are also problems with knowledge management activities: factors, that are important to change the organisation, later are required to support

KM activities

In the presented cases, companies have successfully developed their initial knowledge management program, those were successful for several years

However it has to be realised that old

solutions are not last forever, and without

the help of conscious change

management, these achievements could

be lost

Companies have to be prepared to change

the already deeply embedded solutions,

that can be another problem factor Heavy

concentration on one solution makes

almost impossible to open for another

approach, and by expanding the KM

approach (and practice) employees will

not retain old solutions, but instead

replace them with the new one

Organisations, which are open to other

approaches, and which are developing

their own practice in order to be able to

expand it, have more possibilities to a

successful change of their KM practice

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ISSN 1479-4411 33 ©Academic Conferences Ltd

Data Mining as a Technique for Knowledge

Management in Business Process Redesign

Olusegun Folorunso 1 and Adewale O Ogunde 2

Abstract: Business Process Redesign (BPR) is undertaken to achieve order-of-magnitude

improvements over ‘old’ form of the organisation Practitioners in the academia and business world have developed a number of methodologies to support this competitive restructuring that forms the current focus of concern, many of which have not been successful This paper suggests the use of Data Mining (DM) as a technique to support the process of redesigning a business by extracting the much-needed knowledge hidden in large volumes of data maintained by the organization through the DM models

Keywords: Data Mining, Knowledge Management, Business Process Redesign, Business

re-engineering, Artificial Neural Networks

1 Introduction

Knowledge Managers in any organization

need to integrate Information Systems

Strategies with Business Strategies in

order to attain their vision and mission

.The dividend yield a victory over their

competitors through connection and

interaction with their environment

Therefore, performing surgery on

management overhead does not need to

be macheted in a dark room instead it

requires transparency as suggested by

Strassmann (1995) First, one must gain

acceptance from those who know how to

make the organization work well Second,

the organization must elicit their

cooperation in telling them where the

cutting will do the least damage Third,

employees must be willing to share with

the organization insights about the

removal of an existing business process

that will improve customer service

The redesigning of an organization's

processes is variously called business

engineering, business process

re-engineering, business process design,

business redesign and so on A useful

working definition of BPR is given in Smith

(1996) as the fundamental rethinking and

radical redesign of an entire business - its

processes, jobs, organizational structure,

management systems, values and beliefs

BPR helps rethinking a process in order to

enhance its performance Academics and

business practitioners have been

developing methodologies to support the

application of BPR principles However,

most methodologies generally lack actual guidance on deriving a process design thereby threatening the success of BPR (Selma et al, 2003) Indeed a survey has proved that 85% of BPR projects fail or experience problems (Crowe et al, 2002) Data Mining (DM) is a field that has recently attracted the attention of various researchers and organisations According

to Mena (1999) “Data Mining is the process of discovering actionable and meaningful patterns, profiles and trends by sniffing through your data using pattern recognition technologies such as neural networks, machine learning and genetic algorithms” DM tools can answer business questions that traditionally were too time consuming to resolve They search databases for hidden patterns, finding predictive information that experts may miss because it lies outside their expectation

Given the amount of management attention that has been devoted to the notion of BPR, it is not surprising that a number of tools and techniques (both human and computer based) have emerged to support it Tools that support BPR can conveniently be categorized into two sets: those that help analyze and model the business from a process perspective, and those that help plan the workflow of the business Any or all of these tools may be supported in software The need to deploy Data Mining Technique to BPR was carried out, and it was discovered that the hidden knowledge

generated by Data Mining tools can serve

as a basis for knowledge managers in

organizations to redesign the whole

business process so as to suite the current

business development and challenges and

to remain at competitive level with other

business organisations

Therefore, in this study the following

research questions need to be

3 Do you for see any relationship that

may exist between DM and BPR?

4 How are relevant BPR data obtained?

5 What categories of Knowledge

Managers will use DM techniques for

BPR?

6 What are the likely consequences, if

DM succeed, making BPR a good KM

tool?

We begin in section 2 by defining

knowledge management (KM) and

specifying KM strategies Section 3 briefly

overviews Data Mining (DM) techniques

as a major tool in our study In section 4,

we outline factors, importance and

mistakes of BPR Section 5 presents a

framework for data mining as a technique

for knowledge management in Business

Process Redesign Finally in section 6, we

synthesize those expectations into a set of

conclusions

2 Knowledge Management (KM)

Knowledge is an expensive commodity,

which if managed properly is a major asset

to the company Knowledge is a complex

and fluid concept It can be either explicit

or tacit in nature Explicit knowledge can

be easily articulated and transferred to

others In contrast tacit knowledge, which

is personal knowledge, residing in

individual’s heads, is very difficult to

articulate, codified and communicate

(Gupta and McDaniel, 2002) Although KM

has achieved a level of popularity among

firms worldwide, it has no unique or

standardized definition For the purpose of

this paper, we define KM as a systematic

process of finding, selecting, organizing,

distilling and presenting knowledge in a

way that improves the organization’s

interest A key objective of KM is to ensure

that the right knowledge is available at the

right time in a manner that enables timely decision-making (Hariharan, 2002)

KM encompasses the way that organizations function, communicates, analyze situations, come up with novel solutions to problems and develop new ways of doing business It can also involve issues of culture, custom, values and skills

as well as relationships with suppliers and customers

Wiig (1997), in his work said that organizations might pursue five different knowledge management (KM) strategies:

1 KM as business strategy

2 Intellectual asset business strategy

3 Personal knowledge asset responsibility strategy

4 Knowledge creation strategy and

5 Knowledge transfers strategy

This paper presents business organizations with data mining techniques

as an approach that supports such knowledge creation, sharing and transfer mechanisms

3 Data Mining techniques

Data Mining, the extraction of hidden predictive information from large databases, is a powerful new technology with great potential to help companies focus on the most important information in their data warehouses Data mining tools predict future trends and behaviours, allowing businesses to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions Most companies already collect and refine massive quantities of data The application areas of DM as contained in recent literatures as corroborated in Jiawei (2003) include: medical treatment/disease symptoms identification, retail industry, telephone calling patterns, DNA sequences, natural disaster, web log click stream, financial data analysis, bio-informatics, melody track selection, content-based e-mail processing systems, analyzes of data from specific experiments conducted over time, analysis of nation's

census database, and so on

DM techniques can be implemented rapidly on existing software and hardware platforms to enhance the value of existing information resources, and can be integrated with new products and systems

as they are brought on-line

There are three groups of DM users

namely, Application users, Designers and

Theorists It is usually common that the

theorists based on some principal

assumptions usually formulate new ideas

Therefore, some users are primarily

interested in this group

Those concerned with the application of

DM such as knowledge Managers which

as a direct result of their interest in DM

research and design they are referred to

as the 'DM researcher /designer' Finally,

the respondents concerned primarily with

the using or solving problems, for which

DM offered an effective approach, are

referred to as the "DM application group

The most commonly used techniques in

data mining are:

1 Artificial Neural Networks: this is a

non-linear predictive model that learns

through training and resembles

biological neural networks in structure

2 Decision trees: tree-shaped structures

that represent sets of decisions These

decisions generate rules for the

classification of a dataset

3 Genetic Algorithms: They are

optimization techniques that use

process such as genetics combination,

mutation, and natural selection in a

design based on concepts of evolution

It tries to mimic the way nature works

It is an adaptive heuristic search

algorithm premised on the evolutionary

ideas of natural selection and genetics

4 Rule Induction: the extraction of useful

if-then rules from data based on

statistical significance

5 Regression Methods: this tries to

identify the best linear pattern in order

to predict the value of one

characteristic we are studying in

relation to another

3.1 DM tasks

Some of the tasks solved by Data Mining

are:

1 Prediction: a task of learning a pattern

from examples and using the

developed model to predict future

values of the target variable

2 Classification: a task of finding a

function that maps records into one of

several discrete classes

3 Detection of relations: a task of

searching for the most influential

independent variables for a selected target variable

4 Explicit modeling: a task of finding explicit formulae describing dependencies between various variables

5 Clustering a task of identifying groups

of records that are similar between themselves but different from the rest

of the data

6 Market Basket Analysis: processing transactional data in order to find those groups of products that are sold together well

7 Deviation Detection: a task of determining the most significant changes in some key measures of data from previous or expected values

3.2 Benefits of DM techniques to web information management

A company or an organization encompassing data mining techniques can enjoy a number of benefits; these includes understanding customers’ behaviour, making a judgement on the effectiveness

of the company’s web site- if there is one, and benchmarking marketing campaigns (Doherty, 2000 & Mena, 1999)

2 Calculating the number of new customers coming to the company or their web site

3 3 Identify patterns relating either to navigation routes that customers follow

or to what they buy

4 Discover whom byes what and look for any cross-relationships between clients

3.2.2 Understanding the web site’s strong points

In this category, we can find the following benefits:

1 Developing a better layout of the company’s web site

2 Identifying popular and non-popular areas of the web site

3 Personalizing online advertisement

4 Business Process Redesign

(BPR)

When BPR is used carefully, it can take

organisations into a new realm of

competitive effectiveness However, the

redesign of individual processes will

always have a limited impact unless it is

implemented as part of a wider view of the

organization as a whole and that wider

view must take root into the corporate

culture According to Wendy (1997), this is

the difference between business

re-engineering and process re-re-engineering

since the first takes this wider perspective

while the second is far more focused

The purpose of this paper is to present a

data mining technique that would allow

business practitioners, senior managers

and decision makers in organisations to

extract useful, relevant, previously hidden

knowledge from the organisation’s

database which after careful management

of this knowledge yields the much

knowledge needed to actualize the

Business Process Redesign (BPR)

Ascari et al, (1995) found that certain

factors are common to all BPR initiatives

Common features are:

1 The need for IT solutions tailored to fit

the business

2 The focus on processes

3 The intent to use a pilot project

The importance of other factors however,

varied by whether the organization was

competitively successful or was in a crisis

situation Features strongly sought by

those in a competitive crisis were:

1 The need for a refocusing on the

customer

2 The need to create coherent incentive programme

3 An emphasis on training

4 The redefinition of jobs

5 The need for cross-functional teams

6 The move towards empowerment Kotter (1995) identified what he saw as the eight key mistakes that organisations engaged in BPR make They are:

1 Not establishing a great enough sense

For BPR, we suggest to use the framework described in figure 1 It is derived as a synthesis of the WCA (Work-Centred-Analysis) framework (Alter, 1999), the MOBILE workflow model (Jablonski and Bussler, 1996), the CIMOSA enterprise modeling views (Berrot and Vemadat, 2001) and the process description classes of (Seidmann and Sundarajan, 1997) In this framework, six elements are linked as shown in figure 1

Customers

Products

Business Process

Operation view

Behavioural view

Organisation

- Structure

- Population

Information Technology EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT

Figure 1: Framework for BPR implementation (Adapted from Selma et al, 2003)

4.2 Methodology

4.2.1 Sample

Surveys were administered to 207

Computer Science Students covering

some academic institutions in the

southwestern Nigeria

Participation in the data gathering exercise

was voluntary after the researchers had

explained the importance of the study to

the Students The participants returned

190 useable responses (64.9 % male,

35.1% female) and 16 questionnaires

either were not filled or contain missing

data Thus, the response rate was

92.27% All participants are in full-time

employment with University and Research

Institutes, Banks, Insurance, Ministries of

Science & Technology, Accounting and

Business Consultancy firms A total of 32

work organizations were represented, with

no more than nine participants from an

organization type The significance of this

heterogeneous sample is that the

respondents are not uniformly influenced

by the contextual constraints of any single

organization (Ronssean & Fried, 2001)

The mean age of the participants was

36.39 years (SD = 6.19 years), 74.3%

were married 68% of the respondents use

primary data as their source of BPR data while 32% rely on secondary data

The scale design phase of the questionnaire used focuses on construct validity and reliability, operational issues investigating whether the scales chosen are true constructs describing the events

or merely artefacts of the methodology itself (Campbell & Fiske ,1959 ; Cronbach, 1971) The process started by arranging the selected items in a questionnaire format in preparation for data collection The items were arranged in random order

to reduce bias The response options for some of the question items, anchored on a five-point Likert scale, ranging from (1) strongly disagree to; (5) strongly agree

4.3 Results and discussion

Due to the scope of this research work, all the respondents either have theoretical or practical knowledge of Data mining techniques Some criteria are used to determine knowledge manager's idea of

DM Their knowledge about relevant BPR data, theoretical or practical knowledge of

DM The Knowledge Manager's ability to describe any of these criteria gives him a score of one (1) mark So, a knowledge manager who can explain all two (2)

criteria has a score of (2) while one who

cannot explain any of the criteria has a

score of zero (0)

Table 1: Percentage distribution of KM

was on their knowledge of DM

As shown above, twenty-eight percent of

the respondents had very poor knowledge

of DM and thus scored zero

The majority of the respondents scored forty-one percent, while over seventy-two percent had above average knowledge of

DM

This implied that twenty-eight percent of respondents have below average knowledge of DM The more reason for having larger proportion having the DM knowledge is that most of the respondents work in IT department of their various organizations

Table 2: Analysis of respondent’s view on the use of DM for BPR

Questions

Strongly Disagree DisagreeNeutral Agree

Strongly Agree Total

1 I foresee a relationship that may exist

DM can affect the power within

the organization and the power

of the organization

In table 2 , it was discovered that 71.6% of

the respondents strongly foresee a

relationship between DM and BPR this a

greater proportion This called for more

research in this area while 57.4% of the

respondents strongly suspected

consequences when DM actually

succeeds in making BPR with KM This

will eventually affect the power within the

organization and the power of the

organization

5 The DM/BPR framework

In order to achieve our purpose for this

paper, it is very important to explain how

the DM/BPR tool shown in figure 2 will

extract and transfer the much-needed

knowledge necessary for implementing the

new business Data on past business

processes including vision, technology,

management, sales, services,

accountability and leadership is accumulated over time in a database A clear understanding of this is required after which careful examination and analysis is carried out to organize the data in order to suit our purpose The DM model (Algorithm) is then built which could be a neural network model, genetic algorithm model, association models, decision tree models, clustering model or regression models as the case may be The selected model is tested on the data to yield fruitful

DM results previously unknown to managers and decision makers in the organization The top managers and decision-makers take this new knowledge and implement on the BPR framework described in figure 1 to activate the new business process

Understand your Data

Examine the Data

Build the DM model

Test the model on Data

A new Business Process

Data on Past Business Processes

Figure 2: DM/BPR Framework

5.1 DM as a technique for

knowledge management in BPR

5.1.1 Getting the relevant data

As it was formerly stated that DM is the

extraction of hidden predictive information

from large databases, allowing businesses

to make proactive, knowledge-driven

decisions Most companies already collect

and refine massive quantities of data Data

management today is required of the

ability to extract interesting patterns from

large and raw data to help

decision-making The importance of collecting data

that reflect your business or scientific

activities to achieve competitive advantage

is widely recognized now Powerful

systems for collecting data and managing

it in large databases are in place in all

large and mid-range companies

However, the bottleneck of turning the

data into success is the difficulty of

extracting knowledge about the system

you study from the collected data For

instance, there is an unprecedented

growth of the use of World Wide Web for

commercial and scientific purposes in the past few years, most especially in the commercial sector where people are encouraged to conduct all their transactions online This coupled with the advances in communication technology resulted in the accumulation of data on the Internet This data, which indicates the user’s behaviour is kept in files specially,

created for that purpose called, log files

There is therefore need to extract meaningful but hidden patterns from these large files through data mining techniques

In a constantly changing business environment, people or managers in various departments of industries or organizations can make their organization become much more competitive if they could get this vital information about their customer’s habits

If this vital information is gotten by managers responsible for the promotion of company’s products, it would be possible

to apply direct marketing techniques to every customers so that no money is wasted in vain advertisement This could

also lead to the alteration of the

organization’s web page layout to suit the

new developments All these could be

achieved through data mining

According to the webopedia encyclopedia

of computing technology (The

Webopedia’s web site, 2000) a log file is

defined as “a file that lists actions that

have occurred” These files are generated

by servers – a computer or a device on a

network that manages network resources

– and contain a list of all requests made to

the server by the network’s users

Information in the log files has to be

written in a specific format that will

facilitate the analysis of the file and

instruct the computer as to how to read

and use it Log files are generated and

kept on web servers; there are a variety of

them in the market e.g Apache web

server (at the Apache server Website,

2000)

5.1.2 Examine the Data

In addition to the choice of the web server

to take care of the user’s requests, there

are a wide variety of options as to how the

data will be stored; that is, there are

varieties of formats in existence The

common log file formed would be

explained in this paper A typical entry of

this common log file format might look like

the line below:

83.172.199.21 - - [24/oct/2003:09:15:36 +

0100] “GET / ~ tom / business / P205 / src

/ TicTacTve / docs / Board view.html

HTTP / 1.0” 200 9436

The first field – 83.172.199.21 is the host

making the request (The Apache Webster,

2000: Perl Tutorial website, 2000), this is a

symbolic name and in the case it is not

available, the IP address of the site

making the request can be gotten

The second field is the login name of the

user who is making the request Most

servers may not give this for security

reasons, which is the reason why a dash (

– ) is recorded in the log file

The third field comprises the full name of

the person who is making the request, as

in the above case it is disabled in most

servers and a dash ( – ) is recorded Note

that if a request is made for a file that is

password – protected, then the user’s identity should appear in this field

The next entry in brackets comprises the data and the time the request was made and of the format dd/m/yyyy and hh:mm:ss respectively An obvious problem here is that of the number of different time zones around the world The time zone used is the Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

The next in a set of double quotes after which a request is made to the server through the relevant command GET After which we have the specific file request, which in the case of the above example is:

tom / business / P205 / src / TicTacTve / docs / Board view.html, under the directory

of tom

The next entry is the protocol – in which HTTP 1.0 is used in most cases The next entry is a three – digit code that shows the result of the request, that is, the success

or failure of the server to accommodate the request The first digit can take five values:

Table 3: The meaning of the first digit of

the status code (Adopted form Perl Tutorials website, 2000)

Value of first digit Meaning

1 Informational

2 Success

making the request

A number of sample codes and their meanings are shown below:

Table 4: Some status codes and their

meanings (Adopted from Perl Tutorials website, 2000)

Status code Description