Data, Information, and Knowledge, Essay Example

Introduction

Many people take knowledge as part of power which according to them it should rein forever. On the other side, some of the people take knowledge as something that needs to be shared among the sons and daughters or within an organization since no one knows what hold tomorrow. They take this sharing as natural. Sometimes times people do not like their fellow friends or relatives to have the knowledge they posses (Leonard & Swap, 2005).  But why do the do that? Let us look at some of the reasons as to why this selfishness of knowledge takes place. The first reason is that may be there is a manager who is the owner of the same job. The manager finds it difficult may be to share the top secretes of the company’s trade. If he or she tends to share it with the others, then the company might loss the trade secretes. Sometimes people do not like to learn new things from others but just to discover those things on their own (Leonard & Swap, 2005). This will means that if a person does things on his or her own, no sharing of knowledge have taken place. An individual might have knowledge on a certain problem within an institution but refuses to share it with other colleagues for getting that one day the same problem will face others when he or she will not be around. What should be understandable is that innovation comes as a result of combining knowledge from different individuals and the organization boundary.

Others do not like giving what they have since they do not trust one another. This comes as a result that when a person who has acquired knowledge passes it to another person, there will be no acknowledgement that he or she got the knowledge from someone else. The person takes the knowledge his or her own, which in return triggers the knowledge sharing. When someone has knowledge there area always many clients waiting for him or her to go and fix a certain problem for them. What I mean is that such a person never has any time to sit down with some of his friends to share hat new idea he or she has. The main reason the person gives is that he have a number of deadlines for the company to meet. May be an organization is comprised with people from different cultures, who tend to understand their own language. It causes lack of communication within the same organization and there will be no knowledge sharing since the individual might understand the knowledge on his or her own mother tongue. On another case, a person might understand something very well practically, but due to some of the psychological problems, the knowledge cannot be passed from one person to another (Leonard & Swap, 2005).

How to overcome the barriers of knowledge sharing

The situation can be dealt with accordingly by basing ourselves on the three Cs of knowledge sharing. These three Cs include Culture, Co-opetition and Commitment. To change a culture is not that simple. Therefore it is something that takes a lot of time. We can look at culture as one of the programming mind that differentiates one group from another. Sometimes it is easy to change someone’s culture. But before this, the fundamental underlying layers need to be addressed to be able to change the actions of a person. This change can be done through a group or any person who is ready to do it individually. Let us look at some of the activities that a group or an individual might use to plan or induce change (Skyrme, 2002). The first plan is to put an organization into questionnaires and interviews. This type of plan is known as the Culture audit which is helpful in getting out the differentiation within what is expressed as the desired culture and what is done. It is also advisable for the organization to check on the small cultures that conflict with the overarching goals of an institution. The people who find themselves hoarding knowledge needs to be challenged improper but avoiding the knowledge rage. Another case comes when other people like the newcomers are always discriminated on what they tend to share with others. For knowledge sharing to succeed every person should be involved and whatever such a person discusses with others should be taken with much care and can be used in the decision making of an organization. The group must identify those individuals who are the role models concerning the knowledge sharing and engage them with other groups through even celebrations. The group or individual should have a meeting regularly to improve and understand the internal process. Such kind of process is known as the development of organization session which is used to address the means of acquiring the successful outcomes. The rewards should be organized for those people who are well behaved and take most of their time sharing knowledge with the others. This is a kind of motivation where by every person will be competing for the reward hence there will be the automatic circulation of knowledge sharing (Skyrme, 2002).

Apart from culture, many of us are always eager to excel on something they do which can come as a result involving other people to know much. This takes us to the second three Cs of knowledge called Co-opetition. Therefore in anything done, there must be a competition which should be done on a healthy way (Skyrme, 2002). A person or organization must have several underway competing projects which must be followed by a mechanism to the exchange of knowledge and challenge. For the case of Co-opetition, a manager can come up with a competition regarding the Knowledge Champion of the Year which should be in attendance by everybody or any other prominent person having a word of encouragement on the advantages of knowledge sharing. The organization must set goals against external competitors instead of competing against other individuals.

The last C that we need to have is Commitment. The organization needs to put its commitment to change, culture, challenge, compete and to cooperate. It does not matter what the leaders of an organization do but without commitment to the knowledge sharing then the production will be always as low as their expectations (Skyrme, 2002).

The Value of Knowledge Management

The value of Knowledge Management communicates openly to the efficacy with which the managed knowledge permits the members of the organization to deal with the situations affecting today’s life and effectively foresee and make their future which depends on what the individual brings with them to the situation (Wiig, 2007).

Conclusion

Within every organization there must be a correspondence among the supporting infrastructure, objectives, process, structure and people. By this we can get that culture goes hand in hand with the roles and responsibilities. Above all, let the obvious losers of such competitions share in achievement, rejoice what they have accomplished, and make them feel that they are also part of the team that have won (Wiig, 2007).

References

Leonard, D., & Swap, W. (2005). The Knowledge Coach. HBS Working Knowledge. Retrieved 04/14/08. From the World Wide Web: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/4562.html

Skyrme, D. J. (2002). The 3Cs of Knowledge Sharing: Culture, Co-opetition and Commitment. I3 Update. Retrieved Nov. 2009, 2009. From http://www.skyrme.com/UPDATES/u64_f1.htm

Wiig, K.M. (N.D.). (2007) On the Management of Knowledge. The Wiig Group. Retrieved October 15, 2007. From http://www.km-forum.org/wiig.htm