Knowledge Management Methods, Essay Example

The following Knowledge Management Audit is based on Apple Company. Focusing on one of the best known, and most profitable global corporations, this audit is performed to evaluate the management, products, process, system, and overall organization. The goals of knowledge audits are to assess the organization’s knowledge health. Knowledge in today’s global economy can provide companies competitive advantage.  Knowledge management enables companies to enhance a company’s systems, increase potential growth and profits, embrace and leverage creativity, facilitate organizational learning. As Liebowitz et al. (2000, p. 3) suggest: “Some people view the knowledge audit as being the business needs assessment, cultural assessment, and an examination of what knowledge is needed, available, missing, applied, and contained”.  Knowledge audits do not provide companies with a quick fix solution, but an analytical process, in which consists of multidimensional and complex fact-finding systems. They provide qualitative and quantitative variables that relate to the ability and the knowledge to create business value effectively.

Steve Wozniak, Ronald Wayne, and Steve Jobs founded Apple in 1976 and introduced their first product: Apple I PC pack. Initially valued at $600, over the past 40 years the company has expanded their product lines, and have aggregated over $170billion income. (Market Watch, 2014).  The company’s Mission, Vision, and Value statement states that “”Apple is committed to bringing the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings” (Apple, 2014). Apple incorporates several factors of Knowledge Management within its organization; the reason for their success is in innovation, supported by KM’s fundamental core competency creation tools.

Apple’s existing infrastructure encourages the flow of knowledge, and the leadership promotes a supportive organizational culture, which utilizes IT to enable collaboration among all employees to create better products and improve customer service. Apple’s business strategy is in alignment with knowledge management. It is founded in Steve Job’s initial strategy focusing on developing and selling innovative products that blend technology and design, to offer streamlined and simple user experience.

Apple’s KM architecture and design consists of a seven-layer system. The main units of the network are case-based reasoning system, expert system, and data warehouse. Effective collaboration between different areas of business determines the quality of knowledge flow in the organization, such as an effective leveraging of the company’s infrastructure. Knowledge management has an impact on future strategies, and is able to highlight weaknesses, and strengths. In using Wiig’s (1993;1995) KM Cycle; build, hold, pool, and applying knowledge, as well as Rowley’s (2006) DIKW (Data Information Knowledge Wisdom) Apple effectively utilizes information to improve processes and customer outcomes. The company uses different data, such as facts,  information received from the public and from the employees in creating innovative products that increase Apple’s competitive advantage in the marketplace. Apple further obtains and reconstructs products that accumulate information, in order to coordinate the company’s mission and values, to perform the desired tasks. The shared knowledge of the organization is put to use in creating value for the company,  employees, and customers.

Apple’s strengths include their ability to create knowledge through their innovative products, such as the i Pad and other Apple products. They can maintain their competitiveness by making relevant changes to the business structure consistently, with the each new product release and update. Their ability to keep their product ideas secret is also one of the strengths of the management. It helps the company maintain customer loyalty, and the market leading position of Apple. Apple’s strength also lies in its large market share, which allows them to use a unique and hard to copy operating system that is built around customers.

One of the identified weaknesses of the company also lies in the fact that Apple products use a unique operation system.  Apple products’ limited compatibility with other OS devices impedes with the flow of knowledge. Their organizational culture of Apple can also be viewed as a weakness, because the constant change in management that affects the flow of information and data acquisition. Opportunities lying in Apple’s Knowledge Management include constantly improving technology, with the ability to improve the company’s IT infrastructure and collaboration systems.

Seeking other sources of innovation within the mobile enterprise market can help create more groundbreaking products and the breadth of applications that provide knowledge and value for consumers. By leveraging the existing organizational and product knowledge, future innovation will enhance the intelligence of the organization by developing a system that enables employees to improve their work processes, and improve their job satisfaction. Threats to these opportunities exist for the company in the weaknesses of change management, inadequate collaborative strategy, relying on artificial intelligence and the limited flexibility and scalability. Other outside threats include the advent of hacking into the systems, other companies duplicating Apple product features, and the lack of funding for the R&D teams. Based on this information, Apple can steadily improve their Knowledge management by evaluating their infrastructure, as well as their organizational structure to align with the business strategy and the innovative goals of the company.

References

Apple (2014). Mission Statement. Apple. Retrieved from http://www.apple.com

Liebowitz, J., Rubenstein-Montano, B., McCaw, D., Buchwalter, J., Browning, C., Newman, B. &Rebeck, K. (2000), The knowledge audit. Knowledge Process Management., 7: 3–10. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-1441

MarketWatch (2013).  Apple. Retrieved from http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/aapl/financials

Rowley, Jennifer & Hartley. Richard (2006). Organizing Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Wiig, K.M. (1995). Knowledge Management Methods: Practical Approaches to Managing Knowledge. Schema Press, Arlington, TX