Library Worklife

Volume 2, No. 6 • June 2005

HR Practice

The Importance of Knowledge Management Today

By Paula M. Singer PhD and Jeri E. Hurley, PHR

With so many employees in libraries today approaching retirement age, many libraries are becoming concerned about the knowledge gap that will exist between the retirees and the new employees who fill the positions. Most of the baby boomers that are approaching retirement have been loyal to their place of work and more than likely have been employed by the same library for many years. Over this span of time they have gained a wealth of knowledge about the library, the clientele, co-workers, the work processes and procedures, and how to function in their job the most efficient way. Has any of this knowledge been captured to pass on to the next employee and throughout the library to other employees so they will not have to start at ground zero again? Why lose all this knowledge that has taken someone many years to gain?

Knowledge management seeks to make the best use of the knowledge that is available to the library, while creating new knowledge in the process. Knowledge management should be about exploiting and realizing knowledge of the employees and building a culture where knowledge sharing can thrive. Throughout this process, the library will generate value from their intellectual and knowledge-based assets. Therefore, the library will continue to grow and prosper from the knowledge of employees throughout the library. This is also a great benefit for new employees replacing retirees within the library structure. Knowledge management is often facilitated by information technology, but technology itself is not knowledge management.

For hundreds of years, owners of family businesses have passed their commercial wisdom on to their children, master craftsmen have painstakingly taught their trades to apprentices, and workers have exchanged ideas and know-how on the job. Yet it wasn't until the 1990s that chief executives started talking about knowledge management. As the foundation of industrialized economies has shifted from natural resources to intellectual assets, executives have been compelled to examine the knowledge underlying their businesses and how that knowledge is used. At the same time the rise of networked computers has made it possible to codify, store and share certain kinds of knowledge more easily and cheaply than ever before. -- Debbie Coughlan, National Knowledge Management Director, Clayton Utz (Melbourne)¹

Not all information is valuable. Therefore, each library will need to determine what information qualifies as intellectual and knowledge-based assets. In general, however, intellectual and knowledge-based assets fall into one of two categories: explicit or tacit. Explicit assets are such things as technology plans, original specialized cataloguing, genealogy, and how to fix the 20-year-old HVAC system at central. As a general rule of thumb, explicit knowledge consists of anything that can be documented, archived, and codified. Much harder to grasp is the concept of tacit knowledge, or the know-how contained in employees' heads. The challenge inherent with tacit knowledge is figuring out how to recognize, generate, share, and manage it. While information technology in the form of e-mail, groupware, instant messaging, and related technologies can help facilitate the dissemination of tacit knowledge, identifying tacit knowledge, initially, is a major hurdle for most organizations.

By the early nineties, it was clear that there were two distinct branches of knowledge management. The first branch of knowledge management involves the capture of information and experience so that it is easily accessible. In this view knowledge management is an issue of information storage and retrieval through information technology. This had either little impact or a negative impact on the way in which knowledge was used.

The second branch of knowledge management gives priority to the way in which people construct and use knowledge. It recognizes that learning and doing are more important to organizational success than dissemination and imitation.

BENEFITS

Some benefits of knowledge management correlate directly to bottom-line savings, while others are more difficult to quantify. To get the most value from a library's intellectual assets, the knowledge must be shared and serve as the foundation for collaboration. Therefore, an effective knowledge management program should help the library do one or more of the following:

Cultivate innovation by encouraging the free flow of ideas
Improve customer service by streamlining response time
Improve employee retention rates by recognizing the value of employees' knowledge and rewarding them for it
Streamline operations and reduce costs by eliminating redundant or unnecessary processes

CHALLENGES

Even with the advantages of knowledge management, there are also challenges to knowledge management such as:

Getting Employees on Board
The major problems that occur in knowledge management usually result because organizations ignore the people and cultural issues. In an environment where an individual's knowledge is valued and rewarded, establishing a culture that recognizes tacit knowledge and encourages employees to share it is critical. The need to sell the knowledge management concept to employees should not be underestimated; after all, in many cases employees are being asked to surrender their knowledge and experience - the very traits that make them valuable as individuals.

An incentive program can be developed to encourage employees to buy in to the system, although this is not foolproof either. The ultimate goal is that employees will realize that knowledge management will make their jobs easier and more enjoyable. Then hopefully they will cooperate and share their knowledge.

Allowing Technology to Dictate KM
Although technology can support knowledge management, it is not the starting point of a knowledge management program. Make knowledge management decisions based on who (people), what (knowledge) and why (business objectives). Save the how (technology) for last.

Not Having a Specific Business Goal
A knowledge management program should be in line with the strategic plan and goals of the library. While sharing best practices is a commendable idea, there must be an underlying reason to do so.

Not Keeping Knowledge Updated
Since knowledge can get stale fast, the content in a knowledge management program should be constantly updated, amended and deleted. Also, the relevance of knowledge and the skills of current employees is always changing and evolving. Therefore, there is no endpoint to a knowledge management program.

Not All Information is Knowledge
Libraries need to be aware of compiling too much information. More information is not necessarily a good thing for the program. The point of this program is to identify and disseminate knowledge gems from a sea of information.

Realizing the importance of knowledge management is the beginning of the process. Once a successful program is put into place, the employees and the library should reap the benefits of utilizing the existing knowledge and capitalizing from the new ideas and knowledge gained from the program.

Learning Curves: An Introduction to Knowledge Management, Emerald Group Publishing. http://www.managementfirst.com/knowledge_management/curves/kmanagement.htm .

Dr. Singer and Ms. Hurley are with The Singer Group, Inc., a Human Resources Organization Design and Development consulting firm. They can be reached at pmsinger@singergrp.com or 410-561-7561. The Singer Group's website is www.singergrp.com.

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