A little knowledge that acts is worth
infinitely more than much knowledge
MIS 442
Knowledge Management
Chapter 2: The Knowledge Management Cycle
Learning Objectives
 Describe the KM life cycle
 Compare and contrast major KM life cycle models
 Define the key steps in each process of the KM cycle
 Identify the major challenges and benefits of each phase
of the KM cycle
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that is idle
— Khalil Gibran
Knowledge Management Cycle
 Effective knowledge management requires an organization
to identify, generate, acquire, diffuse, and capture the
benefits of knowledge that provide a strategic advantage
to that organization
 A clear distinction must be made between information —
which can be digitized — and true knowledge assets —
which can only exist within the context of an intelligent
system
Knowledge Management Cycle Major KM cycle processes
 Knowledge assets mainly reside within a human knower —
not the organization per se

 One of the major KM processes identifies and locates

knowledge and knowledge sources within the organization

 Valuable knowledge is then translated into explicit form

 In order to solve problems, make decisions, or otherwise act

based on the best possible knowledge base, networks,
practices, and incentives are instituted to:
 Facilitate person-to-person knowledge transfer
 Person–Knowledge content connections

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Meyer and Zack KM Cycle

 The Meyer and Zack KM cycle is derived from work on
the design and development of information products

 Information products are broadly defined as any

information sold to internal or external customers
Meyer and Zack
 Such as databases, news synopses, customer profiles, etc.
Knowledge Management Cycle

Meyer and Zack propose that research and knowledge

about the design of physical products can be extended into
the intellectual realm to serve as the basis for a KM cycle

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Meyer and Zack KM Cycle Meyer and Zack KM Cycle
 The KM cycle consists primarily of creating a higher  Similarly, competitive intelligence can be gathered and
value-added knowledge product at each stage of synthesized
knowledge processing
 Repackage the raw data into meaningful, interpreted, and
 For example validated knowledge
 A basic database may represent an example of knowledge that
has been created  Knowledge with value to users, that is, it can be put into
action directly
 Value can then be added by extracting trends from these data

 The original information has been repackaged to now provide

trend analyses that can serve as the basis for decision making
within the organization

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Meyer and Zack KM Cycle Meyer and Zack KM Cycle

Acquisition of data or
information addresses the
Acquire Refine Store The guiding principle:
issues regarding sources of
• Calls and surveys • Edit and format • Indexed and linked raw materials such as
• Decompose into knowledge units
units, index, and link Scope
Breadth and Depth
Credibility and Accuracy
Distribute Present Timeliness
“garbage in
• Online via Web and • Interactive garbage out”
groupware selection of Relevance
knowledge units
Cost
Etc.

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Meyer and Zack KM Cycle Meyer and Zack KM Cycle
Acquisition of data or information addresses the  Refinement is the primary source of added value
issues regarding sources of raw materials such as  Refinement may be:
Scope, Breadth, Depth  Physical (e.g., migrating form one medium to another)
Credibility, Accuracy  Logical (restructuring, relabeling, indexing, and integrating)
Timeliness, Relevance
 Refining also refers to cleaning up or standardizing
Cost
Etc.  This stage adds value by creating more readily usable
knowledge objects and by storing the content more
The guiding principle: flexibly for future use
“garbage in garbage out”
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Meyer and Zack KM Cycle

 Storage/retrieval forms a bridge between the acquisition and
refinement stages and downstream stages of product generation
 Storage may be physical (file folders, printed information) or digital
(database, knowledge management software).

 Distribution describes how the product is delivered to the end user

 Encompasses not only the medium of delivery but also its timing, Bukowitz and Williams
frequency, form, language, etc.
Knowledge Management Cycle
 The final step is presentation or use
 The effectiveness of each of the preceding steps is evaluated here
 Does the user have sufficient context to be able to make use of this
content?
 If not, the KM cycle has failed to deliver value — to the individual and
ultimately to the organization.

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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
Bukowitz and Williams describe a knowledge
management process framework that outlines
“how organizations generate,
maintain and deploy a
strategically correct stock of
knowledge to create value”
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 In this framework, knowledge consists, among others, of:
 Knowledge repositories
 Relationships
 Information technologies
 Communications infrastructures
 Functional skill sets
 Process know-how
 Organizational intelligence
 External sources
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 The “get”, “learn”, and “contribute” phases are tactical in
nature
 Triggered by market-driven opportunities or demands
 Typically result in day-to-day use of knowledge to respond to
these demands
 The “assess”, “build/sustain” and “divest” stages are more
strategic in nature
 Triggered by shifts in the macro environment
 Focus on more long-range processes of matching intellectual
capital to strategic requirements
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 Get: seek out needed information
 Encompasses not only traditional explicit content but also tacit
knowledge
 Use: how to combine information in order to foster
organizational innovation
 Focus is primarily on individuals, and then on groups
 The narrow focus on innovation as the reason for making use
of intellectual assets is somewhat limiting in this KM cycle
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 Assess: deals more with the group and organizational
level
 Refers to the evaluation of intellectual capital
 Requires the organization to define mission-critical knowledge
 Map current intellectual capital against future knowledge needs
The organization must also develop metrics to
demonstrate that it is growing its knowledge
base and profiting from its investments in
intellectual capital
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 Learn: the formal process of learning from experiences as
a means of creating competitive advantage
 Contribute: get employees to post what they have
learned to the communal knowledge base (e.g., a
repository)
 KM is not about making public all that resides within the heads
of individuals
 The point of the contribute phase is not to post everything on
the company intranet, but to collect those experiences that
may also benefit others in the organization
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 Build and sustain: ensures that future intellectual capital of
the organization will keep the organization viable and
competitive
 Resources must be allocated to the growth and maintenance
of knowledge
 Create new knowledge and reinforce existing knowledge
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 Divest: the organization should not hold on to assets —
physical or intellectual — if they are no longer creating
value
Organizations need to examine their
intellectual capital in terms of the resources
required to maintain it and whether these
resources would be better spent elsewhere
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McElroy
Knowledge Management Cycle
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Bukowitz and Williams KM Cycle
 The Bukowitz and Williams KM cycle introduces two new
critical phases:
 The learning of knowledge content
 The decision as to whether or not to maintain this knowledge
 This KM cycle is more comprehensive than the Meyer
and Zack cycle
 The notion of tacit as well as explicit knowledge management
has been incorporated
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McElroy KM Cycle
 McElroy KM Cycle describes a knowledge life cycle that
consists of the processes of knowledge production and
knowledge integration, with a series of feedback loops to
organizational memory, beliefs, claims, and the business-
processing environment
McElroy emphasizes that organizational
knowledge is held both subjectively in
the minds of individuals and groups and
objectively in explicit forms
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McElroy KM Cycle McElroy KM Cycle
 Knowledge use results in outcomes that either match
expectations or fail to do so
 Matches reinforce existing knowledge, leading to its reuse
 Mismatches lead to adjustments in business processing
behavior

 Successive failures from mismatches will lead to doubt

and ultimately rejection of existing knowledge
 Produce and integrate new knowledge

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McElroy KM Cycle Knowledge Production

 Problem claim formulation represents an attempt to learn
and state the specific nature of the detected knowledge
gap

 Knowledge claim formulation follows as a response to

validated problem claims via information acquisition and
individual and group learning

 New knowledge claims are tested and evaluated via

knowledge claim evaluation processes

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Knowledge Claim Evaluation Knowledge Integration

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McElroy KM Cycle

Strengths of the McElroy cycle:

• Clear description of how knowledge is

evaluated Wiig
• A conscious decision is made as to Knowledge Management Cycle
whether or not to integrate it into the
organizational memory
• Focus on processes to identify knowledge
content that is of value to the organization
and its employees

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Wiig KM Cycle Wiig KM Cycle
 Wiig focuses on the three conditions required to conduct  Knowledge is the principal force that determines and
business successfully drives the ability to act intelligently

 An organization must have:  With improved knowledge, we know better what to do

 A business (products and services) and customers for them,
 Resources (people, capital, facilities),
 The ability to act (emphasized in the Wiig KM cycle)
and how to do it
 Wiig identifies the major purpose of KM as an effort: “to
make the enterprise intelligent-acting by facilitating the
creation, cumulation, deployment and use of quality
knowledge”

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Wiig KM Cycle Wiig KM Cycle

 Wiig’s KM cycle addresses how knowledge is built and
used (as individuals or organizations)

 There are four major steps in this cycle:

 Building knowledge
 Holding knowledge
 Pooling knowledge
 Applying knowledge

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Wiig KM Cycle - Building knowledge Wiig KM Cycle - Building knowledge
 Building knowledge refers to a wide range of activities  Obtain knowledge
ranging from market research, focus groups, surveys and  Innovations by individuals, experimentation, reasoning with
data mining applications existing knowledge, hiring new people, eliciting knowledge from
experts, etc.

 Building knowledge consists of five major activities

 Analyze knowledge
 Obtain knowledge
 Extract what appears to be knowledge from obtained material
 Analyze knowledge  Abstract extracted materials
 Reconstruct/synthesize knowledge  Identifying patterns extracted
 Codify and model knowledge  Explaining relations between knowledge fragments
 Organize knowledge  Verifying that extracted materials correspond to the meaning
of the original sources

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Wiig KM Cycle - Building knowledge Wiig KM Cycle

 Reconstruct/synthesize knowledge  Holding knowledge consists of remembering, cumulating
 Generalize analyzed material to obtain broader principles knowledge in repositories, embedding knowledge in
 Generate hypotheses to explain observations repositories, and archiving knowledge
 Establish conformance between new and existing knowledge

 Codify and model knowledge  Knowledge pooling consists of coordinating knowledge,

 How to represent knowledge and to assemble the knowledge into a assembling knowledge, and accessing and retrieving
coherent model knowledge
 How to document the knowledge in books and manuals
 How to encode it in order to post it to a knowledge repository.  Use or apply knowledge to:
 Perform a routine task
 Organize knowledge  Analyze and/or handle a certain situation
 Organize for specific uses and according to an established
organizational framework  Determine and/or evaluate alternatives
 Example: use an official list of keywords or categories  Etc.

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Summary: Key Wiig KM Cycle Activities

Build Hold Pool Apply

Obtain Coordinate Perform tasks
Remember
Analyze
Assemble
Survey, describe Integrated Km cycle
Cumulate in Select
Reconstruct
repositories Reconstruct Observe, analyze
Synthesize
Synthesize Synthesize
Embed in
Codify repositories Evaluate
Access
Model Decide
Archive
Organize Retrieve Implement

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Synthesis of Knowledge Processing

Integrated KM Cycle Steps
 Different labels are used to describe each of the KM cycle  Knowledge capture/creation/contribution
stages  Knowledge filtering/selection
 Knowledge codification
 They often refer to the same general type of knowledge
 Knowledge refinement
processing
 Knowledge sharing
 Knowledge access
 Knowledge learning
 Knowledge application
 Knowledge evaluation
 Knowledge reuse/divestment

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Integrated KM Cycle Strategic Implications of the KM Cycle
Knowledge  A knowledge architecture is necessary to enable the
capture and/or processing and transformation of knowledge
creation  The objective is to retain and share knowledge with a wider
audience
Update Assess
 Information and communication technologies provide the
necessary infrastructure to do so

Knowledge Knowledge  Business processes and cultural enablers provide the

acquisition and sharing and necessary incentives and opportunities
application dissemination

Contextualize
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