Case Study: Knowledge Management At The Reserve Bank Of New Zealand

Creation of Knowledge at The Reserve Bank of New Zealand

1. The two appropriate modes of knowledge creation for The Reserve Bank of New Zealand are socialization and externalization of the SECI model.

In the socialization mode, tactic knowledge will be shared through practice, guidance, imitation, and formal communities. The process will further entail the creation of virtual or physical spaces where individuals will further interact on a social level (Panahi, Watson, and Partridge, 2013). Seen as tactic knowledge comprises a set of skills that cannot be transferred to another person either verbally or in written form. Moreover, the mode is in line with the knowledge sharing policy of the organization.

Externalization, on the other hand, involves the conversion of tactic knowledge to explicit concepts such as manuals and documents (Chatti, Klamma, Jarke, and Naeve, 2007). This mode is vital to the bank since tactic information is highly internalized, but through the process it will be shared to other personnel through explicit forms. The codified information will also be accessible to new and future employees that will be recruited by The Reserve Bank. 

2. The codification approach is the most suitable form of knowledge management for The Reserve Bank of New Zealand. According to Schulz, and Jobe, (2001), the approach entails the recording and storing of knowledge in explicit forms such as databases supported by ICT. In this case, ICT is used to store and retrieve the information.

Based on the case study, there are two main impediments to knowledge management within the organization namely staff turnover and high demand for a range of specialists skill sets. In the first case, the rate of turnover is largely influenced by the rightsizing program that the organization was implementing whereby veteran employees left the organization for several reasons including the introduction of technology and prolonged service to the bank after an average tenure of nine years. With their departure, the bank is required to employ new personnel who then occupy the vacant positions. The challenge, however, is the fact that the new workers are not as versed as the veteran personnel with company information and processes that are critical to the daily operations of the organization. Though the bank has a strong policy of knowledge sharing, it is nonetheless limited by the fact that knowledge sharing is departmental. This means that critical information in a certain department is restricted to employees within the department. Nevertheless, with codification, the organization can retain its policy of knowledge sharing where information is shared within the department while ensuring that new employees can still access past and developing knowledge.

Owing to the fact that each country has only one central bank, there is a high demand for personnel with a specialized set of skills as a key resource to the operations within the organization. Such individuals are however limited to a certain pool of individuals, therefore, there is increased competition among central banks to recruit personnel with such knowledge. In spite of recruiting these staff, The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is limited by the average length of service within the bank that lasts for more than nine years. If an individual seeks to leave the organization before the nine year period lapses the bank will suffer loss of critical information. However, with the codification approach, the bank can retain critical information to problems that can be availed to the new set of personnel. This further implies that the departure of a worker will not leave a gap in knowledge management and sharing as new employees can familiarize themselves with information that will be availed in repositories such as databases and handbooks.

3. The two suitable knowledge management tools for The Reserve Bank are content repository and social software.

Content repository comprises tools that allow workers to manage and share information with the organization including social and web content and documents (Alwert, and Hoffmann, 2003). In light of the right sizing program as well as employee turnover, the tool will be beneficial to the bank because it will ensure that vital information is still retained by the bank. Hence, new and future workers will have access to the information therefore allowing them to execute their duties effectively.

Social software includes tools that enable socialization of knowledge whereby knowledge will not only be shared among employees, but also stored for future reference. The use of these tool will facilitate sharing of knowledge between veteran and new employees. This will ensure that new employees can successfully complete operations within the organization even when veteran personnel leave the bank.

4. Content repository: in regards to velocity, this tool ensures that information is readily and speedily obtained by the user in time as it is already available in tangible forms. It is also highly viscous since it contains detailed information or knowledge pertinent to the bank.

Social software: in terms of velocity, this tools transfers information speedily and it is equally viscous because individuals easily obtain tactic knowledge.                         

References

Alwert, K. and Hoffmann, I., 2003. Knowledge management tools. In Knowledge Management (pp. 114-150). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Chatti, M.A., Klamma, R., Jarke, M. and Naeve, A., 2007, July. The Web 2.0 driven SECI model based learning process. In Advanced Learning Technologies, 2007. ICALT 2007. Seventh IEEE International Conference on (pp. 780-782). IEEE.

Panahi, S., Watson, J. and Partridge, H., 2013. Towards tacit knowledge sharing over social web tools. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(3), pp.379-397.

Schulz, M. and Jobe, L.A., 2001. Codification and tacitness as knowledge management strategies: an empirical exploration. The Journal of High Technology Management Research, 12(1), pp.139-165.