Group Case Study For ADB Knowledge Audit

Evaluation

Discuss about the Group Case Study for ADB Knowledge Audit.

In the present era, in which there are changes in organizational dynamics at a rapid rate the need for knowledge management becomes much important (Lauer and Tanniru, 2001). In order to manage the business organizations that are working in complex environmental settings the process of managing knowledge is essential (Schwikkard and du Toit, 2004).The case is related to knowledge management strategy adopted by Asian Development Bank.

In order to achieve this goal the company developed a strategic outline in order to make the system of management, culture, process of business, solutions for IT, community of practice and relations with outside organizations by development of networks in 2007. In this the process of carrying out “knowledge audit” was also outlined. As an initial point to start, the bank decided to carry out an online survey that will measure the perceptions of employees and in turn it will serve as the foundation to measuring the success of system. The major objective of adopting this knowledge strategy was to change the focus to “sense and respond” rather than “make and sell” so that shareholders can have maximum value. In order to have a holistic knowledge management the organization should have integration of external environment, context of organization, knowledge and relationships between the people of organization and the interaction of organization with other organizations. The departments for evaluation include ADB management,board of directors, operations department, DMC, internal evaluation committee and IED that are jointly responsible to evaluate the system (ADB, 2007).

In order to properly implement knowledge management, organization, leadership, technology, and learning are integrated. The leadership plays an important role in driving value for managing knowledge; they work from identifying the need of managing knowledge, establishing goals, planning process and implementing it. Organization acts as a supporting mechanism in the knowledge management procedure by gap, opportunities and risk identification, developing the model and keeping the audience engaged. Technology facilitates the collection of knowledge as well as connecting the sources of knowledge, in this regard it helps using the resources in innovatve ways, it allows better access to knowledge and makes the organization able to report and monitor information in a better way. In learning process teams are developed virtually so that information sharing can be managed, communities of practice are made and incentives and rewards are given to people who play good role in sharing knowledge (ADB, 2007).

Approaches

In ADB their objective is to use knowledge management in order to enhance performance in development of strategy, improving techniques of management, better collaboration, learning and sharing of knowledge along with capturing and sharing knowledge.  In order to attain this goal, the tools such as knowledge audit, assistance from peers, exit interviews, knowledge mapping etc are employed in order to attain these objectives. In this process the technology was also kept in consideration, as modern technological advances such as use of data warehousing, various software to manage data, Email, multimedia, groupware’s, intranet, systems to support decisions, search engines, systems of neural networks and lessons learned,  communication and video conferencing were adopted. It has been found that the process of managing knowledge is facilitated by adopting modern tools and technologies (Miller, 2009).

ADB employed the method of knowledge audit to be carried out in five months, the steps incorporated,   included preparation of knowledge, analysis of audit, review and planning for business. In order to carry out the knowledge audit questionnaires were administrated that contained five aspects i.e. development strategy, management techniques, sharing of knowledge and learning, collaboration and storing and capturing of knowledge.

In this process the perceptions of all departments were considered in order to evaluate the performance of knowledge management system in ADB. It was found that as per the perception of employees in IED, development of strategy, collaboration and capturing and sharing of knowledge is being done effectively, they thought sharing and storage of knowledge is not good. They also said that management should adopt better techniques. Apart from the evaluations of IED, it was found by other departments only strategy is being developed in good way while rest of things need improvement such as collaboration, learning and sharing of knowledge, capturing and storing of knowledge. The participants that belonged to the international committee for evaluation had a different view point. They were only asked about three aspects i.e. collaboration, storing and capturing, learning and sharing knowledge. They gave positive opinion reading all those aspects.

It is stated that the process of managing knowledge is never effective if it is not linked to the external environment, relationships with agencies that act as evaluators and context of company. In case of ADB although they had developed a good knowledge management system but the audit results revealed that there are various issues in this process. Moreover, the opinion of IED, IEC and ADB departments were different that show that the system is not developed in a coherent manner. In addition to this the process of designing the audit included the need analysis of knowledge, analysis of inventory of knowledge, analysis of flow of knowledge and mapping. Most of the focus of the knowledge management process resides on explicit knowledge and they did not have much focus on the tacit knowledge that is more important aspect of any organization. In addition to this the relationship among departments, the context of company, linkage to the outside environment was taken into account. This is a good point because when the link with external environment is not established the proper need identification cannot be done. Theorganization needs to deploy thatknowledge that helps it to improve the business performance and make it aware of the trends(Bontis, Fearon and Hishon, 2003). When the company will have knowledge of trends then it will able respond to the needs of stakeholders accordingly.Furthermore, itis important that all departments must coordinate with each other so that they have a coherent process of knowledge management. But, in this case it is examined that IEC, IED and ADB had different perceptions regarding the knowledge management system. This shows the overall lacking in the understanding of goal of knowledge management system. It also shows that the system is not sufficient to address all the needs of knowledge management as the areas of improvement were identified by ADB and IEC.

Technology and Techniques

Although, IED stated that knowledge management process was working well on all dimensions but they were not asked about the development strategy and techniques of management. One of which was rated as inadequate by ADB. In addition to these the areas deemed to be working satisfactorily by IED were considered as areas of improvement like ADB reported issues in sharing and reporting of knowledge  along with storing and capturing knowledge.

This made ADB realize that their system needs improvement, so they paid attention toward making knowledge audit process more efficient.  They proposed that evaluations should be taken from perspective of more clients. Theysuggested that the “success rates” of projects should also be included. They developed new tools such as learning curves, system for evaluation of information that is an online system containing recommendations, lessons and responses of management.  The company has also enhanced the focus on making group communication better and they renewed ECGnet. The method of evacuation was changed and made more frequent, they created online “evaluation community for practice”, incorporatedcharts forevaluation, harmonized the indicators of performance. The reporting was made more visual by using presentations and photographic formats.  A deliberate effort is being made to enhance the value from evaluating operations. They are using matrices for managing knowledge in this case in addition to incorporating feedback of clients. Overall, good approach is adopted by ADB in order to meet up the deficiencies in its knowledge management system. They have enhanced condition and communication, enhanced the frequency of evaluation and took feedbackfrom more people that will make their evaluation better and able them to adapt the knowledgemanagement system as per needs of internal and external environment, these practices are found to be useful in managing knowledge (McInerney and Koenig, 2011). But they could also adopt the method of carrying out interviews in the process of knowledge audit that is deemed to be one of effective method in identifying the needs of knowledge (Perez-Soltero at el. 2006). The main aim of carrying out audit of knowledge is to examine where the organization stands in terms of knowledge and where knowledge is located.  So, in this case we suggest that they should involve the senior management and support of leadership as well as they are in a better situation to identify the needs of knowledge in collaboration with employees of organization(Kumar,2011). This will make sure that process is carried out under the guidance of senior management and no important knowledge source or skill is left out. As suggested by Miller (2009) they can also involve people from expert knowledge audit firm to carry out the process in better way.  The audit team should have involved people from all departmentsspecially those who have goods knowledge about vision of company so that knowledge management can be matched with it. In addition to this, in order to better develop the tacit knowledge informal social networking should be encouraged(Debenham and Clark, 2003).

Solution and Evaluation

It is suggested that the ADB should have developed knowledge team that includes the people form senior management, finance department, marketing and HR department. In addition to this, the people should be from information technology department and there should be a special head for knowledge management. Furthermore they can also hire an expert form professional knowledge audit firm(Harding, 2010). They had adopted a good process of aligning the knowledge management process with vision of bank but there were some deficiencies in the system that could be managed if an effective team is developed (Burnett, Williams and Illingworth, 2013).  This kind of cross functional team will allow equal focus on tacit and explicit knowledge; it will eliminate bias and make ADB able to deal with the complexities of knowledge management process(Kidd, 2004).  They should include “8C’s of knowledge audit” including connectivity, culture, community, content, cooperation, capacity, capital and commerce (Bergeron, 2003).

On the basis of above discussion and evaluation the new model to show the proposed knowledge system and audit is shown below

Conclusion

In this report the knowledge management process and knowledge audit of ADB is examined. It is found that the company is taking into account the environmental factors and needs of company while managing knowledge and they aim to maximize the value of services. The knowledge audit process revealed some of the weaknesses in the area of development of strategy, collaboration, learning, storing, capturing and sharing of knowledge. In response to this an improved system is devised that incorporated more frequent audit and involvement of more stake holders who collaborate more frequently. It is suggested that the ADB knowledge team should be cross functional in nature and equal importance should be given to tacit knowledge. They should include “8C’s of knowledge audit” including connectivity, culture, community, content, cooperation, capacity, capital and commerce and contact external experts for further improvement. 

References

ADB. (2007). Learning Lessons in ADB. Manila. [Online] Available at: www.adb.org/documents/reports/learning-lessonsadb/strategic-framework-2007-2009.asp [Accessed 23 September 2016]

Bergeron,  B. (2003). Essentials of Knowledge Management,  New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons Inc.

Burnett, S., Williams, D. and Illingworth, L. (2013). Reconsidering the Knowledge Audit Process: Methodological Revisions in Practice. Know. Process Mgmt., 20(3), pp.141-153.

Debenham, J. and Clark, J. (2003). The knowledge audit. North Ryde, N.S.W.: CSIRO Division of Information Technology.

Harding, N. (2010). Understanding the structure of audit workpaper error knowledge and its relationship with workpaper review performance. Accounting & Finance, 50(3), pp.663-683.

Kidd, J. (2004). Leading with Knowledge: Knowledge Management Practices in Global Infotech Companies. Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 2(2), pp.133-134.

Kumar, A. (2011). Knowledge Audit: Its Learning Lessons. SSRN Electronic Journal.

Lauer, T. and Tanniru, M. (2001). Knowledge Management Audit – a methodology and case study. AJIS, 9(1).

McInerney, C. and Koenig, M. (2011). Knowledge Management (KM) Processes in Organizations: Theoretical Foundations and Practice. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services, 3(1), pp.1-96.

Miller, A. (2009). A Review of “Knowledge Management in Practice: Connections and Context”. Journal of Web Librarianship, 3(3), pp.294-294.

Perez-Soltero, B. Valenzuela, et al. 2006. Knowledge Audit Methodology With Emphasis on Core Processes. European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (EMCIS), Costa Blanca, Alicante, Spain, July 6-7, 2006.

Schwikkard, D. and du Toit, A. (2004). Analysing knowledge requirements: a case study. AP, 56(2), pp.104-111.

Bontis, N., Fearon, M. and Hishon, M. (2003). The eâ€Âflow audit: an evaluation of knowledge flow within and outside a highâ€Âtech firm. J of Knowledge Management, 7(1), pp.6-19.