Discuss about the Knowledge Management for International Office Management.
Knowledge Management is a system based on Information Technology which provides a business atmosphere for managing the knowledge such as data storage, data gathering and support for development in the coming future. In an organization, the system of knowledge management allows the employees to utilize the resources, facts and adopt the most suitable solutions (Becerra-Fernandez & Sabherwal, 2014). For this discussion, Overseas Education and Career Consultant Pty Ltd is taken into consideration that is facing some knowledge management issues related to its different departments. Overseas Education and Career Consultant (OECC) is an Australian educational consultant that is based in Melbourne to assist the domestic and foreign students. The services of this consultant includes educational counseling, university selection, visa assistance, course selection, scholarship assistance, part time job guidance, visitor visas, collaboration services to assistance, offers and admissions in Colleges and Universities, course updates etc. The organization is facing the issues related to cross-departmental interaction (Uniagents, 2018). There is a lack of interaction between different departments that inhibited the knowledge sharing outside departmental boundaries.
According to Koulikov (2011), knowledge is one of the most important assets of consulting firms so it is very important to pay the attention on knowledge management. Specifically, the organizations use different IT sources to capture, manage and share the knowledge among departments and people. Michailova and Gupta (2005) stated that there are some issues which can be faced by these educational consultants which affect knowledge sharing process. In its operations, Overseas Education and Career Consultant are facing some issues related to knowledge management which affect the service offering to overseas students (Michailova & Gupta, 2005). It is offering education consultancy services to the students of different countries like United Kingdom, India etc.
The major knowledge management (KM) issue that is confronted by OECC Australia is the lack of cross-departmental interaction that inhibited the sharing of knowledge outside one department. In the organization, it is found that a single Information System is not able to satisfy the context-specific knowledge sharing requirements of different departments or students. As mentioned above, this educational consultant offers different services like educational counseling, university selection, visa assistance, course selection, scholarship assistance, part time job guidance, visitor visas, and collaboration services to assistance, offers and admissions in Colleges and Universities, course updates to overseas students. To offer these services, the company has created a portal i.e. www.uniagents.com and launched International Office Management System for the UK Universities. OECC has divided its team in different departments according to the courses of students like human resources, finance, economics, tourism, Medical etc. The firm is facing the problem that these departments are not able to interact with each other (Galliers & Leidner, 2014). The company lacks formal procedures for sharing the knowledge to each other and students.
According to Tett (2015), it is known as silo effect when separate teams and departments in an organization do not interact with each other. Productivity and efficiency suffers due to this issue. Due to this, finance division of OECC generally finds it very tough to approach other medical department. In United Kingdom, there is an exposure of hospitality and tourism course than others. Due to its larger presence, hospitality and tourism is aware about the clients requiring the services from other divisions (Tett, 2015). In addition to this, the organization is not able to fulfill the knowledge requirements of the students from different backgrounds and cultures. As they offer their services to overseas students so they have to deal with the students from different cultures and countries. Due to this, OECC is unable to satisfy the student at fullest. This is very serious issue as it affects the operations and knowledge sharing at OECC.
As per Hansen, Nohria and Tierney (2018), since the issues of knowledge management as major practice is very new and managers have lacked the successful business models which they could use as instructions. Knowledge management is the most important aspect for an educational consultant because knowledge is the major asset of consultancies. OECC is among the businesses which need to pay attention on and make heavy investments on knowledge management practices. It needs to aggressively explore the utilization of information technology to get and distribute the knowledge (Hansen, Nohria & Tierney, 2018). At OECC, the knowledge is shared with the students not only face-to-face but also over the phone, video conferences and via e-mail.
As mentioned above, this organization is confronting the issue related to cross-departmental interaction that affects the knowledge sharing with the students. To resolve this issue, the organization will use effective strategies and develop a system by using different strategies like codification and personalization. This issue can be resolved by adopting updated and breakthrough technologies so that it can facilitate cross-departmental knowledge sharing (Wang, & Wang, 2016). This system will be implemented on the strategic organizational level. To develop interaction between different departments, the organization will use different technologies and develop network. It will focus on developing different IT tools as the solution to this issue. The major IT tools are such as:
The organization is facing the major issue related to cross-departmental interaction that affects the knowledge sharing with the overseas students. Students are not able to gain the correct and satisfied information about their courses, universities and syllabus. To develop effective interaction among different departments, it will use intranet. Intranet is a privately accessible network that can be used by the staff of an organization. OECC can develop this technology tool that makes the wide range of information or knowledge available on internal intranet of firm. This information will not be shared with the students and other outsiders (Hislop, 2013).
The major benefit of this solution is to develop effective cross-departmental communication among different departments of OECC, so that they can share the information about students. Through this, they will be able to approach a larger student base and share the required knowledge.
In addition to above IT tool, the organization will establish some personal networks through which it will develop communication among different divisions. For OECC, it is very important to identify the network contacts and develop a personalized network so that it can manage all the administrative and knowledge management processes (Holtshouse, 2013). This personal network will connect different divisions of firm like colleagues in other offices of OECC, course experts, universities, colleges and industry experts and other associates in Australia.
It will be the most useful IT solution to this issue of knowledge management that will assist the organization to collect the different information about universities and courses in Australia. The students will contact to the educational consultant and take the details about the courses and universities according to their interests and qualifications (Ghandvar & Sehhat, 2015). Through this network, OECC will be able to share the information about students and their enquiries with the different departments and related universities.
OECC will use both strategies to manage the knowledge in the organization. Through codification, the organization will be able to reliable, higher quality and quick information system adoption by re-utilizing codified knowledge. It will be an effective strategy that makes the knowledge sharing process smoother. Moreover, it will use personalization strategies that provide creative advice to the students about their queries. These strategies will be adopted by developing a model for knowledge sharing to the students (Yeh, Yeh & Chen, 2012). This model is given below:
There are three approaches which can be used for knowledge management such as tactic knowledge management, explicit knowledge management and blended knowledge management. To resolve this issue, the OECC can use the Blended Knowledge Management Approach that will assist the organization to develop the interaction among departments and enhance the quality of knowledge offered to overseas students. It will be the most effective and cost effective approach that can be used by OECC to implement this solution in the process. According to Yeh, Yeh and Chen (2012), blending knowledge management approach is an effective approach that builds the communities of practice and it facilitates the open communication among different divisions, directing to improved knowledge discovery and delivery. OECC can implement the solution by using different steps under this approach that is given below:
By using different technologies and platforms, OECC will share the information among different departments and universities. It will share the information of students with the universities and colleges in the country. It is the first step under blended knowledge management approach that will enable the organization to develop interaction among departments. It will enhance the knowledge sharing with students (Lin & Huang, 2008).
After sharing the information among different departments of OECC, the organization will do internalization. In this step, the organization will convert the explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge. It needs the educational consultants to recognize the knowledge related to organization’s knowledge (Yeh, Yeh & Chen, 2012). It will enable the organization to prepare the knowledge or information that can be shared with the students.
This is the process under which organization can transfer the knowledge to the students. OECC will share the prepared data with the overseas students so that they can use this for their benefits. In implementation process, the company can use different techniques and tools like intranet, personal network and others (Hau, Kim, Lee & Kim, 2013). Apart from this, organization may face some issues in this solution implementation process. These issues may be related to technology and accuracy. There may be chances that employees in the organization will not accept the new process. Thus, they may face the issue related employee change resistance. If these issues will be arising at OECC then it will affect the implementation of appropriate solutions in the process. The organization will motivate the people and tell the benefits of these solutions so that they can accept them.
From the above solution implementation, the organization expects to get positive outcomes. The company anticipates that it will be able to manage the interaction among different departments of OECC. It will be able to enhance the quality of knowledge that will be shared with the overseas students. It will set up a common platform for universities and departments that will enable OECC to share the data with them (Matayong & Kamil Mahmood, 2013). The organization expects that it will be able to increase its student base by providing quality content. In addition to this, it anticipates to improve the knowledge management and sharing process with the potential students.
Conclusion
Thus, it is hereby concluded that knowledge management is a significant process for the educational consultant like OECC. It is very important to manage the system and operations to develop effective knowledge management at this organization. The above report includes that OECC is facing the issue due to lack of interaction between its departments. To resolve the issue, the company will use effective techniques and approaches which will allow the organization to share quality knowledge with students.
References
Becerra-Fernandez, I., & Sabherwal, R. (2014). Knowledge management: Systems and processes. Routledge.
Galliers, R. D., & Leidner, D. E. (Eds.). (2014). Strategic information management: challenges and strategies in managing information systems. Routledge.
Ghandvar, P., & Sehhat, S. (2015). Relationship Between Knowledge Management And Quality Management In Insurance Companies. International journal of academic research, 7(1).
Hansen, M.T., Nohria N. & Tierney, T.J. (2018). What’s Your Strategy for Managing Knowledge? Harvard Business Review.
Hau, Y. S., Kim, B., Lee, H., & Kim, Y. G. (2013). The effects of individual motivations and social capital on employees’ tacit and explicit knowledge sharing intentions. International Journal of Information Management, 33(2), 356-366.
Hislop, D. (2013). Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford University Press.
Holtshouse, D. K. (2013). Information technology for knowledge management. Springer Science & Business Media.
Lin, T. C., & Huang, C. C. (2008). Understanding knowledge management system usage antecedents: An integration of social cognitive theory and task technology fit. Information & Management, 45(6), 410-417.
Matayong, S., & Kamil Mahmood, A. (2013). The review of approaches to knowledge management system studies. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(3), 472-490.
Michailova, S. & Gupta, A. (2005). Knowledge Sharing in Consulting Companies: Opportunities and Limitations of Knowledge Codification. Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, 4 (3) 201–212.
Tett, G. (2015). The Silo Effect: Why putting everything in its place isn’t such a bright idea. UK: Hachette Publications.
Uniagents. (2018). About Us. Retrieved from https://www.uniagents.com/about-us.php.
Wang, Y. M., & Wang, Y. C. (2016). Determinants of firms’ knowledge management system implementation: An empirical study. Computers in Human Behavior, 64, 829-842.
Yeh, Y., Yeh, Y. & Chen, C. (2012). From knowledge sharing to knowledge creation: A blended knowledge-management model for improving university students’ creativity. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 7 (3) 245–257.
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