Knowledge Mangement

Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Hermann Krallmann

Description

The exploitation and systematic reuse of knowledge from employees, customers, business partners and other sources is a huge corporate potential. The focus on knowledge workers in complex, knowledge-intense business processes and communities allows us to identify new potentials for costs savings and efficiency gains. Knowledge Management thus helps creating an 'intelligent' and competitive organization.
This course provides insights into the current discussion and opinions about the field of Knowledge Management. Students will gain an understanding of what knowledge means to corporations and how difficult it is to transfer and reuse personal knowledge within an enterprise. Here, supportive management methods and concepts will be provided. Another part of the course investigates current information technologies that help corporations to deal with the complex field of knowledge transfer between the employees of a company.

Outline

Part I: Foundations of Knowledge Management (KM)

1. Introduction of the team, agenda and introductive overview of the course
2. Definitions of knowledge management and knowledge
3. Types of knowledge and levels of KM in the organization
4. Levels of KM (employee, organization, technology, and culture level)
5. Learning organizations and information management / part I
6. Learning organizations and information management / part II
7. Tasks and dimensions of KM
8. KM approaches / part I - Schueppel's 4 stages of KM, Nonakas & Probst approaches of KM
9. KM approaches / part II - Probst's management concept cntd., Willke's integrated approach

Part II: Information technologies in KM

10. KM technologies / part I - Utilizing CSCW and groupware for corporate KM
11. KM technologies / part II - Knowledge retrieval methods, technologies and applications
12. KM technologies / part III - Integrating technologies with KM concepts and requirements
13. Practical examples of KM applications / KM products and software overview
14. Recap of key issues and connections, comprehensive KM case study
15. Online Test

Literature

Learning Objectives

After completing this course successfully, students can expect to:

• understand the role of knowledge as a resource for creating customer-oriented solutions in knowledge-intense and ill-structured business processes,
• have reflected comprehensively on the term knowledge itself and its relation to information, information management and other current corporate issues,
• know various managerial approaches to handle the complex issue of KM in an enterprise,
• know the different specialized KM job roles, and their major tasks,
• be able to create an appropriate organizational structure and effective KM initiatives for an organization,
• utilize methods to identify KM potentials in corporate organizational structures incl. business processes,
• know technologies in the field of KM and be able to select an appropriate tool for a particular KM initiative.

Method of teaching

This course is based on a combination of slides and an audio track (narrated text with a picture of the lecturer), case studies, practitioners' opinions, exhibits, technology examples, hyperlinks, summarizing quizzes, weekly assignments, and an online test. Given the MBI program's course type categorization, this course is audio and text-based course.
One module per lesson comprises approximately 30-40 slides and written explanations, narrated by a visible speaker. The visual slides give the background and details of the topics. The narrator comprehensively comments the slides to create a thorough understanding of the content.
Online cases, practitioners' opinions and various other exhibits are provided for extended insights and for practical perspectives. Links to software demos and software tools provide interactive experience with information systems and help students to develop comprehensive knowledge about computerized solutions for the underlying types of probems.
To support the learning success, we provide summarizing quizzes for each lecture and conduct a special online test at the very end of the course. This test complements the discussion questions and exercises by testing knowledge about facts.
The rest of the weekly time is assigned for exercises and homework. In most cases an assignment consists of discussing various issues or case studies related to the topic of the very lesson. While solving these exercises, students can discuss questions and give comments via chat, online whiteboard, e-mail, telephone, and online discussions with fellow students and the lecturer's team to further the learning experience. WebCT tools are used for this purpose.
At the end, we train applying all contents to a comprehensive case study of an actual KM project.

Requirements

None

Credits

6.0 credit points