Identifying the required knowledge is the first step in a knowledge management system, and knowledge management focuses on this step initially. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) assert that the conversion of data into knowledge through the process of chain of knowledge creation involves multiple levels—individual, group, organizational, and inter-organizational—with different people getting involved at each level. According to Churchman (1964), the inability of managers to transform the available information into knowledge of action is a serious impediment that affects the process of decision making inside organizations. Proper leadership at group level will lead to a better knowledge management environment and proper utilization of the knowledge of the people. Fareed Hussain (2004) reports that knowledge management requires a major transformation in the organizational culture to create a desire to share the development of methods that ensure that knowledge bases are kept current and relevant, and a commitment at the level of a firm for it to succeed. He added that organizations should establish a culture conducive to more effective knowledge creation, transfer, and use. Technology acts as a foundation for knowledge infrastructure to manage knowledge effectively.

The paper, “The Relationship of Knowledge Identification and Creation with Leadership, Culture and Technology”, by Mohnish Kumar, deals with the descriptive and diagnostic research of knowledge identification and creation dimensions of knowledge management process and attempts to find out the relationship and impact of organizational culture, leadership, background variables and technology in this context. Four leadership groups of activities—expressive environment facilitator, non-bossy leader, democratic leader, and expectancy pressure of a leader—are considered along with eight OCTAPACE ethos, five technology variables and other relevant variables for modeling of the data. It was found that in the presence of positive OCTAPACE organizational cultural ethos and good IT system, expectancy-free and non-bossy leadership practices help the organization to identify and create knowledge.

Knowledge sharing enables an organization to access its own and other organizations’ knowledge as well, leading to extended learning processes and ultimately organizational learning. The employees will be highly benefited with proper provision of task information and know-how, which, in the words of Sveiby (1997), is the key to new organizational wealth. They can help and collaborate with others to meet the the day-to-day work-related challenges in solving problems. The authors, Emad Abu-Shanab, Maram Haddad and Michael B Knight, in the paper, “Knowledge Sharing Practices and the Learning Organization: A Study”, have studied various knowledge sharing practices in the Jordanian communication sector, the level of involvement in those practices within organizations and the benefits of different practices to gain a good level of organizational learning. It was concluded that knowledge sharing practices act as significant predictors of ongoing organizational learning.

A compensatory model, which is a multi-attribute model, allows positive attributes to compensate for negative attributes. In this model, the decision maker arrives at a choice of decision by considering all of the attributes and by mentally trading off the alternative’s perceived weakness on one or more attributes with its perceived strength on other attributes. In the paper, “Quantitative Analysis of Compensatory Model: The Impact of Shopping Malls on the City Structure”, the author, Prathamesh Muzumdar, measures the influence of shopping mall on four major attributes of the city of Bloomington-Normal of USA: (1) change in environment; (2) change in architectural and urban perception; (3) change in communication and transportation; and (4) change in the economic aspect of necessity of a city. The author uses the compensatory model to evaluate each attribute with respect to belief and attitudes of individual towards the attribute. A multivariate correlation analysis was used to assess the interrelationships among the attributes and how the change in one attribute affects another attribute. It was concluded that the change occurring in the environment was sustained by the existing cultural influences on the city; the environment was able to sustain the cultural differences that would have occurred due to the influence of shopping mall on the city; the transport and communication in the city grew up with the increase in shopping malls; and a major change occurred with respect to urbanization and architectural perception.

-- Nasina Jigeesh
Consulting Editor