Information Management, Information Policy, Knowledge Management and Knowledge Organisations

Roger Clarke

Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Version of 19 March 2001

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 2001

This document is at http://www.xamax.com.au/EC/IMKM.html

Contents

• Introduction
• Foundations
• Information Management
• Information Policy
• The Knowledge Organisation
• Knowledge Management
• Resources on Knowledge Management

Introduction

The notions of 'information management', 'information policy', 'knowledge management' and 'the knowledge organisation' are subject to widely varying interpretations, and much confusion.

This document sets out to explain those concepts in a way that grounds them in information systems theory, rather than permitting the kinds of ad hoc thinking pursued by most industry commentators. It therefore commences by reviewing the meanings of key underlying concepts.

Foundations

Many years ago, I wrote a paper on the fundamental concepts in information systems. This initial section commences by summarising the contents of that paper.

Data is any symbol, sign or measure which is in a form which can be captured by a person or a machine and which represents a fact in the real world.

Information is data that has value. Informational value depends upon context. Until it is placed in an appropriate context, data is not information, and once it ceases to be in that context it ceases to be information.

Knowledge is the matrix of impressions within which an individual situates newly acquired information. It is intrinsically personal rather than organisational, and tacit rather than explicit. It cannot be captured in any kind of database or document-base. Further discussion of the idea is in another paper I wrote many years ago.

Information and knowledge are critical to organisational decision-making. A 'decision' is a choice among alternative courses of action. A simple model of decision-making involves four steps:

• a trigger, which is something that causes a person to realise a decision is needed;
• information-gathering;
• alternative-generation;
• choice.

Many relatively simple decisions are made on behalf of organisations by individuals acting alone; but the more complex and critical decisions are made by groups of individuals. Most decisions, and especially complex ones, involve making trade-offs among conflicting objectives, judgements about the future, and judgements about how to limit the information space to manageable volumes and the range of options to a testable set.

The quality of an organisation's decision making depends on several factors:

• the amount and quality of the information available to the individual or group making the decision;
• the knowledge possessed by the individuals involved;
• the degree of commonality of that knowledge among the individuals involved; and
• the degree of correspondence between the motivations of the individuals involved in the decision and the goals of the organisation as a whole.

Information Management

Information is a critical resource. In order to assist organisations to exploit information, the notion of information management has arisen. It is a loose collection of activities that deal with all aspects of information, throughout its life-cycle. The life-cycle can be depicted as:

• creation / collection / acquisition of information;
• storage;
• manipulation of information content and format;
• use within the organisation;
• disclosure beyond the organisation, including publication;
• retention;
• archival;
• destruction.

Data exists in many forms, including:

• relatively unstructured data stored such as text, sound, image, video and animations; and
• relatively structured data stored in rows and columns.

Data storage is of many different ways, including:

• hard-copy documents; and
• machine-readable records, in files, databases and spreadsheets.

A comprehensive information management strategy needs to encompass all forms of data and data storage.

Important elements of information management include:

• control features:
  • ownership of data, records, documents and information;
  • version management;
  • retention, archival and destruction, including information currency review and notices to owners of the need for review of information currency;
  • facilitation of the administration of information;
  • maintenance of data quality, including accuracy, completeness and timeliness, and taking into account the tendency of data quality to reduce over time;
  • publishing management, including:
    • document (including web-page) design guidelines; and
    • cross-media publishing processes;
• data protection features, including:
  • usage policies, and terms and conditions of use more generally;
  • access controls;
  • authentication, variously of individuals, of eligibility and of value;
  • data security, including both technical and organisational measures;
  • authorisation of actions taken on data;
  • logging of actions taken on data;
  • confidentiality, including commercial-in-confidence limitations;
  • privacy protections for personal data;
  • 'official secrets' and FoI-exemptions, such as work-in-progress;
• services features, including:
  • facilitation of the discovery of information, including cataloguing, keywords and other forms of metadata, indexing, and search mechanisms;
  • equity issues, including accessibility and differential pricing;
• risk management features, including:
  • risk assessment of the contingent liabilities that can arise in relation to information, including:
    • copyright infringement;
    • defamation; and
    • confidentiality, including commercial-in-confidence;
  • risk management of contingent liabilities, and safeguards to address them, including:
    • copyright guidance;
    • copyright notices;
    • disclaimers.

Information Policy

Information management adopts the perspective of the organisation. This may conflict with the interests of other stakeholders, and hence a broader outlook is necessary in many circumstances. 'Information policy' is usefully applied to a cluster of matters arising in relation to public policy aspects of data.

Particularly important considerations that may influence an organisation's internal information management include the following:

• security policy, including physical, technical and organisational aspects;
• handling processes for requests for information;
• Freedom of Information requirements;
• copyright licensing of materials used by the organisation;
• privacy policy;
• legal authority for the acquisition, storage, use and disclosure of data;
• authentication, variously of identity, of eligibility and of value;
• support for anonymity and pseudonymity;
• equity issues, including service pricing, and accessibility by consumer segments such as handicapped people, from remote areas, and using mainstream technologies;
• information infrastructure usage policies, and terms and conditions of use.

The Knowledge Organisation

A knowledge organisation is one that encourages and facilitates the acquisition, enhancement and effective use of knowledge by its staff and creates the environment in which this knowledge can be used to support corporate goals. Sveiby uses the term even more restrictively to refer to organisations that produce and sell only knowledge, and that therefore need to manage their intangible assets.

Important characteristics of an effective knowledge organisation include a reliable and comprehensive corporate memory, shared vision, and goal congruence. A knowledge organisation is appropriate for corporations that are confronted by a dynamic, rapidly-changing context. Flexibility and adaptability need to be regarded as high values, and stability recognised as a luxury that cannot be afforded.

For this to come about, the organisation needs to encourage and reward imagination, creativity and diversity of ideas. It must recognise the value of bottom-up and middle-out as well as top-down innovation, and of informal and semi-formal communication networks to complement formal channels. The boundaries of the organisation must be porous, so that it can harness information and energy from contractors, business partners and other stakeholders.

Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is the set of activities an organisation undertakes to create and sustain itself as a knowledge organisation.

A useful description is that "knowledge management ... embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings" (Brint 1999). That source quotes industry commentator Paul Strassmann as saying that "what matters the most in any enterprise [is] educated, committed, and imaginative individuals working for organizations that place a greater emphasis on people than on technologies".

The aim of knowledge management within an organisation is to establish and maintain processes such that there is considerable sharing of, and commonality of, knowledge, objectives and motivations among staff (including key staff of strategic partners), and hence that the organisation's actions as a whole are coherent, and the organisation is not exposed to serious risk when individuals cease to be available to it.

Sveiby writes about researchers and practitioners who are interested in 'People-Track Knowledge Management', and who are primarily involved in assessing, changing and improving human individual skills and/or behaviour. "To them Knowledge = Processes, a complex set of dynamic skills, know-how, etc., that is constantly changing. They are traditionally involved in learning and in managing these competencies individually - like psychologists - or on an organisational level - like philosophers, sociologists or organisational theorists. To me Knowledge Management is the art of creating value from an organisation's Intangible Assets".

Resources on Knowledge Management

Brint, at http://www.brint.com/km/

Davenport T.H. & Prusak L. (1998) 'Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know' Harvard Business School Press, 1998

IBM, at http://www-4.ibm.com/software/data/km/

Knowledge Management News, at http://www.kmnews.com/

Koulopoulos T.M., Spinello R.A. & Toms W. (1997) 'Corporate Instinct: Building a Knowing Enterprise for the 21st Century' Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1997

Leonard-Barton, D. (1995) 'Wellsprings of Knowledge: Building and Sustaining the Sources of Innovation' Harvard Business School Press, 1995

Nonaka I. & Takeuchi H. (1995) 'The Knowledge-Creating Company' Oxford University Press, 1995

Stewart T.A. (1997) 'Intellectual Capital: The New Wealth of Organizations' Currency/Doubleday, 1997

Sveiby K.E. (1997) 'The New Organizational Wealth: Managing and Measuring Knowledge-Based Assets' Berrett Koehler, 1997, and at http://www.sveiby.com.au/KnowledgeManagement.html

Uni. of California at San Francisco, at http://www.ckm.ucsf.edu/

Uni. of Texas, at http://www.bus.utexas.edu/kman/

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Created: 19 March 2001

Last Amended: 19 March 2001

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