Finding in-house knowledge: patterns and implications Janine Swaak (Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands
[email protected])
Lilia Efimova (Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands
[email protected])
Masja Kempen (Telematica Instituut, The Netherlands
[email protected])
Mark Graner (University of Twente, The Netherlands
[email protected])
Abstract: In this paper we present the results of two studies aimed at understanding how employees find knowledge available in their organisation. Data about knowledge awareness and knowledge finding strategies were collected in two research organisations using interviews and on-line questionnaires. The results of the two studies demonstrate interesting patterns. First, we found that although people say that they are aware of knowledge in their organisation, they also indicate that the same knowledge is developed at different places in their organisations. Second, asking others and searching own mailbox and other own digital and paper archives – and not organisation-wide repositories – are most popular ways for finding in-house knowledge. The results are discussed in terms of implications from the perspective of employees and from the perspective of organisations.
Keywords: in-house knowledge, knowledge finding strategies, knowledge awareness, employees’ perspective, organisation’s perspective Categories: A.1, H.3, H.4, J.4, K.6, K.8
1
Introduction
Research suggests that 90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new products is spent in recreating what already exists. Feldman [Feldman 04] estimates "the cost of intellectual rework, substandard performance and inability to find knowledge resources" as $5,000 per worker per year. In other words, a lot of money and intellectual power is spent on reinventing the wheel and searching for knowledge. This is a huge problem for companies and a central challenge for KM research. With our work we strive to contribute to solving this issue. The current paper examines
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how people search for knowledge available in their own organisation and also queries to what extent people are aware of the knowledge in their organisation. In this paper we present and compare the results of a study aimed to understand employees' awareness of in-house knowledge and knowledge finding strategies in two organisations. We discuss patterns that emerge from our results and explore implications for research and practice.
2
Data collection instruments
For understanding `finding in-house information and knowledge’ we took an empirical approach. First we carried out exploratory interviews using the critical incidents technique (see [Intel 02] for similar approach): we asked interviewees to recall several situations when they needed in-house knowledge and discussed why and what they were looking for, how they found it and what problems were encountered. Based on the interviews, we defined two constructs for further data collection and designed two instruments, an on-line questionnaire and task-based interviews. During exploratory interviews we discovered that in many cases when people talk about ‘searching for knowledge’ they look for information about knowledge (e.g. ‘what do we know about topic X in our organisation?’), knowledge representations (e.g. reports on certain subject) or knowledgeable people. We interpret this as an indication that in many cases knowledge cannot be consumed from packaged chunks, instead people need information cues and engagement of others to (re)construct knowledge [Stenmark 02]. A similar observation is made by [Cross at al 01] who make a distinction between being informed about what another person knows and "the willingness of the person sought out to engage in problem solving rather than dump information" (p.102). Our first findings also indicate that searching for information and searching for knowledge are different, but interwoven and hard to separate. In this study we used a pragmatic approach and defined ‘searching for knowledge’ as searching for information and for people within an organisation in order to obtain knowledge. This paper presents the data on two constructs we used in our further analysis: ‘knowledge awareness’ and ‘knowledge finding strategies’. Knowledge awareness indicates to what extent employees are aware of existing knowledge in their organisation. In the on-line questionnaire ‘knowledge awareness’ was measured with several items, including items of the sub-test ‘inventory of existing knowledge’ and items of the sub-tests ‘development of (new) knowledge’ and ‘knowledge sharing’ taken from [Weggeman 97]. In the task-based interview people were asked to mention the top 3 persons, documents and projects of the organisation on a topic familiar to them, and the top 3 persons, documents and projects of the organisation on a topic not familiar to them. Knowledge finding strategies indicate how people search for knowledge in their organisation. We used insights from the exploratory interviews to propose a list of finding strategies attuned to the organisations we studied and asked the respondents to indicate the frequencies of using them. In the task-based interview people were asked to indicate how they would find the top 3 persons, documents and projects on a topic familiar and unfamiliar to them. The task-based interview also queried the reasons for
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using those strategies. Both the on-line questionnaire and the task-based interview provided data regarding preferences for approaching people or systems for knowledge questions (in line with [Sprenger et al 95]).
3
Results from two studies on searching for in-house knowledge
We performed our exploratory study at two organisations: one large-sized Research Department of an international company (further called ‘Organisation I’) and one medium-sized Research Organisation (further called ‘Organisation II’). In both organisations people are co-located at one location, ca. 80% of the employees are in the office on a daily base, 20% are at partners’ places or ‘on the move’ 2-3 days per week. Of the researchers in Organisation I ca. 85% are ‘specialists’ having thorough knowledge in one research area, and ca. 15% are ‘generalists’ having high-level knowledge in several research areas. Organisation II has ca. 65% ‘specialists’ and 35% ‘generalists’. Both organisations have a relatively stable corpus of employees. In this section we present the data collected with on-line questionnaires and taskbased interviews. 3.1
On-line questionnaire
Ca. 300 people in Research Organisation I and ca. 100 people in Research Organisation II received requests to fill-in the on-line questionnaire. Those persons that had not answered after a certain amount of time received one reminder. After this reminder we closed the call. The response rate was 40% in Research Organisation I, and 45% in Research Organisation II. Knowledge awareness This section describes the section of the questionnaire related to knowledge awareness and the figures are reported in [Table 1]. On a daily to weekly base, in Organisation I 60% are asked about the knowledge they developed recently, in Organisation II this is 42%. At the same time, 57% (Organisation I) and 44% (Organisation II) are asked about knowledge they don’t have. Also, on a daily to weekly base, 24% (Organisation I) and 30% (Organisation II) of the respondents are asked about documents. On a daily to weekly base 58% and 65% (Organisation I) and ca. 32% and 36%(Organisation II) of the respondents find out about or ask explicitly about recently developed knowledge of colleagues. We now report the findings as shown in [Table 2]. Of all respondents, in Organisation I 55% agree with the statement that they can tell who has most knowledge to answer a client’s question, this is 58% in Organisation II; 58% in Organisation I and 74% of the respondents in Organisation II agree with the statement that they are aware of who knows what, and who are experts in their organisations, 77% in Organisation I and 71% in Organisation II indicate that managers are aware of the same. Here we see that in the smaller Organisation II people are more confident about ‘who knows what’ while in both organisations, managers are assumed to have a substantial role in this.
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How often…
org.
are you asked about knowledge you developed recently are you asked about knowledge you don't have yourself are you asked about documents of your organisation on certain topics do you find out about recently developed knowledge of your colleagues do you ask your colleagues about their recently developed knowledge
I II I II
never 0 2,0 5,3 2,0
% of the respondents yearly monthly weekly daily 6,6 32,9 51,3 9,2 16,0 40,0 40,0 2,0 13,2 23,7 56,6 1,3 30,0 24,0 40,0 4,0
I
9,2
31,6
35,5
23,7
0
II
6,0
36,0
28,0
28,0
2,0
I
0
5,3
36,8
48,7
9,2
II
0
20,0
48,0
28,0
4,0
1,3
13,2
19,7
53,9
11,8
0
24,0
40,0
34,0
2,0
I II
Table 1. Knowledge awareness in terms of individuals ‘asking’ or ‘being asked’ % of the respondents comple comple dis org. tely neutral agree tely agree disagree agree
Please indicate your perception about the following statements… When I get a question from a client I can tell where one can find the best/most knowledge to answer it I am aware of who knows what, and who are experts in my organisation My manager is aware of who knows what, and who are experts in our organisation I know in what areas we have more knowledge than our main competitors Sometimes the same knowledge is being developed at two different places in my organisation Sometimes valuable mistakes are made because the needed knowledge wasn't at the right place at the right time
I
1,3
10,4
33,8
50,6
3,9
II
0
10,5
31,6
55,3
2,6
I
0
10,5
31,6
56,6
1,3
II
0
7,9
18,4
68,4
5,3
I
0
1,3
22,1
68,8
7,8
II
2,6
7,9
18,4
65,8
5,3
I
7,8
27,3
39,0
23,4
2,6
II
0
26,3
26,3
44,7
2,6
I
0
3,9
24,7
59,7
11,7
II
0
10,5
28,9
47,4
13,2
1,3
5,2
35,1
48,1
10,4
0
15,8
39,5
39,5
5,3
I II
Table 2. Knowledge awareness in terms of statements about oneself and the own organisation
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In contrast with the former results, 75% (Organisation I) and 53% (Organisation II) are neutral or disagree with the statement that they know in what areas their organisation has more knowledge than their competitors. Moreover, 71% (Organisation I) and 61% (Organisation II) agree with the statement that at two different places the same knowledge is being developed at the same time, and 58% (Organisation I) and 45% (Organisation II) agree with the statement that valuable mistakes are made because the needed knowledge was not at the right place at the right time. Knowledge finding strategies Regarding the strategies for finding knowledge at these organisations [Table 3], ‘search your mailbox’ is the most popular in Organisation II and the third most popular in Organisation I: in Organisation II 82% of the respondents search the mailbox on a daily to weekly base, this is 86% for the Organisation I. For Organisation II second most popular is ‘contacting people’, 81% of the respondents do this on a daily to weekly base. This is in Organisation II followed by ‘searching own paper archive’, by 54% on a daily to weekly base. 50% of the respondents ‘search their local disk’ and ‘search network drives’ on a daily to weekly base. 45% go to the document management system of the organisation for searching on a daily to weekly base. In Organisation I, which is the bigger organisation, we see a slightly different pattern: most popular is their Yellow Pages system, consulted by 96% on a daily to weekly base. Second most popular -as indicated- is contacting colleagues with 88% on a daily to weekly base, then searching own mailbox, followed by searching own local disk and own paper archive, respectively by 77% and 75% of the respondents on a daily to weekly base. 62% search the document system on a daily to weekly base. How often do you use each of % of the respondents the following ways to find in- org. never yearly monthly weekly house knowledge... I 3,9 2,6 7,8 48,1 search your mailbox 6,0 10,0 56,0 II 2,0 0 3,1 9,2 60,0 contacting people you know and I asking them 2,1 16,7 75,0 II 0 I 1,3 9,1 14,3 55,8 search your paper archive 18,8 20,8 43,8 II 6,3 I 3,8 7,7 12,8 42,3 search your local disk 10,0 20,0 40,0 II 20,0 I 11,8 18,4 21,1 34,2 search network drives 26,0 12,0 40,0 II 12,0 I 0 10,4 27,3 57,1 search in document management system II 2,0 20,4 32,7 38,8 1,3 2,6 0 44,7 use other systems, incl. ‘yellow I pages’ 12,2 18,4 53,1 II 6,1 Table 3. Knowledge finding strategies
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daily 37,7 26,0 27,7 6,3 19,5 10,4 33,3 10,0 14,5 10,0 5,2 6,1 51,3 10,2
In both organisations people use a mix of strategies for finding knowledge. An important observation is that 4 out of 5 most popular ways to find knowledge – search own inbox, ask people one knows, search own paper archive, search local disk – do not relate to or count on shared, public accessible information. In the larger Organisation I the public Yellow Pages was most popular. This Yellow Pages system is used as a first step towards finding and contacting people. 3.2
Task-based interviews: knowledge awareness and search strategies
Fifteen employees of Research Organisation II were selected for the task-based interview to make up a representative sample of the employees of this Research Organisation. The task-based interview took ca. 1 hour. We found that the interviewees could easily tell the top 3 persons knowledgeable on topics familiar to themselves. Also mentioning the top 3 persons knowledgeable on topics not familiar them was not experienced as difficult. They did not need to search for this information, they simply knew it by ‘co-incidence’, working together, coffee tables, organised lunch talks and sharing offices and not by searching information systems. Next to mentioning persons, interviewees were asked to list projects and documents on certain topics. Projects and documents were harder to mention than mentioning people. The interviewees could mention projects and documents they were personally involved in (as project developer or member), but other projects and documents were labelled a ‘guess’. One interviewee indicated first to search in the document management system for projects and then eventually go and ask others. All other 14 interviewees indicated that they would consult others to become sure. The main four reasons mentioned for this strategy of finding knowledge are: (1) estimations of quality and relevance are best made by experts themselves, (2) consulting colleagues is usually the fastest and most efficient way to find something (the respondents indicated for example that this is the fastest way to find out if you are reinventing the wheel), (3) colleagues can immediately give you feedback, help you to sharpen your search question, and give you suggestions for further search, (4) consulting colleagues is fun, it stills your curiosity, and the document management system and the intranet search facilities are not very supportive. 3.3
Patterns
The results of the two studies look quite similar on several aspects and demonstrate interesting patterns. At the level of individual employees, the awareness of knowledge in the organisation seems sufficiently good. In both organisations employees say that they have an overview of internal knowledge and know who the experts are. At the same time, a substantial number of the respondents indicate that valuable mistakes are made as knowledge was not at the right place at the right time, and that the same knowledge was developed at different places in the organisation. In a sense we observe a paradox: individuals are satisfied with their access to knowledge of others, while from an organisational perspective existing in-house knowledge is underexploited. Also we see an asymmetry; people indicate they know about the knowledge of other employees, but they doubt that others know about their own knowledge and they feel
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they have to expose their knowledge more explicitly to make it known. Currently, on a daily to weekly base, 57% (Organisation I) and 44% (Organisation II) are asked about knowledge they don’t have. Finally, people are better able to mention people with knowledge than documents and projects on certain topics. The interviews indicated that people most often consult people as a finding strategy for knowledge. The on-line questionnaire also showed that ‘people’ and ‘own archives’ (including own email inbox, own paper archives, own local disk) are the most popular ways for finding in-house knowledge. We found this pattern of results despite the fact both research organisations have been using their documentmanagement systems for over several years. An exception seems to be the popularity of the Yellow Pages system in the larger Organisation I. This Yellow Pages system however is used as a first step to contact people.
4
Discussion
A limitation of this work is that the results are collected in just one type of organisation: co-located research organisations. This coloured sample limits generalisability. Another limitation concerns the number of respondents to the on-line questionnaires. Also, it is evident that knowledge behaviour of individuals is determined by many factors we did not study. Such factors are for example personality dimensions, culture and habits in organisations, type of job that people have, and the specific tasks that people perform. This study highlighted complex relations between information and knowledge in the process of searching for knowledge. Both in the exploratory interviews and from the results of the on-line questionnaires and task-based interviews we observed that in many cases ‘finding knowledge’ means looking for people with knowledge, for information about knowledge (e.g. the popularity of the Yellow Pages system in Organisation I), and in fewer occasions looking for knowledge representations (e.g. documents). For us this is evidence that in many cases knowledge cannot be consumed from packaged chunks, instead people need information cues and engagement of others to (re)construct it. Given these subtleties it is clear that understanding how people search for knowledge benefits from the wealth of research on information search and retrieval (e.g. [Rice et al 01] for an overview). However, at least as relevant is the field of learning. Learning places ‘searching for knowledge’ in a context of constructing personal learning experiences, selecting learning resources and engaging others as facilitators. For example, the process of finding knowledge could be described using the learning process phases [Knowles et al 98]: determining what learning is needed, creating the strategy and resources for learning, implementing the strategy and using learning resources, assessing the attainment of the learning goal. Adding this perspective allows using insights about effective learning and application of learning results at a workplace to understand how knowledge is reused. Our results also indicate the underestimated importance of knowledge awareness, especially with regard to understanding what one does not know, but needs to know. This relates to the issue of motivation to ask questions and to actively seek for learning from others instead of reinventing the wheel. There is much discussion in KM on knowledge sharing, motivation and culture, but the demand side of knowledge
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exchange seems to get too little attention. The lack of interest in knowledge of others is often addressed as the ‘Not-Invented-Here syndrome’. Finally, our observed preference for personal archives for finding knowledge of others, calls for further research aimed at understanding how managing information and knowledge at the individual level relates to that of organisations. In our view the reason to search local systems is not just due to "poor search facilities" in organisation-wide systems. We believe that the benefits that individuals experience with their own ways to classify and organise knowledge artefacts, largely explain the preference for personal archives. Therefore it is worthwhile to integrate current research on distributed knowledge management [Bonifacio et al 02], peer-to-peer KM systems [Maier, Hädrich 04] and tools that integrate individual and organisational views [Novak, Wurst 03], with insights from research on personal information and knowledge management.
References [Bonifacio et al 02] Bonifacio, M., Bouquet, P., & Cuel, R.: "Knowledge Nodes: the building blocks of a distributed approach to knowledge management"; JUCS (Journal of Universal Computer Science), 8, 6 (2002), 652-661. [Cross at al 01] Cross, R., Parker, A., Prusak, L., & Borgatti, S. P.: "Knowing what we know: Supporting knowledge creation and sharing in social networks"; Organizational Dynamics, 30 (2001), 100-120. [Feldman 04] Feldman, S.: "The high cost of not finding information"; KM World, March (2004). Available at: http://www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=17 25&Publication_ID=108 [Intel 02] "Information overload: Inaccessible data and a knowledge management solution" Intel white paper (2002). Available at: http://www.intel.com/ebusiness/pdf/it/pp023204.pdf [Knowles et al 98] Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F., & Swanson, R. A.: "The adult learner: the definitive classic in adult education and human resources development"; Houston, Gulf Professional Publishing (1998). [Maier, Hädrich 04] Maier, R., & Hädrich, T. "Centralized versus peer-to-peer knowledge management systems"; Proc. OKLC04, Innsbruck (2004). [Novak, Wurst 03] Novak, J., & Wurst, M.: "Supporting communities of practice through personalisation and collaborative structuring based on capturing implicit knowledge"; Proc. IKNOW '03, Graz (2003). [Rice at al 01] Rice, R. E., McCreadie, M., & Chang, S.-J. L.: "Accessing and browsing information and communication"; London, MIT Press (2001). [Sprenger et al 95] Sprenger, C. C., Eijsden, C. H., ten Have, S., & Ossels, F.: "Vier competenties van de lernede organisatie"; 's Gravenhage, Berenschot Fundatie/Delwel (1995). [Stenmark 02] Stenmark, D.: "Information vs. knowledge: The role of intranets in knowledge management"; Proc. HICSS'02, IEEE Press (2002). [Weggeman 97] Weggeman, M.: "Kennismanagement: Inrichting en besturing van kennisintensieve organisaties"; Schiedam, Scriptum (1997).
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