Towards evaluating knowledge management through the 7C Model Harri Oinas-Kukkonen Dept. Information Processing Science, University of Oulu, Finland
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Abstract: This paper discusses the evaluation of knowledge management systems through the 7C model for organizational knowledge creation. The model is based on the distinction of individual and organizational knowledge and explicit and tacit knowledge. The 7C model suggests that the seven Cs, i.e. Connection, Concurrency, Comprehension, Communication, Conceptualization, Collaboration, and Collective intelligence, play a central role in the knowledge creation process. The paper also argues that previous research has focused on the technology and organizational contexts, and many of the Web’s inherent key features have not been utilized to the extent they should. Better support for the largely neglected human-sensitive subprocesses of organizational knowledge creation, Comprehension and Communication, may be achieved through deeper utilization of the Web’s hypertext functionality. Moreover, organizations may improve both their core business activities and improvement capabilities as well as search for competitive advantage from business alliances. Keywords: organizational knowledge, organizational learning, communities of practice, knowledge management, knowledge networks
1. Introduction Today’s organizations are continuously faced with the challenge of complexity and urgency in their core business activities. The business environment is very hectic and organizations need to be able to cope with many different kinds of business, technological, social, and human requirements. There is an inherent need for organizations to improve their core business activities. In order to be able to solve complex problems the individual and group problem-solving processes involved in computer-mediated communication systems need to be integrated (Turoff, 1991). On the basis of their studies of Japanese companies, Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) proposed their widely known model of the knowledge-creating company. They argued that much of the innovation created and accumulated in a firm is actually based on tacit knowledge, i.e. arising out of experience, and cannot be easily communicated by workers within excessively formalized management procedures. In the pursuit of organizational performance, an organization’s capability to improve its core business activities becomes critically important. Engelbart (1992) proposes a conceptual framework for enhancing organization’s capability, known as the Concurrent Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge (CODIAK). This framework emphasizes the harnessing of technology to achieve high-performance capability. In this kind of an approach it becomes essential, even if admittedly challenging, to improve the organization’s improvement capability. Yet, this may become the high-payoff opportunity for organizations. Organizations also need increased sharing of knowledge across organizational boundaries within their business networks. This enables the sources of innovation quickly to multiply as organizations are able to establish procedures to communicate experience in the organization and its business network. As an example, the electronics industry in the Nordic countries has been one of the forerunners in developing intensive partnerships and alliances in its value networks. This paper aims at deeper understanding of organizational knowledge creation and management. It studies ways in which new knowledge management theory might help the performance of knowledge-intensive organizations through improving their capabilities to improve their own core business activities. Moreover, there are possibilities for highly knowledge-intensive organizations, such as software companies, for multiplying sources of innovation through business alliances, which requests new inter-organizational knowledge management practices.
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Section 2 describes a conceptual model for organizational knowledge creation and management based on the distinction of individual and organizational knowledge and explicit and tacit knowledge suggested by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995). Section 3 aims at providing an idea about the feasibility and applicability of the proposed model for managing knowledge both within and across organizational boundaries, by giving emphasis for the improvement of organization’s improvement capabilities as well as the crossing of organizational boundaries through business alliances or networked improvement communities. Finally, section 4 summarizes and discusses the contribution of this paper.
2. Understanding organizational knowledge creation This paper describes the new conceptual model for understanding organizational knowledge creation, known as the 7C model, which suggests that the following seven Cs play a critical role in the creation of organizational knowledge: Connection, Concurrency, Comprehension, Communication, Conceptualization, Collaboration, and Collective intelligence (Oinas-Kukkonen 2004). The 7C model may be described through different abstraction levels. See Fig. 1. Lyytinen (1987) defines the technology, language and organizational contexts as follows: In the technology context an information system confines object systems to a view of how efficiently data are processed and stored in a given material carrier, in the language context it provides a means and environment for comprehension and linguistic communication, and in the organizational context it supports, enables and takes part in an organizational process involving human interactions and collaboration, e.g. decision-making.
Organizational context Language context
Collaboration & Conceptualization supports
Communication & Comprehension
Collective intelligence
enables
Technology context
Concurrency & Connection
Figure 1: Organizational knowledge creation at different contexts The benefit of the 7C model is realized in the technology context through the fluent connection that st nd the Internet technology provides with information for several concurrent users (the 1 and 2 Cs). In the language context, the hypertext functionality’s ability to promote options and allow freedom rd of choice with contextual support provides users with a rich environment for comprehending (the 3 th C) and communicating (the 4 C) the information they find (Thüring et al., 1995). Information readers can access the information in the most suitable order for their purposes instead of the pre-defined, sequential order implied within many other electronic or printed documents. Likewise, information authors who provide multiple relationships around a piece of information can themselves gain a better insight through the enriched context. th
In the organizational context, knowledge artefacts are conceptualized (the 5 C) as knowledge artefacts, which serve as a collaboration vehicle through interaction between information producers th and consumers, within a team of co-workers or among other stakeholders (the 6 C). In general, support for understanding and communication helps in the individual learning of new things, and organizational learning mainly takes place through individuals and their communication and collaboration efforts. All of these six preceding Cs contribute to the growth of “togetherness” or th collective intelligence (the 7 C). This might also be called the organizational memory.
Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
Language context Individual
Organization
Communication Tacit knowledge Comprehension Explicit knowledge
Collective intelligence
Conceptualization
Collaboration
Organizational context
Figure 2: Organizational knowledge creation The creation of organizational knowledge is not a linear process, but rather a multi-cycle spiral process. See Fig. 2. The framework assumes that Concurrent Connection of all stakeholders with the joint information space is provided in a technologically sound manner, e.g. through the Web, Internet, wireless, mobile and other technologies. The 7C model follows Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) in that the integration of individual and organizational orientations are emphasized and that knowledge is assumed to create through interaction between tacit and explicit knowledge (Tervonen et al., 1997). The model follows Engelbart (1992) in the outcomes of the Comprehension, Communication and Conceptualization sub-processes. The four most central or sub-processes in the knowledge creation are: •
Comprehension – a process of surveying and interacting with the external environment, integrating the resulting intelligence with other project knowledge on an ongoing basis in order to identify problems, needs and opportunities; embodying explicit knowledge in tacit knowledge, “learning by doing”, re-experiencing
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Communication – a process of sharing experiences between people and thereby creating tacit knowledge in the form of mental models and technical skills; produces dialog records, which emphasize the needs and opportunities, integrating the dialog along with resulting decisions with other project knowledge on an ongoing basis
•
Conceptualization – a collective reflection process articulating tacit knowledge to form explicit concepts and systemizing the concepts into a knowledge system; produces knowledge products of a project team, which form a more or less comprehensive picture of the project in hand and are iteratively and collaboratively developed; may include proposals, specifications, descriptions, work breakdown structures, milestones, timelines, staffing, facility requirements, budgets, etc.; rarely a one-shot effort
•
Collaboration – a true team interaction process of using the produced conceptualizations within teamwork and other organizational processes
Each of the sub-processes may also be regarded as the building of an artefact and reasoning why it has been built the way it has. Repeatedly going through these phases in a seamless and spirallike way leads into the growth of Collective intelligence. Support for capturing deep individual thinking and recording the dialog between team members may help create truly innovative 1 knowledge products. 1
The learning involved in the comprehension and communication processes is closely related to the attitudes of the participants, i.e. whether they understand their weak points in the sense of learning styles, for example.
While the Comprehension and Communication in the 7C model are similar with the internalization and socialization concepts in Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), the Conceptualization and Collaboration in the 7C model do not have explicit correspondences within their framework. Conceptualization in the 7C model includes features of both externalization and combination, while Collaboration, i.e. the use of the conceptualizations, has not been explicitly addressed in their framework. In previous research on Web services and knowledge management, the technology (Connection, Concurrency) and organizational (Conceptualization, Collaboration) contexts have received relatively large attention, while the language (Comprehension, Communication) context has received less attention. Admittedly, it may be easier to provide support for technological and organizational contexts, but similar attention should be given to supporting the most humansensitive sub-processes of organizational knowledge creation, namely Comprehension and Communication. One of the most central features of Web information systems is its inherent hypertext functionality. Hypertext functionality supports the relating of pieces of information to each other associatively, its key features comprising enhanced linking, annotation, orientation and navigation capabilities as a seamless part of the information system (Oinas-Kukkonen, 1995). Quite interestingly, many of these features have not yet been utilized to the extent they could in supporting the organizational knowledge creation and management (Bieber et al., 1997). For example, capturing annotations and building typed hyperlinks may support both Comprehension and Communication. When users pay special attention for the true semantic of a link, i.e. what really is the connection between the two pieces of information that the link connects, they are forced to go deeper into the content and its meaning for other users. A link may contain information about its type or other attributes. Naturally, when navigating inside the joint information space the end-users benefit from such definitions. In a similar manner, annotations may serve as an important documentation and reasoning tool for the users and as a communication vehicle between the users. Many other hypertext functionalities (Bieber et al., 1997) may also be utilized to provide better support for organizational knowledge creation. These may also facilitate product innovation.
3. Crossing organizational boundaries Douglas Engelbart proposes a strategic conceptual framework for enhancing organization’s capability, known as the Concurrent Development, Integration and Application of Knowledge or CODIAK (Engelbart, 1992; Engelbart, 2000). Organization’s core activities are described as A, B and C-work. See Fig. 3. The goals differ at each level. A-work denotes the core business activities, B-work tackles improvement of the core business activities, and C-work addresses improvement of the improvement capabilities. As such, the full approach in itself may be regarded as a core business competence in the organization’s capability infrastructure and as an ideal candidate for early improvement to achieve extra bootstrapping leverage. In Engelbart’s framework, much of the knowledge would be shared and distributed through “knowledge workshops” or information spaces belonging to knowledge workers and their groups. Special “community knowledge workshops” focus especially on C-activities, and the use of computerized information systems enables a two-way transfer of knowledge among the C, B, and A-communities. Each organizational unit needs its’ own working processes and knowledge domains, but at the same time they will all have some knowledge elements and dynamics that are mutual. Ideally, the enterprise sub-domain processes will benefit from being interoperable with other sub-domains. Similarly, corporate-wide task forces and subcontractors, suppliers, alliance partners, customers and others will become involved to the extent that knowledge-domain interoperability is needed.
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C-work Improvement of the improvement capabilities
B-work Improvement of the core business activity
A-work Core business activity
Figure 3: The goals of A, B, and C-work (adapted from Engelbart 1992) To accomplish this a very flexible, wide-area sharing of pieces of the knowledge base is needed, such as the Open Hyperdocument System, which would provide for a range of user interface options, varying in areas such as complexity, potential competence level, difficulty of learning, types of interface devices and modalities (Engelbart, 2000). An example of this is the ability to create and use information through Web-connected mobile phones or palmtop computers independent of the time, place and context of use. Interestingly, according to Engelbart (2000) many of the practices and tools will be regarded as natural and easy to use after they have become well established, even though they may be initially viewed as unnatural and hard to learn. Engelbart (1992) notes: “The graphical user interfaces have been heavily affected by the “easy to use” dictum. This has served well to facilitate wide acceptance, but it is quite unlikely that the road to truly high performance can effectively be travelled by people who are struck with vehicular controls designed to be easy to use by a past generation. When the C-activity improvement takes place across organizational boundaries, networked improvement communities may emerge as a new but natural way of forming business alliances. Yet, the way to share business-related information with others is naturally always a matter of serious concern. One immediate thought is often that it would be impossible to share anything with competitors, because so many things are proprietary. Another line of thought concerns what useful things there would be in another business domain for a company to share. The A activities may be very competitive, but B activity tends to be less so, many of the things being more basic and generic, and the C activity even seems to focus on basic and generic matters. For this reason even competitors could consider co-operating at the B- and C- levels. On the other hand, B activities differ less between businesses than A activities, and C activities may be surprisingly alike. In some cases collaboration may very clearly be of value in a business sense, e.g. in the case of the procurement of appropriate systems and services. It might also be more expensive for each organization to operate its own advanced pilots and develop products privately than to do it within a networked improvement community. Moreover, the C-activity leaders may find it valuable to compare experiences and basic approaches with their counterparts in other organizations. As an example, they may be considering how much it would help the B activity to document the way in which things are done at present. Thus partner organizations may acquire value from C-community access and dialog, and they may consider multi-party alliances. According to Engelbart (1992), this improvement of improvement capabilities, and in particular through networked improvement communities, is the high-payoff opportunity to create high-performance organizations. To a great extent, these networked improvement communities seem to operate similarly to business alliances which denote high value integration and a high level of self-organizing (Tapscott
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et al., 2000). High value integration means that collaborators integrate value contributions from the members of the network in producing their offerings. In self-organizing business networks the market and its dynamics define the value and price level of the offerings. The main theme of alliance b-webs is creativity. Value proposition takes place through creative collaboration with the aid of a goal shared by a community of contributors, customers participate as co-contributors, the focus of knowledge is on community and creativity as well as standards and roles, and the main organizational process is innovation.
4. Knowledge management evaluation King and Ko (2001) have proposed a value-chain based approach to evaluate knowledge management and learning organizations. They suggest that the key classes for evaluation are the cognitive (and post-cognitive) processes, learning processes, organization’s behavioural processes, and the organizational impact. The cognitive and learning processes map in our 7C model with the Comprehension and Communication sub-processes, and organization’s behavioural processes map with Collaboration and Conceptualization sub-processes. Evaluating these may be carried out at the individual, work unit (group, team, or department), or overall organizational levels. King and Ko treat knowledge management as a subset of a learning organization. They also treat the knowledge as something more than data or information, i.e. something that makes sense for someone, but at the same time as something that reverts back to data through the conversion of tacit to explicit knowledge (cf. Tuomi 2000). Moreover, they argue that the basic distinction between the knowledge management and a learning organization is that knowledge management primarily focuses on knowledge content while the learning organization embraces all aspects of data, information and knowledge. The 7C model shares this view to knowledge in that knowledge surpluses data and information, and thus even if it emphasises knowledge content, it also addresses the link from knowledge back to re-shaping data and information. The evaluation of the Comprehension and Communication sub-processes means whether the following goals will be achieved: Better understanding of the current and potential future customers, the key organizational business processes, the product portfolio, product features and potential future products, as well as markets in general. Quite naturally, improvement of any of these will lead into either increase of new ideas or achievement of better ideas for future business, and it may also help solve some of the problems the organizations face with over time (by being more capable of defining the core processes and their key challenges) or to even avoid some of the pitfalls they may fall into. See Fig. 4 for a summary of the main issues for evaluating knowledge management systems. Comprehension and Communication customers business processes product portfolios product features markets ideas for future business recognizing key problems solving key problems
Collaboration and Conceptualization decision making rationale reasoning reuse of knowledge productivity …
Collective intelligence and Organizational impact revenue profitability return on investment growth market share customer satisfaction employee satisfaction shareholder value
… … Figure 4: Main issues in evaluating knowledge management systems
The increase of sharing and dissemination of information and the increase in varied interpretations are obvious and, as a matter of fact, by no means the most important measures for the success of knowledge management solutions. The truly important measure is the identification of underlying non-obvious, complex problems and issues. This may help better formulate the problems and 2
Five types of strategic business networks are discernible in a digital economy: supplier networks, producer networks, customer networks, standard coalitions, and technology cooperation networks. The strategic networks can be divided on two dimensions: self-organizing/hierarchical economic control, and low/high value integration. These two dimensions define the fundamental characteristics of five different broad types of b-web: agora, aggregation, value chain, alliance, and distributive networks (Tapscott et al., 2000).
Harri Oinas-Kukkonen
issues the organization is facing, has faced or will face. Naturally, means for solving these problems are urgently needed. By emphasizing the identification of the key organizational issues and focusing more clearly on solving these instead of something else, the organization also becomes less dependent on its individuals. At the same time the corporate or collective intelligence grows by the transfer of ideas, experience and best practices, and the individuals become more confident at their daily work. An example of these, in particular Collaboration and Conceptualization, is the role of design rationale in systems development (Oinas-Kukkonen 1998). Capturing the rationale behind design and other business decisions may become ever more important at emergent organizations, i.e. organizations that constantly try to adapt to their changing environments, but which never achieve the stability they are striving for (Alatalo et al. 2001). Admittedly, the organizational challenge with knowledge management becomes much more difficult with non-routine and unstructured sensemaking (Malhotra 2004). According to Malhotra (2004) the main reason why the knowledge management systems so often do fail lies in that the enablers of knowledge management systems all too often become constraints for adapting these systems in the uncertain and rapidly changing business environments. Moreover, evaluating the ways for collaboration at the C-level will help benchmark the organization with its competitors or partially similar organizations. In addition to the abovementioned, the organizational impact, e.g. increases in revenue, profitability, return on investment, growth, market share, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, or shareholder value become essential. If the organizational impact is not taken into account in one way or another when developing the knowledge management solutions, no success stories should be expected. For this reason, it is important for the organizations to consider the knowledge management solutions at the same time with its business strategies, instead of separately. Nevertheless, the key interest should be put into increased organizational expertise or developing a more competitive product portfolio.
5. Conclusions and future research This paper described the 7C model for organizational knowledge creation and management. The benefit can be achieved in the concurrent connection of many participants with the information, through support for human comprehension and communication, and through conceptualizing the knowledge artefacts and supporting collaboration. Yet, it is the seamless cyclic nature of the whole process, which enables the true growth of collective intelligence. This paper also demonstrated the applicability of the proposed model both inside organizations as well as at crossing organizational boundaries. A competitive organization may implement support for different levels of activities in its business processes before their competitors. The improving of improvement capabilities is never-ending in turbulent, competitive business environments with fastevolving technology and rapid changes in personnel as new employees march in and others leave. This also enables the establishment of new kinds of business alliances through networked improvement communities. These business alliances denote high value integration and a high level of self-organizing, setting emphasis on creative collaboration, customer participation, community knowledge, and organizational innovation. The knowledge management systems may be evaluated through the 7C model. A preliminary list of issues to be tackled in the evaluation was presented in this paper. The Comprehension and Communication sub-processes focus on the identification and solving of the underlying nonobvious, complex problems and issues. These also tackle the issues related to customers, organizational business processes, product portfolio, product features, new business ideas, and markets in general. The Collaboration and Conceptualization sub-processes focus on decision making, reuse of knowledge, and productivity issues, among others. Organizational impact tackles issues such as revenue, profitability, return on investment, growth, market share, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, and shareholder value.
We plan to continue to elaborate and experiment with the 7C model, and we wish that other researchers and practitioners would join us in this effort. Many interesting research issues may be addressed, such as: What are the concrete operational measures for evaluating knowledge management systems? How do organizations and the individuals in them use the intranet systems? When and how do organizations search for knowledge? Where do companies seek new product innovations from? When and how should organizations collaborate with other organizations? What role does credibility and persuasiveness play in the knowledge management? How to motivate knowledge workers not only to carry out their daily tasks but also to address the improvement capabilities of core business activities and the possibilities for improving these improvement capabilities? Naturally, also the organization’s behavioural processes, such as decision making, reuse of knowledge, and productivity, will need attention. Several important technology-related issues may also be recognized. Since Web-based solutions are so dominant today, the possibilities of standard and more advanced Web technologies for supporting the seven Cs should be studied. It will also be important to study how the key software functionalities and the different sub-processes of organizational knowledge creation may be mapped with each other. Research should also be carried out off the Web, if only because the solution space may be limited by the Web’s dominance. One healthy off-the-Web research direction would be to study mobile and pervasive technologies in relation to organizational knowledge creation processes.
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