Introduction
Many companies experience the challenge of tribal knowledge. This is when members of a business have internal knowledge of how to properly perform a task in order to produce a product or service (Brownell, D. R. , 2017). The knowledge is often learned by veterans of a business out of necessity and may or may not be passed down over time to new employees. Operating in this fashion can become inefficient and pose a threat to companies who may lose key individuals or are expanding rapidly.
Within our organization we experience the challenge of tribal knowledge daily within various departments. For example, there are times where a customer may place a time sensitive order for a custom product, but the process to perform this task
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R. , 2017). This document will propose a research plan to identify how problematic tribal knowledge is within the organization and the departments that are most impacted by the threat. The results of this research can then be used to intelligently deploy a corrective action plan and begin the process of addressing the issue.
Problem Statement
It is suspected that tribal knowledge within our organization is becoming an issue and decreasing efficiency in the workplace. We feel this way because as employees have begun to leave the company due to various reasons, there has been a noticeable uptick in situations where existing employees make comments such as “we don’t know how to do that, person X used to be the one that we sent those tasks to”. This results in numerous inefficiencies such as:
Employees “pointing fingers” at who should own the task.
Management needing to determine who is best to learn the task.
A learning curve for the new assignee to “figure out” how the previous employee completed the
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His study was fueled by the a passion to understand why, with all of the digital tools available to humans, was there a perceived constant recreation of material that had already been created in a previous project of the organization. What he found was what they called the “data explosion” (Bilello, P. A. , 2012) . In very simple terms, this is the result of businesses becoming mature in learning how to produce data at a rapid rate, but not organizing the data properly for reuse by others within the organization.
The research also uncovered a similar problem at the 135 year old company Bissell Homecare Inc. For over a century, the company had been operating in what it thought was an efficient manner. Their model was simple; as someone new is hired, as senior teaches them what they do to perform the job, the individual then teaches the next employee and so on. This model appeared to work until they began to expand their manufacturing rapidly overseas. Bissell then launched a simple yet effective program called Knowledge-Based Engineering (KBE) (Bilello, P. A. , 2012). In this model, the problem of tribal knowledge was essentially eliminated. They trained employees to use the model which essentially redirects the knowledge transfer from employee to a knowledge base that can be reused by everyone instead of direct employee to employee knowledge transfer only. The
In his book, titled Tribes, Joel Kotkin talks about the strong prevalence of tribalism on the 21st century. In the book the author starts with defining what he means by the word “tribalism”. The author then picks up 5 globally distributed ethnic tribal groups namely the Jews, British, Japanese, Chinese and the Indians and goes on to analyze each of these groups, in terms of evolution of the tribes, the prominent characteristics of each tribe, how they became more prominent in the modern world with the end of cold war and with the national boundaries getting more permeable. The author finally makes and attempt to predict how these ethnic groups will evolve and which of these groups will dominate the world going forward. The author believes that
A great deal of information was covered this week such as, the necessity in which businesses need to effectively plan and set objectives, the strategies utilized and how they are executed to obtains results, and how managements decisions can potentially affect those results. Although each topic covered was found to be interesting and informational, there was something in particular that struck a chord, which was how business establishments have to be flexible and adaptable and in many instances plan and change their strategies of today, in order to keep up with the evolving technology of tomorrow. Something that one often thinks about is how individuals use technology today and how companies that provide that technology are adapting. For instance, author Richard Daft of the textbook, Management, 12th ed. brings to light the potential issues that Intel is facing explaining “As another example of an external threat, Intel, whose microprocessors power most PCs, is being hurt by the decline in demand for personal computers as more people turn to tablets and smartphones.” (Daft, 2016, pg. 259). After reading this, one wanted to take a deep look into what it is exactly that Intel intends to do to overcome this obstacle and found some
Harvard Business School “Working Knowledge” Newsletter - April 17, 2006:! “Can you manage different generations?
Hansen M., Nohria N., and Tierney T. (1999), “What’s your Strategy for Managing Knowledge?,” Harvard Business Review (March 1999), 106–16.
The management of knowledge within the context of organizational processes is a determining factor of its effectiveness and level of performance. Hislop (2013) stated, "One of the key distinctions in the knowledge management literature relates to epistemology" (p. 8). In an attempt to acquire an in-depth understanding of key aspects of knowledge management I will analyze a key organizational job position that possesses valuable experience and traits of fulfilling responsibilities. My analysis will include a description of the organization and position, a review of the perspectives and types of knowledge, as described by Hislop (2013), as they relate to the job position, and the challenges encountered in transferring
Often the knowledge that is brought to bear represents “intangible products that cannot be produced ahead
Carr introduced “the commoditization of IT” concept. He stated, “It is hard to imagine a more perfect commodity than a byte of data – endlessly and perfectly reproducible at virtually no cost.” Although information technology may appear different to be described as a commodity, Mr. Carr indicates three specific characteristics that “guarantee rapid commoditization”: IT is a transport mechanism; IT is highly replicable; and IT is subject to rapid price deflation. Mr. Carr further supports this concept by demonstrating how “the arrival of the Internet has accelerated the commoditization of IT by providing a perfect delivery channel for generic applications.”
Even though tribe mentality is beneficial in many ways, it also has it’s negative aspects. For example, tribe mentality can cause an individual to not want to branch out into other forms of exercise. One member of an exercise group may shame yoga because it’s too easy. As a result, this may discourage that individual to branch out and try yoga.
though there remain differing viewpoints to this depending upon the nature of the knowledge being collected. First, there are a number of organizational factors which determine the approach toward knowledge management while also helping to identify the obstacles that may be in the organizations path. Hislop (2013) sited specific considerations for the cultivation of an strategy including, knowledge demands on the organization as determined by the markets in which it competes, organizational culture, workforce diversity, organizational size, work type, product or service characteristics, technology, and any specialized processes which might exist within the organization. In light of these elements, “it should be obvious that there is not one single way for an organization to manage knowledge”(Hislop., 2013, p.55). Additional challenges are brought to bear on the organization based upon the type of knowledge being
Digitization: An ongoing process of creative destruction innovators use both new and established technologies to make deep changes at the level of the task, the job, the process, even the organization itself. (Erik Brynjolfsson, 2011)
Can the effects of cultural misunderstandings can be painful for the individuals, but also for the organization as a whole. Embarrassing situations and inadvertently insults, offenses and failure to achieve individual and organizational goals are among the consequences of the joint. Experience of many managers and researchers in the field of strategy, organization, and the development of the theory of the organization suggests all this ", the study of cultural issues at the organizational level is absolutely essential to a basic understanding of what goes on in organizations, and how it works, and how to improve" (Shin 1990).
Knowledge consists of behavioral attitudes, and those experiences and skills that are developed in individuals that cause them to be consistent and effective when performing functions in the workplace (Seidman. W & ...
I was hired last August at my current employers. Coming from the automotive corporate world, this transition was a culture shock. I was used to professional encounters and correspondence. I felt like I had step foot into the men’s locker room of constant swearing, gossiping and joking. The women were the worst, I felt like they used the “F” word as a comma in each verbal sentence. It was very unsettling at first; I was worried I had made a very big mistake making this career change. This workplace culture relates to ethnocentrism. Their behavior was the norm for the work environment. I finally had enough of people speaking disrespectfully I snapped back explaining, I would not tolerate being spoke to that way. Looking back it did resolve the problem; however in this circumstance I should have kept my cool and went to management. Swearing is still the norm in the environment, however swearing towards people has been diminished. The relax environment has benefits, the owners of the company are amazingly approachable and jokesters themselves
Advances in technology have changed businesses dramatically, in particular the communication and information technology that are conducted in firms, which changed the appearance and pace of businesses over the past few decades. ICT in particular, has evolved a lot over the past 30 years; important information can be stored in computers rather than being in drawers enabling information to be transferred at a greater volume and speed (Guy, 2009). ICT has also expanded various forms of telecommunications and workload conducted in businesses, internet examples of this include: e-mails can be used to communicate with others...
In the first place, computer technology can not only improved quality of working but also enhance student’s learning. In the modern society, computer technology becomes more popular in many companies. The reason is that it is able to improve working efficiency and quality. If every worker has abilities to operate and use computer technology, they can save more time to do another things. This means individuals can spend less time on working to do the same quantity of works as before. Most importantly, improving working efficiency and quality is favorable for business operating in the future. For example, more and more companies like to use digital technology to analysis their data. Digital technology is a kind of computer technology that is always used in business. The information created by digital technology and used by others will grow faster than anything else. The Economist reported in 2010 that data management and analytics are worth more than $100 billion and are growing at almost 10% a year, roughly twice as fast as the software business as a whole (Orange, 2014). This is a dramatic increase in working efficiency that is caused by computer technology. Besides, computer technology could also be used to predict further performance of a company, which is