Managing the knowledge of an organization according to ISO 9001: 2015 is a technique considered internally within the same group, together with human resources, infrastructure, the environment, and the means of measurement and monitoring. All this is about an indispensable resource for the organization, due to this its susceptibility to be recognized, managed and inspected in a personal way.
Introduction
Currently, with the incredible number of organizations that exist around the world, day by day it seeks to innovate, in order to be more attractive than the competition, with this companies have to find new methods or tools that allow them to establish themselves in the market. and avoid its extinction.
A few years ago, it was thought that the most important asset of a company lay in the machinery it had or its properties, but with the passage of time it was discovered that this was taking a back seat, since with the globalization of the markets it was necessary something that was characteristic of the companies, that characterized them, that the others did not have and that is how it was stated that the most important asset within any organization would be the knowledge that its collaborators had and how it could be transmitted among all, is where the knowledge management.
"Knowledge management is a new business culture, a way of managing organizations that places human resources as the main asset and sustains its competitive power in the ability to share information, experiences, individual and collective knowledge." (Rovira, 1999)
So when an organization can correctly manage the knowledge that its collaborators have, they can be transmitted and be very useful for the organization, making it stay on the market for a long time.
Key concepts.
Some concepts will be mentioned below so that the reader can have a better understanding of the subject.
Management.
"The term management is used to refer to the set of actions, or procedures that allow the performance of any activity or wish. In other words, a management refers to all those procedures that are carried out in order to resolve a situation or materialize a project. ” (Definista, 2017)
Knowledge.
“Knowledge is a set of abstract representations that are stored through experience or the acquisition of knowledge or through observation. In the broadest sense, it is about the possession of various interrelated data that, when taken by themselves, have a lower qualitative value. ” (Definista, 2017)
Knowledge Management.
"It is that carried out within an organization and that consists of facilitating the transmission of skills or information to its collaborators in an orderly and efficient manner." (Definista, 2017)
Events that gave rise to knowledge management
In recent times, knowledge management has become a popular research topic, being the example of management par excellence, in the area of human resource organization and administration of various organizations.
Each of the existing friendly companies use and create knowledge. When an organization begins to relate to different environments, they feed on information, transform it into knowledge and carry out activities based on the composition of their experiences, internal norms and values, they feel and manifest. An organization without knowledge cannot organize itself.
Now, we come to the third stage of change: starting with the organization based on control and authority, the organization divided into departments, up to the organization based on knowledge.
The emergence and importance of knowledge as a new element of production make the promotion of technologies, strategies and methodologies for its calculation, propagation and realization become one of the priorities of companies in the knowledge society. It is possible to consider that it has been the progress of these methodologies and technologies for the calculation and propagation of knowledge that have transformed knowledge into a precise element for social and economic advancement.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the need to understand and calculate the knowledge management activity was recognized so that organizations can improve their activities and develop policies that promote these benefits.
After the industrial age, the success of a company lies in its intellectual abilities and methods, rather than in its material assets.
The ability to manage human capacity and turn it into viable and useful services and products is rapidly becoming the fundamental management technique of our time.
According to (Gómez, 2006) some of the causes that gave rise to knowledge management are the following:
- The socioeconomic system.- At the end of the Second World War, people are heading for changes that achieve the demand and progress of services and products established in knowledge. The arrival and progress of information and communication technologies
(TIC'S), make the storage and propagation of information and data easier, in addition to communication between individuals.
- The growth of the importance of knowledge as a starting point for organizational efficiency. The "fall" of the usual financial models to appreciate knowledge. The birth and promotion of models, indicators and systems for the calculation of knowledge in each of the organizations The precipitous changes and the increasing competitiveness among organizations that face the need to create and develop constant training skills.
ISO 9001: 2015
Managing the knowledge of an organization according to ISO 9001: 2015 is a technique considered internally within the same group, together with human resources, infrastructure, the environment, and the means of measurement and monitoring.
All this is about an indispensable resource for the organization, due to this its susceptibility to be recognized, managed and inspected in a personal way.
In an organization it is possible to identify two types of knowledge: that which is born from practice and experience, and which is made up of teachings that have been obtained through work and business. The failures and the triumphs.
This same group includes the knowledge with which an organization develops innovative products or technologies.
This discernment, which is protected by tools such as intellectual property, is distinguished from other knowledge designed outside the company.
Activities carried out in the preparation of educational bodies, such as conferences, courses or the knowledge derived from creating ties with different organizations, are considered an internal part of this other group of discernment.
Although this is not an exclusive group, if it has assumed a price for the organization, it also turns out to be of great value to the business.
The ISO 9000: 2015 standard mentions three fundamental requirements to achieve knowledge management.
Requirements according to ISO, own elaboration with information from (European School of Excellence, 2017)
How to capture knowledge?
It is hardly normal for each organization to obtain particular knowledge, which is different from that of other organizations, even if they carry out identical activities.
Locating this knowledge and retaining it is not always so easy. The origin of this knowledge comes from the personal practice of a collaborator, who maintains it for years but is wasted when the collaborator leaves the company.
From this, the importance of locating it on time, documenting it, capturing it and maintaining it so that it is in favor of the company.
- Operating manuals are a widely used and very useful way to capture knowledge. Each area in a job, performs techniques that must be given in a clear way so that the company can stay current and not become extinct. Conserving these processes is a very viable option to retain knowledge and store it for the benefit of the company. Much of the knowledge in a company is represented by a series of steps that, if presented in an orderly and efficient manner, create an end triumphant. Using checklists for each of the steps carried out in the company not only reduces the difficulty of conducting the business but also ensures the preservation of that knowledge. Conduct training sessions, in which the collaborators who have the greatest experience,Sharing your knowledge with younger and inexperienced workers, retaining it in digital media, is a very useful way to capture the company's knowledge.
Use of ICT's for knowledge management.
The progress of Information and Communication Technologies has made life easier for every person in this world, one of the many advantages of ICT's is that you can carry out a large number of activities in less time and with great efficiency, all this has been a point in favor of knowledge management, having different electronic tools that will be very useful to facilitate processes, (Pérez, 2007) mentions some of them:
- Intranets: It is a private network of a company created and developed through the protocols and operation of the Internet, web browser, TCP / IP protocol, among others. Its use is internal but it is possible to be connected to the Internet or other external networks. For the use of users, it is reduced in Web pages that give access to company documents, computer applications and company documentation. Within the Internet it is possible to access forums and distribution lists. Simulation and virtual reality software: These applications manage to minimize the costs of prototyping, experimenting with different ideas and pretending to apply knowledge. Workflow: They are applications that through the use of computer tools manage to automate the stages that make up the development of business processes.With this, the distribution, monitoring and execution of the activities or flows that make up an activity, indicating in which phase the work is, who is the person in charge of carrying out each phase, what procedures must be to follow and what events happen during the realization of the same. Video conferencing: System that allows various people, no matter where they are, to initiate through specific applications a conversation with audio and video in real time. Data mining: Technology that allows the use and analysis of data stored by the organization, generally a large amount of data stored in databases, searching among them relationships and behavior patterns not directly observable. Artificial intelligence:Computer applications that are given properties associated with human intelligence. Examples are expert systems, neural networks, etc. that from the knowledge and rules introduced by a human expert allow to reach inference and solve problems. Search engines: software designed to track data sources such as databases, Internet, etc. which allows indexing its content and facilitating its search and retrieval. Document management: Applications that allow the digitization of documents, their storage, version control and their availability to users with authorization for consultation and / or modification. Knowledge maps and yellow pages:Directories that facilitate the localization of knowledge within the organization through the development of guides and lists of people, or documents, by areas of activity or subjects of domain. Instant messaging and email: applications that facilitate communication in real or delayed time, as well as the exchange of documents.
Systematic process for knowledge management
According to (Anzil, 2010), citing (Pavez, 2009), knowledge management can be treated as a systematic process, with a set of logical and organized processes, having to fulfill one task in order to move on to the next, which They are:
- Detect: It is the process of locating some knowledge that a collaborator has and that may be of importance to the organization in the future. Select: In this part of the systematic process, you will select whether this previously detected knowledge is useful or not, or if you have to "polish" it a little. Organizing: It is the process of storing this new knowledge in a systematic and structured way. Generation: It is the creation of new ideas, the recognition of new patterns, the synthesis of separate disciplines, and the development of new processes. Coding: Once this knowledge is already there, it must be processed, so that any collaborator within the organization is able to understand and use it, this can be through diagrams, manuals, tools of the
ICT's.
- Transfer: Establish the type of opening that this knowledge will have, whether it will be public or private for the exclusive use of the organization and where it will be stored. Filter: Since it is organized, it can be accessed or filtered through search engines, since it will not be the only knowledge that the organization has. Present: The results obtained from the filtering process must be presented to collaborators or computers. In case they are collaborators, the interfaces must be mapped to achieve the wide range of human understanding. In the case that communication is developed between computers, the interfaces must meet all the conditions of a protocol or communication interface. Use: The use of this knowledge lies in applying it to what you want to solve, once applied you can make a feedback to be able to contribute more knowledge that serves to solve that activity in a more efficient way.
Tacit vs. Explicit Knowledge
Tacit knowledge is not that easy to pass on to other people. Tacit knowledge is the result of experiences, learnings and learned habits that we accumulate throughout life. It is increasingly personal, difficult to formalize and communicate to other colleagues.
The challenge about tacit knowledge is identifying which elements of tacit knowledge can be captured and making them explicit.
Tacit knowledge is in the subconscious part and manifests itself consciously when we need it most. It is guided by perception and is difficult to put into words. This knowledge appears momentarily, furtively and we have the skill to repeat it without speculating.
For its part, explicit knowledge has representation and is methodical. It can be comfortably informed and communicated. It is often documented.
“It is articulated knowledge expressed and recorded with words, numbers, codes, universal principles, scientific formulas, and musical notes. Explicit knowledge is easy to communicate, transmit to others, especially in books, on the Internet and in other oral and audiovisual supports. This type of knowledge is known as the tip of the iceberg. It is the opposite of tacit knowledge. ” (Canainca, 2017)
(Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) represent a dynamic model of the birth of knowledge. They socially contextualize the processes of conversion of some types of knowledge into others. These processes require the action of the individual, but go beyond individuality, they are the result of interaction between people.
As a scoop, they argue that the transformation between explicit and tacit knowledge is not in one sense, but that they take place within a helix where the transformation manages to be in any sense.
Socialization (unspoken to unspoken)
It originates from the relationship between collaborators, communicating customs, tacit knowledge can be obtained without using language, through observation, emulation and practice.
Internalization (explicit to tacit)
"The assimilation of explicit knowledge is the result of learning and putting it into practice, what has been called learning by working or learning by doing." (Pérez, 2007)
Externalization (tacit to explicit)
"It is the communication of internal knowledge, with an attempt to represent and formalize that knowledge. Tacit knowledge is stated in the form of explicit concepts, usually through language, or other formal representations. The need for voluntariness on the part of the transmitting subject of knowledge is important. ” (Pérez, 2007)
Combination (explicit to explicit)
"Exchange, association and structuring of explicit knowledge from different sources, which facilitates the generation of new knowledge of the same type and in turn, can allow the internalization of new knowledge." (Pérez, 2007)
Problems to achieve knowledge management
According to (Ruiz, 2014) some problems that organizations may encounter when managing knowledge are the following:
- The level of commitment of the collaborators who possess the knowledge factor, since they must be willing and learn to pass it on to the rest of their colleagues. By encouraging its collaborators to seek the best techniques, the organization must always be on alert, to motivate them In this sense, calculating the results and designing indicators that can be used at the beginning, when carrying out and at the end of the implementation process of this tool, to demonstrate its value to the organization, is not usually something done overnight In the morning. Making knowledge profitable and gaining consumer insight can be done through surveys, but consumers are not always willing to give us information of what they know. Cultural changes,Since they are very difficult and time consuming, due to this it must be developed in an organizational culture that encourages continuous learning and the sharing of knowledge. Knowing that capturing, not all the information that circulates within the organization is valuable, for which should find the staff with the ability and capacity to select only what is relevant, and thus take advantage of the knowledge.
Thesis proposal.
Implementation of an intranet, with the help of ICTs in a SME in the city of Orizaba, for better knowledge management.
Objective.
Manage the knowledge acquired by SMEs in a more efficient way so that it can be used in the future by its collaborators.
Thanks.
I thank my family, for giving me all the support and the drive to continue day by day, the Orizaba Technological Institute for opening its doors to me and allowing me to continue my studies with the Master in Administrative Engineering and Doctor Fernando Aguirre y Hernández for motivating me with their Knowledge in the Administrative Engineering Foundations seminar to carry out each of the assigned articles.
Conclusion.
Through reading the article, we were able to realize the importance of having good knowledge management, since this is not something that is from the future, it is something that we are already living and that all organizations have to face, since now what is sold are ideas, knowledge, how things are done, innovative methods, among other things, so that when detecting that knowledge, organizations have to store, polish and save it, so that in the immediate future, more of its collaborators can make use of it.
We also saw that the use of ICTs greatly facilitates this process, but since most of the country's SMEs do not yet have these resources, this is not an excuse for them to be able to use correct knowledge management, since that from an operations manual, courses, talks, among other activities, this knowledge can be transmitted and that it is not forgotten, so that it can continue to be profitable for all those who make use of it.
References.
Anzil, F. (February 24, 2010). Ecolink. Obtained from
Definite. (March 12, 2017). Concept Definition. Obtained from
European School of Excellence. (May 18, 2017). European School of Excellence. Obtained from
Gómez, DR (2006). Models for the creation and management of knowledge: a theoretical approach. Educate, 25-39.
Luque, AM (July 11, 2017). Organizational creativity and innovation. Obtained from
Pérez, D. (2007). Information technologies for knowledge management. Intangible Capital, 31-59.
Rovira, JM (1999). Knowledge management: a great opportunity. The information professional.
Ruiz, B. (February 15, 2014). SlideShare. Obtained from
Information and communication technologies.
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