Optimizing Knowledge-Work Through Personal Knowledge Management

2019 ◽  
pp. 21-48
Author(s):  
Rezvan Hosseingholizadeh ◽  
Hadi El-Farr ◽  
Somayyeh Ebrahimi Koushk Mahdi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Work Activities ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management ◽  
Individual Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
Discretionary Behavior

Knowledge-work is a discretionary behavior, and knowledge-workers should be viewed as investors of their intellectual capital. That said, effective knowledge-work is mostly dependent on the performance of individual knowledge-workers who drive the success of knowledge-intensive organizations. Therefore, the study takes the perspective of personal knowledge management in enforcing the effectiveness of knowledge-work activities. This study empirically demonstrates that knowledge-workers' behaviors are dependent on their motivation, ability and opportunity to perform knowledge-work activities. This study provides insights and future directions for research on knowledge-work as a discretionary behavior in organization and the factors influencing it. Scholars can investigate the effect of empowerment of individuals on their tendency to knowledge-creation, knowledge-sharing and knowledge-application. Since personal-knowledge often raise the issue of knowledge ownership, further attention to ethical issues may bring valuable insights for KM in organizations.

Personal knowledge management and enactment of personal knowledge infrastructures as shadow IT

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Hossein Jarrahi ◽  
Rebecca Reynolds ◽  
Ali Eshraghi
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Organizational Level ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Organizational Contexts ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management ◽  
Consulting Firms ◽  
Individual Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Intensive

Purpose Personal knowledge management (KM) lends new emphasis to ways through which individual knowledge workers engage with knowledge in organizational contexts. This paper aims to go beyond an organizational approach to KM to examine key personal KM and knowledge building (KB) practices among adult professionals. Design/methodology/approach This paper presents a summary of the findings from interviews with 58 consultants from 17 managing consulting firms. Participants were selected based on their knowledge-intensive roles and their willingness to share information about their knowledge practices. Data analysis was inductive and revealed multiple personal KM activities common among research participants, and the way these are supported by informal ties and various technologies. Findings This work highlights ways in which “shadow information technology” undergirds personal knowledge infrastructures and supports KM and KB practices in the context of management consulting firms. The results uncover how personal knowledge infrastructures emerge from personal KM and KB practices, and the role of informal social networks as well as social media in supporting personal KM and KB. Research limitations/implications This study contributes an overall conceptual model of factors that help knowledge workers build a personal knowledge infrastructure. By affording an understanding of socially embedded personal KM activities, this work helps organizations create a balance between KM strategies at the organizational level and personal knowledge goals of individual workers. Originality/value Much of the previous research on KM adopts organizational approaches to KM, accentuating how organizations can effectively capture, organize and distribute organizational knowledge (primarily through KM systems).

Personal Knowledge Management and Social Media

2013 ◽  
pp. 124-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marie-Luise Groß
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Personal Development ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Influential Factors ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Social Software ◽  
Business Context ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management

Today’s students are tomorrow’s knowledge workers. They will be paid to find innovative solutions to organizations’ most pressing problems. In times of decreasing training budgets and a dynamic job market, employees have to take over responsibility for their own personal development. Social Media and Social Software both on the WWW and organizations intranets offer a myriad of possibilities to employees and managers to be successful knowledge workers in increasingly virtual organizations and to ensure continuous learning. However, social media also puts new challenges on employees. Particularly young people, who – as the Generation Y’ers – are expected to possess extensive social media skills, need to know how they can use social media in a business context to ensure their personal development and be successful in their jobs. In this chapter, the Personal Knowledge Management model is used to discuss influential factors of successful knowledge work and personal development and to outline what students need to learn to be prepared for Enterprise 2.0.

Idiosyncratic job-design practices for cultivating personal knowledge management among knowledge workers in organizations

2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Muhammad Shujahat ◽  
Minhong Wang ◽  
Murad Ali ◽  
Anum Bibi ◽  
Shahid Razzaq ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Lifelong Learning ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Job Design ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Job Autonomy ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Design Practices ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management ◽  
Knowledge Intensive

Purpose The high turnover rate of knowledge workers presents a challenge to both organizational and personal knowledge management. Although personal knowledge management plays an important role in organizational knowledge management, empirical research on the practices for its application is underdeveloped. This study aims to examine the role of idiosyncratic job-design practices (i.e. job definition, job autonomy, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) in cultivating personal knowledge management among knowledge workers in organizations, to increase their productivity and safeguard the organization against knowledge loss arising from knowledge workers’ interfirm mobility. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected from 221 knowledge workers pursuing various knowledge-intensive jobs through a questionnaire survey and were analysed using partial least squares modelling. Findings The results demonstrated that three job-design practices (job definition, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) have a positive impact on personal knowledge management among knowledge workers and thus improve their productivity. However, job autonomy can affect personal knowledge management negatively. Research limitations/implications The findings are confined to a specific context and should be replicated across different contexts for better generalizability in future research. Practical implications Organizational managers should pay attention to (re)designing knowledge-intensive jobs to cultivate personal knowledge management by clearly outlining job responsibilities, offering opportunities to add relevant job activities and drop irrelevant ones, and making innovation and lifelong learning a formal job requirement. In addition, job autonomy should be judiciously provided along with sufficient social and network support to avoid lost opportunities in knowledge creation and sharing, and should be linked to job responsibilities and performance appraisals to avoid negative effects. Originality/value The high turnover rate of knowledge workers presents a challenge to both organizational and personal knowledge management. This study contributes to the literature by addressing the research gap in two aspects. Firstly, based on Drucker’s theory, this study identifies four idiosyncratic job-design practices (job definition, job autonomy, innovation as a job requirement and lifelong learning orientation) that reflect the distinctive characteristics of knowledge-intensive work. Secondly, this study examines whether and how these practices can cultivate personal knowledge management among knowledge workers, which can support their productivity.

Semantic Desktop for the End-UserSemantic Desktop für Anwender

i-com ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 25-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Aastrand Grimnes ◽  
Benjamin Adrian ◽  
Sven Schwarz ◽  
Heiko Maus ◽  
Kinga Schumacher ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Term Study ◽  
The Core ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management ◽  
Long Term Study ◽  
Core Components

AbstractThis article describes the Semantic Desktop. We give insights into the core services that aim to improve personal knowledge management on the desktop. We describe these core components of our Semantic Desktop system and give evaluation results. Results of a long-term study reveal effects of using the Semantic Desktop on personal knowledge work.

scholarly journals From Ignorance Map to Informing PKM4E Framework: Personal Knowledge Management for Empowerment

10.28945/3984 ◽  
2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Design Science ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Knowledge Bases ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Development Platform ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management

Aim/Purpose: [This Proceedings paper was revised and published in the 2018 issue of the journal Issues in Informing Science and Information Technology, Volume 15] The proposed Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) for Empowerment (PKM4E) Framework expands on the notions of the Ignorance Map and Matrix for further supporting the educational concept of a PKM system-in-progress. Background: The accelerating information abundance is depleting the very attention our cognitive capabilities are able to master, one key cause of individual and collective opportunity divides. Support is urgently needed to benefit Knowledge Workers independent of space (developed/developing countries), time (study or career phase), discipline (natural or social science), or role (student, professional, leader). Methodology: The Design Science Research (DSR) project introducing the novel PKM System (PKMS) aims to support a scenario of a ‘Decentralizing KM Revolution’ giving more power and autonomy to individuals and self-organized groups. Contribution: The portrayal of potential better solutions cannot be accommodated by one-dimensional linear text alone but necessitates the utilization of visuals, charts, and blueprints for the concept as well as the use of colors, icons, and catchy acronyms to successfully inform a diverse portfolio of audiences and potential beneficiaries. Findings: see Recommendation for Researchers Recommendations for Practitioners: The PKM4E learning cycles and workflows apply ‘cumulative synthesis’, a concept which convincingly couples the activities of researchers and entrepreneurs, and assists users to advance their capability endowments via applied learning. Recommendation for Researchers: In substituting document-centric with meme-based knowledge bases, the PKMS approach merges distinctive voluntarily shared knowledge objects/assets of diverse disciplines into a single unified digital knowledge repository and provides the means for advancing current metrics and reputation systems. Impact on Society: The PKMS features provide the means to tackle the widening opportunity divides by affording knowledge workers with continuous life-long support from trainee, student, novice, or mentee towards professional, expert, mentor, or leader. Future Research: After completing the test phase of the PKMS prototype, its transformation into a viable PKM system and cloud-based server based on a rapid development platform and a noSQL-database is estimated to take 12 months.

A Mobile Portal for Academe

2011 ◽  
pp. 577-582
Author(s):  
Hans Lehmann ◽  
Stefan Berger ◽  
Ulrich Remus
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Financial Services ◽  
Information Overload ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Working Environments ◽  
Knowledge Intensive

Today, many working environments and industries are considered as knowledge-intensive, that is, consulting, software, pharmaceutics, financial services, and so forth, and the share of knowledge work has risen continuously during the last decades (Wolff, 2005). Knowledge management (KM) has been introduced to overcome some of the problems knowledge workers are faced when handling knowledge, that is, the problems of storing, organizing, and distributing large amounts of knowledge and its corresponding problem of information overload and so forth (Maier, 2004).

A New Perspective on Knowledge Management Research

2013 ◽  
pp. 193-206
Author(s):  
Sari Metso
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Alternative Education ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Practical Knowledge ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Large Group ◽  
Knowledge Intensive ◽  
New Perspective

Knowledge management theories emphasize the role of knowledge work and knowledge workers in knowledge-intensive organizations. However, technologization has changed the knowledge work environment. Many knowledge workers create, process, and share simplified information in digitalized networks. This complicates the profession-based definitions of knowledge workers. This chapter contributes to the emerging concern about the future trends of knowledge management. First, the chapter suggests that knowledge management models ignore a large group of professionals possessing practical knowledge. These vocational professionals are considered a new target group for knowledge management. Vocational professionals’ practical knowledge is worth managing since they operate with organizational core functions. Second, this chapter presents an alternative education-based categorization of workers. The different functions of KM are manifest in the three categories: a diminishing group of workers without professional qualifications, a large group of vocational professionals, and a group of workers with higher education.

Knowledge Workers' Social Media Usage as a Personal Knowledge Management Tool

2017 ◽  
pp. 108-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oya Zincir
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Personal Knowledge ◽  
Media Usage ◽  
Personal Knowledge Management ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Two Factors

This chapter aims to provide a theoretical framework for “profiling knowledge workers' mainstream social media usage” and “investigating knowledge workers' mainstream social media usage for personal knowledge management purposes”. For this purposes, it seeks to analyse the social media usage for personal knowledge management purposes of 365 knowledge workers who work in private sector organisations in Turkey. Frequency statistics and factor analysis are conducted on to the data collected on SurveyMonkey. Two factors emerge from this analysis which are named as ‘Sharing and Creating New Knowledge' and ‘Harnessing Professional Knowledge'.

scholarly journals Motivation for Knowledge Work

2011 ◽  
pp. 657-664 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul H.J. Hendriks ◽  
Ce´lio A.A. Sousa
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Management ◽  
Knowledge Sharing ◽  
Work Motivation ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Work ◽  
Exact Form ◽  
Work Processes ◽  
Knowledge Processes ◽  
Individual Knowledge

The importance of motivation in knowledge work is generally acknowledged. With lacking motivation, the quality of the products of knowledge work is bound to drop dramatically. Without work motivation, individual knowledge workers may direct their efforts to their individual needs at the expense of organization goals or decide to leave the firm. Creativity, knowledge teamwork, knowledge sharing, and other knowledge processes depend on the motivation of knowledge workers. Lacking sustained motivation in association with an insufficiently knowledge-friendly culture has often been mentioned as the principal culprit for failed knowledge management (KM) initiatives and programs (Davenport, DeLong, & Beers, 1998; McKenzie, Truc, & Winkelen, 2001). Several traits of knowledge workers explain, so it is argued, why prevailing work motivation programs will not work when applied to knowledge workers: they have high needs for autonomy, their career formation is external to the organization, they are loyal to their networks of peers and to their profession rather than to the organization that employs them, and the exact form and sequence of their work processes cannot be fully predicted (Despres & Hiltrop, 1996).

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