Jive Software’s Business Background

Discuss About The Management Intellectual Capital Academic.

Knowledge Management activities are practiced by many organizations and enterprises over the world. In Knowledge Management process, the business management collects information comprehensively by the tools and methods that are involved in the organization (Serenko and Bontis 2017). The information that is gathered are then stored, organized, analyzed and then shared using some particular techniques.

The software company that is taken which works with the Knowledge Management strategies is the Jive Software. The Jive Software is basically a provider that establishes collaborations solutions and provides communication to the businesses. The services of Jive Software include collaboration software and also intranet at the back end. This report gives a detailed discussion about the Jive Software working with the Knowledge Management. The business background of the company is detailed with the context of the Knowledge Management. This report details the need of the Knowledge Management in a company and the issues that arises from Knowledge Management. Some tools and techniques needed to work with Knowledge Management are also discussed in this report.

The mission of the company is to serve a communication as well as collaboration to business or organization. Jive Software is basically a collaboration software enterprise company established globally. The Jive Software platform mainly has two products including Jive Customer Communities, and Jive Interactive Intranets. Jive collaboration helps the employees to stay connected, communicate with each other and work together as a whole. The community involved for Jive customer has online platform for engaging the marketing schemes and supporting the customer.

With the growth of enterprises and organizations, there a problem arises in keeping an established connection in between the companies. The communication is to be established both internally that is in between the employees of a company, and externally that is established communication with the customers (García-Holgado et al. 2015). With numerous amounts of tools and software, it is very difficult to stay connected and run the business successfully. The business objective of Jive software is to provide communication within the organization or to provide connection outside with other organization. The aim of Jive Software is to accumulate all the things, people altogether and helps in making the business successful.

The current offers that are provided by the Jive Software is the Jive-n Interactive Intranet Software and a recently started a new service known as Extend Jive. The solutions and the products that are provided by Jive software enhance the communication in between employees of a company and with the customers of a company. The software of Jive corporate collaboration is very innovative, competitive, and productive.

The Need for Knowledge Management in a Company

The customer community of Jive Software provides on;ine communities that deals with companies that cannot establish good communication within the company. The Jive comunities provides online communities enabling direct connection with the customer within the organization and the customers can also engage themselves about the products of the company and question to the company dierctly, shares their feedbacks and advice to improve the service of the enterprise.

The knowledge management is a systematic and an effective management to ensure resource and communication knowledge of an organization. The knowledge management also encompasses the arrangement, storage, retrieval, distribution, and creation of the knowledge of organization. Knowledge management involves active management and gives support to the human expertise (Villar, Alegre and Pla-Barber 2014). Knowledge management deals with acquisition, using the knowledge of management explicitly and deals with managing the tacit knowledge to improve the capacity of communication and collaboration. Mainly four strategies are used that promote the knowledge management in an organization. The strategies are 1) employees empowerment; 2) nurture and motivate the expertise; 3) foster self-organized team and promote social interaction; 4) stores and codifies the rules. With the implementation of the above strategies, the organizations are needs to promote and facilitate sharing of information, creation, and share the information as their knowledge management offerings and initiatives. In this way, the company of Jive Software creates an environment or context that promotes the behaviors at personal level as well as at organizational level. 

Figure 1: Dimensions of Knowledge Management

(Source: Villar, Alegre and Pla-Barber 2014)

Adding up the properties of knowledge management in a business process helps to improve the productivity of the business. Including knowledge management in a business is the most common practice in recent studies. Managing the knowledge asset of an organization or a enterprise, effective management is required to have a successful business performance. This makes the audit of knowledge management very important to calculate the success factor in an organization’s performance. Knowledge audit involves about how the knowledge or the assets of the business are handled while dealing with a business process of an organization. Auditing knowledge of an enterprise gives a proof of the assessment of the asset of knowledge that is included in an organization (Akhavan et al. 2016). Auditing also helps to focus on the knowledge needs that an organization should implement that is mainly focused as KM effort. The recent methods of knowledge audits are very resource intensive and are limited to the study scale and there is also a lack of interaction. These factors mainly reduce the effectiveness and the efficiency of knowledge audits. Another alternative method to mitigate the drawbacks of recent knowledge audits methods called STOCKS (Strategic Tools to Capture Critical Knowledge and Skills) is developed and designed. The STOCKS helps to mitigate the deficiencies faced with the recent audit methods.

Tools and Techniques for Knowledge Management

The knowledge management provides with many advantages that helps the organization to increase its efficiency. The need of using knowledge management is as follows:

1. Governance of Content and Information: A knowledge management mainly focuses on the outcome from the community and those required knowledge that are actually required to achieve the outcomes. Governance involves planning effectively and implementing the efforts of knowledge management so that the information of governance and the content of governance are achieved.
2. More Focus on the Outcome: After implementing the knowledge management efforts in a business process, the focus of the organization is on the outcome of the processes. The business objectives are to be met by the officials of the business to have a successful outcome with the effort of knowledge management.
3. Improves the Employees Behaviors: A good Knowledge Management not only focus on the technological solution of the organization, but also helps to increase the communication among the employees of the organization and changes the behaviors of the employees in the organization as well (Pawlowski and Bick 2015). The KM provides a comprehensive effort that increases the collaboration among the people associated within the organization. With improvement of interactions related with information and documents helps in successful delivery of services and products.
4. Emphasizing on Business Needs: With the strategic system of Knowledge Management, the first focus that is followed is the need of businesses (Sigala and Chalkiti 2015). The goals of the business are to be set first along with the needs of the business are set when a new system of knowledge management is implemented. This helps the business to calculate the enabled technologies that are involved in business processes.
5. Provides Explicit Knowledge: With effective knowledge management, the people of an organization get better knowledge related to the tacit knowledge or the implied knowledge of the business (Obeidat et al. 2016). With explicit knowledge, organizations are able to capture the critical project, departmental knowledge, and the team knowledge.

The knowledge management provides many advantages for business processes that are key to successful system of knowledge management. Along with the advantages, there are also some disadvantages that knowledge management provides (Masa’deh et al., 2017). The issues knowledge management is as follows:

• Finding ways to capture efficiently and to recording business knowledge are difficult.
• Making information and the resources to find easily.
• Motivates others to reuse, share, as well as apply the knowledge consistently.
• Implementing and choosing the technology knowledge management is very difficult.
• Difficult to implement knowledge management in the existing process and the existing information system.

The best model of knowledge management that Jive Software can use is the Nonaka and Takeuchi model. Nonaka and Takeuchi is basically a model of project management has a base similar to the universal model for knowledge creation and the coincidence of management (Meihami and Meihami 2014). Theoretically, there are four different types of conversion in Nonaka and Takeuchi model of knowledge management. The knowledge conversion is done in four different steps as follows:

• Socialization Conversion (tacit to tacit) – This is known as an indirect way of conversion.
• Externalization Conversion (tacit to explicit) – This is known as an indirect way to direct way of conversion.
• Combination Conversion (explicit to explicit) – This is a direct way of conversion.
• Internalization Conversion (explicit to tacit) – This is known as a direct way to indirect way of conversion.

Figure 2: Structure of Nonaka and Takeuchi model

(Source: Meihami and Meihami 2014)

Socialization: This is mainly a technique that shares tacit knowledge with observation, practice, participation, and imitation conversion in formal as well as informal ways in groups and communities. This conversion is mainly preempted by creating a physical space or a virtual space when interaction is required.

Externalization: This is a technique of expressing tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge. This concept of externalization is much internalized and this conversion is a way to knowledge sharing and knowledge creation.

Combination: This is a technique where concepts are integrated in knowledge systems (Fidel, Schlesinger and Cervera 2015). Combination involves reviewing a report, an executive summary, new database for organizing the contents, or may be analysis of trend.

Internalization: This is technique conversion where explicit knowledge is converted to tacit knowledge.

1) Knowledge Identification: The business implementing knowledge management should know the business objectives and strategies (Evans, Dalkir and Bidian 2015). The first thing that is to be identified is the goal of the business.

2) Knowledge Acquisition: When the knowledge gap is determined, the immediate step that is to be followed is to apply knowledge acquisition and to import knowledge. A part of knowledge in a company is basically imported from outside.

3) Knowledge Application: After the knowledge is acquired, there must be application of knowledge (Patil and Kant 2014). Knowledge application involves making the knowledge more relevant and more active in an organization.

4) Knowledge Sharing: The knowledge that is applied in the organization is to be shared among the members of the organization (Bharati, Zhang and Chaudhury 2015). The distribution or sharing of knowledge in an enterprise is vital precondition for making isolated information. The knowledge transition from an individual to a group or an organization is very important in knowledge management.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Knowledge Management

5) Knowledge Development: Developing the knowledge is a building block of knowledge management. Knowledge Developments includes complements included in knowledge acquisition. Development of knowledge involves efforts of management that are aimed to produce capabilities not present in the organization.

6) Knowledge Creation: Creation of knowledge is mainly creating new knowledge or implementing innovation to the knowledge that already exists in the organization (Geisler and Wickramasinghe 2015). The model Nonaka and Takeuchi that is suggested for Jive Software helps in knowledge creation in four different kinds of process of converting the knowledge. The Nonaka and Takeuchi is a spiral type model.

7) Knowledge Preservation: The process by which the potential knowledge is selected, updated, and regularly stored is to be structured carefully. One the knowledge is acquired, the knowledge is to be preserved (Todorovi? et al., 2015). Preserving knowledge and storing knowledge is not about forgetting the knowledge that is acquired. The knowledge is to be updated all the time and is to be kept relevant. Obsolete knowledge is not at all entertained.

New knowledge is always build on foundation of all the previous knowledge. All the new knowledge that is discovered is to be stored and captured properly so that others can access them. Some tools and techniques are involved in the knowledge management that helps to find new knowledge more efficiently.

Tools and Techniques	Description
Case Study	Recording of the progress of the project and the related outcomes. This helps to share the experience with others as well.
Evidence Review	This is systematic review for researching as well as other evidences that ate used to produce the overview of knowledge that is based on some particular area (Martín-de Castro 2015).
Knowledge Banks (From web databases)	Different tools and techniques capture these repositories of the stored knowledge previously.

The knowledge management in an organization must have technological as well as human aspects so that there is successful support from the organization. The knowledge base of an organization mainly involves mapping for providing a support to knowledge base of the organization. The emphasis should be given to use the knowledge assets for promoting the understanding providing the guidance for making decision (Wang, Noe and Wang 2014). The knowledge management helps to manage a particular project, some network of projects, or helps to manage relationships between a single project and the organization. New project and new programs are to be used to make the organization to prosper and to survive. KM requires experienced leadership as well as competent for completing all the tasks at each level. There are many roles that are involved in an organization, which includes CKO, knowledge brokers, and knowledge managers.

• Significance and benefits:

Project management is a method that involves planning, managing, and organizing all the resources that are involved in a business project, which helps to make the project successful (Donate and de Pablo 2015). The benefit of project management is that it helps to organize the project systematically. The work of knowledge management helps in managing all the information that is available in the organization so that other cannot access them. Both of them are needed to make a successful delivery of a project.

• Risks:

The Nonaka and Takeuchi Model of Knowledge Management

There are certain risks factors that are involved in project management as well as knowledge management (Grover and Froese 2016). Most common risks that are associated with the project management is cost estimation and the time estimation that is scheduled for the project. The risks that are associated with knowledge management is drifting initiative, unclear scope rewards, and non-valuable objectives.

• Factors of Project Management:

There are overall five factors of project management that leads to smart project management (Power, Sharda and Burstein 2015). Successful project management involves smart people, smart planning, open communication, manage the risk carefully, and there must be a strong project closure.

• Roles and responsibilities of KM team:

The roles and the responsibilities of the KM team are as follows:

Chief Knowledge Officer: Critically appraise the KM solutions.

Knowledge base Owner: Conducts the best knowledge process.

Knowledge Manager: Understands the principles enables technologies, and tools.

Knowledge Worker: Manages the knowledge effectively and manages the time, processes, and goals of the team.

Steps involved in Knowledge Management	Cost(in $)
Socialization Conversion	155
Externalization Conversion	278
Combination Conversion	148
Internalization Conversion	49

Steps involved in Knowledge Management	Start Date	Finish Date
Socialization Conversion	1/5/2015	17/5/2015
Externalization Conversion	18/5/2015	29/5/2015
Combination Conversion	30/5/2015	10/6/2015
Internalization Conversion	11/6/2015	15/6/2015

 

Conclusions

The knowledge management is a managing that covers the theories, models, tools, frameworks, and all other supporting disciplines useful for businesses. The main aim of knowledge management is providing comprehensive overview by examining the scope, strategy, and tools of knowledge management, objectives, and many more. The structure of knowledge management is much like textbook, with introducing the concepts of the processes on top and then discussions about specific parts in the later sections. The knowledge management is basically of getting the amount of knowledge to right person, at right time. The knowledge management provides a strong tie up in the corporate strategy, helps to understand the form of knowledge and the existence of knowledge involved in the business. It also ensure about understanding the form of knowledge that exists creating more processes that exists in the organization. Knowledge management includes creation of new knowledge, which may particularly focus on sharing of knowledge, refinement, and storage. The analysis of information that is done in the organization using Knowledge Management mainly is based on the resources of the enterprise, documents related to the organization and its people and their working skills. The information that are analyzed using the tools and methods are then stored in the system as a knowledge of the organization. Later, the knowledge is used for making decisions regarding the company or helps in training new members of the company.

References

Akhavan, P., Ebrahim, N.A., Fetrati, M.A. and Pezeshkan, A., 2016. Major trends in knowledge management research: a bibliometric study. Scientometrics, 107(3), pp.1249-1264.

Strategies for Knowledge Management

Bharati, P., Zhang, W. and Chaudhury, A., 2015. Better knowledge with social media? Exploring the roles of social capital and organizational knowledge management. Journal of Knowledge Management, 19(3), pp.456-475.

Donate, M.J. and de Pablo, J.D.S., 2015. The role of knowledge-oriented leadership in knowledge management practices and innovation. Journal of Business Research, 68(2), pp.360-370.

Evans, M., Dalkir, K. and Bidian, C., 2015. A holistic view of the knowledge life cycle: the knowledge management cycle (KMC) model. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management, 12(1), p.47.

Fidel, P., Schlesinger, W. and Cervera, A., 2015. Collaborating to innovate: Effects on customer knowledge management and performance. Journal of business research, 68(7), pp.1426-1428.

García-Holgado, A., García-Peñalvo, F.J., Hernández-García, Á. and Llorens-Largo, F., 2015, July. Analysis and improvement of knowledge management processes in organizations using the business process model notation. In Annual Conference of the Global Innovation and Knowledge Academy (pp. 93-101). Springer, Cham.

Geisler, E. and Wickramasinghe, N., 2015. Principles of knowledge management: Theory, practice, and cases. Routledge.

Grover, R. and Froese, T.M., 2016. Knowledge management in construction using a SocioBIM platform: A case study of AYO smart home project. Procedia Engineering, 145, pp.1283-1290.

Martín-de Castro, G., 2015. Knowledge management and innovation in knowledge-based and high-tech industrial markets: The role of openness and absorptive capacity. Industrial Marketing Management, 47, pp.143-146.

Masa’deh, R.E., Shannak, R., Maqableh, M. and Tarhini, A., 2017. The impact of knowledge management on job performance in higher education: the case of the University of Jordan. Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 30(2), pp.244-262.

Meihami, B. and Meihami, H., 2014. Knowledge Management a way to gain a competitive advantage in firms (evidence of manufacturing companies). International letters of social and humanistic sciences, 3, pp.80-91.

Obeidat, B.Y., Al-Suradi, M.M., Masa’deh, R.E. and Tarhini, A., 2016. The impact of knowledge management on innovation: An empirical study on Jordanian consultancy firms. Management Research Review, 39(10), pp.1214-1238.

Patil, S.K. and Kant, R., 2014. A fuzzy AHP-TOPSIS framework for ranking the solutions of Knowledge Management adoption in Supply Chain to overcome its barriers. Expert systems with applications, 41(2), pp.679-693.

Pawlowski, J.M. and Bick, M., 2015. The global knowledge management framework: Towards a theory for knowledge management in globally distributed settings. Leading Issues in Knowledge Management, Volume Two, 2, p.134.

Power, D.J., Sharda, R. and Burstein, F., 2015. Decision support systems. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Serenko, A. and Bontis, N., 2017. Global ranking of knowledge management and intellectual capital academic journals: 2017 update. Journal of Knowledge Management, 21(3), pp.675-692.

Sigala, M. and Chalkiti, K., 2015. Knowledge management, social media and employee creativity. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 45, pp.44-58.

Todorovi?, M.L., Petrovi?, D.?., Mihi?, M.M., Obradovi?, V.L. and Bushuyev, S.D., 2015. Project success analysis framework: A knowledge-based approach in project management. International Journal of Project Management, 33(4), pp.772-783.

Villar, C., Alegre, J. and Pla-Barber, J., 2014. Exploring the role of knowledge management practices on exports: A dynamic capabilities view. International Business Review, 23(1), pp.38-44.

Wang, S., Noe, R.A. and Wang, Z.M., 2014. Motivating knowledge sharing in knowledge management systems: A quasi–field experiment. Journal of Management, 40(4), pp.978-1009