foundation of quality management

Foundations of Quality Management Unit 7

Sikkim Manipal University Page No.: 127

Unit 7 Quality as a Knowledge

Management Concept Structure:

7.1 Introduction

Learning Objectives

7.2 Knowledge and Information

7.3 Knowledge Management – A Quality Management Framework

7.4 Knowledge Management

7.5 Tacit and Explicit Knowledge in Quality

7.6 Knowledge Repositories

7.7 Approaches to Knowledge Management

7.8 Obstacles in Knowledge Management

7.9 Case Study

7.10 Summary

7.11 Terminal Questions

7.12 Answers

7.13 References

7.1 Introduction

In today’s competitive environment organization needs to have sound

business knowledge to gain competitive advantage. In uncertain market

conditions organization needs a quality approach that views knowledge as a

foundation factor for organization survival and growth.

Quality management emphasis on optimum utilization of resources and on

greater productivity and the use of intellectual capital and knowledge assets

hold the key to achieve desired result. Organizations need to take various

decisions, plan, and organize, and knowledge is the basis for strategically

decision making. They are the building blocks or raw material for decision

making. Sound knowledge leads to effective decisions and provide overall

quality and productivity. Such as, knowledge of customer need and

expectation, knowledge of raw materials and resources to be used,

knowledge of products and services to be delivered these are some of the

information that helps to built strong decisions.

Organizations face various concerns of survival, adaption and competence.

By creating, acquiring, embedding and using knowledge, organizations can

address the issues and gain competitive advantage.



Managing information and knowledge require a significant commitment of

resources. It needs organization to keep the track and update, and look for

new sources of information and new technologies that helps to stand out

from others.

The concern for knowledge management is to exploit and develop

knowledge assets that help to attain objectives.

Knowledge assets refer to the accumulated intellectual resources that an

organization possesses, including information, ideas, learning, understanding,

memory, insights, cognitive and technical skills1.

And to achieve objectives, management has to take responsibility for all

those processes associated with identification, share and creation of

knowledge that requires a systematic creation and maintenance of

knowledge repositories to cultivate and facilitate sharing of knowledge and

organizational learning. A knowledge conversion process helps to use,

create share and transfer knowledge, it helps to preserve, embed and

enhance knowledge of process, products or services, and it also helps to

improve the knowledge access and develops an environment that is

conducive to knowledge conversion process.

Knowledge to be managed includes both explicit,-documented knowledge,

and tacit – subjective knowledge.

Therefore, Quality management helps to address changes, improve

knowledge management capacities and skills. With Integration of knowledge

and quality management process overall quality and productivity of the

organization will enhance and leads to a holistic development.

Learning Objectives:

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

Discuss the importance and application of knowledge management

Discuss the interrelation of quality and knowledge management

Explain the storage, application and utilization of knowledge assets in

organizations.

1Evans. R James and Lindsay. M. William, ”The management and control of

quality”, 6th edn, Thomson – South Western



7.2 Knowledge and Information

Information is an understanding of the relationships between pieces of data,

or between pieces of data and other information.

Information relates to description, definition, or perspective (what, who,

when, where).2

Knowledge comprises strategy, practice, method, or approach (how)

Fig. 7.1

7.3 Knowledge Management – A Quality Management Framework

A manager in Hewlett – Packard noted, ”The fundamental building material

of a modern corporation is knowledge“ H. James observed, “All organization

have it, but most don’t know what they have know, don’t use what they do

know and don’t reuse the knowledge they have”3. Quality of any product/or

service depends significantly on knowledge. To be considered as reliable,

knowledge concerning the organization processes has to be identified and

formalized as much as possible.

In order to manage a business, organizations need to have strong in and

around information. New century is dominated by knowledge-based

enterprises operating within this forces requires concern for wider issues

such as environmental scanning and, quality management is very focused

on knowledge production and integration.

Quality as such is defined as accelerated sustainable innovation in response

to problems and is directed at improving quality of knowledge processes,

production and integration in response to problems.

3 Evans. R James and Lindsay. M. William, ”The management and control of

quality”, 6th edition, Thomson – South Western



Quality management focuses on performing knowledge processing to

manage the best business processes and produce quality in products and

services .It relies heavily on production of knowledge and put emphasizes

on systematic, statistical, and scientific studies to bring quality to the modern

enterprise. Knowledge management is contributing quality management by

continuing contributing evolutionary development of effective programs,

policies, and rules that accelerate innovation in quality management and its

relate knowledge processes to eliminate error.

Quality management decisions and business process actions can be

confidently based on knowledge management.

Deming – quality guru in his quality philosophical framework summarized his

philosophy and called “A system of profound knowledge”, which consists of

four parts

1) Appreciation for a system

2) Understanding process variation

3) Theory of knowledge

4) Psychology

In the third part of profound knowledge which is called “theory of

knowledge”, Deming stresses the nature and scope of knowledge. Its,

presuppositions and bases, and the general reliability of claims to

knowledge4, Clarence Irving Lewis, author of Mind and the world believes

that management decision should be driven by facts, data and justifiable

theories, it should not be based solely on opinions .As such experience can’t

tested and verified but for prediction, good theories which are supported by

data and shows cause and effect relationship can be used, as these

theories explains the reason of why things happen.

Quality and Knowledge – An interrelation

Fig. 7.2

4 Evans. R. James, “Total Quality, Management, Organization and Strategy”, 4

th

edition, Cenage Learning



Role of Quality in Knowledge Management

Managing Quality in knowledge assets is prerequisite, organization must

ensure that data and information are valid and accurate, systems that

process data (hardware and software) are reliable and information is

accessible to all who need it.

Data Validity: Data used for planning and decision making requires

being accurate and valid. Good data yield good results. A sound

decision requires quality data.

To collect reliable data a systematic approach is required, internal cross

functional teams or external auditors can conduct periodic audits of the

process to collect the data.

Standardized forms, clear instructions and adequate training lead to

consistence performance in data collection

For example Data security AT&T Universal Card Services, used

standard data entry and procedures to facilitate the consistency and

uniform editing of manually input data and followed stringent guidelines

and standards for developing ,maintaining ,documenting and managing

data system.

The quality principle should be applied in managing and creating

knowledge.

Following are some of the features to manage quality in information:

Capture data only once and keeping its close to the origin of data

Eliminating human error by encouraging electronic support

Using single database

Ensuring proper training

Defining targets and measures of data quality

Error check and backup

Error checking capability into software system

Ensuring data availability and validity

Data Accessibility: Total quality focuses on data availability to

everyone besides top manager’s. Collected information should be

available to right person whenever needed. Right information, to right

person, at right time is quality approach.



Data accessibility empowers employees and encourages their

participation in quality improvement

Data security: Data are to be kept secure from the external threat .To

prevent the external threats systems have to be safeguarded with the

use of firewalls and passwords. Sensitive data are to be accessed by

only authorized users to safeguard the data security.

Role of Knowledge in Quality Management: The quality of products and

services is significantly depends on knowledge.

Knowledge management involves the process of identifying, capturing,

organizing and using knowledge assets to create and sustain competitive

advantage. Knowledge management can contribute to quality in terms of

providing, conceptual frameworks for thinking, knowledge processing and

improving its character and helps to validate frameworks that can help

individuals and groups.

The contributions of Knowledge Management to Quality Management

decisions are indirect, but they can have a pervasive positive impact on

knowledge processing in QM and through this impact can affect QM

decisions, implementation and business processing.

7.4 Knowledge Management

Concept:

Knowledge management constitutes, the practices applied in an

organization to identify, create, represent, distribute and enable

implementation of perceptiveness and experiences. The experiences and

insights are embedded in organizational processes and practices. It is the

management of information, experiences, insights which helps to improve

the process and enhance quality.

Knowledge is information in context to produce an actionable

understanding. It can be said that knowledge is information and context that

leads the ability to act.

Knowledge management focuses on how an organization identifies,

creates, captures, and acquires shares and leverages knowledge.



History and evolution of Knowledge Management

Peter Drucker, Paul Strassmann, and Peter Senge these are the various

theorists those have made contribution to evolution of knowledge

management, Chris Argyris, Christoper Bartlett, and Dorothy Leonard-

Barton of Harvard Business School have examined various facets of

managing knowledge. A study of Chaparral Steel, company, which has

effective knowledge management strategy inspired the research

documented Wellsprings of Knowledge – Building and Sustaining Sources

of Innovation (Harvard Business School Press, 1995). Peter Senge has

contributed and focused on the "learning organization," a cultural dimension

of managing knowledge.

Diffusion of innovation concept has also made remarkable contribution to

our understanding of how knowledge is produced, used, and diffused within

organization. The appreciation of the mounting importance of organizational

knowledge was accompanied by concern over how to deal with exponential

increases in the amount of available knowledge and increasingly complex

products and processes.

Knowledge acquisition, ”knowledge engineering," "knowledge-base

systems, and computer-aided facilities has contributed a lot in this sphere.

1980’s spurred the rise of the knowledge management systems that relied

on work done in artificial intelligence and expert systems.

Characteristics of Effective knowledge management system5:

An effective knowledge management system should include the following

A system to capture and organize the tacit and explicit knowledge of

business functions and processes to make people better understand

how business functions.

A system design that facilitates incorporation of new knowledge into the

business system and that is toward continuous improvement and

innovation.

A common structure to manage knowledge, validate, synthesis new

knowledge as it is acquired.





A culture and values that support collaborative sharing of knowledge,

across functions and encourages full participation of all employees in the

process.

Why knowledge management ?

Strategically linking organizational intellectual assets with positive

business results and enhancing quality in business processes.

Treating knowledge as an important concern of business activities and

reflected in strategy, policy, and practice at all levels of the organization.

To align strategy and process

To measure return on quality

To design effective performance measure systems

7.5 Tacit and Explicit Knowledge in Quality

Knowledge and information are the tools to deal with business problems;

managing knowledge provides primary opportunity for achieving substantial

savings, significant improvements in performance and provides competitive

advantage.

Knowledge is perishable and if it is not renewed and replenished, it

becomes worthless.

As it provide the “know how“ that an organization has available to use,

invest and grow. Many researchers and writers on this have drawn attention

to the distinction between explicit and tacit knowledge.

Tacit Knowledge : (personal know-how)

Tacit knowledge is information that is formed around intangible factors

resulting from an individual experience and is personal and content-specific.

The tacit knowledge is which we cannot easily communicate in words or

symbols or the rest of the knowledge. Much of our knowledge is tacit;

perhaps we do not fully know what we know and it can be very difficult to

explain or communicate what, we know. Tacit knowledge represents

internalized knowledge that an individual may not be consciously aware of

how he or she accomplishes particular tasks. For ex: A manager way of

motivating employees to accomplish goals.

In many organizations, however, especially the services sector, much of

people’s valuable and useful knowledge is tacit rather than explicit.



The salient characteristic of the tacit knowledge approach is the basic belief

that Knowledge is essentially personal in nature and is therefore difficult to

extract from the heads of individuals. In effect, this approach to knowledge

management assumes, often implicitly, that the knowledge in and available

to an organization will largely consist of tacit knowledge that remains in the

heads of individuals in the organization.6

The tacit knowledge holds that people are ”knowledge carriers“ and

dissemination of knowledge can be accomplished by the transfer of people

from one part to another part of an organization, in this view, new

knowledge is created when people come together under circumstances that

encourage them to share their ideas, experience, knowledge and insights

and this leads to learning in an organization

Tacit knowledge improve understanding of who knows what in an

organization – an effort that is sometimes described as an effort to create

“know who” forms of knowledge

An example of the tacit knowledge approach to transferring knowledge

within a global organization is provided by Toyota. When Toyota wants to

transfer knowledge of its production system to new employees in a new

assembly factory, Toyota typically selects a core group of two to three

hundred new employees and sends them for several months training and

work on the assembly line in one of Toyota’s existing factories. After several

months of studying, the production system and working alongside

experienced Toyota assembly line workers were sent back to the new

factory site. These repatriated workers are accompanied by one or two

hundred long-term, highly experienced Toyota workers, who will then work

alongside with all new employees in new factory to assure that knowledge of

Toyota’s finely tuned production process is fully implanted in the new

factory.7

Explicit Knowledge (recorded)

Explicit knowledge includes information stored in documents or other forms

of media, or that which can be express to others. Explicit knowledge can be

6 Sanchez Ron, “Tacit Knowledge” versus “Explicit Knowledge” – Approaches to

Knowledge Management Practice”, http://www.knowledgeboard.com/download/3512/Tacit-vs-Explicit.pdf 7 ibid



put into a form that we can communicate to others – the words, figures and

models in book are an example of that. Explicit knowledge represents

knowledge that the individual holds consciously in mental focus, in a form

that can easily be communicated to others

In traditional perceptions of the role of knowledge in business organizations,

tacit knowledge is often viewed as real key to getting things done and

creating new value. Not explicit knowledge. Thus we often encounter an

emphasis on “learning organization" and other approaches that stress

internalization of information (through experience and action) and

generation of new knowledge through managed interaction.

7.6 Knowledge Repositories

Knowledge repositories are knowledge assets, to organizations that refer

accumulation of intellectual resources that organizations possess.

Knowledge can easily be lost if information is not documented or when

individuals leave the organization. Repositories are the storage of

information for further use. Knowledge repositories, captures and manages,

knowledge in an organization and can be said as organizational memory. It

continuously captures and analyses the knowledge assets of an

organization. It is a collaborative system where people can get information

in order to retrieve and preserve organizational knowledge assets and

facilitate collaborative working. As the process improvement requires new

knowledge to result in better processes and procedures. Knowledge

repositories or Knowledge assets are similar to capital assets. They are

usually independent of those who created them and they can be used,

moved, and leveraged by others to solve broad-based problems and to

enhance performance.

Knowledge repositories are storage of information or policies and are

accessed to leverage organizational processes. They increases knowledge

of an organization, both as in an individual sense as well as a whole.



Kinds of Knowledge repositories:

Fig. 7.3: Knowledge Repositories

Employees: Employees are repositories of knowledge, they have firsthand

experience, information, knowledge and learning, that can be utilize for the

innovative process designing. Personal knowledge rooted in individual

experience and involving personal belief, perspective, and values. The

knowledge is stored in the brain of respective employees.

They are the carriers of tacit knowledge, attributed with “know-how” to

perform task and they have skills or the ability to solve problem.

Database: Database is organizational knowledge repositories where the

information is stored and retrieved. It is a collection of information that is

organized so that it can easily be accessed, managed, and updated. It is an

integrated collection of logically related records or files that is stored in a

computer system, which consolidates records previously stored in separate

files into a common pool of data records that provides data for many

applications.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_system



Software: There are various software’s used to store and process

information. It enhances knowledge repositories that support the

collaborative generation of knowledge by providing a semi-automatically

generated semantic net of the topics contained.

What is a...

– how does one look...

– how does one use...

– how good is...

– how does one implement...

(verbal description)

(diagrams, animations)

(examples, explanations)

(situational ratings)

(recipe or template)

Patents: A patent refers to a right granted to organization that invents or

discovers any new and useful process, machine, article of manufacture, or

composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement. Patents are

unique information repository

Documents: A document is a physical symbolic, diagrammatically,

representation of the information to communicate. It is designed with the

capacity to communicate and represents information.

It carries organizational documented information for further retrieval.

Guides Policies: Guiding policies are the source of organization plan and

policies laid down for retrieval and organization information.

Procedures: Procedures are the scientific method, which indicates

sequence, steps, task, decision calculation and process to perform a job or

process the job when undertaken produce the result or outcome.

Technical drawings: Technical drawing is the standardized technical ideas

These are the knowledge repositories or knowledge assets that stores

information and knowledge for further process and enhancement, they play

more important role than financial and physical assets in organizations.

7.7 Approaches to Knowledge Management

Approaches to quality management pertain to reshape processes to get

valued result, in terms of quality and sustainable innovation in response to

problems. The emphasis is strongly on the elimination of errors, from

business process, employment of wide range of IT tools and techniques,

human intervention, social, analytical, and techniques are employed to

achieve this.



The ultimate concern is to enhance organizational ability and capacity to

attain organizational goal.

Karl-Erik Sveiby identified two “tracks” of knowledge management:

o Management of Information. According to Sveiby, "… knowledge =

Objects that can be identified and handled in information systems."

o Management of People. For many researchers and practitioners,

knowledge consists of "… processes, a complex set of dynamic skills,

know-how, etc., that is constantly changing."

(From Sveiby, Karl-Erik, "What is knowledge management" )

Knowledge management approaches can broadly classify as:

Mechanistic approaches to knowledge management

Systematic approaches to knowledge management

Cultural/behaviorist approaches to knowledge management

Mechanistic approaches to knowledge management

Mechanistic approaches to knowledge management are characterized by

the application of technology and resources to do more of the same better

Systematic approaches to knowledge management:

The systematic approach to knowledge management retains the traditional

faith in rational analysis of knowledge problem: such as –“The problem has

a solution only the way of thinking has to be changed “

Cultural/behaviorist approaches to knowledge management

Cultural/behaviorist approaches, – This approach concentrates and tend to

focus more on innovation and creativity – the learning organization. And

holds root in process re-engineering and change management, tend to view

“knowledge problem" as a – management issue.

7.8 Obstacles in Knowledge Management

In general, managing knowledge has been perceived as a different kind of

problem – an implicitly human, knowledge work is fundamentally different in

character from physical labor.

The knowledge work is almost completely immersed in a computing

environment. Alters the methods by which we must manage, learn,

represent knowledge, interact, solve problems, and act.

http://www2.eis.net.au/~karlerik/KnowledgeManagement.html



7.9 A Case Study8



Quality in Practice

Knowledge Management for Continuous improvement at

Convergys

Convergys Corporation (NYSE: CVG), a member of the S & P 500 and

the Forbes Platinum 400, is the global leader in integrated billing,

employee care, and customer care services provided through out-

sourcing or licensing. Converges serves top companies in

telecommunications, Internet, cable and broadband service, technology,

financial service, and other Industries in more than 40 countries, and

also provides integrated, outsourced, human resource services to

leading companies across a broad range of industries. Convergys

software processes more than 1.5 million individual bills each day to

support more than 120 million sub-scribes, and manages more than 1.7

million separate customer and employee contacts, both live and via

electronic interaction. Convergys employs more than 48,000 people in

48 customer contact centers, data centers and other offices in the United

States, Canada, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.

Convergys is on the Internet at http:// www. Convergys.com, and has

world headquarters in Cincinnati.

The outsourced customer service industry is maturing rapidly, is

extremely dynamic, and the environment continues to become more and

more complex. Some factors contributing to this situation include

consolidation of providers, stiff price competition, and new competition

from both the expansion to offshore markets such as India and the

Philippines as well as traditional system integrators who are further

penetrating the business process outsourcing (BPO) market. In addition,

Convergys is a fairly young organization, having growth through a series

of acquisitions that number more than 20 in the last 20 years. This high

number of mergers creates a unique challenged to integrate the myriad

of processes, procedure, and systems. With this environment and the

expectations of clients, shareholders and employees to constantly

improve, Convergys developed a vision “To establish a high



performance culture focused on continuously improving the value we

provide to our clients, shareholders and employees.”

To deploy continuous improvement (CI) as a key part of the company’s

culture and achieve this vision, Convergys followed a two-step

approach.

1. Establish leadership support and financial relevance.

2. Support and encourage total participation establish CI as part of

everyone’s job.

First, they built leadership support by linking CI to importance business

initiatives in a highly visible way. With this strong foundation, they turned

more attention to getting all employees involved in improving the

business. To accomplish this goal, Convergys needed a tool to help

facilitate sharing and accelerating improvement efforts. The tool they

chose was a Web-based employee intranet that called the CI portal (see

Figure 8.11).

The CI Portal provides an infrastructure for companywide knowledge

management activities. One of the primary ways employees use it us to

submit, tract, and manage improvement efforts (see Figure 8.12).

Additionally all improvement efforts and success stories from throughout

the organization can be accessed through the CI Portal. Since its

inception in the fourth quarter of 2000, more than 2400 improvement

efforts have been submitted in the pipeline, 300 of which were

completed, successful improvements by mid-2003.

Convergys also introduced a Best Practices Knowledgebase to the CI

Portal (see Figure 8.13). The purpose of the knowledge base is to

encourage and facilitate the sharing of best practices that improve the

value of services provided to their clients. Furthermore, through this

knowledge base, best practices can be adopted and leveraged across

the organization. To facilitate the sharing of knowledge across the

organization, the knowledge base was designed to make it easy to

record a best practice in a consistent format that makes it understood by

others with little difficulty. Additionally, best practices are categorized in

a way that makes it easy to find those that are relevant to a diverse set

of needs. To ensure the ongoing credibility of the Best Practices

Knowledgebase, a potential best practice is reviewed and endorsed



before it can be designated as a best practice. Once the proper

documentation is in place, the potential best practice is forwards to a

vice president deemed to be a subject matter expert in the area of the

idea. The VP is asked to review the practice and decide whether its use

should be encouraged across the organization. The VP then designates

the practice as a Best Practice.

Another reason employees go to the CI Portal is to access resources to

help them facilitate or accelerate improvement efforts. More than 40

specific improvement tools that are accessible through the CI Portal

support their standard improvement methodology, which is referred to as

The Improvement Process or TIP. Figure 8.14 shows TIP as accessed in

the CI Portal. For each step of TIP, CI Tools are identified that support

that step.

GI Tools are approaches, tips and techniques that facilitate problem

solving and making improvements. CI Tools are basically proven

methods that assist in marking fact-based decisions. CI Tools can be

used in a variety of ways. Independently, each tool can help to solve a

common business issue. CI Tools also support a structured

improvement effort. CI Tools are documented in the CI Portal in a

simple, consistent, easy –to- use format. Figure 8.15 shows list of the

types of tools included in the CI Portal as well as the consistent format.

Access to TIP and CI tools through the CI Portal provides an ongoing

source of continual training for employees on an –needed basis and a

way to refresh and reinforce continuous improvement approaches.

Additionally, self – paced training modules have been developed

specifically for CI and the CI Portal and are available to all employees to

augment learning and personal development. Examples of the self-

paced course including the following.

Driving Improvements with the CI Portal

Accelerating Improvements with TIP and CI Tools

Improving Business Processes

Continuous improvement (CI) is an integral part of Convergys’s culture

and its value proposition. Through CI, Convergys has been able to

generate significant financial benefits, such as maintaining higher profit

margins than its competition. In 2002 alone, more than 2,000



Self Assessment Questions:

1. What are knowledge repositories?

2. Differentiate between Explicit and Tacit knowledge

3. Select the correct option:

The Knowledge that is formed around intangible factors resulting from

an individual experience and is personal and content-specific is:

a) Explicit knowledge

b) Tacit knowledge

c) Transit knowledge

d) Information

7.10 Summary

“Quality is the totality of features and characteristics of a product in

satisfying customer needs and expectations on a continuous basis to delight

customer”. Quality is conformance to requirements or specifications, quality

of any product and service depends significantly on knowledge.

As the Business organizations exist with certain mission – “they are trying to

accomplish objectives, though they have to, face competition, gain

competitive advantage”, they have to improve the performance – ”To deliver

the best results”, and they also have to deal with the change “How to cope

with change? Now all these need made lifelong learning as an inescapable

reality for organization and they compete on the basis of knowledge. As the

product and services are increasingly getting complex, endowing them with

a significant information component is essential. Therefore, knowledge and

management employees (or 45 percent of management) were directly

involved in CI activities. In a 24 Month period, more than 2,400

improvement ideas were submitted. Furthermore, thousands more

embraced the CI culture. Several clients also acknowledged their

approach to continuous improvement as a point of differentiation.

CI and the uses of the CI Portal keep expanding. The focus will continue

to be on how employees can be better equipped to facilitate making their

own improvements. Additionally, Convergys continues to learn how to

most effectively leverage the knowledge and experience of its

employees through the sharing of success stories and best practices,

and in the process, strengthen CI as a competitive advantage.



information are considered as corporate assets and it need strategies

policies and tools to manage these intangible assets same as the tangible

assets of organization.

Knowledge Management is the discipline that helps spread knowledge of

individuals or groups across organizations in ways that directly affect

performance. Knowledge Management envisions, getting the Right

Information within the Right Context to the Right Person at the Right Time

for the Right Business Purpose.

Functionally, the ideal knowledge management Infrastructure should take

advantage of existing knowledge stimulates the development of new

knowledge and ideas, acquire it directly and painlessly, automatically

classify and relate knowledge, make it globally accessible so that the right

knowledge could be obtained and effectively utilized by any knowledge

worker who needs it.

Further organization needs to implement technology driven methods to

access control and deliver information to share, identify and transfer

knowledge within organization these are the best practices that often set

high-performing organization apart from the rest

Finally, the contributions of Knowledge Management to Quality

Management decisions are indirect, but they can have a pervasive positive

impact on knowledge processing in QM and this impact can positively affect

QM decisions, implementation and business processing.

9 Evans. R James and Lindsay. M. William ,”The management and control of quality,6

th

edition, Thomson –South Western

9A benchmarking study co-sponsored by the American Productivity and

Quality Center reported that 79 percent of managers from the 70

responding companies felt that managing organizational knowledge is

central to the organization’s strategy, but 59 percent stated that their firm

was performing this management function poorly or not at all. Also, 88

percent believed that a climate of openness the trust is important for

knowledge sharing, but 32 percent of the respondents believed that their

organization did not have such a climate. In many companies, the gap was

attributed to a lack of commitment to knowledge management on the part

of top managers.

The transfer of knowledge within organizations and the identification and



7.11 Terminal Questions

1. How information plays a role in knowledge management?

2. What is the importance of knowledge management?

3. Fill in the blanks with the correct option:

______________ includes information stored in documents or other

forms of media, or that which can be express to others.

a) Explicit knowledge b) Tacit knowledge c) Any information

d) Process knowledge

7.12 Answers to SAQ’s and TQ’s

SAQ

1. Refer to 7.6

2. Refer to 7.4

3. Refer to 7.5

Answers to TQ’s

1. Refer to 7.2

2. Refer to 7.3

3. Refer to 7.5

7.13 References

1. Howard, Alan, Rosa, David; “Quality Management”, Tata McGraw Hill

Publication; Third Edition 2009.

2. M R Gopalan, John Bicheno; “Management Guide to Quality and

Productivity”, Second Edition; Biztantra Publication.

sharing of best practices often set high – performing organizations apart

from the rest.