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Introduction to Knowledge Management
Dept. of Library and Information Science
National Taiwan University
Instructor: Muh-Chyun Tang

Course Description
This class is designed to provide an introduction to the theories and applications regarding the creation, identification, representation and transfer of knowledge in organizational context.

During the course of the semester, the students will
1. Acquire a basic understanding of the identification, collection, dissemination and creation of knowledge in organization.
2. Acquire a basic understanding of the social-techno environment that foster knowledge sharing and innovation.
3. Gain hand-on experiences with KM techniques such as knowledge audit, social network analysis, knowledge elicitation interview, and creation of community portal using content management software.
4. Cultivate a sensitivity to the structure of task environments that sets the parameters for successful KM activities.

Course schedule

	Topic	Note
1 (2/14)	Syllabus; introduction The borg Belbin-Team-Roles-Questionnaire Roles definition	Self-introduction on class portal (your backgrond, interests, team role, and anything that you believe will help a total stranger to know you better)
2 (2/21)	Knowledge economy and intangible assets Knowledge acquisition The Belbin team roles The Science of Productive Conflict WorkLife with Adam Grant	Seemann et al. pp. 85-92. Building intangible assets; in Morey, Maybury, & Thuraisingham (2000). Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works. Leonard, D., & Straus, S. (1997). Putting your company's whole brain to work. Harvard Business Review, 75, 110-122. Govindarajan, V., & Srinivas, S. (2013). The innovation mindset in action: 3M corporation. Harvard Business Review, 6.
3 (2/28)	Peace Memorial Day	*Post the articles of your choosing in the discussion forum Cross, R., & Baird, L. (2000). Technology is not enough: Improving performance by building organizational memory. MIT Sloan Management Review, 41(3), 69.
4 (3/7)	Guest speaker Intellectual capital: knowledge worker TedTalk:the “candle experiment” "Intrinsic" motivation;	Case study 2.1. pp. 46-53. in Newell et al. (2009). Knowledge-intensive organizations. in Managing Knowledge Work Baron, J. N., & Hannan, M. T. (2002). Organizational blueprints for success in high-tech start-ups: Lessons from the Stanford project on emerging companies. California Management Review, 44(3), 8-36.
5 (3/14)	Structure capital: Organization structure and task complexity (The Bavelas-Leavitt experiment) TedTalk: Morieux on organizational complexity	Morieux, Y. (2011). Smart rules: Six ways to get people to solve problems without you. Harvard Business Review, 89(9), 78-86. What if your company had no rules, Interview with Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings
6 (3/21)	Guest speaker Structural capitla: Spiral of knowledge and the concept of "Ba" TedTalk Tricia Wang: the human insights missing from big data	The Knowledge-Creating Company by Ikujiro Nonaka Wenger, E. C., & Snyder, W. M. (2000). Communities of practice: The organizational frontier. Harvard business review, 78(1), 139-146.
7 (3/28)	Structual capital: organizational culture and psychological saftey TedTalk Building a psychologically safe workplace by Amy Edmondson how to love criticism, from podcast WorkLife with Adam Grant Is it safe to speak up at work? Adam Grant Worklife podcast Exercise: measuring psycholgoical saftey	Duhigg, C. (2016). What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team. The New York Times Magazine, 26(2016), 2016. Delizonna, L. (2017). High-performing teams need psychological safety. Here’s how to create it. Harvard Business Review, 8, 1-5.
8 (4/4)	Break	Nahapiet, J., & Ghoshal, S. (1998). Social capital, intellectual capital, and the organizational advantage. Academy of management review, 23(2), 242-266.
9 (4/11)	Social capital: conditions for knowledge sharing TedTalk: how social network makes us smarter Alex 'Sandy' Pentland *Knowledge acquisition project due	Cross, R., & Prusak, L. (2002). The people who make organizations go-or stop.Harvard business review, 80(6), 104-112. Burt(2005) pp.15-23 Pentland, A. S. (2012). The new science of building great s. Harvard business review, 90(4), 60-69.
10 (4/18)	Social network and Social capital; Boundary spanners, structural hole	Parise, S., Whelan, E., & Todd, S. (2015). How Twitter Users Can Generate Better Ideas. MIT Sloan Management Review, 56(4), 21.
11 (4/25)	Knowledge audit; Dunning-Kruger effect	Liebowitz, J. et al. (2000). The knowledge audit. *Diagnosis of the hot spots
12 (5/2)	Knowledge creation in teams Team work; groupthink; information cascade TedTalk:Heffernan on the power of collaboration Exercise: how to measure your social intelligence	Evidence for a Collective Intelligence Factor in the Performance of Human Groups, Science Phillips, K. W. (2014). How diversity makes us smarter: Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, more diligent, and harder-working. Scientific American.
13 (5/9)	Decision making in teams Desert survival experiment Video clips that introduce Delphi methods,Part 1 Part 2 How does rank-choice voting work? TedTalk:Marshmallow Challenge	(Surowiecki, 2004),Ch1, 3, 8,9 Sunstein, C. R., & Hastie, R. (2014). Making dumb groups smarter. Harvard business review, 92(12), 90-98. Goldman, p.81-82.
14 (5/16)	Intellectual humility; diversity and creative abrasion	Shermer (2017), How to convince someone when fact fail. Scientific America Persuading the unpersuadable by Adam Grant, A (2021) Harvard Business Review Can you change your mind wihtout losing face? (from No Studpid Questions podcast, 83) Can you convince someone they are wrong? (from No Stupid Questions podcast, 69)
15 (5/23)	Discussion of your final project	David Foster Wallace's speech on self-centeredness How politics breaks our brains The Atlantics Kahan, D. M., Peters, E., Wittlin, M., Slovic, P., Ouellette, L. L., Braman, D., & Mandel, G. (2012). The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks. Nature climate change, 2(10), 732-735.
16 (5/30)		De Langhe, B., & Fernbach, P. (2019). The dangers of categorical thinking: we're hardwired to sort information into buckets-and that can hamper our ability to make good decisions. Harvard Business Review, 97(5), 80-92.
17 (6/6)	Knowledge audit presentation

Assignments and Grading

A. Participation
Portal participation (55%)
A NTU Cool class portal is created for you to gain first-hand experience in participating online "communities of practice".
You will be able to download lecture powerpoint files, readings, online resources, and post your comments on the class materials, as well as give feedbacks to your peers using this portal.
This portion of your grade will be determined by you engagement in the class portal, judged by the instructor and your peers by the likings received by your peers.
a. Each student is required to post comments on talks by the two invited guest speakers.
b. On the 3rd week of the class, you are to decide which of the FIVE readings/TedTalk/Podcast episode you are to comment on and inform the classs your choices no later than the third week of the semester. However, you can post more or switch to the items that you have not chosen at the beginning of the semester. Extra credits will be given to articles few commented on.
c. In your posting, try to comment on what you have learned, what you do not understand, and what interests you most. The postings should be no shorter than two paragraphs.
d. Extra credits
e. Besides the post your comments, you are also encouraged to give feedback to others' postings, which includes commenting and "liking" through the portal. Extra credits will be given for giving peer feedback.

B.    Group projects
Students will be assigned into groups of 3 to 4 to conduct two team projects (see below for details). For each team project, besides the overall group report, each member should prepare a personal report (no more than a page) explaining your contributions and what you have learned from the assignments.

1. Knowledge elicitation project (15%)
1.1. Conduct a semi-structural interviews with one or two experts specialized in one knowledge domain outside of your area of expertise. Take notes and record the interview
1.2. Present the (both explicit and implicit) knowledge visually you elicit from the expert using a concept map of 20 to 30 concepts.
1.3. Comments on what you have learned about knowledge acquisition and representation process.
1.4. Present your findings to the class.

2. Knowledge audit project (30%)
For this project, each group will conduct a knowledge audit for an organization (loosely defined here, it can be an unit or a team created to perform a certain set of functions or tackle specific problems. An ideal size of the organziation to be interviewed is about 10 to 50 people).
To complete the project, follow the following steps:
2.1. What's the organization's task and information environments (1-3 pages)
Provide the institutional context within which the organization/unit operates.
What are the objectives of the organization?
What is the nature of its tasks and information environment? (e.g. in terms of complexity, change of pace uncertainty, mutual dependence...etc. See Ch. 13 in 林東清)
Draw a concpet map to represent the tasks involved and knowledge required in the organization.
2.2. What kinds of knowledge is needed to achieve its objectives? (1-3 pages)
Use online tool such as Understanding the group knowledge
Identify the locations where the knowledge resides in the unit (See, for example, Wasko & Faraj, 2000), which might include documents, expertise, and organizational practices.
Apply the spiral of knowledge theory by Takeuchi & Nonaka (1995), see if you could elicit one or two stories or anecdotes that demonstrate the dynamics between implicit and explicit knowledge within the unit. You might also want to present this part of your finding with a concept map.
2.3. Through what channels are the knowledge acquired and shared? (1-2 pages)
The use of ICT, face-to-face communication, social network etc.
To trace the knowledge flow, you are encouraged to conduct a social network analysis of the informal network of knowledge sharing within the organization.
2.4. Conduct a "hot-spots" survey, produce hot spot probability that assess the innovative capacity of the organization. (1-2 pages)
2.5. Make recommendation to KM activities (1-2 pages)
Identify the specific KM strategies that are currently in use, comment on their strengths and weaknesses. Specifically, report the role of IT plays in KM.
Based on your analysis, recommend management tools or strategies that you believe will help achieve its objectives more effectively.
Write a report and prepare for an oral presentation (15 minutes) for your project.

References
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       Gladwell, Malcolm (2002). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Back Bay Books: New York. (Chinese title:引爆趨勢舉手之勞成大事/葛拉威爾著 ; 齊思賢譯. --初版. –台北市 : 時報文化 ; 2000(民89)
       Bryan, L.L., C. L I. Joyce (2007). Mobilizing Minds: Creating Wealth From Talent in the 21st Century Organization
       Ayres, Ian (2007). Super Crunchers: why thinking-by-numbers is the new way to be smart. Bantam.
       Cross, R; R. J. Thomas (2009). Driving Results Through Social Networks: how top organizations leverage networks for perfromance and growth. Wiley.
       Cross, R., Parker, A., & Sasson, L. (2003). Networks in the knowledge economy.
       Davenport T. and Prusak (2000). Working Knowledge.
       Surowiecki, J. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations. New York: Doubleday. (Chinese title: 群眾的智慧 : 如何讓個人、團隊、企業與社會變得更聰明 / 索羅維基(James Surowiecki)著; 楊玉齡譯. 臺北市 : 遠流, 2005[民94] 版本項初版).
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Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative science quarterly, 44(2), 350-383.
Ferguson, G. S. Mathur, and B. Shah (2005). Evolving from information to insight. Sloan Management Review, 46 (2), 51-58.
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        Liebowitz, J. et al. (2000). The knowledge Audit. Knowledge and Process Management, 7(1).pp. 3-10.
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