Failuer of KM in some Thai Universities

Confusion between management of knowledge and management of information make some universities unable to reach their goals on KM.

Many university web sites, inlcuding their departmental web sites about KM are mainly focused on gathering of links or announcement about KM and general KM news.

They might know what KM is but do not know how to manage knowledge properly for the universities.

Indeed, individual reseachers might have already managed their knowledge successfully and can link their knowledge to business or community.

But, what is happening to the universities themselve? Why are their KM web sites just a collection of news and links?

The following six steps for knowledge management (Modified from Beazley et al, 2002) can be used to address the challenges.

1.      Conduct knowledge continuity assessment

2.      Determine objectives and scope of the KM initiative

3.      Establish coordination responsibility for implementing KM

4.      Plan KM initiative including measurements

5.      Create a methodology to harvest and transfer the critical operational knowledge.

6.      Transfer operational knowledge 

Important characteristics of knowledge profiles are that they are easy to access and understand. They reflect information critical to not only the job but the success of the organization, and that access at least to portions of the information may need to be limited only to select personnel.  The profile should include four types of information:

·        key operating data (statistics, reference tools, and information sources),

·        basic operational knowledge (job objectives, activities and functions, reports),

·        key operational knowledge (projects, hot issues, key personnel),

·        background operational knowledge (skill sets, performance evaluations, knowledge network information).