ผมค้นโดย Google ได้บทความเกี่ยวกับ KM ในเอเซีย จึงนำมาฝาก เก่าไป ๓ ปี แต่ก็น่าจะเป็นประโยชน์บ้าง พอให้เรามองตัวเองชัดขึ้น
Your say: Knowledge management in Asia
Levels of KM
adoption differ enormously throughout Asia, but there is no
question that knowledge management is rapidly gaining ground in
countries right across the continent. Simon Lelic talks to KM
practitioners in Hong Kong, India, Japan and Singapore, and
explores how knowledge management has evolved so far, and what the
future holds for KM in the region.
A single article –
even a single issue of a magazine – cannot hope to cover the
intricacies of the development of knowledge management in such a
vast, diverse area as the Asian continent. It is possible, though,
to provide an overview of how the discipline has evolved in those
areas of Asia in which it has so far had the biggest impact:
specifically, Japan, the world’s second largest economy; Hong Kong,
still the economic engine of the most populous country in the
world; Singapore, a nation that has set international standards in
terms of government adoption of KM-based principles; and, India,
home to a billion people and a country that is starting to realise
its massive economic potential on the world stage, particularly in
the field of information technology. Again, this list is by no
means definitive (South Korea and Taiwan, for instance, both have
similarly well established KM communities, while KM is also making
waves in Malaysia, as this month’s country-focus column
demonstrates), but the countries it does contain offer adequate
material for a number of observations about how KM has impacted
upon economic activities in Asia thus far. Firms from these areas
also dominate the most recent Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises
(Make) in Asia study, with those from Japan scooping the highest
number of accolades.
In fact, Japan has
long been at the forefront of the KM movement, even in a global
context. As Hideo Yamazaki, senior researcher for Tokyo-based
Nomura Research, suggests, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s groundbreaking
book The Knowledge Creating Company triggered a
knowledge-management boom in both the US and Europe soon after it
was published in 1995. In fact, Yamazaki maintains that executives
in these parts of the world responded to the ideas contained in the
book even before their Japanese peers did. He cites 1998 as the
year knowledge management really began to make an impact in Japan,
the same time that the Knowledge Management Society of Japan was
founded. Asahi Breweries, IBM Japan and pharmaceutical firm Ezai
were among the earliest adopters, says Yamazaki, while more
recently Toyota, Sony and Honda have established a position at the
forefront of KM development and implementation. And an increasing
number of firms from various economic sectors are turning to
knowledge management in recognition that the talent and innovative
capabilities of their employees will be crucial resources in the
struggle to escape the economic malaise that continues to grip
Japan.
Elsewhere, 1998
seems to have been a similar tipping point. Waltraut Ritter,
president of the Hong Kong Knowledge Management Society, believes
the Asian economic crisis of 1997 forced firms across the region to
review their organisational and business strategies. “After 1997,
many companies had to change their business processes, and
corporate-governance practices were critically analysed,” she says.
Trevor Lui, senior consultant at the Hong Kong Productivity
Council, agrees, claiming that the events of 1997 represented
something of a wake-up call to Hong Kong’s economic community in
particular. “After 1997, the bubble burst and there was no more
easy money to be made,” he says. “The public started to take a more
serious look at knowledge management and the benefits it could
bring. Frankly, until that point, Hong Kong was ten years behind in
the development of KM.” No doubt these events played a similar role
in Singapore, as it was around the same time that the country’s
government really began to latch on to the idea that Singapore
would develop into the world’s leading knowledge economy. After
1998, KM-based principles were visible at the highest level of
government policy, and the KM community began to flourish as a
result. In 1999, for example, Suliman Hawamdeh, now a professor at
the University of Oklahoma, set up a KM interest group that would
eventually grow into the Information and Knowledge Management
Society, an organisation that now has over 300 members.
In India,
worldwide economic uncertainty also fostered the growth of the KM
community, but here other factors played a critical role too, as
J.K. Suresh, principal knowledge manager at Infosys Technologies,
points out. “An important factor in enabling the emergence of
knowledge management has been the gradual liberalisation of the
Indian economy, underway for the past 13 years or so,” he says. “In
the decades before this, a regime of strict governmental controls,
licensing and quotas had constrained the Indian industry in its
search for excellence, market share and international presence. It
is the widening exposure to markets and competition worldwide –
also promoted through the growing integration with the global
economy – that has encouraged Indian industry to focus on deriving
superior operational efficiencies and encouraging organisational
innovation, two important objectives that knowledge management
serves.” As this process of liberalisation gathered momentum, a
number of Indian firms were well placed to take advantage of
KM-based working practices. Suresh’s own Infosys was certainly one
of these, as was Tata Steel, a firm whose KM journey is detailed
further in the article ‘Forging ahead with KM’, which begins on
page 21. Today, these two firms are perhaps the most widely
recognised for their formal KM efforts (both are previous finalists
in the MAKE Asia awards, for instance), although knowledge
management has since made significant inroads into the IT,
manufacturing, pharmaceutical and biotechnology sectors in India as
well.
It is Singapore,
though, that continues to lead the way in terms of public-sector
and government adoption. According to Praba Nair, director of NCS’s
Institute for Insights and Innovation in Singapore, “The
Singaporean government has been emphasising the importance of
advancing towards a knowledge economy since the mid-1990s. This has
prompted certain government ministries and agencies to make KM a
key agenda to pursue.” Today, Nair continues, knowledge management
is at the core of government tasks, inseparable from strategy,
planning, consultation and implementation, and both Nair and
Hawamdeh agree that public-sector agencies remain well ahead of
organisations in the private-sector both in implementing KM and in
understanding its nuances and subtleties. In contrast, Yamazaki
feels the Japanese government continues to lag behind; those
public-sector bodies that have implemented KM are doing so
independently, he says. A similar situation exists in India,
according to Suresh, with KM only very slowly creeping up the
government’s list of priorities. The special administrative region
(SAR) government in Hong Kong is perhaps slightly further along,
although Ritter believes a degree of confusion still exists as to
the difference between KM and e-government. That said, and as Lui
points out, since the region’s chief executive stressed the
importance of transforming the SAR into a knowledge-based economy
in a policy address in 2000, a number of task forces, training
sessions and think tanks on KM have been set up by government
bodies.
As in other
regions of the world, however, a gradual increase in the prominence
of knowledge management as a set of managerial disciplines has
prompted a corresponding level of growth in the size of the
industry that offers solutions and services in the area. In
Singapore and Japan, for instance, there are myriad consulting
firms and software vendors active in the KM space; as Yamazaki puts
it, “so many chiefs, but few Indians” – the latter being potential
customers. In India, too, a country now famous for its dynamic
computer-software industry, there are plenty of KM tools and
services on offer. “There are a good number of vendors that provide
standard or customised solutions for use by corporations, both
small and large,” says Suresh. “Many consultancy companies that
specialise in KM have emerged of late, providing solutions to
different industries in the region.” Perhaps surprisingly, this
industry seems less well developed in Hong Kong, a region long
famous in the west for its love affair with techno wizardry. “The
large consulting companies are represented in Hong Kong, although
most of them don’t offer KM advisory services to their clients, but
rather use KM for internal purposes,” says Ritter. “There are also
only a few specialised application vendors in the region.”
Possibly, as Lui suggests, this is because the Chinese mentality
precludes an unquestioning acceptance of westernised KM models,
which the IT-heavy approach arguably represents.
Indeed, the idea
that KM equates to information technology is steadily being eroded
in the region. In Singapore, as Hawamdeh says, “Cultural issues are
dominating discussions today. When KM started, many people thought
of it as another technology or consultancy hype. Since then, with
more awareness and a better understanding of KM, people have
started to realise the real issues that the discipline involves.”
Likewise, in Japan, says Yamazaki, an early focus on building
knowledge databases and on intellectual-capital indexing has given
way to an emphasis on the value of communities of practice, while
in Hong Kong the past four years or so have brought a steady rise
in awareness as to the cultural aspects of knowledge management.
“The emergence of China as an economic power puts enormous pressure
on organisations in Hong Kong to differentiate, to focus on
intangible assets such as institutional capital, rule of law,
infrastructure, and also on the greatest advantage that Hong Kong
has in the whole of Asia: free access to information, the very
basis for the development of knowledge-focused organisations,” says
Ritter. Even in India, where IT has such a prominent role in the
economy, significant attention is being given to how to identify
the optimal balance between people measures, systems, processes and
technology components in KM implementations, as Suresh says.
“Recently, the emphasis on collaboration also seems to have
acquired impetus,” he continues. “The creation and nurturing of
discussion forums, special interest groups and communities, and so
on in many organisations is indicative of this.”
The overriding
consensus seems to be that the knowledge-management community in
Asia can only move in one direction from here. In a region affected
at least as much as any other by the global economic decline, and
where so many countries have the potential to transform their
numerical advantage in terms of population into a competitive one
on the world market, the perceived value of human capital is only
likely to increase. In countries such as Singapore, the government
is ably demonstrating just how important a role ruling bodies can
play in hastening this process, and countries around the world, not
just in Asia, are taking note. Even the commonplace observation
that Asian communication and management traditions are less
conducive to knowledge sharing seems ill-founded, for what may
appear to be a weakness from one angle quite often seems like a
strength from another. India, for instance, has for thousands of
years been a multi-cultural, polyglot and polytheist society, with
a penchant for tolerance of ambiguity and community-based,
collaborative sharing of knowledge. The pursuit and acquisition of
knowledge has always been considered among the most valuable and
valid objectives of all human endeavour; as Suresh says, the
Sanskrit phrase ‘na hi gnanena sacristan’, meaning ‘there is
nothing equal to knowledge’ still welcomes you in hundreds of
educational institutions across India. It is precisely this type of
attitude towards learning, culture and innovation that will allow
Asian companies to mount a sustained challenge to the economic
hegemony of western businesses in the not very distant future.
Contact details
Suliman
Hawamdeh is a professor at the University of Oklahoma. He can be
contacted at [email protected]
Trevor Lui is senior consultant at the Hong Kong Productivity
Council. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Praba Nair is director of the Institute for Insights and Innovation
at NCS. He can be contacted at [email protected]
Waltraut Ritter is president of the Hong Kong Knowledge Management
Society. She can be contacted at [email protected]
J.K. Suresh is principal knowledge manager at Infosys Technologies.
He can be contacted at [email protected]
Hideo Yamazaki is senior researcher at Nomura Research. He can be
contacted at [email protected]
Ref
http://www.ikmagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.0/articleid.96C4BD01-3AEB-43B5-944E-08813C6CD896/qx/display.htm
KM ในเอเชียก็คงจะคล้ายๆ กันกับในทวีปอื่น ที่ขับเคลื่อนโดยคนกลุ่มที่เป็นนักไอที และที่ปรึกษาด้านการจัดการ ในขณะที่ KM ไทยเรามีภาคีกว้างขวางกว่ามาก แต่เราก็มาทีหลังเขาหลายปี ซึ่งก็ไม่สายเกินไป เราน่าจะเดินถูกทางกว่า โดยเฉพาะการที่เราเอาเข้าไปสู่ชาวบ้านธรรมดา และเห็นพลังปัญญาทั้งของชาวบ้านที่ปลุกโดย KM และพลังของ KM ในมือของชาวบ้าน
วิจารณ์ พานิช
๒๗ มีค. ๔๙
ผมเห็นด้วยครับว่า KM ของไทยน่าจะมีโอกาสดีกว่า หรืออาจจะเรียกว่า เราเดินมาถูกทาง เพราะเราได้รับการสนับสนุนจากขุมพลังปัญญาในระดับรากหญ้าในชนบท และนักวิชาการในเมือง อย่างไรก็ตาม ผมก็อดเป็นห่วงไม่ได้ว่า หากไม่มีบุคลากรด้าน IT เข้ามาร่วมผลักดันให้มากกว่านี้แล้ว KM ของไทยจะไปไม่ได้ไกลหรือรวดเร็ว เพราะเราจะขาดนัก technology ที่จะเข้ามาเป็น engine ที่สำคัญสำหรับการผลักดันงาน KM ให้ก้าวไปสู่การทำ KB หรือ Knowladge Based ต่อไป ผมจึงอยากเห็นสูตร KM ในเมืองไทย ดังนี้ (นัก)วิชาการสร้างสรรค์ รากหญ้าคัดสรรค์ และ(นัก)ไอทีบันทึกฐาน ครับ
ขอบคุณครับ ผมเห็นด้วย ดร. สฤษดิ์พงษ์ (และทีม) มีทางร่วมดำเนินการไหมครับ มีทางที่ อจ. จะเสนอแนวคิดด้านการดำเนินการ KB ที่ user - friendly ไหมครับ
วิจารณ์ พานิช
ผมไม่ค่อยเห็นด้วยกับ คุณสฤษดิ์พงษ์ เท่าไรครับ เรื่อง บุคลากร IT IT เป็นแค่ tools ไม่มี IT เลยก็ทำ KM ได้ จะต้อง Balance 3 สิ่ง คือ People Process และ Technology ให้ดี จะขาดอย่างใดอย่างหนึ่งไปไม่ได้เลย
(นัก)วิชาการสร้างสรรค์ รากหญ้าคัดสรรค์ และ(นัก)ไอทีบันทึกฐาน คุณผู้นำไม่เอาด้วย...จะสำเร็จยาก คุณประสานงานไม่ดี...วงแตก และอื่นๆ อีกมากมาย ที่ถ้าเขย่าส่วนผสมไม่ลงตัว ก็จะไม่เกิดการเรียนรู้ และ กระบวนการ KM ไม่ต่อเนื่อง..ก็จบอีก
สูตร KM สำเร็จรูปคงยังไม่มีครับ คงต้องปรับให้เข้ากับบริบท ของงานนะครับ