BMK9X02: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AT STANDARD BANK - Advance Management

Internal Code: MAS5837

Advance Management:

Knowledge management is not a new issue in Standard Bank because South Africa has already started to move to a knowledge economic system, where the main emphasis is on the intangible assets. Sharing of knowledge within the company is important because some employees may never meet but they may be encountering related problems or working on similar projects (Schwikkard & Du Toit, 2012). Therefore, they require facilities for documenting and finding explicit knowledge resources, enabling reuse of resources that may lead to the accomplishment of their projects. They also require the capacity to find and interact with specialists and concerned parties, sharing tacit knowledge. Tacit knowledge refers to an unarticulated and intuitive knowledge that is not easily transferred, understood or used in the absence of the " knowing subject." Its transfer needs close interaction and shared trust and understanding among the communicating subjects. Explicit knowledge, on the other hand, can be easily communicated in the absence of the " knowing subject." It is acquired through practical experience in the application context and generated through logical deduction (Martensson, 2015:111). Standard Bank has not defined its critical knowledge areas that might help it to improve its performance. However, the bank is focusing on becoming a learning organisation with the aim of enhancing its competitiveness, effectiveness, and efficiency, as well as becoming more responsive to its customers' needs. The employees do not know the knowledge that is critical to their current or future operations. They are contented with the manner they can carry out their activities, but they do share their knowledge with their workmates. In general, knowledge needed in the bank include knowledge about new business opportunities and past projects, financial procedures, financial justification of projects, bank's customers, business contacts, financial industry, development and best practices, and current business trends (Chigada & Ngulube, 2015:634). Without a doubt, there is a lot of knowledge management background to cover in relation Standard Bank. The bank executes different processes and activities that can be designated as organisational learning or knowledge management activities. Nonetheless, these learning and knowledge management activities are concerned with specific purposes and distributed across different fields. Current knowledge management processes are not carried out in an integrated and proactive manner. There are different activities whereby knowledge creation occurs or is expedited (Steyn & Du Toit, 2016:16). Questions: 1)  Judge the health of knowledge management in your organisation based on what you have learnt about knowledge management being likened to an olive tree. 1.2. Formulate critical success factors for innovation from a knowledge management perspective 1.3. Discuss how a knowledge management support division can harvest existing knowledge before employees exit the organisation either as retirees or in terms of employee turnover. QUESTION 2: 2.1 Knowledge workers are difficult to supervise and require autonomy. In your opinion, how should knowledge workers be managed in an enterprise? 2.2 From the knowledge management archetypes as compiled by Foong and Lambe fifteen different knowledge manager roles and associated competencies were identified. Discuss the role that you need to play at present that would best suit your organisation now. Then indicate which role you would next need to adopt in order to elevate knowledge management to the next level in your organisation. QUESTION 3: From the various techniques that you have read up on for knowledge sharing, which would you be able to use in your organisation? Motivate why you have selected or excluded the specific knowledge sharing techniques considering the nature of your organisation.