Knowledge Management of Sony Company - Case Study Example

Running head: Knowledge Management Plan Name xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Course xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Lecturer xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Date xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The Chief Knowledge Manager Sony Corporation To The Chief Executive Officer Sony Corporation Dear sir/ madam RE: KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT STUDY REPORT I wish to table the report for the company’s management study report done between January and May 2011. The study was authorized by the senior management to evaluate the response of the company’s employees towards knowledge management systems and tools. The results indicated a general knowledge about the company’s knowledge management amongst the employees. However, there were reported issues on motivation of the staff towards the same. There is need to have continuous studies so that the company be kept at breadth with contemporary market needs. Yours sincerely Chief Knowledge Officer Contents Abstract 5 1.0 Introduction 6 2.0 Knowledge Management 7 2.1 Insufficient motivation 9 2.2 Lack of enough incentive 9 3.0 Methodology 10 4.0 Findings and discussions 11 5.0 Recommendations 12 5.1 Knowledge management implementation plan 14 6.0 Conclusion 15 Abstract The purpose of this report is to give a clear plan that provides information, implementations and recommendations plans for knowledge management incentives for Sony Company. Knowledge management covers a very wide range of functionalities and does support various sets of activities. Data was collected from different countries using questionnaire which handed by the focus group and later analyzed by the committee. The findings indicated that there was need for the company to come up with incentives and motivation for employees. This is because the employees were not ready to share their knowledge and information which led to ineffectiveness in the company. Therefore, it is recommended that the company create more chances of motivating the employees to ensure that the company has maintained its objectives. 1.0 Introduction As authorized by the CEO and senior management team, the report was developed in the end of the financial year of the company. They saw the need to comprehend how far the department of knowledge management had gone with the development of knowledge management interventions for the company. Knowledge management (KM) program have been used in recent times by companies and organization that want to thrive in the competitive business world. KM strategies that have been proposed in this report give and focus on the emerging needs of the Sony Company, that is, aspects that are necessary in ensuring employees are able to work effectively (Sanchez, 2001). Data was collected from 50 middle level managers. The data was collected for six months between January and June. Qualitative analysis was used and involved focus group discussions (FGD). The findings were then given to the committee which had been set up to oversee the process. According to the findings, it was evident that the company offered poor incentives and motivation to the employees which affected the efficiency of the work done. Therefore, it was recommended that as knowledge management does not only make a company aware of the employees, but also influences the company daily operation (Dalkir, 2005). Sony should give the right incentives to the employees so that they can apply and share their knowledge. If the recommendations are taken into consideration, Sony Company will continue to maintain its position in the business field. 2.0 Knowledge Management Sony Company is the undoubted global leader in entertainment and electronics goods. Not only in Japan, where it is based, that the company has gained popularity, but also has created its own niche across the world. This could not be purely be attributed by the effective operation management but also the fact that the launching of innovative products has advanced. Basically, the company is committed to excellence. As the financial capital has an impact on the present profitability, the main role of rational capital is creating future income capabilities (Dalkir, 2005). To fully maximize the impact, essential information about the company, the projects and customers needed to get accessible especially on a global basis. This then can be used in improving accuracy and speed in all the sales process and margins and quality in the process of delivery. Applying an Anderson Consulting framework, this department set up a knowledge management program with the main purpose of building a thriving learning and working environment that will continue to foster aggregation, creation, use and re-use of personal and company knowledge-in the hunt of a novel business value. Sony Company has been following this knowledge management for its work strategies and employees. The company takes knowledge management as a contribution of processes, culture, technologies and people (Dalkir, 2005). Knowledge management is seen as a process through which companies or organizations obtain value from the intellectual assets. Therefore, it caters to the very critical issues of a company adaptation, competence and survival in face of more and more discontinuous environmental change. Basically, it embodies companies’ processes that look for synergistic combination of information and data through information technologies and the innovative and the creative capacity of human beings. In any competitive company, knowledge management comprises of the administration of assets of a company, and the enlargement and sharing of these assets (Dalkir, 2011). Knowledge management, essentially looks at the company adapts to the continuous change to increase the chances o survival. Public sectors in the world are at the forefront in the implementing knowledge management (Sanchez, 2001), Essentially, knowledge management may send to be process that assist companies find, organize, select, transfer and disseminate vital expertise and information to maximum gain in the business world. The primary role of knowledge management is to fully increase the productivity and efficiency of the company through sharing and reuse of experiments and boosting training and work quality (Dalkir, 2005). Knowledge management may be applied in various areas, for example, partnership, manufacturing industries, technology and strategic cost management. Some benefits of knowledge Include: increase in operational efficiency and productivity, cost production, consistency and improvement in team communication. In the Sony Company, however, there are several companies’ issues to work with it. Some issues in the knowledge management include: 2.1 Insufficient motivation Motivation boost the efficiency of the work, but Sony Company is facing the problem of motivation. The managerial rank has failed to motivate the employees for sharing knowledge. The employees have the feeling that they are the best in the field that are; and sharing this knowledge to other employee is not possible. They are not ready to share their knowledge with other employees for work efficiency. In addition older employees in the company are not motivating the new employees to perform effectively and share the gained information in the work. Lack of motivation has also created communication barriers in the company. As of result, the new employees fear to share their information and problems with the rest of the employees in the company (Maier, 2007), 2.2 Lack of enough incentive Incentive system is a brilliant path to motivate the company employees for the initiative of creating knowledge and sharing information with other employees. However, in the Sony Company, this has not been effectively carried out to motivate the employees. Lack of incentives has led to the employees not readily willing to share their knowledge with their working mates. It is evident that lack of incentives has led to poor productivity and work efficiency in the company. Thus, retention of the strategy of the employees is highly influenced by the poor incentives system in the company (Newell et al., 2009). A knowledge management program does provoke high expectations and the Sony Company has a long way to go as the process is being fully clarified. It should be noted that knowledge sharing does not apply to written form but also mechanisms such as post-project and pre-project workshops. 3.0 Methodology In developing a methodology for the evaluation of the company’s knowledge management the first step was to get an organizational commitment and develop a committee. The committee settled on doing a case study applying the grounded theory study. This theory involves multiple stages of data collection, coding, and categorization (Mayfield, 2008). It was also exploratory. This is vital when the phenomenon of interest is as broad and as complex as Sony. The design used multi-level data collection and analysis. It used focused groups which critically evaluated interview schedules. The study also took a positivist approach. The evaluation employed open-ended interviews. This consists of a set of questions carefully worded and arranged with the intention of taking each respondent through the same questions and same words (Mayfield, 2008). This minimized variations and biases that may come when interviewing different respondents. The interviews were conducted on 50 middle-level managers across different departments who were randomly selected. The respondents’ only threshold was that one needed to have accrued at least three years in the company. The assumption was that each had been involved in implementing recommendations during end-of-year departmental and organizational analyses. Finally, the study had 32 males and 18 females. Each interview, face-to-face or over the telephone, was scheduled for 40-60 minutes. The grounded theory application was three-fold: open, axial, and selective coding. The data was coded providing a situation where the raw data was developed into theoretical concepts (Locke, 2003). There were themes developing throughout the study and getting more unfolded in the coding. The FGDs applied the grounded theory coding processes in which data was fractured into fragments in order to be examined and conceptualized in a way transcending the phenomenon under review and to which they belong. This entailed a line-by-line analysis of all data. The application of the grounded theory allowed flexibility in selecting interview lines rather than just full sentences for analysis (Mayfield, 2008) 4.0 Findings and discussions The respondents acknowledged that Sony has knowledge management systems and that they had received trainings on how to use them however there were concerns on the quality of the trainings. The systems were in place for explicit and tactic knowledge. Some respondents described Sony as an organization which combined teams, markets and cultures that were innovative. There were both team cultures and hierarchical cultures. The integration of these across diversity of cultures was hindered by barriers. The manifestation of top-down cultures across boards hindered application of innovative tools such as knowledge café and community of practice. Sony has a profile typical of communications, transportation and electric as identified. There were feelings by some that Sony ran a command-control management approach. Employees may be unwilling to use knowledge management processes and tools for several reasons: there are those who consider their knowledge to be their intellectual property, which they need to protect for a future. There were those who feared sacking or status loss on the basis of what they shared-this is relative to culture profile. Therefore, to stay relevant and important to the organization they would conceal their knowledge. Some indicated that they did not have time and resources to share in knowledge exchange as they were too busy meeting their job description expectation. There were some who felt that nothing happens beyond information sharing or there was no action taken after their KM initiatives, while some did not think they had what others needed. 5.0 Recommendations The choice and implementation of the tools of KM is a very important aspect affecting the motivation of human resource motivation for Sony’s knowledge management system. It is therefore vital that the company addresses their knowledge about and use of tools. The tools should also be adequately integrated so that any investment fetches maximum return (Dalkir, 2011). In addition to the mainstream tools being employed by every other company, this study recommends development and implementation of new need-based tools. The change should involve the employees so that they are motivated. In the fast growing competitive electronics and e-business world today’s competencies become tomorrow’s core rigidities with unprecedented speed (Mathi, 2004). Businesses have to consider and reconsider the value of established processes and systems. Sony needs to develop, enhance and implement what literature and best practices refer to as a community of practice (CoP). A CoP is a network of individuals with common problems or interests who get together to explore new ways of working, identify common solutions and share good practice and ideas (Marylin et al, 2008). The CoP should be implemented using formal and informal communities. The communities may be default or management-made. It is vital to note that this communities need be organic, self-organising and naturally emerging (Marylin et al, 2008). The CoP implementation is able to provide a motivating environment connecting employees and encouraging the growth and distribution of new ideas and strategies. To improve fairness and diversity, goal seeking and viability, the study recommends the use of critical systems heuristics, team syntegrity and postmodern systems thinking. While team syntegrity provides a platform that supports democratic and autonomous decision making, critiacl systems heuristics exposes lack deficiency of planning comprehensiveness and design (Gao et al, 2008). Postmordern systems make space for suppressed voices in the organisation to be heard by engaging the employees’ emotions (Gao et al, 2008 ). The organisation management at whatever level must always maintain clarity of objectives. The key objective in KM should be the integration of organisational and personal knowlegde to achieve organisational goals. These goals should be articulated clearly to all employess. In this way Sony will be able to sustainably generate, communicate and leverage its intellectual assets (Gao, et al, 2008). This is only possible if there will be multi-level integration of administrative efforts with knowledge and facilitative initiatives. The adoption of any tactic should be done only after sound background knowhow and contextual application given the nature of the company and the dynamics of the business environment. Sony should also sharpen its knowledge focus in operations and strengthen external knowledge partnerships with any relevant partner. Staff capacity and skills at the use of tools needs an enhancement so that there is staff development up to date with the dynamic today. This may require the company to design and implement continuous need-based KM training programs. This is essential in a learning organisational culture (Mayfield, 2008) 5.1 Knowledge management implementation plan This study is of the view that knowledge management is not solely a responsibility of the management, but rather it should also involve employees at all possible levels. There is shared goals and accountability. The dynamic organisational environment requires employees at all levels to concern themselves with strategic issues (Ronen & Pasher, 2011). The implementation strategic plan should start with middle level managers, so that there is spread strategic thinking. As such, the knowledge itself becomes a strategic input since the middle level managers pass it on downwards. This plan demands a continuous evaluation of Sony’s strengths and weaknesses relative to external trends, consumer and competitor expectations and behaviors. The evaluation should consider innovation and new technology and the demands on human resource capital. Next, the KM culture in the organisation need be made supportive of the change. this is more than investing into cafés and technological tools. The culture ought to cultivate trust, active leadership and sharing. Once the culture is agreeably supporti\ve, the plan will then flow into implementing tools. However, this is only after the organisation hasd developed customised programs and tools, or innovated the mainstream ones fitting them into ‘Sony’. 6.0 Conclusion The underlying benefits of a successiful KM implementation cannot be overemphasised. This is so for any organisation that hopes to make it through the current tough competitive and economic times. The impact of KM on the utilisation of Human Resources has far reaching implications. In this light Sony management required an analysis of its KM systems and tools relative to HR use and satisfaction. Applying the grounded theory study design in doing the case study, the study revealed that the employees had knowledge of Sony’s KM systems and tools and that some had been using them. However, there were demotivating factors revealed in the study barring the full and successiful utilisation of KM. in the light of the findings, the study made recommendations and suggested a plan for the organisation. This needs to be done by everyone in the organisation, whatever the level of work. KM is not a one-person or one-level activity: it requires vertical and horizontal integration. References Dalkir, K (2011) Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice (2nd ed), MIT Press Dalkir, K, (2005), Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Butterworth-Heinemann Gao, F. et al (2008), Knowledge Management, and knowledge management in business operations, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 12 (2), pp. 3-17. Locke, K. (2003). Grounded Theory in Management Research. London: Thousand Oaks . Maier, R, (2007), Knowledge Management Systems: Information and Communication Technologies for Knowledge Management, Spingar. Marylin et, L., & al. (2008). Knowledge Management tools and techniques: helping you access the right knowlegde at the right time. IDeA. Mathi, K. (2004). Key Success Factors for Knowledge Management. Germany: University of Applied Sciences . Mayfield, R. (2008). Organisational culture and knowlegde management in the electric power generation industry. Phoenix: University of Phoenix. Newell, S, Robertson, M, Scarbrough, H, & Swan, J, (2009), Managing Knowledge Work and Innovation (2nd ed.), Palgrave Macmillan. Ronen, T., & Pasher, E. (2011). The complete Guide to Knowlegde Management: A stategic plan to leverage your company's intellectual capital . Hoboken, N.J: Wiley. Sanchez, R, (2001), Knowledge Management and Organizational Competence, New York: Oxford University Press. Read More