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2009 - Nirmala & Vemuri - Leveraging Informal Networks in Knowledge Management

This paper explores informal knowledge sharing networks within project teams to enhance knowledge management practices. By analyzing two teams—one with an existing knowledge management system and one without—the study identifies key knowledge actors and measures knowledge sharing dynamics. Findings suggest that social network analysis can serve as a diagnostic tool for managers to improve knowledge transfer and team capabilities.
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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
10 views11 pages

2009 - Nirmala & Vemuri - Leveraging Informal Networks in Knowledge Management

This paper explores informal knowledge sharing networks within project teams to enhance knowledge management practices. By analyzing two teams—one with an existing knowledge management system and one without—the study identifies key knowledge actors and measures knowledge sharing dynamics. Findings suggest that social network analysis can serve as a diagnostic tool for managers to improve knowledge transfer and team capabilities.
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Leveraging informal networks in

knowledge management
Maria Nirmala and Madhava Vemuri

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to trace and understand informal knowledge sharing networks
for various competencies in project teams. This will help establish a baseline and thereby enable further
knowledge management interventions to be outlined.
Design/methodology/approach – Two project teams were identified for this study. While one of the
teams had a semi-structured knowledge management system already in place, the other had not
adopted any knowledge management practices. The knowledge network analysis was rolled out for
Maria Nirmala is a Senior both the teams for the competencies that they were working on. This was more of an exploratory study.
Knowledge Management The results are compared across both the teams and inferences are made on the knowledge networks
Executive and for the teams.
Madhava Vemuri is a Findings – The various measures involved in social network analysis can help from a knowledge
Director, Product management perspective to: identify experts; provide indicators to the extent of knowledge sharing for
Assurance and Tools, both various competencies; and baseline current knowledge management practices in a team.
based at Honeywell Research limitations/implications – This methodology would not be very feasible for large teams with
Technology Solutions Lab, more than 500 people.
Karnataka, India. Practical implications – This is a very useful diagnostic tool for managers to know more about the
knowledge sharing dynamics in their teams. This may help them design interventions to build the
capabilities of key team members along specific knowledge areas.
Originality/value – The paper provides indicators on the capability of the teams and their knowledge
repositories based on the interactions between them.
Keywords Competences, Knowledge sharing, Project teams
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Informal knowledge sharing networks have been gaining prominence in the context of
knowledge management. Organizations recognize that majority of individual knowledge
transfer does not follow formal structures or processes but depends a lot on the interpersonal
relationships between people developed through informal interactions. It is this understanding
of knowledge exchange that has brought to attention the need to foster and leverage the
informal networks of knowledge transfer. From modeling flows of money, information and
influence to identification of terrorist networks, social network analysis has found its application
in a variety of fields. The contributions of researchers and practitioners in this field have helped
popularize social network analysis in identifying, visualizing and analyzing informal networks in
the area of knowledge management. The application of mathematical graph theory in the
analysis of the social networks (Hanneman and Riddle, 2005) and availability of software like
Ucinet (Borgatti et al., 1998) and others have enhanced the utility of this technique. Various
papers have looked into the implementation of this exercise as a diagnostic that would help
make invisible ties of information exchange more visible; help in the identification of experts and
knowledge communities. (Parker et al., 2001; Cross et al., 2002; Anklam, 2003; Helms and
Buijsrogge, 2005; Prothmann, 2006; Krause, 2007).

PAGE 146 j JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT j VOL. 13 NO. 3 2009, pp. 146-156, Q Emerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1367-3270 DOI 10.1108/13673270910962932
‘‘ Informal networks are powerful mechanisms of creating
knowledge communities. ’’

This paper in addition to providing another example of visualizing and analyzing the
knowledge networks will also explore further applications of this tool from a competency
based perspective in knowledge management. The initial purpose of this study was
exploratory in nature, however the interpretations were found to have a lot of practical
applications. Hence the objective of this paper will also be to elaborate on how some of the
measures from this analysis can provide inputs for subsequent knowledge management
interventions. Here, social network analysis is used for specific knowledge areas or
competencies and thereby will be referred to as knowledge network analysis (KNA).
The organization where this study was conducted is a multi national company which
provides technology solutions to its parent organization. It works on diverse projects that
range from legacy products that are about 30-40 years old, to the development of new
products using niche technologies. With the current market demands and increasing
attrition rates, knowledge management has become critical to the organization especially in
the context of capturing tacit knowledge. The knowledge management initiative in the
organization started around 5 years back with an intensive focus on reuse. An organization
wide repository where employees can upload and download various reusable components
and knowledge artifacts was set up. While this has helped provide an infrastructure to
manage content, the challenge of capturing tacit knowledge that resides in the heads of the
people still continued. It is in this context that the technique of knowledge network analysis
was adopted. The aim was to first of all understand the flow of this tacit knowledge and then
explore mechanisms by which the knowledge flows can be accelerated and the knowledge
management practices be made more effective.

Methodology
This analysis was implemented in two project teams that were randomly selected. The teams
consisted of eight and nine members and will be referred to as team A and team B
respectively. Ten core competencies were identified for each of the teams based on the
projects that they were working on. A special feature of team B was that they already had a
semi-structured knowledge management system in place. The project manager of team B
had structured a small sub team to compile all the documents, resources and databases
related to the various competencies in their project and place them in a customized server.
This was referred to as the ‘‘knowledge base’’ by the team members.

Data collection
A data collection template in an excel file was prepared for each of the teams and sent
across to all the team members. The template had all the ten competencies listed out along
the columns and the names of the team members along the rows. In addition to the team
members, four more additions as resources were made to the rows. They were: the internet
(IT); the organization repository (OR), resources whom the team members approached
within the organization but outside their team (RI) and resources who were approached
outside the organization (RO). In case of the last two they were requested to specify the
names of the resources. In case of team B, their ‘‘Knowledge base’’ (KB) was also added as
a resource which people would approach for knowledge.
The team members were briefed that the objective of this study was to outline the knowledge
network in every project team. All the members were asked to fill the template, wherein for
every competency they had to identify up to a maximum of five resources that they would
approach for knowledge on that particular competency. They were asked to rank these
resources in the order of 5 to 1. The rating 5 was to be given to the one whom they would

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VOL. 13 NO. 3 2009 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 147
approach as the first choice and also from whom they would get the required response. The
next point of contact was to be rated 4 and so on. In this order, 1 would be the rating given to
the person or resource that they would approach for information when the previous four were
not accessible.
The data that were received were converted into an nXn matrix for every competency where
n is the number of knowledge resources in the team. A sample of the same is shown in
Table I, where the team members of team A, have specified and rated the knowledge
resources that they approach when they want some knowledge on the competency 1. M1 to
M8 are the team members and IT, OR, RI, RO are the other resources like the internet,
organizational repository, resources within the organization but outside the team and
resources outside the organization respectively. The first row indicates that with respect to
competency 1, M1 approaches M3 as the first point of contact and then approaches M2 as
the second point of contact as indicated by the ratings of 5 and 4 respectively. With regard to
the resources inside and outside the organization, the team members were asked to specify
the details of those resources. With regard to competency 1, it can be seen that M8
approaches Mr.X as the fourth point of contact in the organization. These matrices were then
entered into Ucinet (Borgatti et al., 2002) for the network diagram and further analysis.

Results
The knowledge networks are defined and drawn around each of the competencies that are
involved in the two projects. Figures 1-4 are a sample of the networks of team A and team B
for competencies 1 and 2 in their respective projects. The network diagram shows all the
resources featured as nodes or circles. The flows between the nodes are given by the edges

Table I Data received for competency 1 from team A


M1 M2 M3 M4 M5 M6 M7 M8 IT OR RI RO

M1 0 4 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
M2 4 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 3
M3 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0
M4 4 3 5 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0
M5 0 0 4 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
M6 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 0 0
M7 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
M8 3 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 5 0 2 Mr.X 0
IT 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
OR 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
RI 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
RO 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

Figure 1 KNA of team A on competency 1

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Figure 2 KNA of team A on competency 2

Figure 3 KNA of team B on competency 1

Figure 4 KNA of team B on competency 2

or the arrows. For every node there can be a maximum of five lines starting from it and there
can be maximum of (n 2 1) arrows pointing towards it. The tie strength or the rating of the
resources is presented on top of the line. For example in Figure 1, M5 approaches M4 as the
second point of contact and has the rating of 4 as the tie strength. While the figures give us

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VOL. 13 NO. 3 2009 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PAGE 149
an idea of the knowledge flows and extent of interaction, there are measures that will help to
interpret the diagrams in a quantitative manner.

Comparing knowledge sharing


One of the prominent differences between the above figures is the clustering of the ties
between the nodes. This is given by the density measure which gives the global level of
linkage of a network. The density of a network is measured as the sum of the present ties
divided by the total number of possible ties (Hanneman and Riddle, 2005). From this
definition, the density measure can be interpreted to be a measure of knowledge sharing for
the competency. Higher the density would indicate more ties in the network and therefore
increased knowledge transfer in that group with respect to that particular competency.
Table II presents the density measures for team A and team B respectively. With regard to
team A, the density scores for competency 2, competency 8, competency 1 and
competency 10 are comparatively more as indicated by their scores of 0.43; 0.31; 0.27 and
0.24 respectively. Corroboratively competency 4, competency 3, competency 6,
competency 9 and competency 5 have very low densities of 0.03; 0.06; 0.06; 0.07 and
0.08 respectively. Similarly with regard to team B, the density of competency 6, competency
5, competency 1, competency 7 and competency 2 which read 0.49, 0.47, 0.26, 0.38 and
0.21 are comparatively higher than that of competency 3, competency 9 and competency 10
which are 0.09, 0.07 and 0.12 respectively.
Another measure on the knowledge interaction patterns is the reciprocity. This measures the
extent of mutual knowledge exchange relationships within the team. Some theorists feel that
there is an equilibrium tendency toward dyadic relationships to be either null or
reciprocated, and that asymmetric ties may be unstable. A network that has a
predominance of null or reciprocated ties over asymmetric connections may be a more
‘‘equal’’ or ‘‘stable’’ network than one with a predominance of asymmetric connections
(which might be more of a hierarchy). (Hanneman and Riddle, 2005). Table II presents also
the reciprocity measures for team A and team B along the various competencies. This
measure yields the ratio of the number of pairs with a reciprocated tie relative to the number
of pairs with any tie. Team A has the highest reciprocity score of 18 percent with respect to
competency 2 followed by 12 percent reciprocity for competency 1. The reciprocity
measures for team B however are not very high when compared to team A and the maximum
value of 10 percent is seen in competency 5. In both the teams it can be seen that there are
no reciprocal ties in 7 competencies and it would be desirable to have some interventions to
enhance this score.

Identifying key knowledge actors


The oft cited advantage of knowledge networks has been with respect to its ability to identify
experts in a knowledge area. It can be seen from Figures 1-4 that those actors towards
whom there is a clustering of more number of arrows have a key role to play in the network.
They are the experts in that competency whom others approach for knowledge. Degree

Table II Density and reciprocity measures for team A and team B


Team A Team B
Competency Density Reciprocity (%) Density Reciprocity (%)

Competency 1 0.27 12 0.26 0


Competency 2 0.43 18 0.21 0
Competency 3 0.06 0 0.20 0
Competency 4 0.03 0 0.25 0
Competency 5 0.08 0 0.47 10
Competency 6 0.06 0 0.49 4
Competency 7 0.18 0 0.38 6
Competency 8 0.31 0 0.37 0
Competency 9 0.07 0 0.07 0
Competency 10 0.24 7 0.12 0

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centrality gives a quantitative measure of the extent of expertise for every actor. It is the
measure of the incoming and outgoing connections held by a knowledge actor (Hanneman
and Riddle, 2005). In the case of non-symmetric data, like in a knowledge network, the focus
is more on the incoming ties, as outgoing ties for every actor is restricted to 5 and the non
people systems like the internet will have no out degrees. Those with an in degree centrality
of more than ten are taken as experts as that would indicate that at least two people
approach this resource as the first point of contact. Table III and Table IV presents the in
degree centrality for all the actors across all the competencies in team A and team B
respectively. The competencies are referred to as C1 to C10 for brevity purpose.
From Table III it can be seen that M3 features as an expert in competency 1, competency 2,
competency 7 and competency 8. M1 and M2 feature as the experts in competency 1,
competency 2 and competency 8. With high in-degree centrality of 22, 38, 15, 11, 17 and 30
for competency 1, competency 2, competency 5, and competency 6, competency 7 and
competency 8, the internet seems to be the resource approached for knowledge on these
areas. M4’s area of expertise seems to be with respect to competency 2 with an in-degree
centrality of 25.
Similarly with regard to team B, it can be seen from Table IV that, M6 with in-degree centrality
measures of 38, 43, 48 and 17 features as the expert for competency 5, competency 6,
competency 7 and competency 8 respectively. The second most sought after resource for
knowledge on competency 5, competency 6, competency 7 and competency 8 is M3 as
indicated by the in-degree centrality score of 17, 29, 12 and 17 respectively. With regard to
competency 3 and competency 4, M1 with scores of 10 for both is the only available expert.
With regard to competency 2, M5 is the only available expert. Since OR has high in-degree

Table III In-degree centrality of knowledge actors along the competencies in team A
C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10

M1 29 26 5 0 3 4 5 20 0 0
M2 13 20 0 0 4 3 0 11 0 39
M3 35 58 0 0 5 5 24 36 3 5
M4 5 25 0 0 9 4 0 8 0 0
M5 0 8 0 0 0 0 8 12 0 5
M6 1 5 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 6
M7 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 6 0 23
M8 5 4 0 0 0 0 3 14 0 0
IT 16 38 9 5 15 11 17 30 4 0
OR 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
RI 2 8 8 4 0 4 9 0 14 0
RO 3 11 4 1 4 2 5 1 0 15

Table IV In-degree centrality of knowledge actors along the competencies in team B


C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 C9 C10

M1 7 1 10 10 4 2 2 4 0 0
M2 0 0 2 2 8 11 4 7 0 0
M3 0 0 0 0 17 29 12 17 0 0
M4 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 0
M5 0 10 0 0 0 1 3 0 0 0
M6 4 5 1 1 38 43 48 17 0 0
M7 0 4 0 2 13 16 10 4 0 2
M8 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1
M9 0 0 0 0 7 3 0 2 0 0
KB 14 10 7 10 15 10 10 23 9 10
IT 26 15 16 13 7 8 10 10 0 4
OR 65 69 54 65 72 62 61 15 7 19
RI 23 13 5 5 13 16 9 45 12 10
RO 13 10 2 2 9 8 0 12 4 4

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centrality scores across all competencies, there is a lot of dependence on external
resources for knowledge. KB which is the local repository set up by the team to upload
knowledge artifacts has high in-degree centrality scores of 14, 10, 10, 15, 10, 10, 23 and 10
for competency 1, competency 2, competency 4, competency 5, competency 6,
competency 7, competency 8 and competency 10. This indicates that knowledge with
respect to these competencies is being captured up to a certain extent in the organizational
memory.

Identifying knowledge sharing communities


Informal networks are powerful mechanisms of creating knowledge communities. Cliques
which are substructures of maximally connected individuals can be identified and
leveraged. Often resources are allocated on new projects based on the prior experience and
individual competencies. However what actually contributes to the success of the project is
the extent of knowledge sharing and collaboration among the team members. One method
of ensuring that we have the right team to work on a project is by identifying cliques for the
required competencies. Table V gives the cliques on team A for competency 1 and
competency 2. It can be seen that there are more number of cliques with regard to
competency 2 than in competency 1. Based on the nature of requirements of the new
projects, the best team to work on the project can be picked and deployed on the project.

Analyzing knowledge flows


The network gives us a visual idea of the knowledge flows between the actors. To enhance
and support these flows it would help to understand the potential bottlenecks in the network.
In the figures, some of the nodes which depict the actors are dark in color. These are the cut
points which on being removed from the network will leave some of the actors totally
disconnected from the rest of the network. The cut points can have various implications
depending on the nodes that they connect.
In Figure 1 it can be seen that, M2 and M8 are the cut points. They approach RI and RO for
knowledge on competency 1 and nobody else has access to these resources. Since RI and
RO are resources outside the team and resources outside the organization, only M2 and M8
have access to them. This knowledge needs to be leveraged by the others through other
knowledge sharing forums. Similarly in Figures 2, 3 and 4 it can be seen that the cut points
are linked to resources outside the project team. It would help therefore to identify these
sources and leverage them. However with regard to Figure 4, while M1, M8 and M6 are cut
points because they are the only connections to the resources outside the team, it needs to
be noticed that M7 approaches only M5 as the first and last point of contact with respect to
getting knowledge on competency 2 in team B. In such cases it is important for the manager
to link up more people to M7 so that he/she is better connected to the entire network.
Overall, the results of the knowledge network analysis help visualize the informal knowledge
exchange patterns within a team. These patterns can be examined both from a people
perspective and competency perspective. It also helped baseline the existing knowledge
management practices in both the teams.

Discussions
Team B already has a semi structured knowledge management system in place. It can be
seen that there are significant differences featuring in the measures between the two teams.

Table V Cliques in team A for competency 1 and competency 2


Team A
Cliques Competency 1 Competency 2

Clique 1 M1 M2 M3 M4 M1 M2 M3 M4
Clique 2 M3 M4 M5 M1 M3 M4 M7
Clique 3 M1 M3 M8 M1 M3 M4 M8
Clique 4 M3 M4 M5 M8

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‘‘ Overall, the results of the knowledge network analysis help
visualize the informal knowledge exchange patterns within a
team. ’’

The value that the knowledge management system has been able to provide to team B will
be examined and suggestions for further actions for both the teams will be discussed in this
section.
First and foremost the density measures which give an overall estimate of the extent of
knowledge interaction with regard to a particular knowledge area will be examined.
Comparing the density measures across competencies within a team helps identify areas
where there is adequate interaction and areas where the knowledge interaction needs to
improve. It can be seen that those competencies where the density is more, there are more
number of experts. Similarly those competencies where the density is less, team members
are more dependent on the internet and external resources. In these areas therefore the
team would benefit from competency development programs. Therefore the areas of
strength in team A would be competency 2, competency 8, competency 1 and competency
10. The competencies which need more development actions would be competency 4,
competency 3, competency 6, competency 9 and competency 5 where there are hardly any
experts. Density measures therefore can be utilized as capability measures to understand a
team’s area of strength based on the knowledge resources in that competency.
A special feature in team B is the presence of a local repository, KB. KB and OR featuring as
experts in team B indicate that many team members approach these resources for
knowledge and are able to find the same. Those competencies where KB and OR feature as
experts indicate that content related to those areas are captured significantly in the
repositories. Likewise areas where they do not feature as experts indicate the need for more
content to be updated or captured in the systems. Hence the capability of a repository in
being able to address the knowledge needs of the team members can be understood and
targets can be set to generate more content in areas where the repositories do not feature as
an expert. With regard to the density measure it can also be seen that the overall density
measure for the competencies in team B are much higher than the density measures for the
competencies in team A. Also when compared to team A and team B, the usage of OR is also
seen to be better in team B. Both these features indicate better knowledge sharing culture in
team B when compared to team A.

Structuring knowledge management interventions


Further interventions from a knowledge management perspective in the two teams can be
planned along the following aspects:

Knowledge capturing
With regard to team A, setting up of a knowledge base would be the first task at hand. For
this purpose the resources that have high in-degree scores can be identified and leveraged
to drive this as an initiative. In the case of team A, it can be seen that resources like M3
feature as an expert on maximum number of 4 competencies. On examining M3’s network it
was found that M3 got most of the knowledge requirements met from various artifacts that
were organized in the personal computer. From the manager, it was found that M3 was also a
very systematic person with excellent personal knowledge management practices and
anybody approaching M3 would be helped with required knowledge artifacts. Hence for
every competency it would help to identify the experts. These experts could be given the
responsibility of generating the content on which they had the expertise and share their
expertise with others.

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In the case of team B, the focus could be more on capturing knowledge at the next level. It
can be noted that the dependence on the internet and other resources within and outside the
organization is higher in team B than in team A. This can be interpreted as, when the basic
required knowledge gets captured in a repository that all the team members can access, the
knowledge that they seek from others and the internet would be that at the next level. Hence
implementing mechanisms that would facilitate capturing this knowledge is what would be
required in this team. One way in which this could be enabled would be to have more of
online discussion forums and application of tools like wikis and blogs. This would help
ensure that the knowledge shared is available to everybody in a common area; gets
captured in the organizational memory and the enables the problem to be viewed from
different perspectives.

Mentoring
It is to be noted that there could be people with more expertise on the competencies but
what this analysis helps uncover are those people who are willing to share their expertise
with others. These people act as informal mentors and compound on the value they add to
the organization by virtue of the knowledge that they share. They are people who
demonstrate high organizational citizenship behavior. The organization has a formal
mentoring system in place where mentors are allotted to mentees for certain competencies
more by the project managers’ assessment. Since this network analysis helps identify
informal mentors, they can be leveraged by the managers and allocated as formal mentors.
This would enhance the effectiveness of the mentoring initiative and these people are also
recognized for their knowledge sharing.

Rewards and recognition


Rewards and recognition mechanisms play an important role in motivating people to
continue to share knowledge and helps acknowledge their contribution. Apart from helping
make inferences on the roles played by the team members in knowledge dissemination,
this technique helps identify other resources who share knowledge on specific
competencies both outside the project team and outside the organization. Identification
of resources outside the project teams but within the organization helps broaden the
understanding of the knowledge exchange patterns across teams and domains. These
constitute the social capital of team members, wherein they are connected to knowledge
resources more because of their interpersonal relationships rather than the team structure
or hierarchy. It would help to leverage these relationships by acknowledging the others
outside the team through rewards and recognition mechanisms. This would not just
motivate them to continue sharing knowledge but also help build the culture of knowledge
sharing in the organization.

Competency development
As mentioned earlier, this tool helps identify experts specific to the competencies. Further
development plans can be hence planned for both individuals and teams based on their
areas of interest and the need of the group. In competencies where there are no experts
there would be the need to have a competency development plan. Similarly when there is
too much of a dependence on few experts it would be of interest to the organization to get
other people trained in the areas. This would minimize the impact of attrition of key
resources.

‘‘ By identifying the roles that various people play in knowledge


sharing, formal practices can be tailored to align with the
existing practices which might lead to better results. ’’

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PAGE 154 JOURNAL OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT VOL. 13 NO. 3 2009
Communities of practice
Communities of practice are the oft suggested best practices to enhance tacit knowledge
sharing. The knowledge networks helps identify informal communities of practice which
occur in the project teams. Instead of having a top down driven approach where
communities are created and individuals are forced to join them, these naturally occurring
communities can be leveraged upon. Ad hoc discussions and meetings can be encouraged
and brought to the notice of the other team members as well. These discussions can be
captured and stored for further deliberations and reference.

Conclusion
At a time when knowledge management metrics are being explored and debated upon, this
tool helps provide a measure to the informal knowledge sharing practices in teams and also
measures the capability of the teams on the competencies. By identifying the roles that
various people play in knowledge sharing, formal practices can be tailored to align with the
existing practices which might lead to better results. While this analysis helps baseline the
existing patterns and measures of knowledge exchange, it would be difficult to outline an
ideal network. However future work could focus on comparing the networks between high
performing teams and teams that need to improve on their performance. This might help
identify differentiating patterns in the structure and measures of the networks and can then
be used as prescriptive frameworks that could help benchmark knowledge sharing
practices. The limitation of this study has been that, its focus has been restricted to small
sized project teams. In future work, the level of the study can also be scaled up to examine
the practices across multiple projects, multiple locations and strategic business units across
the organization.
To ensure that the tool and the methodology can be used in subsequent assessments as
well, the analysis needs to be viewed purely from a knowledge network perspective and not
mixed with other interpersonal inferences about individuals and their behaviors. The manner
in which the analysis and findings needs to be communicated back to the rest of the team is
also important. It would be advisable for the managers to share the holistic measures like
density and reciprocity and the capability of the competencies rather than highlight the
individuals who feature as experts. Since this tool presents an overview of the knowledge
sharing culture of the team, this can be highlighted in a positive manner. This would
encourage and motivate the team to discuss more and share more so that they can benefit
from each other and experience for themselves the value that they can bring about through
knowledge sharing.

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diss.fu-berlin.de/2006/596/indexe.html

About the authors


Maria Nirmala holds an MPhil degree in Psychiatric Social Work from the National Institute of
Mental Health and Neurosciences, and a PhD from the Indian Institute of Science, India. Her
areas of interest include organization development and change management. She is
currently the focal for knowledge management at Honeywell Technology Solutions Lab,
Bangalore, India. Maria Nirmala is the corresponding author and can be contacted at:
[email protected]
Madhava Vemuri obtained his Doctor of Philosophy in Transportation Engineering from
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His other educational qualifications include
an Executive MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), India. He is PMP
certified and is a visiting faculty member at IIMB, India. His areas of interest include general
management and organization development. He is currently with Honeywell Technology
Solutions, Bangalore, India as Director – Product Assurance and Tools.

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