Page 208 - DCAP310_INTRODUCTION_TO_ARTIFICIAL_INTELLIGENCE_AND_EXPERT_SYSTEMS

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence & Expert Systems

Notes transfer content externally, in the form of products and services. Functions 1, 3, and 5 are essential
and cannot be bypassed.
The knowledge in organizations is more complicated. Except from formal and informal
documents, Davenport & Prusak’s (1998) also introduced routines, processes, practices and norms.
It may, therefore, be clear that organizational knowledge is much more than a sum of all the
individual knowledge. It became clear that most of the knowledge an organization needs,
already exists in the organization, but that finding and identifying it were the problems. This
has several explanations.
First of all, it depends how the knowledge in an organization is organized. Hansen et al. (1999)
made a distinction between a codification and personalization strategy. A codification strategy
focuses as the word already implicates, to codify knowledge in a company, where a
personalization strategy implies personal interaction as the main factor for exchanging
knowledge. Both strategies have their problems. First of all, it is in many cases not possible to
codify knowledge because of e.g. modifiability and complexity. This is called cognitive limitations.
“As expertise increases, mental representations become more abstract and simplified” And
even if people can share knowledge, sometimes they do not want to. Hinds & Pfeffer (2001) call
this motivational limitations. Hall et al. (2001) see rewards and informal activities with colleagues
as the solution for the so-called motivational limitations. They divided the rewards in two
groups, the explicit and the soft rewards. Explicit rewards are e.g. economic incentives and
career advancement. Soft rewards are non-economic rewards such as reputation and satisfaction.

All this theory is based on formal structures in an organization. Organizations all also exist out
informal ties and networks. This complicates organizational goals of formal knowledge sharing.
A company will lose track of who has what knowledge because of the informal networks. This
does not mean that informal networks are negative, just on the contrary, informal networks can
create ties and surroundings which are necessary for knowledge sharing. The implication and
unfortunately also the complication of informal networks is that an organization loose the
general view of the knowledge in the organization. The informal structure significantly differs
of the formal one. To effectively maximize the potential the authors argue that it is necessary to
analyze both structures. They introduce the so-called Social Network analysis which
systematically assesses informal networks. The result is that knowledge consequently can be
collected from formal and informal networks to create a socio-knowledge matrix in
organizations.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

1. Knowledge is created and used by people.
2. A learning culture promotes not only individual learning.
3. Functions 1, 3, and 5 are essential and can be bypassed.

11.2 Indexing and Retrieval Techniques

Following are the indexing and retrieval techniques:

11.2.1 The Frame Problem

A fluid mix of framed experience, values and contextual information that provides a framework
for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information. It originates and is applied

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