Page 228 - DCAP208_Management Support Systems

Unit 13: Knowledge Management

But, what categories do people use inside their own heads? People use knowledge structures, Notes
ways of organizing information into a coherent whole, in order to process what goes on around
them. Knowledge structures help us make sense of the world around us. What knowledge
structures does an expert have and how do they acquire them?

Understanding how knowledge structures are acquired helps us understand what kinds of entities
they are. Learning depends upon knowledge and knowledge depends upon learning. A script is
a simple knowledge structure that organizes knowledge we all know about event sequences in
situations like restaurants, air travel, hotel check in, and so on. We know what to expect and
interpret events in light of our expectations. But do we use this kind of structure to manage
knowledge?

If something odd happens to us in a restaurant, how do we recall it later? Let me count the ways.
We would recall it if we entered the same restaurant at another time or if we had the same
waitress at a different restaurant, or if we ate with the same dinner companions (assuming we
ate with them rarely). It is clear that an incident in memory is indexed in many ways. One set of
indices is the “people, props and places” that appeared in an incident and are associated specifically
with that incident.
But there is more abstract indexing method that goes beyond the “people, props, and places”
type of index. Those indices are about actions, results of actions, and lessons learned from
actions. These indices matter greatly in a KM system. If they do not exist no one will learn
anything from a description of an event that has lessons in it beyond those about the people and
places of that event.

One set of abstractions about actions involves roles and tasks. Organizing information around
role and tasks allows events to be easily accessed if one has an implicit understanding of the
roles and tasks involved in a given situation.
Beyond using an organizational scheme involving roles and tasks, human experts can do
something that is quite significant. They can abstract up a level to organize information around
plans and goals. To put this another way, if the waitress dumped spaghetti on the head of
someone who offended her, you should get reminded of that event by the 3 Ps and also if you
should happen to witness this event in some other setting. But, far more importantly, you
should get reminded of this event if you witness the same kind of event another time. The
question is what does it mean to be the same kind of event? Whatever this means, it would mean
different things to different people. One person might see it as an instance of “female rage” and
another as an instance of “justifiable retribution.” Another might see it as a kind of art.
The key issue is to learn from it. Any learning that takes place involves placing the new memory
in a place in memory whereby it adds to and expands upon what is already in that place. So, it
might tell us more about that waitress, or waitresses in general, or women in general, or about
that restaurant and so on, depending upon what we previously believed to be true of all those
things. New events modify existing beliefs by adding data to what we already know or by
contradicting what we already know and forcing us to new conclusions. Either way, learning is
more than simply adding new information. Since information helps us form a point of view,
when we add new information it changes the information we already have.
The question is: how do we find the information we already have? This answer depends upon
how it was indexed (or categorized) in the first place. Learning depends upon the initial
categorization of what we know and may involve changing those categorizations in order to get
smarter. A KM system that does not do this will never be very smart and will fail to absorb new
information in significant ways.

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