Inaugural lectures
Wednesday 5th December, 2012 at 5pm – Lecture Theatre SMB.0.14 (Stewart Mason Building)
Being Right is Not Good Enough – Why Knowledge Management Initiatives Fail
Professor Ray Dawson, Department of Computer Science
Knowledge Management is of growing interest in business and industry today, and many organisations are looking to use knowledge management techniques.
However, most knowledge management initiatives fail to measure up to expectations and many fail altogether. What is going wrong? Is this just a passing fad or can knowledge management be used to make worthwhile improvements to an organisation’s way of working?
In this lecture Professor Ray Dawson first examines what knowledge is and what makes the management of knowledge difficult. Professor Dawson concludes that organisations are right to want to embrace knowledge management, but being right is not good enough to ensure the success of any knowledge management initiative.
There are many examples of knowledge management systems that have floundered or failed and some that have been successful. Is it not possible, therefore, to use this knowledge to learn from these experiences to improve the success rate?
Professor Dawson describes a number of case studies of knowledge management initiatives and from these Professor Dawson derives a 12-step plan for successful knowledge management implementation.