Comparing Learning and Knowledge Management Theories in an Australian

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2010 7: 33Asian Journal of Management CasesKenneth David Strang

Telecommunications PracticeComparing Learning and Knowledge Management Theories in an Australian

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Cases

COMPARING LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT THEORIES IN AN AUSTRALIAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS PRACTICE

Kenneth David Strang

A community of practice in a communications company was examined to discover how design specialists learned and shared knowledge to produce innovative designs. Contemporary learning and knowledge management theories were used as the basis for comparison. The design team revealed how they applied learning and knowledge management principles during their internal processes. Action research, refl ection-in-action and nominal focus group techniques were used. Several workfl ow models were produced by the participants to explain and contrast learning and knowledge management as applied in e-business. The fi ndings indicated that the team did not apply conventional learning or knowledge management methodologies, but instead used a modifi ed learning model.Keywords: Australian telecommunications, e-business, tacit process knowledge management, organizational learning, community of practice

INTRODUCTION

A community of practice in an Australian telecommunications e-business company was explored to discover how product design specialists learn, share and manage knowledge across the organization to create innovative portfolios. Contemporary learning and knowledge management theories (Awad and Ghaziri 2004; Becerra-Fernandez et al. 2004) were used as the basis for comparison. The design team was requested to docu-ment how they applied learning and knowledge management principles during their internal design processes. The generally accepted action research, refl ection-in-action and nominal group techniques were used as the research methodology. The purpose

ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT CASES, 7(1), 2010: 33–54SAGE PUBLICATIONS LOS ANGELES/LONDON/NEW DELHI/SINGAPORE/WASHINGTON DCDOI: 10.1177/097282011000700104

This research case was prepared by Professor Kenneth David Strang of Central Queensland University, Australia, and APPC International Market Research, NY.

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34 KENNETH DAVID STRANG

ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT CASES, 7(1), 2010: 33–54

of the study was to determine if this particular e-business used any unique learning or knowledge management processes in its virtual community of practice.

The case study company extensively used virtual design teams that were based across Australia and Europe with a multinational project offi ce in Australia. Team feedback confi rmed that the community of practice relied on knowledge manage-ment principles as well as cognitive learning processes such as applying, analyzing and evaluating knowledge. Contrary to the generally accepted learning theory where knowledge creation starts in the cognitive domain with ‘remembering’ and ends with ‘evaluation’ (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001; Bloom and Krathwohl 1956), these experts used a different methodology.

Spurred by the fact that the case study company was economically successful and was still growing its market share despite the 2008 global recession (www.telstra.com.au/fi nancials 2009), the research team launched an examination to see how these mo-bile telecommunications subject matter specialists learned and acquired knowledge to produce innovative designs. An overarching research motive was to determine why it seemed that this multinational organization and its community of practice did not apparently value contemporary university education. Was there an informal learning mechanism, knowledge sharing methodology or anywhere/anytime training system being used in lieu of the traditional learning taxonomies used at universities (and in place of university education)? The objective of this research was to capture and con-trast the community of practice knowledge management process with educational psychology theories reported in literature as being relevant for e-businesses in the knowledge economy. An evidence-based positivist ideology was applied to this research by reviewing empirical studies in the literature and by employing a grounded theory method to gather data directly from subject matter experts.

LITERATURE BACKGROUND

Many empirical studies of e-business organizations have used popular knowledge man-agement frameworks or educational psychology theories to account for individual and organizational learning. Very few studies have taken an interdisciplinary approach by combining knowledge creation and learning theories. None of the studies reviewed, identifi ed a need for learning from university education (none tested it either). The following sub-sections review relevant international e-business studies in an effort to synthesize representative fi ndings of applied knowledge management and/or organ-izational learning theories.



COMPARING LEARNING AND KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT 35


Knowledge Management and Learning Practices

Chang and Cho (2008) used the knowledge management theory to identify how teams learned and shared organizational memories. Another meta-analysis was grounded on a knowledge processing framework to confi rm the importance of organizational learning on outcomes in Australian e-businesses (Pentina and Strutton 2007). Kodama (2005) leveraged knowledge taxonomy to show how two Japanese e-businesses learnt to rapidly innovate using a supply chain community of practice. One recent study that applied the SECI model (Nonaka and Teece 2001) on an e-business revealed how transformational leadership and knowledge sharing formed a collaborative synergy, which predicted higher project performance and stakeholder satisfaction (Strang 2008). A knowledge management construct was used to show how international cross-functional teams learned and shared information effectively as evidenced by their good performance (Sherman et al. 2005). An empirical study of fi fty-two international e-business projects employed an integrated organizational learning and leadership framework to demonstrate that learning in teams had a strong positive effect on in-novation (Sarin and McDermott 2003).

A survey of successful Spanish e-businesses applied organizational learning concepts to measure innovation outcomes, concluding that learning and knowledge sharing by cross-functional teams ‘obtain a more effective NPD process (i.e., better development times and costs, and superior products) and a higher percentage of new products that are successful in the market’ (Valle and Avella 2003: 44). A case study of Nortel, a large North American e-business, described how knowledge management methodology increased their organizational learning, intellectual capital and knowledge assets (Massey et al. 2002). The e-business cited by Massey and colleagues (2002) was em-pirically examined by this research team (in a different study), whereby it may be confi rmed that Nortel has a unique design process based on tacit knowledge creation and sharing, and they also tend to favour internal employee training and cognitive apprenticeships.

There are numerous studies in literature applying organizational learning and edu-cational psychology theories in e-businesses that use e-learning design frameworks (such as Backman et al. 2007; Ettlie and Elsenbach 2007; Gordon et al. 2008; Kyriakopoulos and deRuyter 2004; Reid and Brentani 2004; Sawhney et al. 2005). A case study in e-business demonstrated that the constructivist principle of situated learning can be applied to develop an online training programme for e-business subject matter ex-perts (Moon et al. 2005). An interesting fi nding by Moon and colleagues was a gap between educational psychology theories and business needs. ‘There was marked convergence between the identifi ed best practice revealed by the literature and by





the expressed needs of the SME managers’ (Moon et al. 2005: 379–80). A case study of a semi-conductor manufacturing organization in North America applied a traditional pedagogy approach in the e-learning mode for staff (in cooperation with a university), which provided some indication of learning by the management team (Edgington 2005). Roussev and Rousseva (2004) applied Bloom’s cognitive domain educational taxonomy for a learning experiment in e-business software training with statistically signifi cant fi ndings. A study of learning design in e-business revealed that applying deep learning concepts along with organizational learning principles improved learn-ing (Rungtusanatham et al. 2004).

The older management science literature is quite saturated with case studies that have applied knowledge management or organizational learning theories to show that businesses can improve innovation and competitive advantage. Even though many of these studies were based in the US, some researchers also examined international (non-US) organizations (this case study is based on a multinational e-business located in Asia and Australia). By way of synthesis, the consensus is that creating, sharing and leveraging explicit/tacit knowledge through team and organizational learning is a competency of successful businesses in the knowledge economy (Edvinsson 1997; Hamel and Prahalad 1994; Handy 2001; Leonard and Sensiper 1998; Nonaka and Teece, 2001; Sveiby, 1997; Teece, 2001; von Krough et al. 2000; Wiig 2002). University educa-tion is rarely mentioned in the relevant literature cited here. Educational psychology theories are sometimes identifi ed and assessed in empirical literature when analyzing organizational learning and corporate training programmes.

Knowledge Management and Learning

Innovation (knowledge management) and e-business learning require the ability to capture and share tacit knowledge about design. Teams do not have time to ‘learn from scratch’ as would be the case in a typical university course (Chang and Cho 2008; Gronröos 1994; Handy 2001; Kavali et al. 1999; Nonaka and Teece 2001; von Krough et al. 2000). In product design, tacit knowledge and intellectual capital are considered more valuable than explicit information (Boudreau and Ramstad 1997; Kim and Mauborgne 1999; Stewart 2000).

Knowledge management and organizational learning researchers have used key terms such as ‘experiential’, ‘conceptual’, ‘routine’ and ‘systemic’ (Nonaka et al. 2001: 29) to describe tacit knowledge. In e-business ‘memory knowledge’ can be held by indi-viduals (Lank 1997), customers (Prahlad and Ramaswamy 2000), teams (Takeuchi 2001), communities of practice (Wenger and Snyder 2000) and/or organizations through their procedures, strategy or culture (Beckett 2000; Walsh and Ungson 1997;





Zack 1999). Memory knowledge may be a state of knowing (to know about)—to be familiar with or to be aware of facts, methods, principles, techniques; a capacity for action (know how)—to understand facts, methods, principles and techniques suffi cient to apply them in the course of making things happen; and/or a body of knowledge (know what)—codifi ed, captured in books, papers, formulas, procedure manuals, computer code, and so on (Nickols 2001). Memory knowledge in business is typically differentiated from facts as ‘a conclusion drawn from the data and information’ (Stewart 2000: 69).

Several researchers such as Zack (1999: 132) extended the basic memory knowledge defi nition using the ‘W5+how’ principle to include ‘causal knowledge (know why)’, ‘conditional knowledge (know when)’ and ‘relational knowledge (know [who])’. Others suggest there may be memory knowledge characteristics associated with motivation (Quinne et al. 1996; Teigland 2000) as well as emotion/trust (Goleman 2000, 1998). Anxiety (along with fear and helplessness) has also been linked with memory know-ledge (Schein 1993: 86–88; Seel 2001).

Language and national culture have always been critical psychological dimensions associated with memory knowledge (Brown 1998; Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars 2000; Holden 2002; Swierczek 1994; Trompenaars 1993). Language is a fundamental determinant of how humans interpret defi nitions (Brown, 1998); people often use shades of meaning (varying by language and culture) to explore and interpret each other’s perception and sense of a phenomenon (Chomsky 1959). This leads to the next critical characteristic of memory knowledge expressed as ‘tacit’ (Polanyi 1997: 136). Explicit memory refers to knowledge that is (or can be) codifi ed while tacit means silent, ‘more than we can tell […] such as face recognition from millions of faces’ (Polanyi 1997: 136).

There are variations and extensions to the tacit memory knowledge in literature. Nickols (2001: 15) considers that tacit knowledge cannot be articulated at all and ‘the knowing is in the doing’. In a slightly different perspective, Burton-Jones (1999) de-scribes some kinds of tacit knowledge as ‘sticky’ which is diffi cult to codify or explain so that it tends to stick to the person with that knowledge and is only transferred with a fair bit of explanation and effort. This is a common perspective of tacit knowledge.

A variation of tacit memory knowledge is ‘embodied tacit knowledge’ meaning knowledge in use and ‘self-transcending knowledge’ intended to mean knowledge that has not yet been embodied (Strang 2010: 313). It is possible that these last two char-acteristics could be described as intuition—a well-known phenomenon in e-business. Weick (1995: 112) seems to have defi ned tacit knowledge in use as instinct, ‘wise people know that they do not fully understand what is happening right now because they





have never come against that precise situation before, however, they pattern match for similar situations […] and make their judgments accordingly’. Perhaps this is an innate form of knowledge.

Another form of tacit memory is ‘implicit knowledge’ (Nickols 2001), which is implied by or inferred from observable behaviour or performance. Additionally, tacit knowledge can only be shared if the recipient individual or group is ‘absorptive’ (Cohen and Levinthal 1990), ready and capable of receiving and understanding. However, certain implicit or tacit knowledge may be so complex that it is ‘not teachable’ (Davenport and Prusak 2000: 70) and thus it cannot be retrieved or used other than by the holder.

Despite the diffi culty of sharing or teaching tacit knowledge, organizational memory is recognized as a critical form of organizational knowledge for business innovation. Organizational memory includes traditional corporate knowledge, namely strategy and procedures (Hansen et al. 2001), as well as competitive intelligence capability (Johnson 2001), and tacit memory. Moorman and Miner (1997) suggest four dimensions of organizational memory: level, dispersion, accessibility and content. Organizational memory is ‘…a fl uid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new ex-periences and information […] it often becomes embedded not only in documents or repositories but also in organizational routines, processes, practices, and norms’ (Davenport and Prusak 2000: 5). Organizational learning is often associated with and is seen as the main source of organizational memory (Brown 1998: 16).

Communities of practice (Wenger and Snyder 2000) are valuable sources of organ-izational memory. These practice communities are ‘informal, spontaneous, self-organized groups of people, who share knowledge, solve common problems and exchange insights and frustrations’ (Lesser and Prusak 2001: 253). These groups are bound by informal relationships, share similar work roles and a common context to produce social capital.

Knowledge management processes describe the way knowledge is created, trans-formed and shared/transferred, while borrowing upon certain memory defi nitions and taxonomies. As compared with methodologies, processes are separate workfl ows, tools and techniques in the knowledge life cycle (they are not necessarily integrated in a systematic loop). There are broad views in literature about knowledge manage-ment processes; the common theme is that knowledge processes are discussed as systematic tools and techniques for sourcing/capturing, organizing/transforming/storing/retrieving and sharing/transferring.

In business, explicit knowledge is most readily captured from organizational records (techniques, performance, data mining), from communities of practice members





(project histories) and from customers/suppliers (surveys, feedback). Procedural and declarative knowledge are important to capture because this is the basis for skill development, job descriptions, project management, productivity, quality, and eventually competitive advantage. The sources are often tacit behaviour and occas-ionally they are organizational memory/intelligence (documented strategy, core com-petencies). Interestingly, literature reminds us that valuable explicit intellectual capital can be researched from external sources, namely, innovation approaches and best practices (Horvath 2001). Customers (the third relational component of intellectual capital discussed earlier) are a good source of explicit knowledge (Ulwick 2002).

Nonaka et al. (2001: 73) describe a knowledge creating and sharing process that spirals in a four dimensional cycle of ‘socialization’, ‘externalization’, ‘combination’ and ‘internalization’ (SECI), using a community of practice. Nonaka describes the com-munity of practice as ‘ba’ (Nonaka and Konno 1998: 133) and ‘Nippongo’ in Japanese for shared interpersonal space.

Sharing tacit knowledge follows the general axiom that fi rst it must be articulated (into explicit memory), before it can be communicated or transferred (Kaye 2001). However, articulation methods go beyond verbalizing, drawing and writing—they may include body language, signals and even shared perceptions. Storytelling is a method for sharing tacit knowledge which involves (primarily subject matter specialists) using combinations of personal stories, evidence to support their ideas, along with a visual metaphor (superimposed on an ‘analysis tree’) that shows the structure and relation-ships among the ideas/phases (Forman 2001). Storytelling permits the transfer of rich contextual knowledge details (Hansen and Kahnweiler 1993), while empowering the community of practice members to reframe their own perceptions (not necessarily fi ltering out or denying cultural norms), thus enabling individuals to grasp new implied tacit knowledge not present in their conscious memory (Ambrosini and Bowman 2001; Sternberg et al. 2000; Swap et al. 2001).

Other useful processes for creating and sharing tacit knowledge include sense making whereby specialists refl ect on tacit, explicit and self-transcending knowledge, forming or augmenting their mental model (Senge et al. 1999). Additionally, practice members are able to use other techniques mentioned earlier to share that concept. Mental models can sometimes be shared within a community of practice where mem-bers have shared experiences (Wenger 1999).

Organizational learning is a form of knowledge management process (Awad and Ghaziri 2004; Becerra-Fernandez et al. 2004), which is often viewed as the business industry complement to educational psychology. Organizational learning includes both intentional and unintentional learning, enabling the acquisition of, access to,





and revision of organizational memory, thereby providing direction to organizational action (Robey et al. 2000). High quality organizational learning is often integrated with the community of practice concept, using dialogue as a process for capturing valuable tacit knowledge into the organizational memory (intellectual capital). Communities of practice (COPs) are ‘groups of people informally bound together by shared expertise and passion for a joint organisational’ (Wenger and Snyder 2000: 139). Literature contains many examples of the relevance of COPs for capturing tacit knowledge. For example, at Xerox, informal (but highly focused) technical specialists solved complex and often perplexing problems by collaborating (Kikawada and Holtshouse 2001). In this case, COPs are used to improve product designs. This tacit knowledge can be shared as organizational memory through dialogues, storytelling and other processes, so the organization is able to ‘learn’ (Brown and Duguid 1991; Davenport and Prusak 2000; Lesser and Prusak 2001).

While there are many theories in educational psychology, the generally accepted taxonomy of learning consists of three domains—cognitive, affective and kinaesthetic (Bloom and Krathwohl 1956)—whereby the cognitive domain is of interest in this research since it roughly mirrors the knowledge management memory taxonomy applied in e-business (and other e-business studies have applied this theory). The cognitive domain consists of six sequential stages in the learning process, and there are two popular versions (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001; Bloom and Krathwohl 1956) in literature (both versions are illustrated and briefl y enumerated in Figure 1 as a know-ledge pyramid). The sequential stages (viewed as an academic learning process) are remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001). The learning stages shown in Figure 1 are a ‘bottom-up’ process.

It was proposed that the model in Figure 1 can be used as a guideline to interview the e-business subject matter specialists (many participating from other business units), and ask them to describe their knowledge management methodology.

METHODS

An action research and refl ection-in-action approach was applied on an existing NPD team. The team consisted of specialists e-collaborating across business units from three different countries. The product was a mobile phone package design (hardware and software) that was intended for a resale through the dealer and franchise networks (business-to-business). The team was interviewed as a focus group workshop, using nominal brainstorm technique, on three different meeting days. The underlying phil-osophy was to observe expert practice/behaviour without preconceived notions. How-ever, in this case study, the cognitive domain (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001) was used





as an a priori framework. This was done to save time and improve the brainstorm out-come quality at the request of both the focus group members and their company.

A team ‘information package’ was prepared explaining the research project which was approved by the case study company. The package contained a synthesis of the

Figure 1Learning Stages and Processes in E-business Cognitive Domain

Source: Case writer’s notes.





literature review along with the model shown in Figure 1. The nominal brainstorming approach was used. First, the subject matter experts were asked to individually draw and explain the process of knowledge management that they felt was most commonly used in their community of practice when designing new mobile phone services/prod-ucts for e-businesses. Then, in order to arrive at an overall consensus, small groups prioritized and improved the individual models.

On the fi rst meeting day, all subject matter experts were told to reuse anything pro-vided in the literature review and diagrams, and everyone was particularly encouraged to be factual and think beyond the a priori models documented in literature. Next, on the second meeting day (a week later), the individuals were brought together into small groups (randomly selected) to reach a consensus on their most common knowledge management methodology. The competing models were presented by each group, and all ideas were ranked by each subject matter expert. All subject matter experts were given copies of all competing models and notes. On the third meeting day (a week later), the fi nal version of the e-business knowledge management model was deter-mined through a consensus. The research team improved the aesthetics of the drawings and then disseminated the results to the team, inviting corrections and feedback.

FINDINGS AND INSIGHTS

The results from the e-business subject matter experts consisted mostly of two diagrams along with explanatory notes and examples. Each of their diagrams is explained using the notes from the focus group, expressed in the nomenclature of knowledge management and educational psychology theories.

Knowledge Management Business Model

Figure 2 is a simplifi ed conceptual overview of the e-business process. It shows the sequential business functions going left to right across the middle (planning, NPD, mar-keting, etc.), with a circular knowledge management cycle in the centre, starting with consumer needs gathering, and concluding with hopefully a complete design. This is a common framework that can be found with slight variations in management science literature. There are three interesting elements in the e-business conceptual model (Figure 2). First, the focus group acknowledges the role of tacit and explicit knowledge sharing. Second, the group shows a knowledge management process superimposed over the inner cycle (along the top of the diagram), which links business goals with post-NPD functions such as marketing and sales. Third, it includes a feedback loop,





which the research team labelled organizational learning (along the bottom of the dia-gram), that brings new information from the downstream e-business units (including external supply chain distributors and clients), which serves as useful input into future designs. The subject matter experts noted that tacit knowledge could enter the process anywhere at anytime, individually or as a shared conceptual realization described as ‘being on the same page’.

The interesting fi nding is that the design experts claimed they had the instinct, mental models and intuition for good mobile phone service/designs, but needed the help of other business functions to transform their concepts into practical designs to comply with manufacturing constraints (packaging, regulations, etc.), and also to leverage potential economies-of-scale (which features could be done cheaply with supplies in mass assembly versus hard-to-do). Also there were two unique aspects of this model. The fi rst was that the team was able to more easily share all three different

Figure 2Knowledge Management Cycle in E-business






types of knowledge (particularly tacit), but mostly had to codify its ideas (in diagrams such as this), to externalize its designs for feedback and approval from other business units. This knowledge articulation process (externalization between units) was done using storytelling supplemented by drawing, writing, speaking and refl ecting on pre-vious designs (as well as business strategies).

NPD Team Learning Model

The design focus group was asked to elaborate on how it learnt and shared knowledge in its community of practice. The group provided examples of the knowledge artefacts used in the mobile phone design methodology. Explicit knowledge mostly refers to documents such as procedures, policies, information, codifi ed theories and codifi ed models. The group explained that espoused theories were explicit ideas that they could verbalize or write about. Refl ections were described as ‘hindsight’, explicit understandings based on thinking through what has happened before in the market. Most of their creative work involved tacit knowledge such as internally constructed perceptions of a pretty mobile case or screen saver (sometimes a picture could be offered, while other times not). Theories-in-use were described as how consumers really use the products—designers think they know this from their own use but it is possible that subtle different patterns could exist that might be observable, if one were to study a consumer using a mobile phone for many hours. For example, recent NPD telecommunication e-business studies noted that multicultural learning style and personality factors have a signifi cant impact on individual and team performance (Strang 2009).

Mental models represented a cognitive understanding of a design, or a proposed in-novative improvement to a design. Organizational culture represented the often unsaid accepted routines that the team was allowed to do as compared with written policies and procedures. This was an example of what infl uenced the team to articulate the top-down sequence in the learning model. Upon refl ection, it became obvious that an existing tacit model was the starting point for mental elaborations in the design process. Likewise offi ce practices (time reporting, dress code) were part of the organization’s culture and sometimes different from the written policy.

Social culture referred to the manner in which the community of practice behaved, working mostly at home, how often they communicated with one another, norms for chatting and collaborating online, the frequency in using e-business software (accessed from their own company supplied low-fee mobiles), and so on. Intuition referred to





their best guess of customer behaviour, which they could often partly articulate, but still retained a tacit view internally. Innate was a less used type, but still recognized as distinct from tacit. Innate included unobservable and unknown consumer behaviour. (Would parents pay an overdue mobile phone bill for their child? How many mobile screens would each age group download and at what cost?)

‘Refl ex’ referred more to the ergonomics of the mobile phone such as keyboard layout, screen lighting and ring tones. Genetic culture referred to consumer demographics such as the hidden behaviours of homogeneous groups, for example, native Chinese consumers rarely use their mobile except for necessary communication but no one knew why. Instinct is a community of practice member’s ability to come up with a gut feeling without thinking about it, such as a response to a proposed design within 1–2 seconds. The team did not know exactly how that process worked, but they were confi dent that often their original instinct was correct (after refl ecting on this).

Organizational Learning Model

Finally, the knowledge management/organization learning methodology (Figure 3) was produced by the focus group. At the centre of the model, there are two mirrored knowledge management pyramids. The right pyramid lists the six sequential stages of the academic learning process in the cognitive domain (Anderson and Krathwohl 2001), reproduced from Figure 1—these are bottom-up stages. The left pyramid reveals the community of practice methodology, which also contains six top-down representative phases suggested by the focus group. A systemic organizational learning feedback loop (returning to ‘model’) completes the knowledge management pyramid. It is obvious in looking at this diagram that the a priori constructs did infl uence the focus group outcomes and they were meant to serve as a guide (allowing them to skip reinventing the wheel if they felt inclined to do so).

The unique characteristic of the knowledge cycle (Figure 3) is a top-down process fl ow that uses three stages from the taxonomy of learning stages (in different phases). Instead of starting with a review of the available knowledge (as one might do in an academic learning context), the subject matter experts fi rst examined existing models from their own community of practice and beyond—namely literature and competitors. Although the team seemed creative, they explained that in an e-business, their motto was not to reinvent the wheel if a solution or concept could be reused or adapted. Often there were tacit and innate (not yet embodied) concepts embedded in their own previous designs and those of their competitors. The focus group explained that





by looking at working solutions with a new client’s needs in mind, they were able to see new possibilities (reframe their perspectives). The experience of the team might also explain why they approached the cognitive domain model in reverse direction, since they were essentially fi ne-tuning a proven (internal or competitive) model to innovate it. In the academic context, the assumption was that students are not ex-perts and therefore start learning the basic knowledge of defi nitions, concepts and

Figure 3Knowledge Management/Organization Learning Pyramids






principles, then expand by building on this using analysis, synthesis and evaluation of real world data.

The fi rst ‘model’ phase at the top of the knowledge management pyramid was a critical process (Figure 3), with the rest falling into place, and more easily explained. The evaluation consisted of brainstorming and ranking techniques that the community of practice used, to sort through the possible ideas and best practices in order to select a few models to concentrate on. Next the selected models were analyzed in terms of fi t (and gap) with planned mobile services/designs for e-businesses. This often included consumer focus group input, client behaviour pattern (data mining), client surveys and market intelligence data gathering. This was not where new ideas were created, but instead where the highly ranked ideas were ratifi ed based on empirical evidence. Once a new design was conceptualized to fi t a need, the gap in making the design practical was decreased by using a transforming process of completing the blueprint using existing explicit, tacit (or innate) knowledge, as a shared community of practice activity.

The fi nal two phases of dissemination (sharing with other business units) refer to putting the conceptual design into a physical design; this is done by using explicit knowledge codifi cation activities. A systemic feedback loop was added to show the organizational learning mechanism that operated to provide competitive advantage and sustainability by recognizing benefi ts, errors as well as new potential opportunities (gained from all stakeholders in the e-business supply chain). Overall, this (Figure 3) was a very different methodology as compared with any educational psychology theory or generally accepted research method.

Organization Capability and Business Practice Implications

Albeit, the return-on-investment was not specifi cally assessed from these NPD design teams, as noted in the introduction, the case study company (Telstra) performed very well, including the mobile new product development e-business unit. Further, one of the most signifi cant perceived benefi ts from research such as this was increased man-agement recognition of the value in training the staff. The quality of the knowledge management/learning models produced by the design teams in this study made positive impressions on the executive management team as well as the learning and development unit.

An indirect result of documenting the team development process was that the case study company increased its funding into staff development and knowledge sharing. For example, in 2008–09 the case study company’s knowledge management/





learning development funding was AUD 104 million (representing around AUD 2,800 per employee); it included 649,274 online knowledge/learning course completions and over 2,000 employees participated in ‘frontline leadership’ programmes (www.bizcs.co.nz/page.asp?E_page=416432&3648=431731). Additionally, twenty-three employees completed the executive leadership programme while 227 enhanced job-specifi c training courses were developed for NPD and knowledge-worker staff (www.telstramarketingacademy.com.au). The models from this project were shared with course designers to facilitate knowledge transfer for future NPD and cross-functional staff teams.

Theoretically, the NPD models from this project have made the most signifi cant im-pact by documenting the process to educate new team members. These tacit processes are being promoted in the case study company through community of practices as well as through their internal training programmes (as noted above). By having a high-performing NPD e-business unit articulate these methodologies, relevant case study material for courses are being developed at the case study company learning and development unit, as well as at their marketing academy. Further, having these methodologies documented will now give the existing (and future) teams an easier starting point upon which to share and improve on these models. In fact, these NPD process models are especially useful for cross-functional NPD team members that reside in different geographic units (outside the head offi ce).

Quantitatively, knowledge sharing initiatives related to this project have resulted in a positive return-on-investment. Company gathered statistics indicated that ‘5,700 managers completed the online modules by the end of the half-year review (February 2009)’ and ‘two new online people manager skill building modules were developed and launched’.

CONCLUSIONS

The catalyst for this project was that a ‘successful’ team at a profi table multinational mobile phone company appeared to have an unusual design methodology (as com-pared to knowledge management or educational psychology literature). The research objective was to capture and contrast the community of practice methods with knowledge management and educational psychology theories synthesized during the literature review. Action research, refl ection-in-action and nominal group techniques were applied with focus group workshops and interviews to gather the data. The result was two models (with explanatory notes and examples) produced by the focus group to externalize their tacit processes (Figures 2 and 3).





The focus group explained how it acquired knowledge, from where knowledge originated and how the participants perceived this on a continuum (innate, tacit and explicit). They provided examples of common artefacts from their community of practice. The focus group confi rmed the important role that tacit knowledge plays during innovation, in particular, how mental models and theories-in-use become de-signs via organizational learning feedback. The key fi nding was that the knowledge management methodology contained three similar phases (apply, analyze and eva-luate) when compared to the cognitive domain, but they were ordered differently. The method operated in the reverse direction when compared to the cognitive domain. The methodology started at the ‘model’ discovery and ‘evaluation’ phases, whereas the cognitive domain started at the bottom with ‘knowledge remembering’, ending at the ‘evaluation’ and ‘creating’ stage. The methodology relied on a systemic organizational learning feedback loop for sustainability. The group confi rmed the important role that tacit knowledge plays during innovation, in particular, how mental models and theories-in-use become designs via organizational learning feedback.

The key fi nding was that their NPD knowledge management methodology con-tained three similar phases (apply, analyze, evaluate) when compared to the six learning taxonomy cognitive domain stages, but they were ordered differently. The method operated in the reverse direction when compared with the cognitive domain. Their methodology started at the top with ‘model’ and ‘evaluation’ phases, whereas the cognitive domain started at the bottom with ‘knowledge remembering’, ending at ‘evaluation’ and the ‘creating’ stage. The methodology relied on a systemic organiza-tional learning feedback loop for sustainability.

In terms of practical impact, one of the most signifi cant perceived benefi ts from this research was the increased management recognition of the return-on-investment value for training e-business staff. The quality of the knowledge management/learning models from this case study (and other researches) made positive impressions on the executive management team as well as the learning and development unit (namely the funding of courses which used these models in their case studies). In fact, to date over AUD 104 million have been spent for internal knowledge worker training. The theoretical value of these NPD knowledge management models contributed to the e-business course designs (as case studies). Furthermore, the tacit NPD processes have now been externalized into explicit models which give the existing (and future) e-business teams an easier starting point to share and expand the methodologies (put-ting cross-functional and geographically dispersed teams on the same theoretical page). Finally, the case study models and research methodology have become a documented organizational capability.





Future research could replicate and extend this study using other methods, more industries and/or different NPD e-business departments and teams.

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Comparing Learning and Knowledge Management Theories in an Australian