Knowledge Management Issues in Malaysia

Abstract

Purpose – This article aims to examine the current knowledge management issues in Malaysia, to identify the key of issues in knowledge variables within the organization.

Design/methodology – The approach takes the form of a literature review of knowledge management that focuses on the issues in knowledge management.

Findings – There is a need to increase research on examining knowledge management issues that exist in Malaysian organizations.

Introduction

Over the past few years, we have seen how knowledge has evolved around us and it has changed on how we acquire knowledge in our daily routines. For example, in the previous days, people will go out and buy newspapers or magazines. Nowadays we will just browse through our mobile phones or even the notebook and start searching for the news website. Today’s knowledge management is like living yesterday’s science fiction fantasies that people always dream of many years ago.

In the 21st century, the ability of knowledge to bring sustainable competitiveness is recognized as the primary organization resource. The long-term competitive advantage focuses on knowledge management (KM). By this, an effective KM strategy is important in developing KM. According to Kim et al, depending on the time manner, to have a better result in performance, an adequate KM strategy allows the organization to create, gain, access, and leverage knowledge. In the same time, the authors also stated that organizations deal with the knowledge that be sustainable over time and competitive advantage, rare and valuable resources have low imitability, low substitutability, and low mobility.

Literature review

The importance of knowledge as an asset in an organization in the knowledge economy has been emphasized by a few authors. In the same time, the only that is occur in implementing KM is the issues itself. KM is an enabler or platform in keeping the sustainable such as what it knows, how fast it can know something new, and how it uses are the only thing that gives organizations a competitive edge. The competency that drives to intellectual behavior, an agent that produces clear goals, and the required element that leads people's perception is known as knowledge.

A big contributor to organization performance and organization business strategy usually can be recognized by using knowledge management. There are a few knowledge management driving forces as stated by Nonaka listed below:

• Competitors and suppliers
• Sophisticated customers
• Globalization of business and international competition
• Knowledge as an enabler to corporate success
• Intangible assets value and measurement
• Reduce cost
• Realization of the changing role of knowledge

Many of us know that by identifying organizational barriers and encouraging other people that they are able to gain from knowledge sharing are the ways knowledge can support an organization’s decision making and process competency are mainly act as an important resource. During the implementation of knowledge management, there are actually four areas that need to be identified in the organization:

• Marketplace barriers
• Technological
• Economic
• Cultural

And also, not to forget there are people-related issues when in implementing of knowledge management. There were scenarios that should create issues when implementing a knowledge management program where some people unwilling to join knowledge sharing, resource constraints, and lack of commitment.

As stated earlier, it can be seen that when implementing knowledge management initiatives in the organization there will be barriers and issues of time and cost. Other than that, organization that creates, acquires, and transfers knowledge to reproduce new knowledge intuitions refer as a learning organization. A learning organization is able to drive for excellence through constant organizational regeneration. Marquardt, believes that by removing bureaucracy, embracing constant improvement in learning approaches, and encouraging employee participation are factors to produce a learning organization.

Furthermore, a leader should come out with the main initiative to make knowledge management significant and noticeable within the hierarchy and function of the organization. Other than knowledge management, the employee is the number one organization asset. By providing essential training and knowledge sharing it will increase the employee’s competency thus in the same time improving the organization knowledge management. Once the organization has skillful employees, it will automatically make the organization runs efficiently and effectively. In the same time, the business output will improve on the fast deliverables and better output.

It will be an extra if organization leadership that champions with the concept of knowledge management and has the ability to overcome challenges of managing the free flow of knowledge within the organization. These leaders must have insights on the specific knowledge and skill.

Issues of KM in Malaysia

As mentioned earlier, this conceptual paper is discuss about a country which is Malaysia as a developing country. Malaysia was built up in economic and technological elements. Although Malaysia has the maximum strength in a few aspects, there are still existed some issues which can help the organizations to eliminate any barriers and insufficiencies and help Malaysian companies commence a conductive way. Nowadays, the implementation of KM might be failed because of certain issues as the barriers of adopting the KM practice in the organization.

Ethical Issues

There are many aspects of KM but all of these cabs be blocked from expanding because of the KM issues. This is where issues of trust arise and employees are usually having less sense of sharing their knowledge in the organization. Some of the ethical issues in KM occurred because of the ethical issues of the employers and employees itself. Ethical issues involving the work in the organization are well publicized in Malaysia. A major component of successful KM practice is raising its awareness not only to managers at all levels but also to frontline personnel. The concept of KM need to be better understood and benefits much talked about by everyone in the organization in order for the organization to be conducive to the KM practices.

Trust issues

This means that the employees need to report out research honestly, and this applies to their methods such as what they did, data, results, and whether they have previously published or any of it. The employee should not make up any data, including extrapolating unreasonably from some of the results or do anything which could be construed as trying to mislead anyone. It is better to undersell than over-exaggerate the findings and results. This could affect the trust issues among the colleagues themselves and will affect other not to listen to the others. Consequently from that, knowledge sharing could not be implemented since there is a trust issue and a lack of trust to receive and share the knowledge in the organization. When working with others, the employees should always keep to any agreements, and act sincerely so that the organization could achieve the best performance and goals.

It can be clarified as authentic trust. Trust is the most misunderstood word at work, resulting in perceptions of broken promises and trampled expectations. People mean different things when they use the word. But the new workplace currency of trust is centered on authentic trust. Authentic trust comes from authentic people. And authentic knowledge will become from authentic trust and authentic people.

Trust can be classified as many types. The kind of trust that workplaces and ignites engagement is just like non-authentic and unrealistic. If the employee notice where there is a lack of authentic trust then the other employees will see controlling people. The trust issue is very important in order to keep KM continuously practiced in the organization.

Organizational Issues

Organizational behavior issue is the manner in which individuals and groups act and relate with each other in the workplace. Various factors influence these acts and relations, such as leadership, organizational culture, and the personal objectives of individuals within the organization including financial. This organizational issue could lead to the failure of implementing or continuously practicing KM in the organization. In Malaysia, there is a non-rare issue that occurred within the organization. There are a few factors on why these organizational issues in KM occurred.

Cultural

The culture of a certain society in an organization will influence the way people utilize information and knowledge. It will reflect the importance that an organization’s management attribute to the use of information in achieving aims and goals or avoiding failure. Basically, there are four (4) common information sharing cultures that existed in the organizations such as information function, information sharing, information inquiry, and information discovery.

Technological

Information system infrastructure is also known as an Information system (IS) and management of knowledge are often discussed either as separate entities or alternatively as analogies. There are two success factors in knowledge management projects which are working with information system components. First and foremost is the utilization of the network technology infrastructure. For example, in Malaysia is the internet and other global communication systems for effective transfer of knowledge. The second one is the establishment of a broad information system infrastructure based on desktop computing and communications. Effective information system infrastructure includes databases or sophisticated email systems which that component is most significant in contributing to knowledge management application.

Financial

Return of Investment (ROI) in Malaysia is one of the most traditional and essential performance measures that has been based on financial performance such as return on investment (ROI). However, financial performance measurement might be inaccurate in terms of usability in that it tends to measure only financial terms. Since the value of an organization in the k-economy has to be based on intellectual capital, traditional financial measures such as price and earnings ratios, revenues, and market share that cannot measure intellectual capital adequately. But, when it comes to measuring returns on investment in knowledge management, two conventional approaches are in common use by many researchers: sales/turnover (excluding extra-ordinary income) and earnings before interests and taxes (EBIT).

Workers Issues

Actually, there are so many Malaysian companies which they are working on knowledge management and they realize and understand the importance of it in their professional life. The barrier for an organization to implement Km might be due to the workers' issues itself.

Training and workshop

Knowledge sharing and creativity would not be possible if there is no training in organizations. The individuals should have professional trainers in so many skills such as writing, editing, and formatting in order to input items in the knowledge responsibility.

Participation

This participation from the team shows how a group of individuals or employees affect and influence effectively with efficiency in order to achieve objectives in their own organization. According to Kaufman, employee participation is important for becoming an organizational success and aimed the goals. The reason of maximizing participation within the organization has been widely recognized as an important part of knowledge management, especially in organizations. Workers' participation plays an important role in order to succeed the knowledge management implementation. It can be a passed initiative because the employees must share the nature of knowledge creation and sharing, many knowledge activities are unthinkable without employee involvement.

Teamwork

Teams can be defined as individuals as the basic building blocks of organizations. Creating a team will make the organization to apply diverse knowledge skills and experiences towards its processes and problem-solving. Organizations with team-oriented employees who trust one another are more successful at sharing knowledge than those who are merely technologically superior. Hence, fostering a spirit of teamwork based on trust is an essential factor for the successful implementation of knowledge management in organizations.

Empowerment

Knowledge comes from expertise, learning, and experiences and through empowerment; the organization can accelerate its capability when employees are empowered, they begin to think about how they work, make choices, and accept extra responsibilities to other portions of the business to solve the organizational problem by learning new skills at the job. Empowered employees have given autonomy freedom, independence, and discretion over their work activities. Employee empowerment has also been regarded as a key factor of knowledge management success because true empowerment can give the employees a sense of ownership in the overall aim of the organizational knowledge management system.

Impact of KM issues

The impact of KM issues in the organization can be described as one of the barriers for implementing and sustaining the KM practice in the organization. The issues in KM can be as simple as it but also can be a critical issue and affect the organization. There were a few reasons to overcome issues in KM such as:

• To have better work experience and improve the company's value
• To help organizations gain a competitive advantage by having a knowledge base
• To store and retrieves knowledge, improve collaboration, locate knowledge sources, and capture and use the knowledge for future references.
• Able to increase value and efficiency
• Easy access for data sharing
• Management encouragement & increase value for customers and clients
• To be used as knowledge sharing among workers
• To be used as a future reference, especially in KM

Another impact of issues in KM that could affect the organization itself is as below:

Currently, there is no formal chief knowledge officer in the organization. Hence, the researcher replaces it with a knowledge-skill consultant. In Malaysia, a knowledge-skill consultant is also known as a senior consultant or management consultant. According to a few organizations in Malaysia, these people held a major role for the latest product and services. By this, most of the public or private organizations do not see a chief knowledge officer will be in the organization neither in short-term or long-term positions. Due to the KM issues that occurred in most Malaysian organizations, this position has been introduced in the organization.

Knowledge skill consultants are appointed to make knowledge available, leverage knowledge, and enable knowledge. It was mentioned that there are characteristics of a knowledge skill consultant must own as per below:

• Friendly, talkative
• Blue sky thinking, logic
• Influencing skills
• Ability to give a quick response to a problem and provide a solution
• Knowledge-based on experience and proved it with a good outcome
• Easy accessible
• Must know how to manage and inventories the knowledge
• Soft skills & problem-solving skills
• Eager to explore, take ownership
• Must be technically sound and also possesses good soft skills such as communications, decision making, etc.
• Effectively deliver user requirements to comply with the system; effectively document the user requirements and solutions
• Knowledgeable in current IT infra, technology, and business org structure. Can be a good listener, good in file management, and Good communications skills.
• Know how to do documentation

Conclusion

As stated by Peter Drucker shifting away from manual work to the knowledge worker where knowledge becomes the main resource in completing tasks. Throughout the studying, a knowledge worker is an attitude or characteristic of a person who is using knowledge to keep track of everything they need to know and can be adopted by any profession. It is clearly knowledge worker is not a new thing in the digital era. It is important for knowledge workers to better equip themselves in order to get to the fullest potential and efficiency. Knowledge workers have initiatives, make plans, and have clear goals.

The respondents are in between on implementing knowledge management based. Lack of knowledge management strategy experience is currently being one of the main barriers in planning KM. In order to save cost and to render a better service, organizations must first overcome it in the first place of implementing knowledge management based.

As knowledge management allows significant potential to improve organization performance, leading edge management techniques by organizations it will continue to flourish. Learning in a knowledge-based society and knowledge management organization. This case study has the ability to help the organization’s journey of KM implementation by expressing the areas that should be able to fit into the organization’s main business. Well-established knowledge management in organizations has enabled the employee to make KM as part of their daily work activities.

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