Knowledge Management Assignment: KM Projects Implementation in Pharmaceutical Company
Question
Task
Case study: A pharmaceutical company (Source: Chua, A. and Lam, W., “Why KM projects fail: a multi-case analysis”, Journal of Knowledge Management, vol. 9, no. 3 (2005).
Consider the above case study and write a knowledge management assignment answering the following question:
Give your views on failure of implementation of knowledge management at a global company based on five distinct stages of knowledge management:
Stage 1: Advocate and learn
Stage 2: Develop strategy
Stage 3: Design and launch KM initiatives
Stage 4: Expand and support initiatives
Stage 5: Institutionalize knowledge management
Also, discuss about the failure and your views with respect to implementation of KM components and knowledge management framework.
Answer
Overview
This study is conducted to find the setbacks of knowledge management projects in relation to their implementation, components and framework.
Three Knowledge management projects were implemented in a pharmaceutical company. These projects involved company workers for gaining knowledge. First project named, lesson learned was conducted at the end of each drug development session. Each team of workers was asked about their experiences at the manufacturing session.
Second project is known as warehouse. It contained all the knowledge gathered by lessons learned project. The aim was to extract important issues and provide possible effective outcomes along with concrete decision based procedure. Also, it contained common database of knowledge and collaborative platform to share ideas among teams.
Cafe project was third project employed by pharmaceutical company that contained web based application through which users could share their stories regarding pharmaceutical manufacturing and related to company culture as well. However, access to this web based application is to organizational key person such as CEOs, board member, etc.
Knowledge Management Project Results
Knowledge management projects in pharmaceutical company resulted adversely for few strong reasons. The projects were considered to be unsuccessful because none of the project found encouraging to workers. The results of projects are:
- Project lesson learned did not provide stable results after using it for three years
- Warehouse project did not succeed due to partial involvement of workers as it was difficult for them to adapt it.
- Café project was impractical and involved only organizational head body.
This report covers failure insights of pharmaceutical knowledge management projects with respect to failure in implementation as per knowledge management stages, components and framework. It focuses on finding mistakes done by knowledge managers in terms of knowledge management design and implementation of these projects.
Implementation Failure elaboration as KM stages
Knowledge Management is useful for any organization as it helps organization to identify problems and find solutions to those problems [1]. It gathers knowledge from people targeting its business processes and technologies used in providing services. It brings balance between tasks and workers if project became successful or can lead to loss if failed. However, KM projects developed with utmost care by following rules can result in exploring more effective ways of performing a task and providing best quality services to consumers.
The projects discussed above failed for following reasons described as knowledge management stages.
Stage 1 - Advocate and learn
In this phase of knowledge management, before implementing and deploying projects, it is important to gather thorough information regarding aims of company as well goals of project. Advisory meetings should be conducted in order to plan projects and project their outcomes before implementing them [2].
With respect to pharmaceutical company, stage 1 is somehow not performed properly as none of the project is encouraging any of the workers or organizational heads.
Stage 2 – Develop Strategy
In this stage, a strategy is developed for implementing project in reality. While developing strategies it is important to look up key factors such as what tools and techniques will be more effective to yield desired outcome.
The pharmaceutical company while implementing strategy for lessons learned project fail to identify techniques that can help in extracting useful knowledge from the collected debriefing answers from teams involved in drug development project. The collected knowledge was based on experience of workers in regards to drug development. They noticed that drug development process itself was traditional and did not encouraged them to participate in trying anything new. The interviews at the end of development process were disappointing reviews of workers regarding manufacturing process as company did not use new strategy for drug manufacture. The debriefing exercise given to workers resulted in discouragement for traditional way of development process. The lessons learned project seemed to be a ritual to workers with nothing new to learn from development process.
Stage 3 – Design and launch KM initiatives
After developing strategies, the most important stage is to design the projects as per strategies and initiate its usage and implementation. For this, organization should provide funds in order to perform design and launch process.
On the basis of reasons of failure, it was noted that warehouse project which relied on lessons learned project could not be able to find solutions as per addressed problems. Other than this, launch and design of knowledge management projects were completed successfully. After launching it was important to not the response and results of each process.
Warehouse project resulted in loss when knowledge retrieving process was started. Many companies viewed this knowledge management project as a good waste of resources for its no usefulness.
Café project was launched online but only for sharing stories of head bodies. The team members were actual assets and should be given closed liberty so that they can speak up without any pressure. This project allowed sharing experiences for head body which was impractical.
Stage 4 – Expand and support initiatives
The implemented projects are expanded as huge projects if they are successful. Due to major setbacks of each project, the pharmaceutical company did not reach to this stage any of the projects implemented were not useful for even one department. Project lesson learned did not provide stable results after using it for three years Warehouse project did not succeed due to partial involvement of workers as it was difficult for them to adapt it. Café project was impractical and involved only organizational head body. All the projects failed and hence no body was interested in further investing in it.
Stage 5 – Institutionalize knowledge management
With the help of this stage, the company is assessed for its gains after implementing the projects and assessing their outcomes to benefit organization. As all the projects were failed, this stage was of no relevance. The pharmaceutical company assessed the knowledge management projects and found that it not only wasted time but also resources and money to greatest extent.
Considering these five important implementation steps, it can be noted that projects were not seriously implemented right from stage 1. Nobody implements to fail, but the projects were over confided as a result, company saw failure in each of them. The five stages discussed above are simple in order to achieve success in KM project implementation. Not just outsiders but pharmaceutical company itself does not want to employ these projects in it other departments.
KM Components Failure
Knowledge Management components work in collaboration in order to collect and extract useful knowledge that can be re-used as valuable information for organization. The key components of knowledge management are People, Process, Tools, Strategies [2].
People: The workers of pharmaceutical company were important asset of KM project. The people participated as a ritual reinforcement in lessons learned project. However, they were never enthusiastic to share newness as there was apparently no innovation in the same old daily process.
Process: The process of KM implementation is important that contains five stages described in previous section. The implementation process was not used in proper manner. If it was, projects would have been successful.
Tools: The tools are important to extract and manage useful information collected by projects. To use tool so that information is mined to provide beneficial information to project stakeholders. No tool was used to find valuable information in warehouse project and hence all the problems could not be addressed. Café project used an online web portal but found to fail for its poor strategy.
Strategies: People, process and tools are useless if the strategy is poor. KM projects can be successful only if strategies are good enough to yield positive outcomes. As said earlier café project used online web application as a tool to collect information, it did not strategize it well. Café project involved only body heads that led to failure.
KM Framework Failure
A Knowledge management framework is important as it collectively forms a platform for components to communicate with each other for best results. The knowledge management framework contains interface, management of knowledge base, functionality, infrastructure and continuous improvements [3]. The framework for knowledge management strives to attain business goal as well as KM project objectives.
The pharmaceutical company implemented and launched KM projects but never managed the data source that contained answers from lesson learned and café project. Warehouse project lacked functionality which is important framework asset. Moreover, after knowing flaws in projects, managers did not change tools and strategies to make it successful. In this manner, continuous improvement of KM projects was found lacking within managers. The KM projects could have been implemented in better infrastructure. The lessons learned project on completion of process was daily mandatorily forcing workers to describe process which was repeated daily; how are they supposed to answer something new about same old process?
References
[1] D. Williams, “Nuts and Bolts of a Knowledge Management System,” Journal of Information & Knowledge Management, 2015, pp.135-55.
[2] E. Bolisani & C. Bratianu, “Knowledge strategy planning: an integrated approach to manage uncertainty, turbulence, and dynamics,” Journal of Knowledge Management, Vol. 21, Issue 2, 2017, pp. 233–253.
[3] A. M. Abubakar, H. Elrehail, M. A. Alatailat & A. Elçi, “Knowledge management, decision-making style and organizational performance,” Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 2017, pp. 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jik.2017.07.003
