A Knowledge Flow Model to Capture Unstructured Product Development Processes

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/kpm.1501
• Author: Amaresh Chakrabarti,Gokula Vijaykumar Annamalai Vasantha,Jonathan Corney
• Date: 01 April 2016
• Published date: 01 April 2016

■Research Article

A Knowledge Flow Model to Capture

Unstructured Product Development

Processes

†

Gokula Vijaykumar Annamalai Vasantha

1

*, Amaresh Chakrabarti

2

and

Jonathan Corney

1

1

University of Strathclyde, Department of Design, Manufacture and Engineering Management, Glasgow,

UK

2

Indian Institute of Science, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Bangalore, India

Product knowledge emerges from day-to-day,ubiquitous interactions executed by engineers. Types of interaction and

their associated influence on knowledge activities are often not perceptible, and therefore not captured in current

industrial practices. To emphasize the importance of interactions, an interaction-centric model, along with necessary

knowledge elements, is proposed. Toevaluate the usefulness of the proposed model, two industrial observational case

studies were conducted. In total, nine engineers were observed. The paper reports validation of the proposed model

emphasizing interaction as a core element associated with knowledge activities and mapping knowledge elements.

The frequency and duration of time spent on the variety of interaction types and knowledge activities are detailed.

The commonly used interactions for respective knowledge activities are elaborated. The proposed model should help

understand knowledge activities in organizations better and act as a valuable tool for conducting knowledge audit.

Elicitation of the types of interactions and supporting knowledge activities should help engineers improve their

understanding and their influences on product development. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

INTRODUCTION

Knowledge assets are often cited as a critical success

factor in business performance (Scholl et al., 2004).

Similarly in product development (PD), availability

of knowledge is a central factor for the success of a

design (Frankenberger and Badke-Schaub, 1999).

Multiple studies in design research emphasize the

importance of knowledge, knowledge activities

and their impact on the final design (Marsh, 1997;

Court et al., 1998; Hicks et al., 2008; Wild et al.,

2010; McAlpine et al., 2011). Although knowledge

management (KM) is strategically important to

organizations, it has been reported that at least half

of all KM initiatives fail (Rossett, 2002). These

failures could be because of inadequate

understanding of operational foundation and

process for management of knowledge assets

(Cheung et al., 2007), more dynamic and complex

nature of organizational knowledge creation (Marr

and Spender, 2004), failure to identify critical

knowledge resources (Lee et al., 2007), not

addressing critical business requirements (Rollett,

2003) and disintegration of KM from work

processes (Scholl et al., 2004). Successful integration

of KM into an organization’s business processes is

a most pressing issue, and the future of KM lies in

the solutions of this issue (Mertins et al., 2003).

To find a solution for integrating KM with the PD

process, we based our studies on the hypothesis,

proposed by Nonaka et al. (2000) that the theory of

organizational knowledge creation cannot be

understood without understanding the nature of

human beings and the complex nature of human

interactions. In this work, we hypothesize that the

complex interactions, carried out by engineers in a

rapidly changing technocratic PD organizational

environment, play a vital role in knowledge

activities. We argue that following the day-to-day

interactions of engineers will help us understand

the dynamic nature of knowledge activities. This is

*Correspondence to: Gokula Vijaykumar Annamalai Vasantha,

University of Strathclyde, Department of Design, Manufacture

and Engineering Management, 75 Montrose Street, Glasgow G1

1XJ, UK. E-mail: avgvkin@gmail.com

†

This work was conducted in Innovation Design Study and

Sustainability Lab, Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing,

Indian Instit ute of Science, Bangalore , India.

Knowledge and Process Management

Volume 23 Number 2 pp 91–109 (2016)

Published online 22 April 2016 in Wiley Online Library

(www.wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/kpm.1501

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

in-line with Seeley’s (2002) view that ‘knowledge is

created, exchanged, applied, refined and captured

through the work that’s naturally done by

knowledge workers’. Knowledge and work

processes develop concurrently and therefore

should be studied concurrently. The simple

mapping of static knowledge resources is not

sufficient to satisfy the requirements for a

comprehensive approach of processes aimed at

KM (Barcelo-Valenzuela et al., 2008). To understand

the dynamic nature of knowledge creation, an

interaction-centric model along with necessary PD

knowledge elements is proposed in this paper. The

objective of this paper is to use this model in order

to understand the rationale of activities within

unstructured PD processes, and form development

of strategies for effective KM through transparent

knowledge flows.

To evaluate the proposed model, knowledge

audits (KA) were conducted in two PD

organizations. In general, KA helps develop KM

strategies specifically tailored to an organization’s

environment, processes and goals (Robertson,

2002). It helps find solution for common critical

issues in organizations in which much of the

valuable knowledge that is resided in a company

is often not noticed, stored or utilized until it is lost

when the relevant members of staff leave or resign

from the organization (Cheung et al., 2007). It aids

answering the question: ‘How is knowledge handled

in work processes in an organization?’While the

importance of KA is emphasized in literature,

Schwikkard and du Toit (2004) argue that very little

of the literature investigates beyond superficial

discussions of what such a knowledge audit might

entail. We aim to undertake in-depth KA in PD

organizations to understand the dynamic and

unstructured nature of PD through the proposed

interaction-centric model. Answering the above

question will help an organization to understand

the dynamics involved during PD and how

knowledge is embedded in action, and understand

the various knowledge activities such as knowledge

capture, sharing and acquisition.

Two observational case studies were undertaken,

one each in two PD organizations. The paper

describes the understanding obtained about the

types of interactions, knowledge activities and the

linkages between them. The understanding

obtained aids to inform generating requirements

for developing better KM systems and procedures

that are aligned to an engineer’s intuitive design

environment. The subsequent discussions in this

paper are organized in five sections. The next

section provides a detailed literature survey about

knowledge processing and interactions, and further

establishes the relevance of this paper. The sub-

sequent sections detail the proposed interaction-

centric model, elaborate the research objectives

and methodology used, discuss the results from

the KA, discuss the implications of the results and

propose a strategy for managing knowledge, and

conclusions from these observations and further

extensions to this work.

Related literature

A process is defined as a sequence of activities that

are performed by actors to serve business goals.

Processes convert inputs to organizationally valued

outputs. Processes are subdivided into two types:

structured and unstructured. Structured work

processes are procedural and well documented.

The knowledge requirement to support a structured

process is defined straight-forwardly (Yip et al.,

2011), whereas unstructured work processes are

unpredictable, non-repetitive, complex and difficult

to represent using a linear graph. Most business

processes including the PD process are

unstructured, formation of activities is ad hoc with

different types of interaction, and their scope is

loosely defined. Understanding unstructured

processes play a pivotal role in understanding the

dynamic nature of knowledge creation, and in

visualizing the activity system, knowledge flow

and stakeholder relationship (Strohmaier and

Tochtermann, 2005). It helps to integrate (core)

processes of an organization with knowledge

creation and utilization (Reimer et al., 2008). The

approaches proposed in literature to visualize the

dynamic nature of knowledge creation are studied

and summarized in this section, with the intention

to identify relevant elements to be incorporated in

the model to understand knowledge creation.

Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) formalize a generic

model of organizational knowledge creation that

emphasizes conversions between tacit and explicit

knowledge. The importance of interaction in

knowledge creation is recognized at individual,

group, and organizational interaction levels

through four knowledge conversion modes—

socialization, externalization, internalization and

combination. Although the importance of interac-

tions in knowledge creation within an organization

is recognized, the work focuses mainly on strategy,

structure and culture of the organization. In PCANS

model of organizations proposed by Krackhardt

and Carley (1998), interaction is illustrated with

three primary networks, a collaboration (social)

network, a task network and a knowledge network,

in order to understand the complex structure of

interdependencies that exists within organizational

boundaries. PCANS stands for precedence, commit-

ment of resources, assignment of individuals to

tasks, networks of relations among personnel and

skills linking individuals to resources. Marr and

Spender (2004) illustrate a structure for the

knowledge asset dashboard to identify important

actor/infrastructure relationship and to elucidate

92 G. V. A. Vasantha, A. Chakrabarti and J. Corney

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Know. Process Mgmt. 23,91–109 (2016)

DOI: 10.1002/kpm