The group presented Xerox and NASA as instance surveies for Information and Knowledge Management constructs and procedures. These two instance surveies are chosen for their alone experiences. It is non the focal point of this stuff to compare and contrast the two instances. The aim of this stuff is to discourse how the cardinal issues that were chosen by the group relate to the turning literature about Information and Knowledge Management. Along with this. attempts to distinguish Information Management and Knowledge Management supply a better appreciation of these two constructs. their patterns and their functions in organisations.
Xerox’s instance focused on its organisations attempts to get at accessing its cognition by transforming tacit into explicit. Prior to the constitution of its cognition base system. in the signifier of Eureka II. ethnographic work on Xerox employees provided an enterprise for the company to turn an involvement in pull offing its organisational acquisition. The cardinal issues from this survey were identified. Andrew Cox’s probe of Xerox’s Eureka system and its origin seems to bespeak that cognition direction is a re-packaged construct of information direction.
The employment of Orr’s ethnographic work implicates a possibility that the organisation used this invention as its ain “rebranding tool” . ( Suchman in Cox. 2007. p. 7 ) . Furthermore. the group inquires about the construct of communities of pattern ( CoPs ) as a more promising alternate to the proficient attack implemented in Eureka’s building as cognition base system. The instance survey of Xerox provided an chance to glimpse how an organisation behaves and transforms its patterns to make inventions and. in bend. maintain its stableness and competitory border in the market.
The particular instance of NASA’s Challenger incident is an of import specimen to look into how an organisation manages its security and safety patterns. The nature of NASA as an organisation can be understood by analyzing its vision. mission and ends. However. the group focused on a peculiar incident and its chronology. Hazard analysis and hazard direction are some of the constructs that relate to this organization’s experience in information and cognition direction.
Some of the cardinal concerns for this instance are identified as: ( 1 ) Should NASA hold a Eureka-type system? ; ( 2 ) Do you believe communities of pattern would hold helped NASA? ; and ( 3 ) How would NASA hold benefited from traveling through the alliance procedure? This stuff attempts to clear up these enquiries and to supply way by mentioning legion surveies and constructs in the field of cognition direction. Discussion NASA’s instance. peculiarly of Challenger incident. can be examined by utilizing the construct of hazard appraisal and direction.
Risk direction is defined in NASA’s literature as “ a direction procedure by which the safety hazards can be brought to degrees or values that are acceptable to the concluding blessing authorization. ” ( ASEB. p. 79 ) . Procedures such as the constitution of acceptable hazard degrees. formalisation of alterations in system design or operational method to accomplish such hazard degrees. system proof and enfranchisement and system quality confidence were enumerated as portion of hazard direction. ASEB. p 79 ) . After the Challenger incident. recommendations such as hierarchal undertakings were cited: The Committee believes that hazard direction must be the duty of line direction ( i. e. . plan director and. finally. the Administrator of NASA ) .
Merely this plan direction. non the safety organisations. can do wise usage of agencies available to accomplish the operational ends while cut downing the safety hazards to acceptable degrees. Safety organisations can non. nevertheless. assure safe operation ; they can merely guarantee that the safety hazards have been decently evaluated. and that the system constellation and operation is being controlled to those hazard degrees which have been accepted by top direction. ( 4. 1. 4. 3 ) ( ASEB. p. 79 ) The transition above was one of the lessons learned. the designation of the elements of and duties for hazard appraisal and hazard direction. as cited in the appraisal papers in 1988.
Constitution of duty for plan way and integrating. the demand for quantitative steps of comparative hazard. the demand for incorporate reappraisal and overview in the appraisal of hazard and in independent rating of keeping principles. independency of the enfranchisement of flight hardware and of package proof and confirmation. and safety borders for flight constructions were wholly cited as lessons learned following the Challenger accident. Clearly. hazard direction is an facet of information direction in this peculiar instance.
Aside from the enterprises for alterations in the countries of hazard appraisal and direction. analyzing NASA as a learning organisation might helpfully exemplify the information processes within the organisation. Organizational acquisition in NASA can be traced back to Apollo epoch when centralisation of shuttle direction construction was adopted. ( Mahler & A ; Casamayou. 2009. p. 164 ) . But these lessons can be unlearned as what the instance of the Challenger accident had shown. Prior to the Columbia accident that followed in 2003. unlearning in critical determination countries occurred.
Mahler & A ; Casamayou ( 2009 ) relates this event as follows: Similarly. there was initial grounds that NASA had learned to defy agenda force per unit areas. The bureau delayed launches to cover with ongoing proficient jobs and made the determination to trust on the bird merely when perfectly needed. But these lessons from the Challenger faded in the 1990s under terrible budget restraints and new agenda force per unit areas created by our engagement in the International Space Station. ( 2009. p. 164 )
This relates how outside forces can impact organisational acquisition. Public organisational acquisition. non unlike corporate organisational acquisition. is affected by its environment. Risk appraisal and direction. alternatively of context in market competency and capital additions in corporations. becomes the context of dependable ends and public stature in public organisations such as NASA. There are specifics of public organisational acquisition that should be brought to visible radiation to better understand the information processes and larning behaviours within NASA.
Mahler & A ; Casamayou ( 2009 ) enumerated a three-part procedure of organisational acquisition. One is job acknowledgment. another is analysing the consequences to bring forth illations about cause and consequence in the hopes of geting at an understanding how to accomplish better consequences. and the last 1 is the establishment of new cognition that the organisation will profit from. ( Mahler & A ; Casamayou. 2009. p. 166 ) . These procedures summarizes the procedures of public organisational acquisition on a macro-level.
It is besides of import to analyze the interactions of histrions within the organisation. During the group presentation. enquiries about how NASA should profit from a Eureka-type system was mentioned. The construct of communities of pattern ( CoPs ) within NASA. as a beginning of Andrew Cox’s ( 2004 ) non-canonical cognition was explored. Before the constitution of any cognition base systems. an eventful experience is treated as a acquisition beginning. As with NASA’s instance. following the Apollo epoch. sensing systems were installed and had been dependable of all time since its origin.
These quantitative steps of measuring hazards and failures runs parallel with the pattern of corporate organisations over-reliance on engineering. as what the firs-generation cognition direction pattern brought us its “IT trap” . ( Huysman & A ; Wulf. 2006 ) . What should besides be noted is the transmutation of NASA into a complex system of histrions. determination shapers and diagnostic and technological tools. As a system becomes more complex. there could be a higher possibility for unexpected and unwanted results. The construct of Charles Perrow’s ( 1999 ) normal accident theory is closely related to this illation.
The nature of map and decision-making within NASA exemplifies Perrow’s constructs of yoke and interactions. Interactions can be tightly coupled or slackly coupled. as with NASA’s instance it is of class tightly coupled. These tightly coupled interactions found within an organisation can non digest hold. Interactions can be additive or complex. ( Perrow. 1999 ) . As with NASA’s instance. it is doubtless complex. As mentioned earlier. the possible over-reliance on diagnostic systems and isolation of determination shapers and force per unit area to launch are accountable for the incident.
Judging and comprehending besides play a function in larning. Decisions in NASA’s instance are measure-based and every bit good as judgement-based which could be said. is more reliant on intuition and non-verbal experience. But in this instance. NASA’s critical determination histrions were non exhaustively immersed in the safety step pattern which in bend shows that organisational construction has a function in the incident. As Baumard ( 1999 ) related in his work on silent cognition in organisations. ‘puzzled organizations’ are manifest when accidents take topographic point.
The impression of ‘acceptability’ was. in consequence. a societal building developed in the context of an organisation in which the perceptual experience of hazard thresholds had been modified by the routinization of the command of a complex engineering. If the O-ring job had been brought to the attending of an untrained populace it would rather likely have provoked an alive reaction. In a different societal context it would hold been found wholly ‘unacceptable’ to establish infinite birds with articulations that risked giving manner. whatever the degree of this hazard.
Despite the truth. the preciseness to categorise the hazard associated with the articulations as ‘acceptable’ seems to be based more on the common significance of the word ‘acceptable’ than on any scientific definition. There is no equivalent to the ‘acceptable’ in other countries of exact science—it is a value opinion. non a step. This suggests that. it ‘reality is hidden by measures’ ( Berry. 1983 ) . steps excessively may be sometime hidden by world. The route to catastrophe in the Challenger shuttle instance was clearly of societal building.
