Implementing knowledge management in organisations: gaps between theory and practice

Hi there. My name is Eric Tsui. I'm from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. This is Part 2 of my talk on implementing knowledge management in organisations, the lessons learned.

In this part, I will talk about the theory-practice gap. Precisely, it's what we typically learn from the textbook and what we actually encounter in implementing knowledge management. Knowledge management is a very practical area. Don't be surprised that many of the so-called theories that you have learned from the textbooks and academic papers, when it comes to applying them, that there are some gaps or discrepancies that you may have to modify or, in the worst case, it just doesn't work.

The theory-practice gap.

I like to quote Professor Paul Iske's beautiful sentence about the theory-practice gap. He said that, "In theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there's a difference between practice and theory." I hope that you can truly appreciate what he said there. In fact, when it comes to applying knowledge management, as I said earlier, there are many occasions in which many of the things that you have picked up from your academic reading that may need to be modified in order to implement it.

Now, on the next slide, a little bit more information about KM theories and practice. KM theories are not always consistent. That's already a problem in itself. In fact, there's rarely a one-to-one correspondence between theory and practice. A theory may cover a number of practice areas. A practice may involve the conjunction of certain theories to be applied. Knowledge space is a non-linear space. That means things are not directly proportional, but misconceptions have led to knowledge environments still being evaluated and measured by metrics used for gauging linear spaces. What that means is, knowledge in organisation is a very complex thing. It's a complex system, yet organisations are typically making the mistake of asking for some simple metrics, like how many people logged in to the KM system today? How many people download this file a day? That's a far cry from a real measure of the success or the adoption of a knowledge system, because once again, knowledge operates in a non-linear space and we should not be using linear, simple metrics to measure its performance. Most knowledge management theories and research are developed for very large organisations. Indeed they are. Not many theories are developed and are appropriate for small to medium-sized enterprises, as well as for subsidiaries of the large organisations worldwide. When it comes to implementing the KM theories in quotes, you'll find that, unless it's a large organisation, the theories may not apply. For example, in Hong Kong, we have many subsidiaries and even regional offices of large organisations. Worldwide, global organisations. Famous organisations here in Hong Kong. When you ask them about knowledge management, sure, many of them have implemented knowledge management as well, but you'll be surprised to find out that they don't exactly follow what the textbooks say. In other words, to do the assessment, to do the knowledge audit, to do the KM strategy formulation, and the lot. No, they start with implementation. Why is that? That is because the headquarters has already done the first part, and when it comes to the regional office, they're instructed to purchase, adopt certain parts of the KM system and start to roll it out. Is that a problem? That's a big problem. Why? The local culture and values could be different. Local products and services could be different. On many occasions, these are not sufficiently taken into consideration and therefore that may render or compromise the effectiveness of the KM infrastructure and system. The next point, the theories may have ignored many constraints. Theories are typically developed by academics, and they may not have sufficient exposure in industry to properly define the set of constraints and operating parameters that the theory should operate under. As a result, when it comes to the real world, many constraints surface and therefore the theory may not be applied. Another thing is, the last point here, theories are usually accompanied by many underlying assumptions, and these assumptions have to be true before you can apply a theory. Fair enough, but today, we are living in a rapidly advancing, rapidly changing environment, especially with digitisation and connecting the dots with the abundance of information. These changes and developments render the continuing validity of the assumption of the theories. While the academics may have a very good heart in designing the theories, they did not anticipate the assumptions changing so rapidly. That may render their theory to be ineffective in today's era. To make this even more practical,