Teams and Knowledge
management
B.V.L.NARAYANA
Sr Professor (T M)
RSC/BRC
Organizational learning( Kim
1993)
 All organizations learn through their
individuals
 Organizations cannot learn independent of all
individuals
 Crucial issue –transfer of individual learning
to organizational learning
Individual learning
 Operational
 Know how
 Accommodation (
adjusting mental
models to experiences)
 Routines
 Conceptual
 Know why
 Assimilation
(integrating
experiences into mental
models)
 Frame works
Mental models are deeply held images of how the world works
and powerfully influence what we see (Senge 1990)
Organizational learning
 Cycles of individual learning affect
organizational learning through their impact on
shared mental models since not all individual
learning's has organizational consequences
 A group is a collection of individuals with
shared mental models contributing to
organizations shared mental models
OADI-SMM THEORY
 Observe-assess-design-implement-shared mental
models
 Learning occurs through exchange of individual
and shared mental models
 Individuals learn and change mental models
 Organizations learn when individuals learn
 Not all individual learning has organizational
consequences
Transfer mechanisms
 Active organizational memory- what it
attends, what it chooses to act and what it
chooses to remember—in form of individual
and shared mental models
 Individuals learning and making new mental
models and making them explicit helps
organizational learning as it is dynamic
Transfer mechanisms
 Shared mental models make organizational memory
usable—because of tacit knowledge which makes
explicit knowledge complete
 Each mental model is a clustering of data that
prescribes a course of action
 Conceptual learning changes these models
 New mental models enclose changes and how they
fit into existing frame works
Transfer mechanisms
 Individual mental models get embedded in
organizational milieu or reflection of culture
 Influence of organizational culture leads to
formation of shared mental models
 Strength of such linkages depends upon amount of
influence exerted
 IDLL –when individual learning affects individual
mental models and future learning
 ODLL- when individual mental models get
incorporated into organization through shared
mental models and affect organizational actions
Transfer mechanisms—
incomplete learning cycles
 Situational learning—crisis management


Improvisation on the spot but no coding
No change in mental models
 Fragmented learning


Individual learns but organization does not learn
Link between individual mental model and shared models
not established
 Opportunistic learning

When organizational actions are based on individual
mental models and not shared mental models
Challenges
 Making mental models explicit


Mental models are dynamic and non linear
Have both explicit and tacit components
 Manage the transfer of individual mental models to
shared mental models
 Questions?
Centrality of teams in organizational
learning (Murray and Moses 2005
 teams act as critical liaison device between
learning at the individual and organizational
level.
 Teams help to


develop horizontally based personal relationships
assist in knowledge creation by making personally
implicit knowledge more explicit
 team effectiveness is influenced by the
dynamics of team learning and team structure
Team learning
 Team learning involves transforming
conversational and collective thinking skills so
that groups of people can reliably develop
intelligence and ability greater than the sum of
individual member talents (Senge 1994)
 team learning is more important than individual
learning since most decisions are made in
subunits such as teams and divisions.
 Collective interpreting and sense making within
a group or team facilitates shared
understandings which leads to better
Team learning
 teams are often presented with the contrasting
goals of achieving long-term renewal and
short-term performance. So connect strategy
with operations
 Operational connectedness indicates the
crucial interlinked role of teams in bridging
learning at the individual and organizational
level
 teams are social units engaged in collective
learning through informal processes that link
the individual to the organization. Teams are
Team knowledge structures
 Two key dimensions

Knowledge differentiation---extent to which
team members possess different types of
knowledge
Increases absorptive capacity and ability to acquire
new knowledge
 Requires knowledge integration to learn
 Allows creation of new knowledge

Team knowledge structures
 Externalization

Is when team uses knowledge held by non team
members. Members never personally possess this
knowledge
Scope for learning is less due to outsourcing
 Scope for integrating is less
 Less scope for creation of new knowledge

Any questions