MGMT 2601 COURSE PROJECT- ASSIGNMENT GUIDELINES (40%)
The assignment
Students will work individually on this project. You will:
(a) Select a specific organization (business, government, or not-for-profit) to study for the
term,
(b) Analyze how the organization currently manages knowledge and/or utilizes
information/knowledge/competence resources,
(c) Find out if there are unutilized opportunities or specific challenges related to
knowledge management or utilization of information/knowledge/competence resources,
and
(d) Provide solutions/recommendations that will help in improving the performance of
the organization with regard to the management of knowledge as a core asset of the
organization and the key to a sustainable competitive advantage.
Examples of organizational challenges students have analyzed and resolved in the past include
"how to apply effectively ICT in intraorganizational knowledge sharing”, "how to manage
knowledge in a multisite organization”, "managing knowledge in interorganizational
collaboration”, "how to transform an organization into a learning organization”, "how to improve
collaboration between different professions”, "how to improve sharing of tacit knowledge”.
Learning objectives
The course project assignment is related to the following course learning objectives, as specified
in the syllabus:
Critically apply theory to organizations in order to identify and justify effective
knowledge management strategies and activities.
Access and evaluate current literature and research findings relating to knowledge
management.
Design problem solutions based upon research findings and critical assessment of current
theory and practice.
Communicate clearly and effectively incorporating varying formats and technologies.
Project Format
The output includes three assignment deliverables as explained below. Please note, the three
deliverables, i.e., project deliverables 1, 2, and 3, are linked and therefore it will be acceptable
for you to recycle some text from assignment 2 into 3 (not considered as self-plagiarizing).
A brief outline of your project as well as an annotated bibliography of the sources you found for
your research should be submitted on Brightspace by October 5, 2018. This should include a
paragraph presenting your selected organization and a brief overview of what the report will
cover, as well as an annotated bibliography of the sources you found as outlined in detail under
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
the heading “Project deliverable 1: understanding research” below. The purpose is to ensure that
your topic is not too broad to be manageable or too narrow to be appropriate. It also gives you
the chance to make sure there are sufficient resources for you to complete your project.
A 2 to 3 page organizational analysis report, single line spacing, providing a description and
analysis of your chosen organization should be submitted on Brightspace by November 2, 2018.
This should include an analysis of the organization’s external and internal environments. The
structure of this report should be as stated below under “Project deliverable 2: Organizational
Analysis”.
You will submit a full written report of your project findings. The body of your report will be in
the range of 5 to 6 pages, single line spacing (references and appendices are added as additional
pages). References should be cited and a clear rationale presented for all conclusions. The final
report is due on Brightspace by November 30, 2018 @ 23:59 (Atlantic Time). The structure of
this report should be as stated below under “Project deliverable 3: Business Report”.
Remember to use APA format for your term project’s in text citations and references. Anything
that did not originate with you needs to be cited. Use the sources to back up your own
statements, as opposed to just using the sources alone, e.g., your quoting 3 pages of text will not
help you. I am more interested in your ideas, analysis and conclusion.
You should use scientific (scholarly) literature, business reports, as well as publicly available
information of the organization. As Ms. Laura Little will discuss in class, the Dalhousie Library
system is an excellent resource. Excellent information can be found at
http://dal.ca.libguides.com/c.php?g=257102&p=3662381.
If you have any questions about this assignment, please do not hesitate to contact me via email or
phone.
GRADING
Element
Deliverable 1: Understanding research
Deliverable 2: Organizational analysis
Deliverable 3: Business report
Total marks (worth 40% of the grade for the
course)
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Mark
allocation
5
15
20
40
Joyline Makani, PhD
PROJECT DELIVERABLE 1: UNDERSTANDING RESEARCH
Due Date: Before midnight, October 05 2018
Submission: Via Brightspace.
Purpose
The evaluation of data/information/knowledge and the creation of new knowledge is done
through dialogue between members of a community, profession or discipline. At this stage of
your education, it is essential to develop the research and evaluation skills needed to participate
in these dialogues, i.e., specifically to this course assignment be able to answer the following
questions:
What organization have you selected to study and why?
How does the organization manage and utilize information/knowledge/competences?
How are you going to collect data/information/knowledge to help you answer your
questions, evaluate, and efficiently use it?
In this assignment, you will be putting these skills to test. The Goals of Project Deliverable 1 are
to evaluate your ability:
to locate and retrieve relevant sources on your topic;
to evaluate sources; and,
to properly reference sources consulted.
As stated above this project requires you to do research on the organization of your choice,
exploring how the organization manage and utilize information/knowledge/competences. This
assignment will set the stage for the other project deliverables to come, so make sure you choose
an organization that you are interested in investigating and thinking about for the whole term
with regard to KM.
Instructions
1. Select an organization
2. Find one newspaper article and one web page (2 sources) on your selected organization.
The sources should be relatively recent (5 years at most). The more relevant to your
project these sources are, the higher your grade will be. Please note: the web page
should NOT BE from your chosen organization’s official website.
3. Find two scientific articles on your selected organization, KM or utilization of
information/knowledge/competence resources. The articles must have been published
within the past 5 years in academic/scholarly journals.
4. Find one book that discusses materials that could be directly relevant to an analysis of
your organization and KM.
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
5. Submit a paragraph providing a brief description of your project and your choice of
organization, as well as an annotated bibliography of the sources you found in steps 2, 3,
and 4 above. For help in writing an annotated bibliography please go to
http://bit.ly/2wp0HZG.
6. Your annotation (100 words max.) should not merely summarize the source but also
evaluate the suitability of the sources you found to your research, i.e., tell me why you
consider the source useful for your research. Questions to ask yourself include:
a. Does the source provide context or background information about the
organization and/or KM and the utilization of
information/knowledge/competences?
b. Will the source shape your argument by raising a question, suggesting a line of
thinking, or providing a provocative quotation?
c. Does the source serve as an authoritative voice in support of your claim?
d. Does the source provide evidence for your claim?
e. Does the source make a counterargument that you will disagree with or take a
position that complicates your own position? (Please note: including ideas that
disagree with your position strengthens your work as a manager/professional by
showing that you can respond to ideas that seem to challenge or contradict your
own).
PROJECT DELIVERABLE 2: ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS
Due Date: Before midnight, November 02 2018
Submission: Via Brightspace.
For deliverable 2 of your project, you will do more research on your chosen organization and
provide a description and analysis of the organization, including its business, internal and
external environments, etc. In other words, provide enough information on the selected
organization so that a reader can understand something about its operations, organizational
design, culture, etc.
Feel free to use section headings as appropriate to improve readability. Content should be in full
sentences and paragraphs, though, unless you have a strong reason for using bullets. Spelling,
grammar and readability are definite considerations for a good grade, so please pay attention to
these aspects of your report as well as the content itself.
Instructions
1. Provide a description and analysis of your chosen organization. To the extent possible,
follow the outline below:
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
a. Introduction – briefly introduce the organization
b. Description and analysis of the External Environment – e.g., an analysis of the
business, the competitive environment, market and industry trends relevant to your
organization
c. Description and analysis of the Internal Environment – e.g., analysis on the
management philosophy, organizational structure, business processes and culture
framework.
2. Correctly cite sources (APA 6th ed. format).
3. Length: approx. 2-3 pages, single line spacing (excluding appendices and references)
PROJECT DELIVERABLE 3: BUSINESS REPORT
Due Date: Before midnight, November 30 2018
Submission: Via Brightspace.
At this stage of your project, you should have done some research and performed an analysis and
assessment of your organization’s external and internal operating environments. For this
assignment, you need to relate your analysis of the organization to the unutilized opportunities or
specific challenges related to knowledge management or utilization of
information/knowledge/competence resources, and provide solutions that will help in improving
the performance of the organization.
Instructions
The report should include the following:
1. Executive Summary (about half a page) (For information on how to write an executive
summary go to http://bit.ly/2wp0HZG).
2. Introduction (include a description of the project topic, the importance of the topic and
which aspects of the topic you are going to write about; a description of the structure of
the report, i.e., you should explain how you have structured your report which aspects
you are going to deal first, second and so on)
3. Main body of the report
A brief description of the organization, summarizing the organizational external and
internal analysis you provided in deliverable 2.
An analysis of how the organization currently manages knowledge and/or utilizes
information/knowledge/competence resources.
Identification and presentation of the unutilized opportunities or specific challenges
related to knowledge management and/or utilization of
information/knowledge/competence resources.
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
4.
5.
6.
7.
Discussion and analysis of your research into knowledge management or utilization
of information/knowledge/competence resources.
Recommendations of solutions that will help in improving the performance of the
organization (providing justification from your research and identifying risks /
strengths of your suggestions).
Conclusion (briefly summarize the main results of the project report in three or four short
sentences. Then, you should give your point of view. Try to explain why some authors
are wrong or right and what you think about the topic, but you have to base your own
opinion on reasonable arguments. The conclusion should be no longer than 1 page).
Reference list (Correctly cite sources (APA 6th ed. format)).
Appendix (if needed) (information that supports your analysis but is not essential to its
explanation).
Length: approx. 5-6 pages, single-spaced (excluding appendices and references).
IMPORTANT NOTE: relevant research and statistics to back up your assessment of the
organization and your recommended solutions, including current trends and industry best
practices must be included throughout the main body of your report. Remember, your
recommendations are only as good as the evidence that you present to back them up. If you
simply state your opinion without references to support it, you will definitely lose marks.
GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS AND GUIDELINES FOR WRITTEN ASSIGNMENTS
The assignments are to be submitted through Brightspace, at or before 11:59 pm Atlantic
time, on the specified due date.
A penalty for late assignments will be assessed, unless prior permission has been given
by the instructor to submit an assignment late, which normally will be for extended
illness, medical, or family emergencies only.
Late submissions will be assessed a penalty of five percent per day, including weekends.
Assignments will not normally be accepted seven days or more after the due date; in such
cases the student will receive a grade of zero. Time management should be considered a
priority.
You must also check your assignments after attaching them – attaching the wrong file is
the equivalent of not submitting the assignment. No leeway is given for computer
failures, internet problems, ill-tempered pets, and so on.
Proper grammar and spelling are strongly considered in the evaluation of every
assignment. If your assignment is not readable, this will negatively affect your grade.
All material not originating with you must be cited. This applies to direct quotes,
paraphrases, and inspiration (basing your own writing on someone else’s ideas). Research
cited in your work is to come from verifiable and legitimate sources only. All papers
will be examined using Urkund for Academic Integrity. You may examine your
Urkund report prior to submitting the paper.
The required citation style for this course is the American Psychological Association
Publication (APA) Manual (sixth ed. 2010).
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
All assignments must;
o Be submitted as a “.doc”, “.docx”, or a “.pdf” to be accepted.
o Be single-spaced, and pages must be numbered.
o Use 12-point font in either Arial or Times New Roman.
o Use 1-inch (2.54cm) margins on all 4 sides of the page.
o Have a cover page including your first and last names, official Dal email, your
TA’s name, assignment title, and due date of the assignment.
MGMT 2601 Knowledge Management
Joyline Makani, PhD
ORGANIZATIONAL ANALYSIS ON FORD COMPANY
Introduction
Knowledge management involves the process of sharing, using and managing the knowledge
of the already created information about an organization. Ford motor company is considered
to be among the leading automotive companies in the world. It operates in more than two
hundred countries across the world. The brands that can be obtained from this company
include Ford, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury, and Volvo. Other brands that can be gotten from this
company include Luxury sports cars such as the Aston Martin. The physical location of the
company is in the US and Europe. Ford targets to create products that are enormously
anticipated by all customers across all the continents. This is done by increasing the number
of new products from around the world. The vision for the organization is to see people
working together as a lean, global enterprise to make people’s lives better through automotive
and mobility leadership (Barker, 2015).
External environment analysis
Knowledge management of the organization is based on the various activities that should be
performed within the organization during the knowledge management effort. Based on the
external analysis, Ford Company may need to carry out an analysis of the business, the
competitive environment, and market and industry trends. The organization, in this case,
makes use of SWOT framework that is used in the identification of knowledge gap of the
organization, as well as defining the knowledge strategy which can be critical in achieving a
clear strategy for the business. The organization is able to understand the knowledge gaps
based on two knowledge forms, tacit and explicit knowledge. Through the tacit knowledge,
this gives the organization the competitive edge in the market. Through filling the knowledge
gaps as states, Ford Company has indeed been in a major position to compete in with other
industries in an innovative way. Comparing this organization with Toyota, the pace of
innovations have since remained slow. The organization should be in a position to take into
consideration the knowledge needs of their customers. By getting knowledge from the
customers and sharing it with each other, it would be possible to analyse the trends in the
market as well as that of the customers. Understanding such proactive will make it possible
for the company to meet the needs of the customers and meet new opportunities that would
drive the business to success (Kaplan, 2018). Moreover, by creating knowledge flow between
the suppliers, the organization will be able to forecast supply needs based on the market
trends identified. Moreover, the organization needs to pay attention to the stakeholders and
the major views in terms of the operations of the company.
It is also considerate that the organization pays more attention to the regulations of the
government, and technological trends that are taking place among others. To be successful in
the marketplace, an organization should understand the types of technologies to employ in the
system and implement them. These technologies should be effective in the company and
should allow communication among the employees and the management. The IT
infrastructures that the organization applies are well linked up with that of the customers and
suppliers which enhance the effective flow of information. On the other hand, it is also a vital
step the company make use of intranet and facilities of the web as most of the customers
make use of computers in their everyday life. The web facilities are well created to allow
users find information easily and are not complicated in any way (Dayan et al., 2017).
Internal analysis
Moreover, the organization understands its management philosophy, organizational structure,
business processes, and cultural framework. This can as well be understood as its internal
analysis. In reference to Teece, an organizational competitive perspective is based on the
ability of a firm to create, integrate, and exploit knowledge assets. Notably, employee’s
contribution to the knowledge management effort is invaluable for the organization.
However, the organization considers appropriate measures to improve the flow of knowledge
between the employees and the company’s management (organizational culture). Through
that, it is possible for the employees to take part in sharing their knowledge with each other.
The organization also considers what their competitors are doing and consider the best
approaches that can be effective in managing successfully. Also, business environment
assessment is critical for identifying measures available to stay competitive as well as
innovative in the organization (Dayan et al., 2017).
The costs of production are high as compared to that of its competitors. The company as well
need to focus on the networks of production and global supply chain (Barker, 2015).
Knowledge of SWOT analysis should as well been cooperated with systems thinking. In a
real sense, this suggests that Ford company need to be identified as a system, having different
sub-systems as well as interactions within the sub-systems. Considerably, the knowledge gap
existing within the organization should be investigated, or rather examined based on the level
of interaction and sub-system. Notably, by understanding the strategic gap, the organization
is able to understand what it needs to do. On the other hand, understanding the knowledge
gap is effective in understanding the dissimilarities that exist among the knowledge of the
organization and what it needs to know in order to move on with their strategy (Hislop,
Bosua & Helms, 2018). Therefore, it is important to understand that there is a connection
between the knowledge gap and strategic gap, as this makes it effective to know each aligns
in the organization to improve the effectiveness of the business
Ford uses business process re-engineering in its day to day operations and mostly for its
accounts payables accounts. Business process should critically be evaluated to ensure
employees are able to apply that knowledge in their responsibilities. The organization might
make use of the current informal networks to help them with resources that can be used in the
business. Also, the organization should have metrics can be used to measure how knowledge
management applies to the business paradigm. Ford embraces the continuous production
system as it is poised for mass production of automobiles. The management have knowledge
of the continuous product system, including the employees, on how it can promote an
effective production system (Child, 2016). The Ford team is determined in nurturing
innovation in all the 4 ‘P’s (Product, Process, Position, and Paradigm). This company also
focuses on standardizing the products, components, process, and tasks of control. Lastly,
Ford embraces the philosophy of uniform output rates as well as a systemization of the entire
manufacturing process.
Conclusion
There is a current demand by the market to produce high-quality products for the consumers.
The companies have also to produce such high-quality products to remain competitive in the
market. For the production of such quality goods, methods such as the 6-sigma and the Best
practice Replication have to be put in place. The use of knowledge management in an
organization will ensure an increasing customer base and also customer satisfaction.
References
Barker, J. (2015). Reference manual for public involvement. . Bromley, 30-62.
Child, M. (2016). Organizational Structiure, Environment and perfomance. The role of
strategic choice, sociaology. 1-22. 83-99.
Hislop, D., Bosua, R., & Helms, R. (2018). Knowledge management in organizations: A
critical introduction. Oxford University Press.
Dayan, R., Heisig, P., & Matos, F. (2017). Knowledge management as a factor for the
formulation and implementation of organization strategy. Journal of Knowledge
Management, 21(2), 308-329.
kaplan, R. (2018). The startegy focused organization for knowldege management. 50-62.
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