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.
Purchase answer to see full attachment