Competencies of a Knowledge Worker - A Select Webliography

A quick glance at Aa..ha! [Thinking Inside The Blog!]'s recent post: KM Competencies gave me an opportunity to think about this subject. The more you go far and deep in the WWW you will find very interesting perspectives. But, of all the most precise I found is Aa..ha!'s, which is as follows:

"I think the fundamental dependency of such a definition is on the KM vision and objectives of the organization. For example, an organization that is targeting innovation through KM needs people who are slightly different from an organization that aims to achieve learning/productivity improvements through KM. Having said that, KM, however, needs people with a versatile or eclectic background and profile/competency.

1. People skills: Networking and Organizational behaviour skills to start with. Also important would be insights into how people learn, collaborate and share/reuse/apply knowledge
2. Technology skills: Requirements gathering, products evaluation, design and testing (More skills required in the case of a KM developer)
3. Process skills: I think this is important but neglected. Understanding of business and project management processes in order to lead to improvements from the perspective of knowledge capture, sharing and utilization.... [source]"

The above is most precise, not because the KM industry lacks such a conceptual clarity, not even because I admire Aa..ha!'s simplified approach; but simply because it gives a clear overview. In fact, KM is too broad (rather some would say complex) and hence one has to have focus (by level, sector, region, background and type of work) to even understand what is the actual concern about the term competency.

The literature on this theme is growing, with a recent book:

Knowledge Management: Competencies and Professionalism (Series on Innovation and Knowledge Management) by Suliman Hawamdeh, Kimberly Stauss, and Franz Barachini (2009): Table of Contents. And, a powerpoint by the first author, IIUM - KM Competencies and Career Opportunities

About the book: This edited book contains papers from the 2008 International Conference on Knowledge Management to be held in Columbus, Ohio. The papers represent much of the best and most up-to-date work by researchers and practitioners in the field of knowledge management. It provides insights into the knowledge management practices within organization and discusses issues related to knowledge management competencies and professionalism. It is a good reference source for information and knowledge professionals and can be read by both graduate and undergraduate students.
See also:
Information Worker Competency

Human Capital Management, Talent Management: Competency Framework - Knowledge Worker based Industry

Developing customer knowledge management competencies for Superior Market Experimentation and Organisational Learning

Knowledge Management Competencies in an E-Learning Environment: An ...

KM Competencies: Is Certification the Way to Go?

KM Competencies, Kadix Developed Leadership KM Competencies.

SSRN-Understanding the Process of Building KM Competencies

Survey on How Much Organisations Invest in KM Competencies

KM Competencies [see here: Roles of a KM Practitioner; a comment by a librarian turned KM specialist...]

KM Competencies and Performance Action Group for Federal KM Initiative

CIBIT Developing KM competencies in a safe environment

Google for more: here and here

Difference Between Overstanding and Understanding?

Do You Know The Difference Between Overstanding and Understanding?
Posted on Friday September 12th, 2008 at 21:32 in connect the dots, octaves, perturbations, resonances, rhythm, sounds, spoken words, syllables

"Sometimes meanings are conveyed in sounds. All words are sounds. All syllables are notes. Spoken words cause perturbations in the eddy currents of the subtleties all around us. These perturbations are resonances of higher and lower octaves." continue reading: It Seems Incredible That You Can Gain An Understanding Of The Truth About The Origin Of Civilization And Know The Difference Between History And His-tory!
Don't You Deserve To Know The True History Of Civilization? Read "The Burning Sands" - A novel by Hamza Abdullah

KM & E-Social Science - Revisited

Knowledge Creation, Knowledge Sharing, application of Knolwedge Management (outside the corporate work culture) in the social and cultural lives of the Netizens is the focus:

4th International Conference on e-Social Science

philbu's blog: Report on the CRASSH Workshop “Subversion ...

CRASSH Workshop “Subversion, Conversion, Development: Public Interests in Technologies” Cambridge, 24-26 April prepared by Philipp Budka

Public & Private in the Blogosphere

See also on the same shelf and aisle:

• Knowledge Management: Society / Community Wise
• Knowledge production in a profession: Use-inspired...
• Body-Mind-Soul - KM initiatives
• Tacit and Oral knowledge @ FaithCommons Forum

Info courtesy: Professor Neelameghan and Ann the Librarian

Knowledge Audit: Is it Necessary for Your Organization?

KnowGenesis is a freely available, international, scholarly journal, dedicated to making accessible the results of research across a wide range of information-related disciplines under Technical Communication. KnowGenesis publishes both referred papers and working papers in the fields of technical communication, documentation, information science, information and technology management, information systems and information policy.

Read the
Panel Discussion on " Knowledge Audit: Is it Necessary for Your Organization?" Led by Ginu George

PS. To access the journal online, you'll need your login ID and password.
For FREE registration, visit the registration page
(http://www.knowgenesis.net/journal/index.php?
journal=IJTC&page=user&op=register) or e-mail your registration
request to editorinchief@knowgenesis.org.

NB. Panelists: Prof. A. Neelameghan, Dr. L. J. Haravu, Mr. Bhojaraju D Gunjal, Mr. Ginu George, and Dr. Mohamed Taher

See also:
If We Can’t Even Describe Knowledge Sharing, How Can We Support It?

India to dominate global KPO market - Media Monitoring

"The ambit of knowledge services typically spans areas like Business Research, Market Research, Investment Research, Data Analytics and intellectual Property." says Bhaswati Chakravorty in New Delhi, Dataquest

KPO:
What is KPO: The work entails doing equity research for overseas investment banks, research houses, consultancies and other financial institutions. The range of services covered by KPO includes intellectual property creation such as patent research, data mining, database creation and updating and analytical services such as equity research, competitive intelligence preparation of company profiles, industry reports and financial modelling. Says, Amitabh Sharma Virtual bridge - The knowledge process outsourcing industry Jamaica Gleaner News, July 11, 2007.

India to dominate global KPO market The Times of India, 23 Jul 2007
NEW DELHI: India, already known as the back office of the world, will account for two-third of the global Knowledge Process Offshoring (KPO) segment that could create up to 1.8 lakh new jobs here by 2011, a new study has said.

The worldwide KPO market is expected to grow to 16.7 billion dollar in revenues by 2010-2011 at an annual growth rate of 39 per cent. Of this, India would account for 11.2 billion dollars, according to the study by business research and analytics firm Evalueserve continue reading

Evalueserve Quarterly Sales Index Survey: What's Holding Back 'Small and Medium Sized Businesses' from Growing? Small Business Informer News, July 12, 2007

An In-Depth Analysis of the Indian Vendor Space along with Profiles of All Major Industry Players, July 10 2007 [Company Press Releases]

Gurgaon Bheja now Served Fresh in Wall Street, Puneet Mehrotra, Hindustan Times, July 19, 2007
Extract:

"Dogs and Indians not allowed"
Circa 1945, signboard outside the elitist British Club in Calcutta
"India is the 2nd biggest investor in London"
Circa 2006, small news snippet in the business page of a leading newspaper.
"Asathoma Sadhgamaya, Thamasoma Jyothirgamaya"
The above is a Sanskrit verse from an ancient Hindu text meaning from the unreal lead me to the real, from shadows lead me to the light. The great Indian brain is doing exactly that. Leading the world's largest money market into light. Yes, that absolutely right. Not talking about some mundane back office processing work. The work happening here is pure pundit-giri consisting of analysis and more, about which is a hot stock, where to invest, about mergers and charting the growth of the world's biggest financial market. In simple words brains at Gurgaon, out skirts of Mumbai and Chennai are actually running the Wall Street Market.

If that sounds like an understatement and too unreal to be real would somebody please answer what are companies like iRevna, Evalueserve, Fidelity, Copal Partners and others doing in India. Surely they can get cheaper labor in Philippines and perhaps many more countries. continue reading Gurgaon Bheja

PUNCHLINE - No Wonder:

Taj Mahal on a London visit with Shilpa, Dravid

See also on the same shelf and isle Knowledge Management aspects while Outsourcing Business Processes

Librarians and Knowledge Management

EXTRACT
GLIS 692 Assignment 1, Sept. 25, 2003

Introduction
Identification. Verification. Acquisition. Organization. Dissemination. These are the traditional services provided by librarians since the emergence of the field. The unspoken object of these actions has always been printed material: books, journals, newspapers, and so on. With the creation of audio and video recordings, as well as microfiche, librarians quickly expanded their discipline to include non-printed material, but the process for discovery, cataloging, and distributing library materials remained relatively unchanged. In the last few years librarians have again had to expand their area of expertise to include digital information, including areas of the World Wide Web. And they are being asked to redefine themselves again. This time to include the vaguely defined realm of knowledge itself...

Taxonomy ....
Classification and Cataloging ...
Technology ...
Liguistsics and Cognitive Science ...

Bibliography:
Allix, Nicholas M. "Epistemology And Knowledge Management Concepts And Practices." Journal of Knowledge Management Practice. April 2003. Faculty of Education, Monash University, Victoria, Australia. Accessed September 25, 2003 http://www.tlainc.com/articl49.htm
Broadbent, Marianne. "The Phenomemnon of Knowledge Management." SLA Outlook. May 1998. Accessed Spetember 22, 2003 http://www.sla.org/pubs/serial/io/1998/may98/broadben.html
Bryar, J.V. "Taxonomies: The Value of Organized Business Knowledge." NewsEdge White Paper. NewsEdge Corporation (2001).
Church, Dough. "From Librarian to Knowledge Manager and Beyond: The Shift to an End-User Domain." Special Library Association. Accessed Spetember 22, 2003 http://www.sla.org/chapter/ctor/courier/v36/v36n2a1b.htm
Kanti, S. and Koening, M.E.D. "Knowledge Management for the Information Professional." Information Today (2002).
McCarthy, I. (1995) "Manufacturing Classification: Lessons from organizational systematics and biological taxonomy." Integrated Manufacturing Systems, (1995) 6: 37-48.
Satyadas, Antony. "Growing a Practical KM System." September 2003. Knowledge Management/Destination KM Accessed September 22, 2003 http://www.destinationkm.com/articles/default.asp?ArticleID=1036
Weidner, Douglas. "Using Connect and Collect to Achieve the KM Endgame." IT Pro (2002).

Question with no answer - few CIOs move to become CEO?

First a quotable quote: "Librarians are being made CIO's less for our technical skills than for our organizational skills and our ability to manage the complex change that is fostered by or linked to technological change." [Source: Managing Technology, Managing Technologists, Shirley K. Baker]

An image tells a thousand words, in my humble opinion [image courtesy: blogs.idc.com/ie/].

"Knowing what we know about CIOs -- that is, that most are smart, hardworking, supremely aware of how the business works and increasingly savvy regarding the working of external customers' minds -- the failure of more CIOs to become CEOs has to be one of the biggest mysteries of our age. If any readers can shed light on it, I'd love to hear what you have to say." Thus spake Thornton A. May, in the Computer World magzine, March 2 2007, p. 10

Others who reflect on this paradigm:

THE CIO'S ROLE IN THE CEO'S AGENDA, By D. Neil Gissler,
11.11.2004 Cutter Consortium, special to SearchCIO.com

Interesting thread at Slashdot, based on a vacuous article about why CIOs don't become CEOs.

Why don't CIOs become CEOs? by Espen

Google for similar problem of moving up on the ladder.

Much more @ Google

DESKTOP COMPUTING - Help for Librarians, BY LAUREN CAPOTOSTO [Editorial - CIO]

Any comments?

Tacit and Oral knowledge @ FaithCommons Forum

Fund an article* on social innovation in a Website that is (by my perception) on issues that are common by faiths, in a Multifaith perspective.

As a comment on the article I initiated a thread on the relation between tools and strategies of Knowledge Management (with special focus on tacit, tangible and cultural knowledge) within the context of corporate communications.

See the discussion at:

* Three scenario’s for social innovation Feed: P2P Foundation

What is this article in relation to the FaithCommons? by Mohamed Taher

Knowledge Management, by bill

Tacit and Oral knowledge, by Mohamed Taher

Mistaking Information as Knowledge, by bill

What Is Born of the Spirit is Spirit, by reido

NB. A bonus post I found, and wish to share with you:

Thinking Without Language, by Dave Pollard @ How to Save the World

My previous posts:

Vertical and tacit: Multifaith and Knowledge Management in Perspective

What do you think? Any comments, suggestions?

Project Management for Professionals

Is a basic knowledge of project management only for certified project managers or those who hold a diploma? Not necessarily!

"You need to manage your laboratory the same way you do your science: boldly but methodically, with the right balance of purposefulness and opportunism."

Project management has evolved over the years. Today's project management is less an arcane technical discipline than a set of principles intended to provide a structured approach to making the everyday decisions that keep a business running, even a small business. Or a laboratory.

Project management begins, as it should, by defining its subject: A project, according to project management theory, is an activity with three characteristics:

Specific outcomes or results

Definite start and end dates

Established resource budgets

The Key Components of Project Management

Planning--clarifying:

Organizing--specifying roles and responsibilities for project personnel

Controlling the performance of project work

Key Premises That Lead to Project Success

Project management is a way of thinking and behaving, rather than just a way of analyzing and presenting data.

Attempting to control all aspects of a project assures the greatest chance of success, but you will never succeed at controlling everything. That's okay.

People, not numbers and graphs, create successful projects.

Continue reading ... Project Management for Scientists, Stanley E. Portny, Jim Austin, United States, 12 July 2002

See also my review:
Barbara Allan. Project Management: Tools and Techniques for Today's LIS Professional. FACET (imprint of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals). & Neal-Schuman Publishers, 2004. Information Processing and Management, (in press)

KM in Academia: KM Degree Programs

SCAM FREE PATHFINDER: How Would You Describe Your Involvement in KM? [just-in-case you don't know] Then click here

Looking around for certification, and professional development? Here is a possible source [PS. the list is dated]

KM in Academia: KM Degree Programs
This section contains a list of schools that offer a Masters, Ph.D., or certificate programs in knowledge management. In addition, this site also provides a list of private companies that offer a wide range of KM workshops, training, seminars, and short online certificate courses in the area of knowledge management. Included in this section is a chart that displays the number of KM dissertations by year produced between 1981 and 2001. Continue browsing the site

NB. Credits: Reflections of a Knowledge Manager, KM Career Information/Resources, July 18, 2006.