Modelling and Knowledge Management in the Field of Road

Infrastructure Operation and Regulation

Study on the Methods Application in an Organizational Unit

Luiziana Rezende

1,2

, Maria Angela Lobão

2,4

, Celia Regina Nerva Burmann

Joel de Lima Pereira Castro Junior

2,3

, Luiz Angelo Merino

, Soraia Alves Rocha

and Carlos Alberto Malcher Bastos

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

GtecCom / Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Brazil

PPGAd / Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Brazil

IBMEC Faculty, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Flow, Knowledge Modelling, Techniques, Tools and Practices of

Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tree.

Abstract: This paper presents the application of an Interactive Method for Modelling and Knowledge Management on

Business Environment for an Organizational Unit of Road Infrastructure Operation, from the Brazilian

National Ground Transport Agency. As part of an innovative project named MIKM for the Knowledge and

Information Manage Model of this agency adopts Knowledge Management fundamental concepts,

knowledge and competence, mobilized by professionals on their activities for building information goods.

For the method's development and application were needed activities of identification, collection, mapping,

representation and analysis of the knowledge and competences needed to the execution of the activities

related to knowledge assets of the already mentioned Organizational Unit. Materials and documentation

available were analyzed and techniques of meetings and interviews with managers and employees in the

steps of identification and collection; for mapping a methodology developed by Rezende (2007) and a

knowledge tree concept (Authier and Lévy, 1992) was applied. On knowledge management's analysis and

improvement proposals the knowledge conversion modes (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2009) about knowledge

flow, from Road Infrastructure Cycle of Regulation.

1 INTRODUCTION

Communications and information technologies

development enabled society to realize structural

changes on economics, financial, productive and

cultural spheres. Currently the largest value of

organizations is intangible, intellectual capital and

knowledge, mobilized by its employees on the

development of their processes and activities. For an

organization to be in a sustainable and competitive

level it needs to operate in an increasingly dynamic

knowledge environment, focused on new products

development, new and more flexible processes.

Knowledge Management (KM) area has as its object

of study to develop methods, techniques and tools

that allow the organization to identify, locate,

classify, store and retrieve, distribute, disseminate,

recreate and apply knowledge as input for the

development of intellectual capital and social capital

through effective services. The article presents the

MIKM, Model of Information and Knowledge

Management (MIKM, 2011), by an iterative

methodology, incorporating well known practices of

information and knowledge modelling to develop a

single management model. The Iterative Method for

Modelling and Knowledge Management (INNKM)

is part of MIKM and it was applied in a Corporate

Environment, an Organizational Unit (OU) of the

National Ground Transport Agency (NGTA),

detailing the mapping and modelling process of

relationships among knowledge, competences and

working groups. The method is based upon the

concepts of knowledge, competence, skills and

265

Rezende L., Lobão M., Nerva Burmann C., de Lima Pereira Castro Junior J., Merino L., Alves Rocha S. and Malcher Bastos C..

Modelling and Knowledge Management in the Field of Road Infrastructure Operation and Regulation - Study on the Methods Application in an

Organizational Unit.

DOI: 10.5220/0004131402650268

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2012), pages 265-268

ISBN: 978-989-8565-31-0

 2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)

working group proposed by Fleury and Fleury

(2004) and Zarifian (2005), whereas the collection

and mapping methodology used was developed by

Rezende (Rezende, 2007). The construction of the

maps of knowledge, competences and working

groups was done by using the tree of knowledge

(Authier and Lévy, 1992). The processes of

knowledge conversion, proposed by the SECI model

(Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995, 2009), were used to

analyze gaps in the flow of knowledge.

Figure 1: Method of Work for collection, assessment,

modelling, analysis and representation of knowledge/

Competences.

2 OBJECTIVES

The main objective of this study was both to identify

and to map the existent relations among knowledge,

competences and working group in the OU

dedicated to Road Infrastructure Operation as well

as the information goods in this context. The

knowledge, competences and working groups were

considered in relation to existing activities and

information flows. Consequently, it was carried out

the survey so that it could be built up the map of

relationships between knowledge, competences and

working groups need to do each working activity.

This map can be used by to improve OU decision

making as it allows the organization to integrate the

information among its employees and it improves

the sharing level among them. The maps help the

elicitation of knowledge, transforming tacit

knowledge into explicit one, whereas it helps the

understanding of working processes and the

identification of new knowledge unidentified so far,

the identification of experts to existing activities, the

possibility of constructing more efficient forms of

communication, development of new ways of

learning, building of community work, the

structuring of both individual and team experiences.

Thus the organization enters a more fertile ground of

new ideas and creative problem-solving can exist.

3 DEVELOPMENT AND

CONSTRUCTION OF MODELS

The analysis of knowledge and its management was

used the knowledge spiral of the SECI model and

the concepts of KM proposed by Takeuchi

(Takeuchi et al, 2011). Figure 1 illustrates the

method indicating its steps: a) information gathering,

b) survey of knowledge and Competences; c)

classification; d) representation; e) analysis.

Figure 2: Map of Knowledge/Competences/Working

group.

The first step, information gathering, was

conducted through interviews with workers and it

aimed to identify all the information necessary for

the construction of models, since these individuals

have expertise and working experience. This step

has two stages; the first is to gather the information

and knowledge needed, which were considered: a)

all documents and existing systems in this OU or

used by it; b) the list of information goods; c) As Is

models (describing the present processes); and d)

actors, workers, working groups and use Business

Use Cases methodology. After that, the list of

professionals to be interviewed is defined.

The interviews were open by nature, seeking to

establish a relationship of trust and respect with

interviewees to achieve a level of commitment and

information reliability. The interviews were detailed,

sought to identify the existing explicit and tacit

knowledge and competences necessary to perform

KMIS2012-InternationalConferenceonKnowledgeManagementandInformationSharing

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their activities. The data collection generated a

matrix of information goods x interviewees x

working group and the demographics data of the

interviewed professionals. The second step was to

survey, which allowed the definition of knowledge

and competences needed for activities of

information goods for working group. Thus, lists of

knowledge and competences were done (Figure 1).

The third step, the classification, builds the

topographies of knowledge and competences. The

first one consists of its type (tacit or explicit), weight

of relevance (irrelevant, less relevant, relevant and

very relevant), level of knowledge (basic,

intermediate and advanced) and its location. The

topography of competences consisted of the weight

of relevance (irrelevant, less relevant, relevant and

very important) and its location. Based on those was

built the map of information goods x activities x

working groups. The fourth stage was the

representation one that constructed the map of

knowledge, competences and working groups

(Figure 2) and the tree of knowledge to view the

knowledge in a hierarchical (Figure 3). Another use

of this analysis is as a tool in the evaluating process

of employee performance.

Figure 3: Tree of Knowledge.

At the last step, the analysis, descriptive graphics

were constructed from different possible groupings

of information and knowledge obtained. Another

level of analysis was the identification of gaps in

relation to the SECI model. It was still possible to

investigate the existence of new correlations

between Competences and knowledge that may

indicate new relationships associated with

information goods, activities and working groups.

According to the topics of the training plan of the

Agency was established a classification for the

expertise identified. This classification was ranked

and then used for developing a information good

entitled "Analysis of Studies and Projects of Works

and Infrastructure Services," for all working groups

involved in the execution of all activities associated

with, the relevant weights. Another knowledge

classification was done by weighted average of the

importance levels of knowledge. This descriptive

analysis influences in defining the employee

knowledge to perform the activities efficiently.

4 PROPOSALS FOR

TECHNICAL, BEST

PRACTICES AND KM TOOLS

According to the spiral of knowledge (four modes of

knowledge conversion: socialization,

externalization, combination and internalization)

processes are not carried out in constructing

knowledge. In the elicitation process (consists of

transforming tacit knowledge into explicit one),

knowledge is found in documentary form, but is not

organized in a systematic way. Therefore, the OA

could benefit in using an Electronic Document

Management system. To make more efficient the use

of the information good "Analysis of the study and

construction projects and infrastructure services," it

should be stored in a database corporate all

information required to project submission to be

presented by the concessionaires to the Agency.

Regarding socialization process, which consists in

sharing individual and collective experiences, it was

identified a manager organizing workshops. This can

be taken to other areas to develop knowledge and

skills for this practice. It is important to organize

events to the concessionaires in order to exchange

knowledge and practices on road operations.

Another practice is to create a discussion forum for

best practices and experiences on specialized topics

having for the concessionaires, regional units and

other stakeholders. In these forums would be

released the most relevant results arising from the

events. Regarding the combination process, the

absence of a centralized, integrated and consolidated

database makes difficulty the systematic use of

needed knowledge to carry out different activities.

The absence of a shared database, the process of

internalization suffers, since its employees are

overloaded with daily tasks that could be done by

using management and technological tools. Thus,

the time to learn, reflect, evaluate and reconstruct

ModellingandKnowledgeManagementintheFieldofRoadInfrastructureOperationandRegulation-Studyonthe

MethodsApplicationinanOrganizationalUnit

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the knowledge available, as well as their practices

and experiences, is greatly reduced. Losses

involving its employees imply the avoidance of

knowledge and competences, which often have not

been socialized, externalized and not combined, and

thus may be lost. It is recommended to use the

organizational portal as focal point to the OU. For

the knowledge transfer, it is recommended the use of

methods supported by technology such as: the

Virtual Classroom, which consists of a learning

network for discussions and interactions at distance.

It identifies in the an organizational culture to the

creation of communities of practice, entailing a

database of lessons learned, database of practices,

database of technical alerts and yellow pages,

complete with discussion forums The adoption of

the suggested improvements will contribute to

organizational learning to the extent that such

knowledge is transparent disseminated and can be

retrieved, manipulated, developed and disseminated.

That creates an environment where new tacit

knowledge appears, demanding that new processes

take place, allowing a new cycle of knowledge.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The INNKM in Corporate Environments was

effective in its application, allowing identifying,

collect, mapping, representing and analyzing

knowledge, Competences and working groups

mobilized and involved in building an information

goods in the field of Ground Transportation

Regulation. As results new information goods have

been created and some have been modified in its

structure to better meet the agency's mission and the

society expectations. The developed models allowed

the identification of tacit and explicit knowledge and

analyze the flow of knowledge in their steps:

identification, representation, validation, storage,

retrieval, dissemination, distribution and recreation,

indicating gaps and improvement needs. The

identified critical success factors of KM assist OU

managers decisions in process improvements using

KM; indication of necessary knowledge in bidding

for public contracts, new training courses and

regular training, identification of gaps between the

individuals and working groups knowledge and

competences needed to perform their activities,

among others. With respect to KM were identified

eight new tools necessary for the agency. From the

knowledge base, built during the modelling process

can be made several descriptive analysis. Finally,

managers will have at their disposal an incremental

basis of knowledge, unique to the agency, which

will enable different analysis depending on need and

the decision to be made. With all mapping and

modelling all completed will be possible to structure

agency's Architecture of KM and set methods,

techniques, technologies and appropriate tools for

their effective management of knowledge, allowing

it to fulfil its mission more effectively and meet the

needs of society.

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