Organizational Development for Knowledge Management at Water ...

Case Studies
The Department of the Navy
The DON Moves into the Knowledge World
The Department of the Navy became aware of the need to implement knowledge
management strategies to optimize strategic and tactical decision making, resulting
in more effective and efficient mission performance. The DON’s vision for the
future is to obtain Knowledge Superiority, a sustainable competitive advantage over
potential enemies, by sharing knowledge through an interactive network system.
The institution considers knowledge management as a process for optimizing the
effective application of intellectual individual, team-based and corporate capital to
achieve organizational objectives. Thus, they developed a knowledge management
implementation framework built around five balanced concepts: technology,
content, process, culture and learning. Another core element was the development of
a Knowledge Management Community of Practice (CoP) which now includes more
than 50 participating organizations and gets its support through the web and
actively exchanges thinking and best practices virtually.
Learn@WELL (Water and Environmental Health in Developing Countries)
Design and Practical Experiences with the Learn@WELL Knowledge Management
Module
This paper introduces knowledge management and describes how it is being
implemented to partners in WELL (Water and Environmental Health in Developing
Countries) through the Learn@WELL knowledge management distance-learning
module. This module is a value chain model and is also known as knowledge
lifecycle, which is driven by the operational goals flowing from an organization’s
mission and vision. These goals can be accomplished by creating, sharing, applying
and evaluating knowledge. Learn@WELL intended to strengthen its network
system by implementing the knowledge management module in small steps through
the application of different tools, such as communities of practice, personal
mapping, a knowledge management scan and developing a knowledge management
plan by internal and external information sharing.
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