Year: 2010
Type: dissertation
Abstract: ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Knowledge assets can be defined as anything that affects a business’s disposition to act on data received from the environment. Knowledge assets are embedded in the objects within an organisation and are the source of an organisation’s competitive advantage, by being closely linked to what the organisation knows and by allowing the organisation to act and to be innovative. Knowledge assets evolve over time as knowledge agents, through a process of sense making, substitute physical resources for informational resources by codifying and abstracting knowledge assets, in the process increasing their value and ability to be diffused to wider audiences. These knowledge assets are internalised in an organisation and impact on the organisation when they are applied to concrete problems. Knowledge assets play an important role in the creation of information assets in an organisation. Information assets are created when a knowledge agent makes use of his or her knowledge to make sense of data received from sources in the environment. The creation of information through the sense making process creates new knowledge which is added to the agent’s knowledge base. Enterprise architecture is the process of designing future states for an organisation and then planning, leading and governing the organisation towards that future state. Enterprise architecture focuses mostly on the organisational process, on information and technology. Enterprise architects make use of enterprise architecture frameworks such as TOGAF or the Zachman framework, which are primarily concerned with the domains of business, information and technology architecture, yet none of these mainstream frameworks used by enterprise architects takes knowledge assets into account, despite the obviously important role that they play in the organisation and especially in the information creation process. This research proposes to show that knowledge assets have an important role to play in enterprise architecture by allowing enterprise architects to • identify or facilitate the creation of knowledge assets pertaining to a specific problem; • understand whether information assets are located in the ordered and complex or the chaotic regimes and what would be the implication of moving them between regimes; • plot knowledge assets movements and relationships to each other on the social learning cycle path, which would enable enterprise architects to balance the types of learning that the organisation employs; • define the level of codification, abstraction and diffusion of knowledge assets, based on the intended audiences and to understand where knowledge assets could be developed to improve quality and when outdated knowledge should be destroyed in favour of new knowledge. Knowledge assets are related to Enterprise Business Architecture (EBA) through the specific knowledge domains that exist within an organisation. Understanding whether knowledge assets exist in the ordered, complex or chaotic regimes will provide a more complete view of the organisation. Architecture of knowledge assets in this space will provide a better understanding of an organisation’s culture: this understanding can compensate for differences in knowledge agents’ spatio-temporal positions, how and when they receive data and their particular cognitive styles. The importance of knowledge assets in the creation of information links it emphatically with Enterprise Information Architecture (EIA). Knowledge asset architecture provides a better understanding of how information is created and flows through an organisation, taking into account the meaning of the information to the organisation, which compensates for that oversight in information theory, which regards the accuracy of data that is communicated as the only concern. Information technology has exponentially increased mankind’s ability to codify, abstract and diffuse knowledge assets. Enterprise Technical Architecture (ETA) is mainly concerned with the technology infrastructure implemented within an organisation. Enterprise architects can apply knowledge asset architecture to decide whether the technology should be used to enhance the codification and abstraction of information, allowing more efficient diffusion of information to a larger audience, or whether more concrete information should be diffused to a more closely-knit audience. This research will argue that the use of knowledge assets as a domain within enterprise architecture will greatly enhance the enterprise architect’s ability to understand and lead the organisation to a more desirable future state.
Author: Francois Joubert
Language: English
Subfield: Management Information Systems
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2146445263