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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT CASE STUDY

The importance of knowledge harvesting

in government

By Dr Ronel Davel, Sars Knowledge Management Specialist

Knowledge is increasingly recognised as an imperative, strategic resource by all types of organisations and institutions, both
private and public. Regrettably, for many years public sector organisations across the globe had often been less inclined than
the private sector to embrace knowledge management (KM) to its full potential (Arora, 2011).

Of late, the public sector has come to realise the importance of Knowledge harvesting processes
KM. This realisation can be attributed to the kind of difficulties
that have an impact on the efficiencies and effectiveness If most of our knowledge is unwritten and essentially
of their services such as potential knowledge loss as a unsaid, one first needs to elicit this knowledge before it
result of older employees retiring; problems with retaining can be articulated, shared and employed in a wider sense.
knowledgeable personnel (Jaine, 2009) and millennial job Knowledge harvesting is one way to extract and package tacit
churn. As a consequence, it has become imperative for the knowledge so that others can adapt, personalise and apply
public sector to focus on methodologies that will protect it it to build organisational capacity, and preserve institutional
against a potential knowledge drain. One such approach is memory (Serrat, 2010).
termed knowledge harvesting.
Knowledge harvesting processes are ultimately aimed at the
Defi ning knowledge harvesting individuals performing the key tasks within an organisation.
These processes are designed to not only establish what an
According to IGI Global (2018), knowledge harvesting can be expert knows with reference to a particular domain or aspect
defined as an “… integrated set of processes that allow the of work, but also the specific how-to and qualified knowledge
often hidden insight of human expertise to be captured. Then (when, why, whether, etc.). A typical knowledge harvesting
it is converted into a specific actionable know-how that can be project is thus focused on a particular expert or experts.
transferred to others.”

Knowledge Harvesting Inc. (2018) refers to knowledge
harvesting as something that “is used to convert the know-how
in an expert’s head into information assets that can be used to
dramatically improve corporate performance, competitiveness
and valuation.”

In essence, knowledge harvesting can thus be described as
the process that is applied to convert the tacit know-how of
identified experts into explicit information assets to protect
organisations against the loss and unavailability of expertise
if, and when, it is needed.

Value of knowledge harvesting

According to Snowden (2010), “we always know more than we
can say, and we will always say more than we can write down.”
Much of the knowledge that is most critical to an organisation
thus resides in the heads of employees. When critical
employees leave the organisation, so does that knowledge.
Organisations are thus at risk of losing critical knowledge as
key employees retire or move to new jobs; and the only way
in which they can protect themselves from the unavailability
of this expertise when and where it is needed, is if they can
identify, capture and transfer vital technical, and business
knowledge in time.

Volume 12 No. 1 of 2018 | SERVICE DELIVERY REVIEW 25