Assignment 2
Chapter 5, Question 5
What is the difference between human and social capital?
Human capital is intangible. It is the economic value of an individual’s skill set, his or her knowledge, experiences, values and even health. These types of qualities in a person lead to higher pay for the individual and greater productivity for the organization.
Social capital, also intangible, is the ability of the individuals to work together or cooperate in a way that benefits the organization. The associations people have through networks, personal relationships and trust foster learning and the use of knowledge and skills that individuals possess.
Chapter 6, Question 3
What are some of the tools used in organizational memory management?
Knowledge repositories are one type of tool used in organizational memory management. They are often intranets and portals that capture and analyze organizational memory. They capture more than just documents or records. A repository will include tacit knowledge as well. It is a collaborative system where users can search and retrieve information.
Another tool is Electronic Performance Support Systems (EPSS) is an easily accessible software program that helps improve the employee’s productivity by providing immediate training, guidance, tools, and overall help that allows an employee to perform his or her duties with minimal help from others.
E-Learning is another tool. E-learning is technology mediated learning that allows the user to learn anytime. It provides the user trainings, information and guidance. Information is delivered via the Internet, CD, intranet or even satellite TV. E-learning can be self-paced. My organization, San Diego Unified School District, uses Moodle. Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS) that teachers use to facilitate learning both inside and outside the classroom. E-learning can also be instructor led. Examples include video conferencing, chat and whiteboards.
Chapter 8, Question 1
Discuss the pros and cons of the major technologies used in:
a) The knowledge creation and capture phase.
Some pros of data mining tools include finding correlations in data and detecting patterns in data. The con is that it takes a human to verify that patterns do actually exist. Blogs are another content creation tool. They bring useful information to light. Organizations can set up a blog to exchange information and can be archived. The fall back of using blogs as content creation is that they are web pages. The only way to search for information is through a search engine such as Google which does not prioritize blogs and returns them down the list in search results.
b) The knowledge sharing and dissemination phase
Chat rooms allow users to communicate with each other in real time using