THE LANGLEY FILES

Case study- The Langley files

Knowledge Management and CIA

An insight towards the implementation of knowledge management systems (KMS) on Central Intelligence Agency

1. How does the company perceive KM? Do they demonstrate any bias (e.g. more technology than people-oriented, more efficiency than innovation-oriented?) Analyze the definition of KM?-Which key attributes of KM are of particular importance to this company? What are the strengths of their definition? Weaknesses? How would you revise the KM definition in order to improve it? (4 points)

To understand the problem where it lies, that is Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), one must understand that working as a team and giving out unanimous decisions in all matters those individuals must work together to keep the organization, in this case, the agency intact. With reference to the credibility of a knowledge management system, knowledge management is not a new technology that can simply be installed, but there are systems like Microsoft's SharePoint and CCH's Knowledge Connect that provide structure and help capture, store and distribute the knowledge in a just-in-time fashion. Knowledge management is a firm project and not an IT-based project. If you place the responsibility on the IT department, at best you will have a document management system and not a knowledge management system (Andriessen, 2004). According to my point of view believe it starts at the top and has much to do with attitude. Lifelong learners tend to share, with the attitude that by doing so, they will continue to grow. If your firm and its employees are protective of their knowledge, a system will not fix the problem. On the other hand, if the firm is willing to share internally and externally, the culture is already in place and can be nurtured successfully, with technology as the accelerator.

One may question what competitive advantage is and how companies can create competitive advantage. There are three different views on creating competitive advantage, which are the positioning view, the resource-based view, and dynamic capabilities view. Companies should choose one of the three competitive positions in the market place if they want to achieve and maintain competitive advantage. The first position is cost leadership where a firm aims to achieve competitive advantage by achieving a cost leadership position in the market. The differentiation position implies that a company must offer something unique and rare. The focus strategy has two options: focus differentiation and focus cost leadership. The former one aims to achieve differentiation by offering a superior and unique product or service to a niche segment. The focus cost leadership strategy aims to achieve cost leadership position by targeting a niche segment in a specific geographical area. Porter suggests that only one of these three generic strategies should be followed rather than trying to follow all or two of them simultaneously.

In the case of CIA, they do not wish to show any form of reluctance towards uploading their gathered work and information, it is simply the level of human interaction and rapport building that people and employees working ...