Infosys Technologies Case Introduction The Infosys case analysis revolves around using a systems perspective to examine and

evaluate the knowledge management system put in place by Infosys Technologies. A systems perspective, according to the authors, allowed them to concentrate on processes rather than on research. This means that they were able to go beyond the known facts, and uncover the distinct characteristics of the relationships that take place among these processes. These distinct relationship characteristics are the key findings of the Infosys case, and they have been identified below. Even though Infosys seemed to have all the necessary knowledge management systems in place at each level of the organization and had already reached Level 5 in the Capability Maturity Model (CMM), the company was not able to sync all its knowledge management systems with one another. As a solution, Infosys established the Knowledge Currency Unit (KCU), which was supposed to motivate employees to supply knowledge. This solution created information overload and eventually led to an even bigger problem than it was initially trying to resolve. This outcome led to the main key finding of the case: Knowledge management systems create processes that interact with one another. These processes can become vicious or virtuous in nature, and managers must have the ability to steer them according to the companys needs. Other key insights of the case include the following: First, although technology has allowed for the enhancement of knowledge management systems, it must not be treated as the only solution. Second, managers must have a systems perspective when analyzing their knowledge management infrastructure. Finally, they must also find a balance between centralizing and decentralizing those systems to achieve success. Overall, our group believes that the key insights of this case were not completely apparent unless the case was reviewed various times. This piece will apply general knowledge management principles from class materials to the Infosys Technologies case in order to better understand their strengths and weaknesses, and the path that led them to a vicious circle. We will then present an update of the company, various examples and solutions related to the case, and finalize with a conclusion of our findings. The Knowledge Spiral The Infosys Technologies case analysis notes that one can use the knowledge spiral theory generated by Nonaka and Takeuchi to understand how a virtuous circle is created within an organization. Takeuchi and Nonaka have a dynamic approach to their knowledge spiral theory which involves many levels. In short, they explain that there are two dimensions to organizational knowledge creation, these are epistemological and ontological. The ontological dimension is viewed horizontally, and the epistemological dimension is viewed vertically. Each dimension has its own drivers and they both create separate knowledge spirals, that when combined, can explain the core of Takeuchi and Nonakas Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation (Takeuchi 177). In this section, we will examine the epistemological dimension of the knowledge spiral. In specific, we will take a look at how the five organizational conditions that allow knowledge to be transformed within the spiral were present in the Infosys Technologies case. Nonaka and Takeuchi explain that there are five conditions that an organization must meet in order to encourage knowledge creation. The five conditions are intention, autonomy, fluctuation and creative chaos, redundancy, and requisite variety. Organizational intention drives the knowledge spiral and outlines the goals and vision of a company when it comes to knowledge management (Takeuchi 159). This is an essential part of the process because all employees need to be in sync with what goals they are

trying to achieve. This allows for the correct knowledge to be generated at a higher quality. Infosyss vision is represented by their motto Learn once, use anywhere. Even though this motto is good for an overall organization vision, the lack of customized departmental goals allowed for the disorder of Infosyss system and the creation of information overload. The second condition, autonomy, deals with giving individuals the ability to make their own decisions when creating and sharing knowledge. This, Nonaka and Takeuchi argue, will allow for the creation of unexpected knowledge and more motivation from employees to share that knowledge. However, the Infosys case makes the argument that a virtuous circle that is left alone may never materialize. On the other hand, if management gets involved, the virtuous circle might become a vicious one (Garud 27). A balance must be achieved. Fluctuation, allowing interaction within the organization and the external environment, allows for questioning of knowledge that is already created and can be enhanced. This fluctuation can result in creative chaos, which can generate top quality knowledge. Even though the Infosys case does not state how the company interacted with external knowledge specifically, we believe that the external knowledge was coming from hired recruits. Instead of hiring employees that would learn by doing, Infosys decided to hire those with learnability, which would allow them to turn specific instances in learning into creative chaos. Redundancy, the fourth condition, refers to intentional overlapping of information within the company (Takeuchi 167). Originally, one of Infosyss main issues was that the company was not able to sync all its knowledge management systems with one another. At this point, the redundancy condition would have been an appropriate approach to solve this problem. Instead of trying to overlap the systems, however, Infosys tried motivate employees to share knowledge by providing KCUs, which resulted in information overload. The fifth and final condition is requisite variety, and it deals with having an internal environment that mirrors the external environment so that a company has a better capability of dealing with issues that arise. Infosys tried creating a diverse internal environment by hiring those with learnability. The company also promoted internal diversity and sharing of information. However, low quality knowledge and excessive sharing were consequences of these decisions. In this case, having too much requisite variety and not enough filtering of knowledge resulted in a vicious circle. An application of the five enabling conditions for organizational knowledge creation to the Infosys Technologies case allowed us to showcase some of the weaknesses and strengths that Infosys possessed in their knowledge management system. It also enabled us to understand some of the causes of the vicious circle that was unintentionally created. Knowledge Markets As stated in the Infosys Technology case, in order to adopt knowledge management into a company it requires all the companys resources. This means that the people, structure, systems and processes all take part in making knowledge management successful. Infosys Technologies had already embedded into their company a sharing culture which allowed employees to share information informally throughout the company to its colleagues. When attempting to introduce knowledge management into the company vicious circles emerged despite their efforts for virtuous results. What Infosys Technologies failed to initially realize was that installing software to promote hard copies of knowledge was not going to solve their knowledge management initiatives. Buyers, sellers and brokers are all players in the market knowledge that take part in the exchange and outcome of the knowledge market. Infosys Technologies already had knowledge markets with these players in place but they wanted to find a way to record this in order to better the company. They created libraries; which are brokers, by introducing Sparsh, which became the central information portal and later they developed Kshop. Though these were attempts toward virtuous circles their attempt to have workers use the system led to unforeseeable problems. Each knowledge market has a pricing system which places value on the information being exchanged. In this case Infosys Technologies developed a KCU incentive scheme rewarding those who contributed to Kshop. This led to the typical information overload of too

many contributors just to be rewarded as well as information that lacked quality. By implementing this scheme Infosys Technologies destroyed their asking culture filled with altruistic employees sharing information just to help others. Though not all employees have an altruistic view, this eliminated the sense of reciprocity and repute. Through this cycle a person who shared information expects to receive the favor later on, as well as develop a reputation for having knowledge. All of this was taken away when the KCU scheme took full affect. Prior to any KM initiatives the employees trusted each others knowledge and confided in the accuracy of what was being shared with them. After the KM initiatives, groups that worked together started holding their knowledge and didnt interact with different groups in the company because of lack of trust. Without trust, knowledge initiatives will fail, regardless of how thoroughly they are supported by technology and rhetoric and even if the survival of the organization depends on efficient knowledge transfer (Davenport, 34). The case clearly pointed out that this company had a stable environment that was interruption with the attempt of KM initiatives, and like most companies thought that software and technology alone was going to make things work. Fortunately, unlike many companies Infosys Technologies realized that the software was not the problem and steered away from a vicious circle that could have destroyed the companys culture. Infosys Technologies and Class Articles At Infosys Knowledge management initiates a balance between centralization and decentralization; knowledge managers believe that centralization allows greater ability to achieve organizational synergies. And we can see that in the previous case of Toyota, organizational structure of the company is very centralized and structured with hierarchy, but also giving enough freedom to the employees to implement and innovate. Just like Toyota takes great time building people also known as hitozukuri, Infosys values its human capital. Infosys believes that learning is an ability to derive generic conclusions from specific instances of learning, in other words, Infosys wants its employees to learn, apply and innovate. For example, they dont want their employees to learn C++ and Java, on the contrary they want to see whether the employee is able to figure out how Java is similar to or different from C++ and make appropriate adjustments in applying it. At Toyota, any knowledge gained while investigating creates new solution which is captured and ready for use on the next project or program. Similarly at Infosys, having solved a problem of one customer, the knowledge gained is stored and reapplied accordingly in a generic way to some other problem. Therefore, constant storage and recycling of knowledge is seen in both companies. Toyota has its senior engineers also known as Sushas, that train and develop new trainees by giving them documented knowledge and also passing on his own on the job experience and past scenarios. Similarly in Infosys, knowledge managers, started the KM effort by tools such as email, bulletin boards, and repositories for marketing, technical and project related information. Information portal like Sparsh, that made bodies of knowledge (BOKs), made it easy for employees to access the bulletin boards and local repositories. So both the companies make sure that whatever knowledge is gained is passed along in the easiest and most effective way throughout the firm from high level to the lower levels.

Current Knowledge Management in Infosys After the initial over load of information in KSHOP during the period from 2001 to 2004, the top management of Infosys decided to streamline the process, all incentives for knowledge sharing was discontinued and all the data that was being uploaded to SPARSH required a minimum of two validations. The second thing that was done was the integration of the tacit knowledge into a work culture, where senior employees are mentoring junior employees (Toyota case). All employees are on call and there personal phone number and email addresses are available to everyone through SPARSH. This enables anyone to be contacted at any time and this was incorporated into their employee contract while they are offered the job, thereby avoiding future law suits. Project team structure within Infosys: Delivery Head (Experience of 20-23 years) Domain Heads (Experience of 15-20 years) Senior Project Manager (Experience of 13-15 years) Project Manager (Experience of 8-12 years) Project Leader (Experience of 6-7 years) Team Leader (Experience of 3-4 years) Team member (Can be a fresher or have an experience of 1-3 years) In SPARSH (Infosys intranet) all the projects that they have worked on and all the details of their current work is available for anyone within the company and also their contact information. In the past few years the Ask culture has been developed within the company. The delivery head can be compared to Shusa and the delivery head is responsible for the whole project. Additional Examples/Solutions Example 1: Steps taken to Implement and Improve KM at Avventurra Infotech Manager and Trainer meetings Trainer and Team Meetings Documented training materials for trainees

First thing in the morning, manager and trainer meetings are every morning thing, where the manager asks the trainers about their upcoming day, and what they need to work on and new trainees. Here the trainers give detailed report of their respective teams and also the progress of the new as well as existing team members. Manager also helps the trainers to solve problems, if any, with his/her past experiences. Trainer and team meetings are very crucial for the start of day. The trainer briefs the team for the day and also shares some work related stories with them to warm them up. The team discusses problems with the trainer. After that the trainees are given printed material to read and learn and then questioned by the trainer. Storytelling/experience sharing sessions Lunch break/smoke break sessions Switching trainers among teams on a weekly basis Employee self evaluation/team evaluations Team night once a week

Storytelling/experience sharing is done at the end of the day, this helps all trainees and team members to share knowledge and also gain knowledge about different situations while at work. Lunch break and smoke break sessions are particularly important as these sessions help the employees to connect in a social environment and also know more about each other. Trainers are asked to handle different teams every week, this helps the trainer to learn how to manage different people and also make familiar with different teams. Team nights are for social gathering for dinner or just in a pub for couple of drinks. This helps everyone to know more about their colleagues, and also helps the trainer to know his team on social level. All these practices come back to knowledge sharing and knowledge gaining, which well managed by the management, to better the efficiency, greater team bonding, every trainer know every team member Example 2: KM in Verizon Wireless Verizon wireless had 3 major regions within the US namely the western, southern and the eastern region till 2004, and by combining all three regions as one, there were a lot of issues in regards to the different policies that were being followed in each region. Verizon was forced to have different call centers for different regions and the employees had to be trained for that particular region. They introduced Infomanager during that period of time to compile and place all the different policies into one place and employees could access it from anywhere. In 2003 Verizon started using KNOVA , KNOVA is a Consona CRM solution that has been built on an adaptive search and knowledge management platform. It is an intelligent customer experience solution that helps to maximize the value of every interaction throughout the customer lifecycle. The advantage of using KNOVA's suite of applications is that it helps companies to increase their revenues, reduce service costs and improve overall customer satisfaction. At the grass roots level, Verizon Wireless encourages their employees to share best practices and also success and innovation is recognized instantly with on the spot awards and rewards. All manager level employees can issue these rewards. There are employee blogs and forums. Time for change was another initiative that was launched in 2009 to get more ideas to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness in resolving customer issues. In conclusion Infosys Technologies ran into several obstacles in their attempt to bring knowledge management into their company. As many companies fail when introducing knowledge management,

Infosys Technologies was able to understand the main issue that arises very often with many companies, which is the expectation that computers and software would make the whole knowledge management notion work. And that knowledge management is highly dynamic with many forces acting at the same time for and against it. The case could have been written differently so that the reader could easily understand the entire systems approach that the company was trying to use to accomplish knowledge management. Several parts of the case clearly explain where the errors occurred and how they were fixed but the style of writing took away from the entire case. Overall this was one of many companies trying to master the complicated nature of knowledge management.

Sources Garud, Raghu, and Arun Kumaraswamy. "Vicious and Virtuous Circles in the Management of Knowledge: The Case of Infosys Technologies." MIS Quarterly 29.1 (2005): 9-33. Print. Takeuchi, Hirotaka, and Ikujiro Nonaka. "Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation." Knowledge Management: Classic and Contemporary Works. By Daryl Morey, Mark Maybury, and Bhavani Thuraisingham. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002. 139-182.