Today I will try to discuss the difference & relationship among these three terminologies and, also will look at how data, information and knowledge play an important role in my organisation.
Though its too early to conclude something about the different notations used in knowledge management and knowledge management itself, but I have observed that its totally a mind game and all depends on your understanding that how you observe your daily life in your organisation and how you perform your duties by utilizing your skills to maximize the productivity for your organisation.
Data
It is just symbols which don’t necessarily make any sense or meanings itself [1]
e.g “35” “Television” “Colour”
“0700” “Train” “London”
“84” “Rooms” “Hotel”
Information
When we put data into a context which makes a clear understanding & meaning to it, call information. [2]
e.g we have a 35 inch colour television at our home.
First train to London is at 0700 A.M.
There are 84 rooms in premier inn where I work.
Knowledge
is to understand the information and make our decision or judgement on the basis of information.It depends how do we perceive something and varies from person to person according to their understandings. [3]
e.g we need “sky box” to watch the television at our home or we need to put an antenna at the top of our roof to watch the free channels. We are making these decisions because of the knowledge we have and if we don’t have the knowledge then we won’t be able to make these decisions.
My university starts at 0900 A.M and it takes me 2 hours to go to the university and it takes me an hour to go to London which is at half way to the university so I’ll be on time if I catch the 0700 A.M train. Here I can make my decision about the train timings only on the basis of my knowledge and calculating the time is also my knowledge which I am utilizing to be on time in my class.
The hotel where I work has 84 rooms and during the week days our hotel is 100% guaranteed full that’s why we recommend our regular guest to make an early reservation to avoid any sort of problem. If some regular guest makes a late reservation and there is no room available then by using our knowledge we overbook the hotel to a certain extent as we know there will be some late cancellation and we can accommodate our late reservation guests to a certain number of rooms.
Everyone should agree with the definitions of Data, Information and Knowledge separately without applying them on any organisation or in any scenario. Data, information and Knowledge separately are understandable for anyone but it makes a difference when we apply them in any organisation or try to apply them in any real life scenario and their meanings become different for everyone according to their understandings. [4]
For example in my hotel my company provides a good night guarantee which means any guest can have their money back if they are not satisfied with the hotel services and this process calls invocation. If any of the guest invocate we fill a report on our system and submit it. To fill in the report we collect data from the guest reservation such as guest name, which employee checked in that guest, guest address, contact no and how the guest has refunded (cash or credit/debit card) and also the refunded amount.
The data which we get from the gust reservation do not make any sense individually but when we put that data on the report it becomes information to us and to the management as well then the management makes a decision either that person complaint was genuine or he/she invocated just to get his/her money back. By checking his/her previous record it becomes clear that how many times that particular guest has invocated in past and by using knowledge the hotel management makes a decision either to allow that guest to stay with the hotel in future or not.
A guest detail (data) helps us to make a report (information) on which basis decision (knowledge) makes. For front desk (reception) it’s easy to understand the data and to enter that data on report form but if we ask the hotel restaurant department they wouldn’t be able to collect that data and hence they need knowledge first to get an understanding about the data and how to fill in the invocation report.
Over all data, information and knowledge are interchangeable/relative. Data may be knowledge for someone and vice verse. [4] [5]
During the seminar all of the other groups mentioned this is a one dimension process (data, information and knowledge) but its not, it can be in any direction like as in the following diagram.
References:
[1] Malmberg, P. 2006, Scientific Proceedings: European Productivity Conference (EPC, 2006), Retrieved March 02, 2008 from http://www.epc2006.fi/EPC_Scientific_Proceedings.pdf#page=31
[2] Thomas, H. Davenport & Prusak, L. 1998, Working Knowledge: How Organisations Manage What They Know, A Book Summary by Jyrki J.J. Kasvi, Retrieved 28, February 2008 from http://www.knowledge.hut.fi/projects/itss/referDavenport.pdf
[3] Rowley, J. Feburary 15, 2007, Journal of Information Science, The Wisdon Hierarchy: Representations of the DIKW Hierarchy, Sage Publications, Retrieved February 28, 2008 from http://jis.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/33/2/163
[4] Ganesh D. Bhatt 2001, Knowledge Management in Organizations: Examining the Interaction between Technologies, Techniques and People, Volume 5, Issue 1, Retrieved February 28, 2008 from http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewPDF.jsp?Filename=html/Output/Published/EmeraldFullTextArticle/Pdf/2300050106.pdf
[5] Liew, A. June 2007, Journal of Knowledge Management Practice: Understanding Data, Information, Knowledge and Their Inter-Relationships, Vol. 8, No. 2, Retrieved February 28, 2008 from http://www.tlainc.com/articl134.htm
Bibliography:
2. Retrieved Feburary 13, 2008, from http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm
Trace back:
A reply to Prof. Mark Woodman can be found from the following link
http://waseemknowledgemanagement.blogspot.com/2008/02/knowledge-management-data-information_24.html
1 comment:
For Waseem's blog
I start from the position that the terms "Knowledge", "Information" and "Data" are of little use unless placed in some context. So, in a sense, I don't see the difference, or am rarely motivated to work out the difference between them when others talk about them. Your contribution has made some very interesting points, so you need to be aware of my starting position on these matters.
I'll give you more of a clue about my position: why we use the words it that we are briefly, maybe temporarily indicating the value we place on the stuff we are talking about. So, we use "data" when its value is less apparent to us, "information" when we think it has some value, and "knowledge" when it has real value. By that I mean with "knowledge" I can make decisions and take actions.
You are right that symbols like 35, Television, Hotel are just symbols. However, most people would not argue with what "Television" means or "Hotel" means. So you if you refer to either symbol there is inherent meaning. (There are words in English that have multiple meanings, e.g. crane, but they're not worth worrying about in this context.)
Numbers like 35, 267.43 are different because for most practical purposes they are incomplete -- they need to be applied to something, e.g. 35 carrots, 267.43 volts. But, it is incorrect to say they have no meaning. They have meaning in mathematics and can be manipulated regardless of what they are eventually applied to (e.g. adding 3 to 35 gives 38 and it can be applied to hotels as much as carrots and have agreed meaning).
The other worry I have about dimissing "data" as just being about symbols, is that if you have gone to the bother of collecting something that turns out to have the value 35, you must have had "knowledge" about what the values were likely to mean. So, if you collecting temperature readings and got 35, you wouldn't say 35 is just a symbol, you'd say it meant the temperature was sensed at 35 degrees (and you wouldn't say it meant you had 35 TVs!).
Moving on to "information": giving context (or recognising context) is important, but for me it is only part of adding value. Since I have no prospect of using the fact you have a 35inch colour TV in your home for any decision/action, I'm happy to call it information. However, there is a good chance that I might need to 'know' that the first train to London is at 0700 to decide on, e.g. attending a meeting, but it since that need is uncertain, I might call it "information".
You wrote, "Knowledge is to understand the information and make our decision or judgement on the basis of information.". If the word "information" did not appear in the definition I'd be much happier.
I think your examples of "knowledge are great" because they have lots of stuff I need to 'know' to make a variety of decisions. But, the example work because we share a common culture: we know about provision of TV services in the UK, we know about hotels (at least share a little knowledge), we know about a variety of real-life scenarios. In a sense, that is a problem for discussing these ideas. What happens if we are both put into a hospital to make decisions on emergency admissions of patients? I have no experience of making decisions like that, and I suppose you don't either. How would we judge the value of the stuff (data/information/knowledge) that came our way? Of course, because we couldn't make such judgments, we would not be put in a situation by a hospital to make decisions. In that kind of circumstance, we would not be able to distinguish between data, information and knowledge. If we were IT people who had to build a system (i.e. a KM system) to help make those decisions, would a discussion of data/information/knowledge help?
You conclude by saying, "Over all data, information and knowledge are interchangeable. Data may be knowledge for someone and vice versa". (From what you write earlier about data/information/knowledge, I did not expect this conclusion, so you need to explain your position beeter.) I agree with this as far as it goes, but want you to add in context of an organisation and its values and its need for decisions, not the individual's.
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