Knowledge Management as a foreman’s challenge

The purpose of this study was to orientate to the theory of Knowledge Management and to investigate how people who are foremen perceive their own profession, what are good leadership practices in their opinion and how they view the means provided by information technology as a helping tool in their profession. A secondary purpose was to deepen the writer’s own leadership skills and achieve occupational development.

Knowledge Management as a concept does not only relate to innovative work but also to how an individual’s own expertise can be extracted and utilized to provide business value and competitive advantage.

A foreman is a part of the middle management within an organization and it is the foreman who has the role to create synergy between the organization’s management and workers. This equation produces the fact that foremen face a number of challenges while trying to implement the goals set by the organization’s management. With their own actions and examples, foremen must be able to deploy the knowledge and expertise of workers in such a way that it serves the organization efficiently.

This study is qualitative and theory based by nature. The theory part of the study is based on literature discussing Knowledge Management. Also a questionnaire survey was conducted in the study. The questionnaire survey enabled direct information and opinion collecting from people who are foremen by their profession. The survey included such questions that would state the participant’s views of good leadership skills, their own view of being a foreman and how information technology solutions are seen by them.

The process of the study was challenging yet rewarding. The goals set were mainly achieved especially in the field of the writer’s own occupational development. The results of the questionnaire survey state that many of the respondents are actively trying to create open-minded organizational environments. Many of them also aim at creating trust in working environments and thus help to create new knowledge and spread the existing knowledge. Solutions provided by means of information technology were mainly seen as helpful and intensifying; however, some respondents observed that information technology solutions create dependency. The end results of the questionnaire survey are not absolutely fool proof and cannot be generalized due to the small number of participants.

As a development idea, Knowledge Management should be implemented more efficiently from the codification point of view in the writer’s own working environment. This would make information and knowledge more easily achievable and they would not be restricted to working hours only.