Quality Information and Knowledge Management (Textbook Binding)

~ (Author), Yang W. Lee (Author), Richard Y. Wang (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Three leaders in intellectual capital management, Dr. Kuan-Tsae Huang, Professor Yang W. Lee, and Professor Richard Y. Wang, show how information can be assessed, evaluated, managed, and promulgated to make your business more responsive, efficient, and effective. They illustrate their ideas with real-world examples of companies that have faced million-dollar losses due to poor data management, as well as industry leaders who have prospered through Total Data Quality Management.

From the Back Cover

* Manage your information as a product
* Capitalize your knowledge as assets
* Survive and prosper in the digital economy

One of your company's most valuable assets is going to waste!

Whatever business you're in, chances are you've never really assessed how you manage your most valuable product-information.

Now three leaders in intellectual capital management, Dr. Kuan-Tsae Huang, Professor Yang W. Lee, and Professor Richard Y. Wang, show how information can be assessed, evaluated, managed, and promulgated to make your business more responsive, efficient, and effective. They illustrate their ideas with real-world examples of companies that have faced million-dollar losses due to poor data management, as well as industry leaders who have prospered through Total Data Quality Management. Topics include:

* Fostering an environment for knowledge creation and sharing, especially in today's global businesses
* Transforming tacit understanding into explicit knowledge
* Capitalizing on organizational insights and creating quality information from organizational experience
* Creating customized solutions using intellectual capital, knowledge reuse, and data mining
* Defining the Information Product Manager's job description and responsibilities
* Making the most of your intranet and other corporate information systems

So you've spent millions on information systems to deliver knowledge throughout your company. How do you know you're not just sending bad information faster? Data quality management can bring great rewards in customer service, productivity, and responsiveness. Lack of data quality can cost your company millions. The authors take you step by step through assessing your information assets, planning and implementing quality controls, and institutionalizing continuous information quality improvement efforts. Learn how to structure knowledge management so that your company thrives even in times of high employee turnover.

Turn information into a product, not a by-product, and transform it into profitable knowledge.

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Product Details

• Textbook Binding: 250 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall; 1st edition (October 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130101419
• ISBN-13: 978-0130101419
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,410,874 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Timely, insightful dialogue on quality and knowledge, March 6, 1999

By	Lou Agosta ([e-mail]) (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This book succeeds in promoting a dialogue about information quality and knowledge management. This is a timely and useful undertaking. It contains an original synthesis of best of class ideas on information, quality, and knowledge. In a way, it is an argument by analogy. The language of total quality management of physical products is applied in detail to information and information products (knowledge). This can be seen in the way information is described as being "fit for use" (p. 43). This is the language of the uniform commercial code (UCC) where material products are "fit for use," a use incidentally which is often covered by warranty and conditions of legal liability (not studied here). Chapter One proposes that by boot-strapping quality information the creation of knowledge occurs. The implication: knowledge is information that satisfies the quality attributes so that it is fit for use. In my reading, knowledge is explained as - reduced to - quality information. Chapter Two makes the case for managing information as a product -- the product being reusable knowledge. Chapter Three drills down into the sixteen quality attributes of information - attributes like complete, unambiguous, meaningful,correctness. This builds on the work of one of the authors (1). A framework is provided for formalizing how computer systems succeed (or fail) in representing the world about which data is captured. This perspective on information quality changed my way of viewing information. The authors claim is the framework is ontological (p. 35) - having to do with the order and structure of reality in the broadest sense (p. 35). The authors may or may not be familiar with the early Wittgenstein and his reliance on Hertz's model building in physics (2). Nevertheless, this framework, in my opinion, is a productive and engaging one. Chapter Four looks at the survey method used to gather intelligence on how an organization is performing in terms of quality information. Chapters Five through Nine turn to the explicit dimension of knowledge management. Experience with Intranets by knowledge workers at IBM serve as examples. Here we get a new definition of knowledge as a capacity to perform -- a "core competency," which is explicitly invoked. The authors specify ten strategies for knowledge management, which include establishing methods, managerial visibility, collaboration, sharing best practices, and related. Thomas Stewart's (3) distinction between intellectual capital as human, structural, and customer capital is deployed and adds value to the discussion (p. 134). The text is peppered with many useful references, and it is a minor oversight, easily corrected, that Stewart is not included in them. Nevertheless, the fundamental insight endures -- the royal road from information to knowledge crosses the bridge of quality. In my opinion, the authors' work has enough integrity and coherence to withstand criticisms. The way they write about "hardening" knowledge is misleading. It is true that we do speak of "hard data." But "hardening" knowledge is easily confused with organizational Alzheimer's disease (p. 92) referenced elsewhere (clearly undesirable). The "hardening," however, is a positive feature. It refers to indexing, ormalization, preparation for reuse, and storing as an accessible asset in a library or database. That would ordinarily be described as the "systemization" of the knowledge. Further, no where do the authors say, "OK, here is our definition of knowledge . . ." Instead, several useful working definitions are provided: knowledge as quality information, knowledge as competency, knowledge as a "hardened," systematic product. The authors distinguish between "know-how," "know-what," and "know-why" knowledge (p. 62). This is a useful classification between factual, instrumental, and explanatory kinds of knowledge. Note, however, that each presumes an implicit definition of knowledge. In the final analysis, the most original definition of knowledge provided is -- When information has a suitable number of quality features, then that information becomes knowledge in the full sense. Knowledge is made relative to information; but gains in engagement with real world contexts. It acquires the dignity and respect we accord something when we say "we know . . ." rather than "we hope . . ." or "we believe . . ." While the theoretically inclined may find many problems with this approach, the result is a practical success. Knowledge is operationalized in pragmatic and instrumental terms; and that is indeed a valuable result. References (1) Wang, Richard Y. 'A product perspective on total data quality management,' Communications of the ACM, 4, 2 (Feb 1998), 58-65). See Computing Reviews, July 1998, Vol. 39, No. 7, p. 384 [9807-0554]. (3) Stewart, Thomas A. Intellectual capital: the new wealth of organizations , Doubleday, New York, 1997. See Computing Reviews, December 1997, Vol. 38, No. 12, p. 617 [9712-0981]. (2) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, trans. D.F. Pears and B.F. McGuinness, Humanities Press, New York, 1971.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on the subject., June 9, 1999

By A Customer

This the best book on the subject of data and information quality! The authors have provided us we the means to implement a practical and simple way to achieve data and information quality with the notion that data are products. The emphasis of IT is shifted towards supporting the production of data and information products. Data and information as products, also encourages interactions with consumers of these products. The authors illustrate the importance of this with long chapters devoted to consumers surveys about information timeliness, packaging, content, meaning, and packaging. My organization was fortunate enough to have Dr. Wang offer a seminar based on his book. In the seminar, Dr. Wang emphasised the importance of data and information as products whose quality ia judged by access, interpretation, content, and timeliness. The depth of knowledge and pratical use of basic quality principles to achieve consumenr satisfaction is well demonstrated by Dr. Wang and his co-authors. As all of us must live in a world where data, information and knowledge are commodities of trade, this book is a necessary guide for success.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent book for business professionals and academic., April 21, 1999

By	[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

The book introduces how to apply information and knowledge to improve the organization's productivitiy. The authors not only provided soltuions with their industry practices but also armed with theoretical/business models. An excellent book that is suitable for both business professionals and academic.