A Critical Review of a Statement In Line With Systems Thinking and Strategic Knowledge

Document Type:Essay

Subject Area:Business

Document 1

(2015) “Before we measure something we must ask whether we understand what it is we are trying to measure. ” Their understanding was that within any given organization, they have to be certain features that require being measured for the organization to be considered as being effective and this could only be made possible if the organization had control of these factors to enable it to run them effectively. The understanding of this quote can be based on the fact that any organization or individual would like to have sufficient control of their operation, which also applies on the general aspect of an individual, and making sure that they understand what they have and how it can be measured. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to make sure that it looks deeper within this statement from the perspective of a given organization, which in this case will be Toyota Motor Company.

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Toyota is a global company that has been in operation for over two decades and had its subsidiaries in most of the regions across the world. In most cases, the knowledge management aspect within an organization is approaching from the basis of the Dimension, the strategies that may be used to achieve it and also the motivations of the concept at large (Dalkir and Beaulieu, 2017). Another notable factor in understanding the concept of knowledge management is that the discipline is that the discipline mainly focused on the objectives of the organization at large. It tries to ensure that aspects such as innovation, competitive advantage, sharing of information, integration and the continuous development and improvement of an organization are effectively met. In general, this ensures that the organization is presented with an opportunity to learn and grow, for both its employees and the management (Liebowitz and Frank, 2016).

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Therefore, it can be concluded that knowledge management within any given organization is an important feature to integrate for the effective development of the organization, especially considering that the business environment has become extensively unpredictable due to the integration of technology and other factors that stimulate the changes that are realized within the business environment. These refer to a set of activities that add up to produce the firm’s deliverables. What requires immediate attention is the management of the business processes while the challenge arises in the idea that the most of the business processes arise form cross-functional processes since there is more than one functional area un the business rather than many functional areas of a company that are integrated to produce deliverables.

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Since the 1950s, Herbert Simon work has been used to come up with a process model that can be used for decision making and is credited as the beginning of the scientific stud of decision support systems (). It marks the beginning of developing a framework for the development of a strategic knowledge base in a firm. Today, the ability to gain knowledge and applying it is perceived as the most critical aspect of the organization’s capital. However, with the increasing globalization and demand, it began setting up operations in other markets all over the world. Such expansion brought about management problems of its resources. To solve these issues, the management began to make use of knowledge base upon realizing its need and significance.

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It came with significant growth in its operations and therefore began to utilize other advanced measures such as total quality management, lean production, among others. These approaches helped the company in being able to create a niche for themselves within the rising markets. Intellectual capital The intellectual capital of a company may be considered as an aspect of knowledge management as it is defined as the intangible value of a business that covers the human people, the value of the relationships and also the structural capital of the organization (). Therefore, the intellectual capital of a company is of great importance as it is one of the components that an organization requires to operate effectively. As such, understanding the basis of the employees with regards to their academic achievements, their skills, and capabilities, as well as their effectiveness to the organization.

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in relation to Toyota Motors Company, the intellectual capital may be considered to be the value of the business which can be assessed based on skills and capabilities of the organization in addition to the relational capita- the relationships within the organization and the structural capital – what is left within the organization if the employees are taken out of the picture (Khalique et al. Intellectual capital is intangible, and this is an aspect that an organization ought to understand before it plans to measure or effectively evaluate it. This will enable it to have a strong basis to measure its operations and do so effectively. Performance measurement Performance measurement, which may be considered as the collection, analysis and reporting of information that is related to the performance of employees, a team or an organization in general (Landy, Zedeck, and Cleveland, 2017) is also another important aspect that relates to the general concept that is presented by Grey et al.

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Organizations often evaluate their performance to ensure that they are in line with their annual or strategic objectives and as such, it is essential to understand performance before getting to measure it. For Toyota, the performance of the company can be evaluated based on the number of cars that are manufactured or sold within a given time period or even a given timeframe. As such, in order to understand the concept of performance within the company, the company may set goals and objectives based on this and evaluate the performance on whether the goals and objectives have been achieved. Therefore, the importance of measuring within Toyota or any other organization, in that case, is to ensure that the organization has control over the aspects that it is measuring.

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In conclusion, understanding something before one opts to measure it is of great importance. It ensures that one has a broader perspective of what they are measuring and how it will impact the organization or the employees in general. Aspects such as knowledge management, performance measurement, social networking and environmental communities have to be understood before they are measured as one may opt to measure them and end up measuring the wrong thing. In the case of Toyota, this is the ad it should be made possible by focusing on the positive impact that eh measuring the aspect will have on the organization and its operations. Hasegawa, T. Recent projects and initiatives at Toyota Archives.  Comma, 2016(1-2), 149-154. Khalique, M. , Bontis, N.

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