INGENIEUR
in establishing good practices in Total Asset
Management (TAM). It has been given the task
of acting as the Secretariat to the committee and
formulating policies and introducing best practices
by providing systems, standards and a technical
consultancy.
LEARNING CULTURE
Top management and officers in PWD have started
to generate a new environment of a learning
culture related to asset and facilities management.
A learning culture is part of the corporate
vision that provides direction to achieving an
organisation's goals by tolerating and encouraging
knowledge related activities such as interacting
and exploring, creating a community of mutual
sharing of information and ideas with a sense of
involvement and contribution among employees.
Thus, an environment that encourages knowledge
application will create a learning culture that
consists of the interaction between employees and
customers, encourage a desire to seek assistance
in learning, and exploring new knowledge or
resources. In PWD, the organisation always
encourages its employees to learn and practice to
enhance their knowledge and competencies.
INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL
Referring to Figure 1, a learning culture creates
intangible knowledge that in turn creates a stock of
knowledge about asset and facilities management
in the form of intellectual capital. Intellectual
capital forms a strategic approach in defining the
source of knowledge which is not yet codified (tacit
knowledge) and consolidated, namely human
capital, social capital and organisational capital.
Tacit knowledge is a form of knowledge that cannot
be verbalised (action-based and unformulated),
which is difficult to capture, codify, adopt, and
distribute. In other words, the knower and the
known are united in action (Nonaka & Takeuchi
1995). Whereas, explicit knowledge is easy to
articulate, capture, and distribute in different
formats such as procedures, scientific formula,
norms, rules, forms, specifications, manuals, or
textbooks (Bhatt 2000; March 1991).
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VOL
2018
VOL 74
55 APRIL-JUNE
JUNE 2013
B a s e d on the G overnment ’s A s s e t
Management Policy, human capital is the first
source of information to obtain the idea and
concept of maintaining the Government’s assets.
PWD as the Secretariat of the Government
Asset Management Committee started to
collect personal thoughts, ideas, skills and
capabilities of individual employees and their
experience in managing maintenance and FM
contracts for Government assets. This was
added to the information collected from the
social capital through the knowledge embedded
in organisational networks of relationships,
including those of Ministries and agencies;
and interactions among individuals. Valuable
information was also gathered through
organisational capital whereby the experiences
and ideas that were documented and codified
in the form of databases for the scope of work
in maintenance and FM contracts, manuals
for daily routines, organisational structures,
and processes of implementing the task were
collected. Additionally, PWD has sent 60 of its
officers to further study a Master of Asset and
Facilities Management at Universiti Teknologi
Malaysia (UTM). The purpose is to obtain as
much information that is needed to develop good
practices in asset and facilities management in
the Government sector.
KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
The intellectual capital gathered was the basis of
developing knowledge management in asset and
facilities management. Knowledge management
is defined as the action used by an organisation
in optimising the use of its knowledge resources,
both tacit and explicit knowledge (Sabherwal
& Becerra-Fernandez 2003). Knowledge
management consists of three main components:
acquisition, conversion, and application of
knowledge. Knowledge serves as the basis for
knowledge management to be utilised in the
implementation of knowledge processes which
consists of the acquisition of the diversity of
knowledge, converting the tacit knowledge into
explicit knowledge, and facilitating the distribution
and application of the knowledge through
transferring and sharing.