Posted by Riva Gianluca on December 17, 2001 at 11:10:59:

In Reply to: Tacit knowledge practices posted by Denham on December 16, 2001 at 22:07:55:

Hi, Denham, glad to hear from you,
Yes, you're perfectly right. We have plans, programs, software to store, share, transfer knowledge, and at the same time we don't know how to create knowledge, we don't even know what knowledge actually is (I've got my idea but I know is my personal concept). It's pretty ironic. It's like you're trying to meet the partner of your dreams through a thick fog, and when you make it go away, there's nothing behind...You know I have quit a strong critical approach. This is not because I consider knowledge managemnt useless or unimportant, but rather I think what has been known so far about the topics is a little trivial: in my opinion all the big discoveries are ahead of us, and maybe just a touch away...Let me question again some basic assumptions of a commun knowledge management article
1)We live in the age of knowledge. I think every time has been an age of knowledge. There's always been a relationship between mankind and some kind of knowledge. The Romans, when invented a system to turn a naval battle into a land one to defeat Carthago, managed knowledge very effectively (and also they introduced a radical innovation which has been kept for ages).
2)We've got knowledge workers. Well, as you an read in "do knowledge workers really exist?" this is a label depending on organizational strategy
I'd like to discuss your statements. Well, I don't know the first two authors you've been quoting, but I do know Brown&Duguid, Weick and Wenger. I think we have a lot of pieces to connect. There's plenty of studies showing useful finding for further understanding of knowledge management, but most practitioners (I don't absolutely mean you) are simply too busy with their busy to care...If we could connect a little psichological, sociological, managerial researchs we could gain a great design. If we could connect practioners and academics we could get greater radical innovations.
Do you want some examples of this good findings which question the way knowledge management is dealt at present?
I can show you some:
a)RBV theory stating you need rare and unreproducible resouces to gain competitive advantage, whereas firms are all buying the same software
b)The complicated and old organizational learning theories show knowledge is a complicated issue concerning experience, information, sociology, power, politics, ethnicity. For a brilliant review of the various perspectives read Easterby-Smith "Disciplines of organizational leaning: Contributions and Critiques" Human Relations Vol.50 N.9 pp.1085-1111
c)The debate between olism and atomism is useless. We have people and organizations, individual and societies, it's not important (and impossible) to state if the whole is more important than the single individual, it's more crucial to understand how people can interact with the organization to achieve results meaningful both for the organization and the person. For istance, Axtell & others ("Shopfloor innovation: facilitating the suggestion and implementation of ideas" Journal of occupational and organizational psychology, Vol.73 n.3 pp.265-285) have demonstrated that creativity is more an individual issue whereas innovation is an organizational matter, but for the interactionist approach also creativity is about interaction between organization and people (Amabile is the leading thinker).
d)There is no best practice, there is a practice performed by specific people in a specific environment. You shoul try to evaluate the ties between people, practice ad the environment before try transferring it. For example, Volvo tried to transfer effective cellular production and skill-based evaluation from Sweden to UK and Belgium, and it failed because in Continental Europe there is not the partnership between employers, unions and public administration as in Scandinavia (Wallace, "Societal effects meet sectoral effects: work organization, competencies and payment systems in the Volvo Commercial Vehicle Division" International Journal of Human Resource Management Vol.11 n.4 August 2000, pp.714-735)
e)Strassman and other studies show there's no connection between IT expense and profitability
f)Stein&Trevino& Webster ("Making connections: Complementary Influences on Communication,Media Choices, Attitudes, and Use" Organization Science Vol.11 n.2 March/April 2000, pp.163-182) have shown the way you use a means of communication is affected not only by the intrinsic qualities of the technology or of the task at hand, but there's a social meaning connected. Some people consider e-mail cold, others hot and effective. A firm should make a little survey before buying the latest software, to make sure it suits its people!!!
As we can see, we've got many pieces of a PUZZLE. We could build the puzzle if we spoke to each other...but have a look around you and be honest. WHO CARES KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING AS LONG AS THEY CAN MAKE MONET AND SELL SOFTWARE?
REGARDS

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