Posted by Yogesh Malhotra on July 21, 1997 at 22:43:30:

In Reply to: Re: The issue of sharing knowledge posted by Joe Rizzo on July 21, 1997 at 17:12:07:

Very well said: "theory is one thing, but if one cannot put into practice, so what?" One caveat, however, needs to be observed about the 'quick recipes' that are generally hyped as the 'silver bullets' to solve all or most of organization's problems.

Specifically, how does one know if the propagated 'practice' is 'witchcraft', as underscored in the book Witchdoctors, or anything more than that. Or as observed on their site:"Do any of them really know the cure f or what ails corporate America, or are they all full of hot air?" In the same tone, Mintzberg, in his Harvard Business Review article, Musings on Management, observes that one needs to take the quick "how to's" offered by the 'turnaround doctors' with a grain of salt.

Given this issue, one may perhaps scratch beneath the surface to distinguish the chaff from the wheat. How does one go about doing that? By having a 'deep understanding' (Senge) of organizational, behavioral, and technological (besides many other) issues that provide the context within which most organizational phenomena occur. 'Deep change' requires a 'deep understanding' of the issues and needs to recognize that " Solutions...are a temporary event, specific to a context, developed through the relationship of persons and circumstances" (Wheatley).

Allow me to make some observations to further the dialog. I welcome your comments and inputs based on theory (if your strength is in theory) and/or practice (if your forte is practice). However, may I suggest to please take the liberty of elaborating your points, the "how to's" beyond the status of the physician's prescription pills that need to be ingested without an deep understanding of the symptoms and/or problems. You may make theoretical, empirical (practical), or common sense arguments to communicate the import of your issues.

Here is a brief list of issues to begin with, particularly with emphasis on the 'new world of re- everything' suggested by the likes of Brian Arthur, George Huber (based on empirical 'real world' research), and Nadler and Tushman [most references available at http://www.kmnetwork.com/kmrefs.htm] :

Knowledge is present in people - we already understand that based on the very extensive discussion that has occurred in this forum, and as noted by many others such as West Churchman, Ikujiro Nonaka, Karl Sveiby, Tom Stewart, etc.

Now, getting on to the question of expertise. How does one determine a person is a 'knowledge expert,' especially for the world of 're-everything' which puts a premium on anticipation of surprise over prediction of future based on yesterday's solutions? (Drucker, Ghoshal & Bartlett, Kerr). What kinds/categories of knowledge is amenable to such elicitation from 'knowledge experts'?

How does the expert present one's knowledge through the stream of consciousness technique? How is this technique different from, or similar to, the notion of dialog (Bohm, Senge, de Geus), or to the 'spiral of knowledge creation' suggested by Nonaka & Takeuchi? Let me also reiterate Churchman's and Sveiby's issue with your assertion about "taking the knowledge content" and making it available to the organization.

How does one clean the knowledge content, given that what you may clean may depend upon your assumptions of the past, and the future may not compute from the past (Drucker, Ghoshal & Bartlett, Bartlett & Ghoshal)? What kinds of 'filters' are you going to use for the process? How do you reconcile this 'cleaning' with the critical need for Hegelian and Kantian inquiry processes that have been articulated in the paper Knowledge Management in Inquiring Organizations.

Perhaps, some of your points may be illustrated by giving examples of the subject matter experts, particularly noting how you go about converting the tacit knowledge of those experts into explicit knowledge that is then stored in 'technological repositories.' How about extrapolating on 'what' is stored in the databases or intranets? How does one take care of the ongoing renewal of the 'stored knowledge,' [if one can call it knowledge at all given the reservations such as those expressed by Drucker, Churchman, Sveiby, Bartlett & Ghoshal]? Or, is it unnecessary in the proposed paradigm?

How does one consider the notion of knowledge - isolated from the issues of meaning, context, and action as suggested in the paper mentioned above?

Hopefully, by underscoring the observations made by several experienced practitioners [in the process of trying to elicit convergent validity of the observations], I have been able to emphasize the caveats made by the practitioners for the practice of knowledge management.

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