Posted by Bryan Gladstone on January 10, 2000 at 12:02:03:

In Reply to: Knowledge Elicitation & Resistant Culture posted by allan taylor on December 08, 1999 at 08:48:41:

I have enjoyed this enormously interesting moral debate. Poor Al Taylor has certainly come in for some stick. Isn't this all a bit precious. Of course, stealing knowledge from unsuspecting knowledge workers is unethical. Alan clearly knows that. He also knows that there are alot of unethical employers out there. Go back and look at the motivation behind half the tacit-to-explicit initiatives you have seen. what are they about, if not taking the knowledge and the power away from the proles? Let us not be too holy. KM is about power, because all management is ultimately about power. The project that alan has talked about will almost certainly fail, because it so directly seeks to strip knowledge from senior knowledge workers and they will not let themselves be stripped. But how many companies have been trying and, often, succeeding in doing just that?

In answer to Alan's original question - No, Al, there is no way you can fool people into giving up their knowledge. They will share it if the rewards in terms of promotion, job satisfaction, job security and salary motivate them to share. As for all the suggested tech-based solutions, they may help your client get more access to information, but the knowledge will remain untouched and untouchable. People are not quite as stupid as your client and lots of other clients seem to think.

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