Many organizations, including universities, in the 1990s chose to use knowl- edge management systems to improve the efficiency and service quality of their operations. As indicated in Chapter IV, these intended gains in efficiency and quality have remained elusive at best. Why, then, have organizations continued to pursue such goals? The concept of an academic technocracy presented is
central to my analysis. In the previous chapter, my colleagues and I discuss three consequences of higher education institutions’ efforts to respond to the pressures of academic capitalism and technocracy: the digital restructuring of academic labor, the unproven efficiency argument of academic technology, and the emergence of “technological bloat.” Each of these phenomena may be giving rise to an “academic technocracy.” In part, this chapter will present data that helps to support these hypotheses, but, more importantly, the chapter will incorporate Hakken’s (2003) idea of “knowledge management fatigue syn- drome” as an explanation of how an institution-wide knowledge management implementation project could continue for more than a decade.
More than 10 years ago a Research I university in the southwest (Southwest University) proclaimed in a strategic planning document for information tech- nology that it would “leap forward utilizing information technology to fulfill the University’s goal of becoming the best land grant institution in the country.”
Certainly, the goals of this project were grand. While it is not necessarily shocking to see a university desiring to improve its status in the U.S. higher education system, the study university does demonstrate a new dimension in how it intends to create this increased prestige. “Southwest University”
intended that an information technology system would create the change needed to achieve the goal. Initially, the implementation process was intended to take only two years; today, after more than a decade, the project has yet to be fully realized. As discussed above, Southwest University envisioned a knowledge management system that would allow students and staff alike the ability to access essential data at any time, from any place. This access, of course, would be attainable because of the Internet and other advanced information technology. Hakken (2003) suggests that the early to mid 1990s was the prime time for such assertions because at that time knowledge management was the “killer application” that would justify the massive organi- zational investment in automated information technologies: “It [knowledge management] fed (and fed off) the media hype about the ‘knowledge society’”
(p. 55). In the early 1990s, it was reasonable to assume that a university attempting to improve its ranking would look to an all-encompassing, inte- grated knowledge management system to achieve its goals, as was the case for Southwest University. Hakken (2003) adds that as a result of the rhetoric of the information society, the New Economy, and globalization, “it was not difficult to convince the typical manager that highly touted information technology, as it got more complex, would provide an infrastructure for ‘sharing the knowledge’
among distributed staff” (p. 65).
Given the initial enthusiasm and high expectations that a new knowledge management system would solve all of the university’s data access, manipula- tion, storage, and, particularly, integration problems, it is surprising that Southwest did not complete the project reasonably close to its initial two-year timeline. It can be argued, however, that the failure to complete the project in a timely manner was the result of knowledge management fatigue syndrome (Hakken, 2003). As conceptualized by Hakken, knowledge management fatigue syndrome results when enthusiasm for knowledge management solu- tions evaporates, projects are stalled, and discussion about them is stifled.
Hakken offers five technical and conceptual explanations for the emergence of knowledge management fatigue syndrome in organizations: (a) the short shelf life of automated information technology slogans; (b) the overselling of prod- ucts in a crowded marketplace; (c) continuing technical difficulties in using Web-based interfaces to merge complex information databases; (d) the inappropriateness of IT products designed for one purpose being sold for another; and, (e) the failure of many KM projects to take sufficient account for the social. Generally, technical explanations tend to be more apparent from outside an organization, while the conceptual explanation is more easily viewed from inside an organization.
Hakken’s first technical explanation evokes Birnbaum’s (2000) concept of management fads in higher education, where higher education institutions adopt popular management trends from the private sector before they have been proven effective. According to Birnbaum, by the time higher education orga- nizations have adopted such practices, private businesses already have moved on to a new strategy because the initial one has lost its luster. In combining these two ideas, the first technical explanation for knowledge management fatigue syndrome would be understood as short-term information technology fads.
Hakken (2003) explains that although knowledge itself still might be important to organizations, the term “knowledge management” can cease to have any importance and is, therefore, no longer “fashionable.”
Over-competitiveness in a potentially lucrative market defines Hakken’s (2003) technical explanation for knowledge management fatigue syndrome.
That is, technology firms in their desire to capture market share with the appearance of “cutting edge” technology would simply repackage data and information networking products—without substantive modifications—as
“knowledge management” products. Knowledge management in name only, these products were not designed to “address the problems of creating the trust, commitment, and community-life feel of teams/thick knowledge network-
ing, on greater, more complex scales” (p. 65). Once again, this technical explanation for knowledge management fatigue syndrome is also related to Birnbaum’s (2000) conception of higher education management fads. Too often higher education organizations seek easy answers in a new management style or system for what is a complex human issue. In the case of knowledge management, this second explanation illuminates the problem that information technology is unable to offer an easy solution to complex problems involving both data and human responses to it and to each other through it. Hakken (2003) suggests that too often inappropriate products were sold as knowledge management solutions.
The third technical explanation is mirrored in the dot com bust at the turn of the century. Initially, the Internet (and networking itself) was championed as the new, efficient model for all businesses and organizations. Unfortunately, that promise was found to be lacking in many instances. One such problem was the relative inability of Web-based products to always integrate large and complex sets of data; let alone doing it instantaneously from remote locations. Each of these three technical explanations, then, gives rise to the fourth. No technol- ogy—hardware or software—can be a panacea, the correct and efficient answer to all problems.
Hakken (2003) also offers one overarching conceptual explanation for knowl- edge management fatigue syndrome: “the failure of many KM projects to take sufficient account for the social” (p. 66). This conceptual explanation is closely related to the second technical explanation. Not only a means to integrating vast amounts of data into useful knowledge, knowledge management systems also need to integrate and coordinate various units in an organization, units which are often territorial about the data they control and the power and leverage such data grants them. To function properly, a knowledge management system must foster a real sense of cooperation and teamwork among units that may have no history of such interactions. This human function is much more complex than even the technical challenges facing knowledge management systems. Through both technical and conceptual frames, Hakken (2003) offers a means to examine the implementation of a fully integrated student information system at Southwestern University.