What are we to make of Wilson’s assertion that information is tangible and knowledge is both process and the essence of a person’s own being? It is certainly not possible to share one’s “essence of being,” and absolutely absurd to think of managing it, as in the phrase “knowledge management.” Wilson’s argument against the possibility of sharing knowledge is solid if one thinks of
“knowledge transfer” as moving one’s essence to another. However, one might also consider what happens in the process of sharing a “knowledge object or
artifact.” The object is a representation of knowledge held within a person, but not knowledge itself. A knowledge object might be a photograph of a work of art, a videotape of a talk where the speaker is explaining some of what he or she knows; a written report of lessons learned through an experience, or it might be a graphical flow chart of procedures that had been known by one person before making that procedure explicit by drawing it. It is common for a speaker of some repute or expertise to visit an organization and share what he or she knows with the audience in one place at one point in time through a presentation. If an organizational member is not able to attend the talk that day, the opportunity to experience the presentation is lost. However, if the talk can be captured in an audio and/or video file, and if the presentation slides can be placed on an intranet or Website, then a version of the presentation is available through the knowledge object for review and re-use. Seeing a video file of the presentation does not have the immediacy or energy as one experiences by being in an audience, for example, but at least it can be a good substitute for being there. This is where knowledge sharing meets knowledge management and where technology can assist in making knowledge objects available.
Writers often use “knowledge” and the management or sharing of knowledge as a figure of speech when what they really mean is creation and use of “knowledge objects” or the “representation of knowledge,” or even the process of knowing itself. Seeing or writing about “knowledge” as a synecdoche, that is, a part representing a whole, makes more sense than using “knowledge” literally as that which we know and hold within our being.
So when a writer states, “we want to share the ‘knowledge’ of our employees,”
what he or she might really mean is “we would like to teach each other the lessons we have learned or the skills that are necessary to function well in this organization” (Hislop, 2002). Clearly, one person can never teach another everything he or she knows, but there is a legitimate process of teaching and learning where the skilled or “master” instructs the less skilled or novice in a skill or subject matter and therefore shares part of what the more experienced person knows. “Knowledge management” might also mean the management of knowledge objects to aid in the creation of new knowledge in order to encourage innovation, or KM could refer to a way of managing so that the constituent members of an organization become willing to share both the information and the methods that help people become more knowledgeable (Ipe, 2003). For example, a manager might teach new employees how to conduct productive and appropriate meetings so that meetings are used only when it makes sense to bring people together. Managers can support coffee break rooms or on-site cafeterias that encourage people to meet and share what they know. Research has shown that when organizations lose these informal meeting spaces (when employees all work off site or telecommute, for instance), critical information exchange can be lost. When a computer firm mandated that all sales people work out of their homes instead of having a company office, the sales force was less able to give critical feedback from
customers to marketing staff or product developers as they had done in the past over lunch in the company cafeteria. An online feedback system had to be created to capture this customer feedback because face to face interaction among people in different divisions had been virtually eliminated (McInerney, 1999).
Organizations benefit when senior employees share knowledge that has been gained through experience, education, trial and error, and research with novices so that newcomers can presumably make fewer mistakes and be more comfortable knowing the accepted way things are done. There is also a need for new hires to feel like insiders with a sense of belonging. Receiving advice and information from senior staff can encourage confidence and ease a newcomer into the culture of the organization. Huysman & de Wit (2003) studied ten large companies and examined how they managed the sharing of knowledge to understand the variety of methods used and how successful they were. The results highlighted the structure of knowledge sharing in four organizations:
Schipol Airport, ING Barings, Cap Gemini, IBM and other commercial as well as not for profit firms. The researchers found that programs recognizing KM as a flow of knowledge were more successful than those viewing knowledge management as stock (or collections) of knowledge. “Flow of knowledge”
in this case meant knowledge being shared among organization members.
Another finding from the study demonstrated that implicit practices are more successful than directive ones. In other words, if there is an ongoing climate of knowledge sharing, chances are that knowledge will be shared more willingly than if the manager forces employees to share knowledge through directives.
There is also a need to share knowledge laterally with staff of comparable status when expertise is needed across departments or organizational units, especially when there is a merger or acquisition. However, many organizations experience problems with this exchange of knowledge as documented by a study completed by Ernst & Young (Ruggles, 1998). In a survey of 432 companies in the U.S. the consulting firm found that only 13% of the firms thought that they were doing a good job of sharing knowledge internally from one unit to another.
There can be many problems inherent in sharing knowledge especially if the organizational culture is more competitive than collaborative, and certainly a good many companies depend on competition (e.g., sales commissions, attorneys’ billable hours, consultancy work, and winning contracts) to survive and succeed. For much of the business world competition is a way of life, often associated with business behaviors in the U. S. but now characteristic of many global businesses, and if workers, executives, and departments are all in competition with each other, there is little motivation to share knowledge. The assumption is that knowledge is power, so on the surface it may seem counter intuitive to share knowledge in a competitive firm, because by doing so, the competition gains more power. It is the long term benefits that everyone gains from sharing knowledge that make it strategic
to do so. While one may argue that such knowledge sharing depends on the organizational context and type of knowledge, processes may be enacted to overcome potential barriers, for example, the approach to knowledge markets proposed by Davenport and Prusak (1998) in which buyers, sellers and brokers interact to exchange knowledge in the accomplishment of organizational tasks. Davenport and Prusak suggest that trust is a critical factor in these transactions, stating that it can “trump the other factors that positively affect the efficiency of knowledge markets,” (p. 34). Trust can be created by being visible, ubiquitous, and representing the engagement of and support from senior management (pp. 34–35).
Efforts to change work processes in the 1980’s and early 1990’s to make them more efficient and responsive to customer needs, generally known as Business Process Re-engineering (BPR), required making those processes visible; and the reluctance of many employees to make known their individual work practices highlighted the difficulties that are inherent in sharing individual knowledge of workers (Suchman, 1995). Despite the emphasis on competition in many workplaces, though, collaboration and partnership can be positive necessities, as the airline industry, newspapers, and car manufacturers have learned through their alliances with producers and providers. From the perspective of the business climate in the early 2000’s, these collaborations arose out of necessity as much as strategic management, since without the cooperative ventures, some businesses, even large and well established ones, would not have survived the harsh economic environment of corporate downsizing and budget reduction. At the heart of collaboration is an understanding that parties involved share what they know and trust their partners, even if they were competitors in the past.