occurred in the consulting companies when they embraced knowledge management (Wickramasinghe, 2003). This was certainly no easy task, but the benefits have been significant, in fact the respective knowledge management implementations would not be successful had it not been for the culture changes that took place. It is particularly important in the current climate, where speed and time are so critical, for organizations to be cognizant of necessary changes to culture and structure, and ensure these take place in order to facilitate key business process and maximize their knowledge management initiatives.
The introduction of technology into an organization or the change to a new tech- nology platform can result in altering the roles of people within the organization and their relative power. Tasks might become richer and more challenging or may require less skill and become more routine. Changes in power structures and roles by the introduction of technology and consequent effects to the organization are best exemplified in the classic case study by Markus (1983), which discusses the introduction of an information system in the Golden Triangle Corporation. The result was that the system impacted the jobs of various accountants in the corporation, making some jobs richer (for the financial accountants) and others more routine (for the divisional accountants). By doing so, the system affected the relative power of two departments within the corporation. The combination of these two impacts led to many resistance issues connected with the system. The key lessons to be learned from this case study include understanding the impact of the technology on all interested parties in the organization and ensuring resistance is minimal if at all by effecting appropriate change management strategies in conjunction with the implementation of the system. Given the significant reliance on technology, in particular knowledge management systems, for most organizations in a knowledge economy, this becomes of even greater importance.
These organizations are generally small and designed to take advantage of opportunities presented, or created, by a dynamic yet relatively simple envi- ronment.
2. Machine organizations are described as containing “... highly specialized, routine operating tasks, very formalized communication throughout the organization, large-size operating units, reliance on the functional basis for grouping tasks, relatively centralized power for decision-making, and an elaborate administrative structure with a sharp distinction between line and staff” (Mintzberg, 1989, p. 133).
These types of organizations are structured for control, with task coordination derived from highly standardized work practices that carry little discretion in decision-making for the operators and line first-line managers and where the division of labor is never blurred.
3. Professional organizations are described as ones where “work is complex, requiring that it be carried out and controlled by professionals, yet at the same time remains stable, so that the skills of those professionals can be perfected through standardized operating programs. The structure takes on the form of professional bureaucracy, which is common in universities, general hospitals, public accounting firms, social work agencies, and firms doing fairly routine engineering or craft work. All rely on the skills and knowledge of their operat- ing professionals to function; all produce standardized products or services”
(Mintzberg, 1989, p. 174).
These types of organizations are found in complex, relatively stable environ- ments that require processes that must be learnt over long periods and can produce standard outcomes, although the processes themselves are often too complex to be standardized in their application.
4. Diversified organizations are described as “not so much an integrated identity as a set of semi-autonomous units coupled together by a central administrative structure. The units are generally called divisions and the central administra- tion, the headquarters.” Divisions “are created to serve distinct markets and are given control over the operating functions necessary to do so, ... Each is relatively free of direct control by headquarters or even of the need to coor- dinate activities with other divisions ... There is a headquarters, and it has a series of roles that distinguish this overall configuration from a collection of independent businesses providing the same set of products and services”
(Mintzberg, 1989, pp. 155-156).
These organizations are typically large and the diversification is driven by the need to address multiple markets.
5. Innovative organizations are described as having “... highly organic structure, with little formalization of behavior; specialized jobs based on expert train- ing; a tendency to group the specialists in functional groups for housekeeping
purposes but to deploy them in small project teams to do their work; a reliance on teams, on task forces, and on integrating managers of various sorts in order to encourage mutual adjustment, the key mechanism of coordination, within and between these teams; and considerable decentralization to and within these teams, which are located at various places in the organization and involve vari- ous mixtures of line managers and staff and operating experts” (Mintzberg, 1989, p. 1999).
These organizations are found in complex, relatively dynamic environments where the requirement is for flexibility in structure so that different forms of expertise can be drawn together quickly to address problems and situations directly.
6. Missionary organizations are described as having “a very special culture—a richly developed and deeply rooted system of values and beliefs that distin- guishes a particular organization from all others” (Mintzberg, 1989, p. 221).
Within these organizations, the identification between organization and the people who work there is so strong that it can be used as a mechanism for coordinating activities, in place of the direct supervision that is found in ma- chine organizations, for example.
7. Political organizations are described as ones where the internal system of politics “reflects power that is technically illegitimate...in the means it uses, and also sometimes in the ends it promotes. In other words, political power in the organization (unlike government) is not formally authorized, widely ac- cepted, or certified. The result is that political activity is usually divisive and conflictive, pitting individual or groups against the more legitimate systems of influence and, when those systems are weak, against each other” (Mintzberg, 1989, p. 238).
These organizations contain conflict, between competing units or individuals, which arise from the effort to gain and maintain power.
Three other generic organizational structures (Hedlund, 1990; Huber, 1990) believed to be important include: (1) the hierarchical structure (here the emphasis is on the level or position within the organization), (2) the functional structure (here the em- phasis is on a particular business area, e.g., accounting or marketing), and (3) the departmentalized structure (here both level and function are of equal consideration).
These are depicted in Figure 6(a) through (c). Irrespective of the typology or specific organizational structure knowledge management is useful for all structures, however it is important to understand the particular organization structure before initiating and implementing any new KM initiative.
Finally, given the high degree of specialization required by knowledge workers in a knowledge economy we are seeing more and more the emergence of multidisciplinary
or cross functional teams, and even virtual communities as a preferred structure (Cortada, 1998). In a team or group dynamic scenario, the key to maximising the tacit knowledge is to view the group as a collaborative intelligence rather than a collection of intelligence. Moreover, it is important to understand the comfort zones of every member as well as their respective strengths and weaknesses so that projects can be designed to take advantage of the whole team and each member’s expertise (Rubenstein & Geisler, 2003). Hence, two broad concepts become important (ibid.):
1. Team building: Requires creating a congenial work environment, improving communications and building strong relationships and trust between all team members.
2. Team learning: Requires looking outward to build knowledge while simulta- neously looking inward to create alignment between the new knowledge and existing expertise.
Figure 7 depicts two views of teams within organizations. Figure 7(a) shows the more traditional view where knowledge worker teams are made up of people from the same horizontal layer, while figure “b” demonstrates the more emerging make up of cross functional or multi-disciplinary teams which are viewed as a vertical slice taken from all levels of the organizational structure. Figure 7(b) represents the structure that supports more successful adaptation of KM technologies, learning structures and processes in the organization as well as the better use of the intel- lectual capabilities of the organization.
Figure 8 depicts the key dynamics that take place within team structures, especially multi-dimensional or cross-functional team dynamics. Essentially, the respective Figure 6. Typical organizational structures
a) hierarchical b) functional c) islands/departmentalized
knowledge that is brought to the team by each individual knowledge worker im- pacts the innovative function and quality of the process or project and this in turn leads to the creation of new knowledge and hence increases the individual’s extant knowledge base as well as the team’s knowledge base (ibid.). Once team structure is selected, teams should strive to achieve the highest possible outflow of ideas:
quality, knowledge, and innovative ideas. Quality ideas are based on quantitative measures of improving processes, such as cost and time. In contrast, knowledge ideas are concerned with unstructured data as well as structured data analysis. Finally, innovative ideas are those that are unusual even abnormal initiatives that will lead to fundamental process improvement beyond quality and knowledge ideas.
Using creative and innovative thinking methods, individual and team profiles must be established and stored in profile databases (Cortada, 1998; Rubenstein & Geisler, 2003). One individual may become a member in more than one team. Team members are dynamically transferred between teams based on performance analysis of the individual as well as teams, such as communication, politics, lack of harmony among team members, and incongruence between member profiles. Once individual and team profiles based on innovation and creativity techniques have been established, team membership selection, composition, and transfer should be conducted dynamically so that team and individual satisfaction and performance should be maximized. It is necessary for organizations to perceive that knowledge and innovation generation requires commitment across the organization; this in turn will lead to teams being formed around critical processes. Each team/individual must be given the chance to suggest new ideas to their own team as well as other teams. Members of any team may be invited to meetings of any other teams, if needed. This will then create what is called a circular team organization (Figure 8).
We note that probably the ultimate type of cross-functional team would be a commu- nity of practice. The notion of a community of practice is becoming more prevalent in the literature and even practice particularly because of its impact on learning and innovation and thus knowledge creation and impact more generally to knowledge Figure 7. Shifting perspective from viewing knowledge workers at horizontal levels to a cross-functional perspective
Knowledge
Worker Knowledge Workers
(a) (b)
management (Alavi & Leidner, 2001; Allee, 1997; Wickramasinghe, 2003). Given its strong connection with learning and innovation, we shall return to a discussion of community of practice in our chapter on Organizational Learning.