SAP DESIGN GUILD

Knowledge Sharing in Practice

By Marleen Huysman, Vrije University Amsterdam (Homepage: staff.feweb.vu.nl/mhuysman/; read also the author's book) – 09/12/2002

Understanding the practice of knowledge sharing within organizations is a serious concern for organizations of today. More and more, organizations become aware of the necessity to stimulate circulation of knowledge. To address this need, we studied the practice of knowledge sharing in the form of knowledge management initiatives in ten large companies (see also Huysman and De Wit 2002). We analyzed these different practices with the use of six basic questions: whose knowledge is shared, what knowledge is shared, when is knowledge shared, how is knowledge shared, why is knowledge shared and where is knowledge shared? This analysis threw up six biases corresponding to three interrelated traps: the management trap, the individual learning trap and the ICT trap (see for the cases and the critical analyses Huysman and De Wit 2002). The traps are potential dangers that are related to structured knowledge sharing. In other words, the risks can be avoided as proved by several organizations that we looked into. In the next sections, I discuss the traps briefly. This will be followed by a discussion what organizations can do to avoid falling in these traps.

 

The Management Trap

One of the most common risks to knowledge management initiatives is that they might be handled exclusively from a managerial perspective. There are several advantages for managers to manage the knowledge sharing within the organization. One is that knowledge is often scattered throughout the organization. With the emergence of the knowledge economy in which workers gain more and more knowledge specific to their own work process, organizations need to make these scattered knowledge domains more transparent. Next and related is the argument that transparency is needed in order to reduce the likelihood of reinventing the wheel. The ideal is that once the point has been reached when everyone knows what everyone else knows, people will then contact each other to exchange knowledge or to refer customers and clients more effectively.

Learning from each other has the additional advantage of filling up the knowledge gaps that would otherwise exist when people leave the organization or change positions. Because managers cannot force people to share their knowledge, knowledge management calls for the vast support of knowledge workers. Knowledge management relies heavily on the willingness of knowledge workers to take part in it. We encountered various reasons for knowledge workers to actually engage in knowledge management initiatives, such as an increase of job-efficiency, status, and fun. If the condition of a win-win situation is not taken care of, managers will be confronted with major rejections from the side of the knowledge workers.

 

The Individual Learning Trap

Knowledge management is generally seen as the management of learning processes within organizations. The risk however lies in seeing this as the management of individual learning instead of collective learning. During our research, we came across many initiatives that approach knowledge management as supporting knowledge development of individuals more than of collectives within organizations. Concentrating on individuals instead of collectives is understandable as tools to support individual learning such as training, education, or more explicit tools such as libraries or databases are part of every organization. Tools to improve the collective knowledge base are still only sporadically institutionalized. Much of the collective knowledge is gained during day to day interactions and is less easy to manage and support. Because of this bias towards individual learning, organizations might fall into the trap to focus on the development of individual knowledge instead of sharing and creating knowledge among individuals.

 

The ICT Trap

In general the ICT trap comes from a technology driven perspective on knowledge sharing. The underlying assumption is that ICT can support and improve the knowledge exchange within an organization. The trap lurks particularly in the assumption that ICT can positively support and improve knowledge-sharing while ignoring the conditions that stimulate or hinder people to share knowledge. The tendency to perceive IT as independent from the social environment of which it is part, has caused disappointing acceptance rates. It is not the technology itself but the way people use it that determines whether it will be used. This tendency to perceive IT as existing on its own, also feeds to the assumption that all knowledge can be transformed into data en stored into systems. Echoes from the legacy of the information-management era resound here. When knowledge is saved in a system it becomes transformed into explicit, codified knowledge. A lot of knowledge has however a large tacit dimension and appears to be difficult to share with others, let alone store in a system. In the case of implicit knowledge, the human being is both the knowledge carrier and the vehicle through with the knowledge is passed on. Next to the producer, the potential consumer of knowledge might also create pockets of resistance to using ICT tools for knowledge-sharing. People want to know from whom they learn as this provides important 'meta-knowledge'. Knowledge only has meaning if it can be related to people. This is one of the reasons why recorded knowledge seldom leads to the knowledge being re-used. Aids to knowledge-sharing such as Intranets and knowledge bases that are geared towards codifying knowledge are not effective enough. When sharing experiences, people prefer to look for support from personal networks rather than electronic networks. Meta-knowledge cannot be recorded in technical networks and requires the support of social personal networks. In that case, tacit knowledge does not need to be transformed into explicit knowledge in order to share it with others. What is needed is the support of social networks and knowledge connections to enable transfer.

 

Towards a Second Wave of Knowledge Management

One important reason why the above discussed 'first wave of knowledge management' initiatives increasingly met with resistance is that knowledge-sharing cannot be forced; people will only share knowledge if there is a personal reason to do so. As knowledge owners, people have the power to decide if, when, how, and with whom they will share knowledge. It is an illusion to think that these decisions can be forced upon individuals. It is only when organizations acknowledge this, that the next step in the evolution of knowledge management can be made. In the second wave of knowledge management it will be the practitioners themselves who manage their knowledge together as they are in the best position to do so (see table 1).

Research Question 1st Wave 2nd Wave
Why is knowledge shared? Managerial needs Part of daily work: as a routine
When is knowledge shared? When there is an opportunity to do so When there is a need to do so
Where is knowledge shared? Operational level Organization-wide
Whose knowledge is managed? Individual capital: human capital Collective: social capital
What knowledge is shared? Codified Tacit and Codified
How is knowledge shared? Repository systems and electronic networks Via personal and electronic networks

Table 1: Differences between the first and second generation of knowledge management

Taking seriously the power of individuals in deciding to contribute to knowledge-sharing means that organizational conditions must be changed in such a way that people would like to share. These changing conditions do not always require different organizational structures, rewards systems, positions, etc. In fact, we observed that people often do feel the need to learn and share knowledge with others in situations where this would help them do their work better, more efficiently and with more satisfaction. This certainly applies to situations in which knowledge-sharing contributes to the daily operations of the organization.

People do want to share knowledge but only if there are good reasons to do so. Personal triggers to share knowledge are, for example, when it provides recognition from significant others, when it contributes to daily practices, or when it contributes to individual learning processes. The most important obstacle to managing knowledge is management itself. The role of managers in the next generation of knowledge management will be much more on the periphery, providing opportunities for people to exchange knowledge. What first needs to be addressed is the question how to stimulate a need to share knowledge among a group of people. It is only when this need is satisfied, that physical or electronic spaces are used for knowledge-sharing purposes. The second stage in the development of knowledge management places this need for knowledge connections center stage. For this purpose, authors within the area of organization and management increasingly start to link the idea of social capital with knowledge management.

 

Social Capital and Knowledge Management

The notion of 'social capital' should be seen as an additional ingredient to the already well-known economic conditions or elements that make up organizational capital: physical capital, financial capital, and human capital. Where human capital refers to individual ability, social capital refers to social networks that create opportunities. While the notion of human capital formed the core knowledge of the first wave of knowledge management, social capital can be seen as the core ingredient of the second wave of knowledge management. Together, human and social capital make up the intellectual capital of the organization. Human capital relates to individual learning but does not necessarily contribute to organizational learning. It is argued that social capital provides the conditions that nurture a willingness among these intellectual humans to connect.

Investing in social capital means that long term benefits such as social networks based on reciprocity, trust, and mutual respect and appreciation will last much longer than engineered networks such as organizational teams argue The concept of that social capital has three dimensions that are highly interrelated and difficult to segregate in practice (Goshal and Nahapiet (1998):

Investing in social capital seems even more important with the growth of virtual organizations, e-lancers and geographically dispersed settings together with and the continuous changes that are a result of shifting partnerships and boundaries. Due to these organizational changes, existing social capital can easily be shaken up.

One way to help people connect despite geographic and time differences, is through the use of communication technology, such as e-mail, telephone, video conferencing and more advanced groupware technologies. It has already been argued for many years that GroupWare will be a very important tool in present and future organizational settings.

The role of ICT in social capital can be seen as bidirectional. A high level of social capital, shown for example by pre-existing strong non-electronic networks, is a success factor in establishing electronic based networks. This is also what we saw happening in our research on knowledge management initiatives. But at the same time, the existence of ICT possibilities might create a networking infrastructure, which encourages the formation of social capital. It is thus an empirical question which tendency will dominate.

 

References

 

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