Evolution of Business Knowledge

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Evolution of Business Knowledge

• Harry Scarbrough
• Email Harry.Scarbrough_at_wbs.ac.uk
• Tel. [phone]

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Evolution of Business Knowledge

• Director of ESRC Research Programme
• 3.5 million over 5 years to research the
  evolution of business knowledge
• Co-author of Managing Knowledge Work
• Member of the IKON (Innovation, Knowledge and
  Organizational Networks) research unit, Warwick
  Business School.
• Research on networks and innovation Knowledge
  Management and the capture of project-based
  learning

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EOBK in context

• Whats new ?
• Knowledge has always been an important element of
  production

Capital consists in a great part of knowledge
and organization .... Knowledge is our most
powerful engine of production. Alfred Marshall
1890
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EOBK in context

• Management has long grappled with the problems of
  the division of knowledge
• managers assume ...the burden of gathering
  together all of the traditional knowledge ...
  possessed by the workmen and then of classifying,
  tabulating, and reducing this knowledge to rules,
  laws, formulae
• Frederick Taylor 1911

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EOBK in context

• There has long been academic debate about the
  nature of knowledge
• Carl Ludovici was appointed to a chair in
  Knowledge of the World in Leipzig in 1733.
• Royal Society was described as a knowledge
  bank.
• Peter Burke A social history of knowledge, 2000

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EOBK in context
What characterises the current technological
revolution is not the centrality of knowledge and
information but the application of such knowledge
and information to knowledge generationFor the
first time in history, the human mind is a direct
productive force, not just a decisive element of
a production system. (Castells, 1996 32).
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Evolution of Business Knowledge

• Whats new?
• Not knowledge itself, but what we do to
  knowledge.
• Accelerating innovation - speeding up knowledge
  flows
• Making knowledge the property of the organization
  not groups or individuals
• Recycling knowledge across projects
• Applying knowledge to the creation of knowledge.

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Evolution of Business Knowledge

• Competitiveness comes not from the possession of
  knowledge itself but from continuously acquiring,
  integrating and utilizing knowledge.
• Managing knowledge as a directly productive
  resource the intensification of knowledge - and
  not as a cost or an accidental by-product.

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Evolution of knowledge
Social and institutional contexts
Knowledge transfer
economic pressures
Knowledge utilization
Knowledge production
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EOBK Key issues
Social and institutional contexts
Institutional pressures on mgt practices
Embeddedness of knowledge
Evolution of business knowledge
Developing knowledge learning as a productive
resource
Role of management
Systems of information
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Role of IT in evolution of knowledge indirect
effects

• Study of the diffusion of lean production methods
  across supply chain networks
• Logistical integration through EDI etc. linked to
  adoption of Just-In-Time methods
• Shift in power relations towards lead firm
  increased surveillance, enforcement of quality
  and delivery norms
• Transfer of knowledge (coercive isomorphism) from
  lead firms to supplier firms - change in work
  practices, development of teamworking etc.

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Illustrative Vignette Ebank

• Ebank is a large global bank based in Europe
• Growth via acquisition highly decentralized
• Impetus for change loss of major global client
• Response Global KM vision to be implemented via
  introduction of Global Intranet
• Pilot workshop succeeded in raising awareness of
  Intranet technology

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Global KM at Ebank II

• Contradictory outcomes
• over 150 independent local intranets
  reinvention on large scale
• KM created electronic fences
• failed to integrate IT and business knowledge
• little added value to business
• Highlights limits of IT driven KM

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Analysis of the Ebank case I

• Differential knowledge transfer
• know how and know what vs. know why, know
  who.
• Distributed knowledge
• National differences
• Growth by acquisition
• Absence of inter-unit networks
• Lack of leadership and vision to integrate
  activities

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Analysis of the Ebank case II

• Embedded knowledge
• Dispersed social identities Intranets as a badge
  of identity for different business units
• Professional expertise
• IS division had sophisticated technology but
  major content was the inter-site bus timetable
• Banking division had sophisticated content but
  Intranet took 30 seconds to load a page

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Analysis of the Ebank case III

• The problem of the integration of knowledge
  ..is not a problem of simply combining, sharing
  or making data commonly available. It is a
  problem of perspective taking in which the unique
  thought worlds of different communities of
  knowing are made visible and accessible to others
  
• Boland and Tenkasi 1995 39

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Cross-Sector research on KM practices for
project-based learning

• IKON Research Unit,
• Warwick Business School, UK

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Rationale for KM
The central theme of KM is to leverage and reuse
resources that already exist in the organization
so that people seek out best practices rather
than reinvent the wheel. Wah (1999 16)
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Projects the need for KM

• Projects increasingly important innovation,
  flexibility etc. - and a critical source of
  learning, knowledge creation.
• BUT
• Projects lack the institutional mechanisms to
  capture/share learning of steady-state
  structures.
• Assembly/dispersal of project team members.
• Project activity dynamic, high uncertainty, time
  bounded, outcome-focussed not routinised.
• Projects frequently re-invent the wheel due to
  lack of knowledge transfer.

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UK Health Service Organization

• Re-design of cataract treatment process 12
  months lead time
• Optician GP Consultant Nurse Operation
• Professional demarcations constrained development
  of organizational knowledge.
• Transformation team sought to redesign the
  process
• Creation of organizational knowledge about the
  process.
• Changing roles of different groups involved,
  including consultants secretaries as well as
  professional groups.

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UK Health Service Organization

• Project work
• Creating a multi-professional project team
• Breaking down professional boundaries through
  collaborative team working and team leadership by
  consultant
• Overcoming professional distrust consultants
  view of opticians etc.
• Overcoming resistance of consultants secretaries
  through visits to other hospitals
• Development of team-based organizational
  knowledge

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UK Health Service Organization

• New routine developed
• Optician Consultant Operation
• Old process 1 year, 6 visits
• New process 6 weeks, 1 visit
• New design in the interests of almost all the
  groups involved, especially patients
• YET
• Little diffusion of new treatment routine to
  other organizations in the UK health sector

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Constraints on transfer of learning to other
projects

• Constraints on transfer of cataract routine
• Motivation strong championing and leadership
  needed
• Process knowledge - difficult to transfer
• How final design achieved multiple iterations
• How to select project team members
• How to build multi-disciplinary teams
• Transformation team expertise

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Conclusions

• Process designs as means of knowledge capture?
• Dialogue between groups role of project work
• Developing trust and legitimating new knowledge
• Micro-level shift in relative power of different
  professional groups
• Need to re-invent the wheel to link the process
  of knowledge creation to changes in practice?

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Conclusions

• Process vs. product innovations
• Divergent vs. convergent paths
• Context dependency
• Knowledge linked to practice