The Future of Work
Secondary Readings
A presentation by Ray James
October 3, 2006
Knowledge Management Systems
Covering
• Teece: Research Directions in
Knowledge Management
• McDermott: Why Information
Technology Inspired But Cannot
Deliver Knowledge Management
• Masterton: Oracles, Bards, and Village
Gossips, or, Social Roles and Meta
Knowledge Management
October 3, 2006
2
Research Directions
• Past can inform present, future
• Don’t re-invent the wheel
• Use existing literatures in:
– Management of technology
– Entrepreneurship
– Business Strategy
• Don’t forget accounting, economics,
entrepreneurship, behavioral studies,
marketing, etc.
October 3, 2006
3
Research Directions
• Does a business’s edge come from
what it knows that others don’t?
• Given an open market, what creates
wealth these days: intangible assets &
dynamic capabilities
• Challenging research methodology
– Qualitative
– Mixed methods
October 3, 2006
4
Research Directions
• Discover how to value intangible assets
– Technological know-how
– Brands
– Customer relations
– Others?
• Intellectual property for sale or rent
October 3, 2006
5
Research Directions
• Where did those darling inputs?
• Largely unknown input dimensions
– Information
– Knowledge
– Competences
• Largely unknown economics
– Information
– Knowledge and competence
• Need to know costs (value) of intangibles
October 3, 2006
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Research Directions
• Have you got a spare Tobus Q?
• Testing the relationships among
intangibles (tacit knowledge) &
profitability. How can it be done?
• It takes a generalist to raise a profit
October 3, 2006
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Research Directions
• Everybody can administer, can you
innovate?
• Can empirical research reveal why
entrepreneurial enterprises (Silicon
Valley) are quicker on their feet?
• Decentralize, decentralize, decentralize
• Other research directions?
October 3, 2006
8
IT can‘t deliver KM
• IT creates ‘leveraged knowledge’
dreams
• Co-location of peers, ideas
• Change in work patterns based on
electronic links
• Document and share, that’s it!
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• IT creates the vision
• IT can’t make it real
• Old norms don’t die, they just
change their software
• F2F first then PC2PC
• Trap: use IM tools to design KM
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• Distinguishing knowledge/info
• Knowledge is human, residue of
thinking, now, belongs to
community, circulates in many
ways, created at boundaries of old
• Humans needed to leverage
knowledge
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• Knowledge is human act
– Containing is not knowing
– Use it if you got it
– Professional practice
• Turn knowledge into solutions
• Put it to a purpose
• Thinking required (residue needed)
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
•
•
•
•
It’s happening now
Quick, tell me everything you know
‘…living acting of knowing.’
Knowledge belongs to community
(Is sharing required?)
• Knowledge flows P2P, G2G in
different ways
– (water flows toward money)
October 3, 2006
13
IT can‘t deliver KM
• Knowledge resides in books, file
cabinets, minds, language, tools,
routines, stories, axioms.
“Thought is an infection, some
thoughts are an epidemic”
- Wallace Stevens
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• New knowledge is created at the
boundaries of old knowledge
• Working outside the box
• Expand knowledge by sharing
(blogging); it’s multiplex
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• Knowledge is what it is
• What’s really important is the
community and it’s citizens
• Develop KM by developing
community
• Create ‘space’ for thinking
• Community-driven sharing
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• To leverage knowledge
– Create support structure
– Use community’s terms for
organizing
– Integrate into natural work flow
– Culture change is community issue
• Important knowledge must be so
for business and people
October 3, 2006
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IT can‘t deliver KM
• Key challenges in building KM
communities
– Technical
– Social
– Management
– Personal
• The whole is greater than the sum
of it’s parts
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• KM has a KM problem
• How good are KM design tools?
• Social role/KM interface in
organizations requires examination
• ‘Multiple role groupware’ produces
conflict (work/benefit)
• KM systems can have problem
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• ‘Intelligent agents’ solve problems
without social conflict because
they reside in the ether
• IA serve as matchmakers, editors,
librarians, bards, and village
gossips without a social cost
• H2H is social, H2C as well?
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• ‘Intelligent agents’ work less well
as we make them more human
• KM systems are diverse
• KM systems work differently at
different levels – difficult to make
usability study
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• Use it, damn you, use it or I’ll …
• Use of KM tools taper off after ‘new toy’
phase; WWW doesn’t work
• Use failures may have social
component
• Components of non-use of KMS
– Task-related problems*
– Culture-related*
– Individual-related*
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• KMS failures mirror other
collaborative systems problems
• KMS failures breakdown flow of
valuable information
• Me and my PC, we and our PCs
and this useless KMS
• Issues are complexity &
magnification
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• Since KMS are used in differing
ways, problems differ
• Good early design can mitigate
• Examples
– Answer garden
– Virtual participant
– British Telecom’s KSE
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• Answer Garden
• Designed to aid information search for in
organization
• User groups defined
– Tire-kickers
– Intermittent users
– Heavy users
• Answer Garden required two key changes
– task related (additional software)
– culture related (change in working practices)
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• Virtual Participant designed to address
observed problems in a computer
supported collaborative learning
(CSCL) environment
• Core points stored, made available to
current discussions
• Lack use came from complexity and
failure of effort v. benefit
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• KSE designed for closed systems to
share explicit and tacit knowledge
• User-defined profile, user decisions
• Defines role in community
• System then acts as agent to gather
and share information within the
community
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
• Social dimensions in designing KMS
– anthropomorphism vs. mechanomorphism
– private vs. public
– closed vs. open
– fixed vs. extensible
• Usability and acceptance remain the
key hurdles implementing KMS
October 3, 2006
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Social roles in KM
“Knowledge management systems can,
and genuinely do, play the roles of
oracles, bards, and village gossips
within today’s modern organizations.
And why shouldn’t they?”
Well, what’s your opinion?
October 3, 2006
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Questions?
October 3, 2006
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