Design / Redesign

Something I've been working on:

Failed knowledge management initiatives are common, if not legendary. Obviously failures are not as widely publicized by firms as successes, which are often merely those projects succeeding by fact of their completion. From the very start, KM technology suffered difficulties with organizational adoption and business purpose. Chae & Bloodgood (2006) report a meta-analysis of KM-related initiatives (including IT and organizational change initiatives), finding more reports of KM failures than success. Also citing Malhotra (2004) and Mertins et al (2001), they report a study across more than 1200 European firms that fewer than ten percent were satisfied with their KM initiatives.

Some critics in information science consider the appropriated concept of knowledge in KM as a meaningless glorification of information. Wilson (2002) exhausts the literature in a critical meta-analysis deconstructing the value and meaning of knowledge as found in peer-reviewed KM articles. He finds no relationship between the Polanyi (1967) concept of tacit knowing and the framing of knowledge across the business and information systems literatures. If Wilson is at least partially correct in his analysis, the emphasis on knowledge as a stock/resource may be misleading and widely misinterpreted. He places blame on its highly-visible adoption by management consultancies and the original Nonaka research itself (for misconstruing Polanyi). However, Wilson and other critics also miss the context within which the Nonaka work is represented. The Nonaka knowledge-creation cycle has been lifted from its "knowledge-creating company" and widely used as a general purpose model of organizational knowledge management. Knowledge creation is not a general process applicable to all organizational functions.

Simple explanations readily appear for the failure of KM to take hold. Our management theories of knowledge may be wrong, from Nonaka (1991) to Chae & Bloodgood, (2006), untenable and untested. The focus on KM technology may misdirect valuable organizational attention, preventing organizations from implementing valuable knowledge management theory. Or organizations generally lack the thoughtful leadership necessary to deploy organizationally-centered knowledge management, a critique that emerges between the lines in Nonaka's own explanations of the cross-cultural differences between KM as found in Japan and the U.S.

Knowledge Management as technology cannot resolve or address the paradox of knowledge strategy. In the concept of knowledge strategy, managers recognize the competitive advantage of organizational knowing and learning, guided by strategic goals and constituted in effective internal processes. The paradox emerges when executives envision the strategic value of developing knowledge as a resource of the firm, but have no control, accounting, or valuation of knowledge as an actual asset. The top-down vantage point of (traditional) strategy is unable to generate knowledge exchange within an organization, unlike the control of other assets. Simply put, knowledge does not function as a strategic asset (Venkatraman and Tanriverdi, 2005), it cannot be sold or exchanged like a building or plant. Strategically, firms following this model may operate from an unworkable theory.

Nov. 27: Dave Snowden in Cognitive Edge recently answered the musical question from the 2006 KM World: Is KM Dead?

One of the questions at KM World was the now familiar one question: Is KM dead? My view for about two years now is that it is on its last leg as a strategic movement (otherwise known as a fad) in management. We also have that infallible predictor that a fad cycle is coming to an end: government adopts it as industrial best practice.

Now don’t get me wrong, the objectives of KM theory and practice persist and will continue to be of great importance. They are clear, simple and important and can be summarised as follows:

1. To support effective decision making
2. To create the conditions for innovation

(More later)