Foreword
With
remarkable
regularity a ‘new idea’ surfaces in the management community. Often it results from repackaging a long-lived management issue or truth. Conversely, the current
vogue
, Knowledge Management, is a genuinely new concept. In summary this involves the processes that ensure all the knowledge, explicit and implicit, that exists in the organisation is organised in a way that enables it to be accessed quickly and easily. This allows for distributed decision making so that new actions, products and services can be built from it at a pace that outstrips similar use by others. Knowledge management
simultaneously
meets the need to make information
freely
available while also enabling those with full understanding to move swiftly ahead, thereby rendering the earlier knowledge redundant. In today’s fast paced environment, it offers an essential market edge for individuals and for their organisation.
Knowledge management is frequently linked with technology,
specifically
computer or information technology. IT developments such as database management, bulletin board systems and web technology offer the potential for information to be gathered continuously from a vast array of sources. Also this ensures that it can be accessed in a similar way giving rise to countless
permutations
of inferences and new possibilities. At the same time, some researchers and gurus, mindful of the capacity of the human mind to make connections between apparently unrelated facts, have urged the study of human aspects of knowledge management rather than
concentrating
solely on computerisation. The focus here is on collecting the unwritten stories and mors of organisational experience. The shared assumptions, leaps in understanding and intuition that come from standing simple information on its head, may prompt a ‘eureka moment’. In
turn
, this leads to
breakthrough
thinking.
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Nevertheless, most authors and
speakers
about knowledge management focus on the computer systems that assist the collection of knowledge or, more accurately, information. In this book, rather than relying on technology to manage knowledge as if it were an entity in itself, Christina Evans correctly focuses on human interaction – the need to manage
for
knowledge: that is to organise people, such that they gather and act on the knowledge that is
inherently
available to them. By directing her attention specifically to HR, she puts this function at the heart of the business since leveraging knowledge effectively is a
vital
strategic goal of all organisations today. Clearly and directly Christina sets out the role for HR in building a culture where
harvesting
knowledge as opposed to simply gathering information is the norm. She shows why managing for knowledge is important, how to do it and gives practical examples. She offers guidance to
encourage
HR specialists to reinvent their role, to become full business
partners
. Most significantly, she
demonstrates
the crucial importance for HR to work effectively with knowledge management, the concept and the technical support, in order to create organisations that are successful tomorrow as well as today.
Val Hammond Chief Executive, Roffey Park Institute
Introduction
The Knowledge Economy – Opportunities And Challenges For Business
It is difficult to pinpoint an exact time when the current interest, possibly
obsession
, with knowledge management took off. Certainly some of the seminal books from management writers
began
to emerge in the early 1990s. Yet managing knowledge is not a new concept. Professionals, i.e. individuals whose work depends on them making
judgments
that are grounded in their knowledge base, have always had to manage their knowledge in order to continue practising.
So why has managing knowledge suddenly moved up the strategic agenda for large corporations? What has changed? A number of
fairly
significant changes have occurred over the past ten to fifteen
years
. One significant change has been the shift from manufacturing to service-based businesses, where companies are competing to
attract
and retain more knowledgeable and more discerning global customers. In this environment speed to market has become all-important.
To
compete
, some organisations have had
radically
to rethink how to do business. In the IT sector, for example, most of the major manufacturing companies have transformed
themselves
into services companies, where they now offer ‘total solutions’. In this context knowledge about customers’ businesses, i.e. what their business issues are, what their strategic goals are, is crucial. Of course this information is only of value if the organisation then acts on it, in order to deliver what the customer wants, in a costeffective way, and
timely
manner, ahead of the competition.
In the race to get a handle on managing knowledge many organisations have come unstuck by investing too much energy in developing formal systems, often IT systems, to facilitate knowledge sharing, at the expense of capitalising on the benefits that come from informal processes.
Organisations have spent millions of
pounds
on systems to capture, store and improve access to vast
quantities
of information that is now available, through one source or another, and yet this does not always bring the expected business benefits. I am using the
term
organisation here as the collective
name
for its people. As it is people who act on information, not machines, this reinforces the need to focus on mobilising, energising, supporting and enabling individuals at all levels within the organisation to combine their ‘Know of’ and ‘Know how’ to deliver existing services more
efficiently
, as well as to create new services. Perhaps one of the questions that needs to be asked is can we achieve what we want to achieve without an IT solution? If not, should we not at least ensure that any new system can be integrated with what we already have? What seems to have been overlooked is that knowledge doesn’t always flow from formal structures and systems, but instead is often the by-product of daytoday interactions.