Changing Roles And Responsibilities In Knowledge Businesses


With traditional structures within knowledge-based businesses being broken down and replaced with more fluid structures this inevitably has an effect on individuals’ roles and responsibilities. As Bahrami (1996) points out ‘An individual’s effectiveness in getting things done is based on results and credibility, perceived reputation, and network of relationships, rather than formal authority, job descriptions, and position in the hierarchy. In this context, titles, seniority, spans of control, formal power and hierarchical position are not necessarily significant determinants of individual success and organisational power’. In knowledgebased businesses individuals, as well as managers, need to adjust to new structures and ways of working.

With knowledge becoming the key business asset this has created a need for new specialist roles, as well as a revision of the responsibilities associated with existing roles. These new roles include:

Chief Knowledge Officer

The role of the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) is to lead on developments relating to the infrastructure, processes and cultural dimensions of an organisation’s knowledge management approach. Their remit is often that of developing the concept of knowledge management within the organisation, in partnership with senior managers from IT, HR and business development areas. TFPL[2], a specialist recruitment agency for knowledge workers, defines the responsibilities of CKOs as:

  • Identifying and prioritising changes that need to be made to leverage the organisation’s information and knowledge.

  • Implementing processes, infrastructure and organisational procedures to enable the building and effective utilisation of a corporate knowledge base. This includes ensuring that: information needs are understood and acknowledged; information resources and intellectual assets are identified and managed on an integrated basis; processes exist to facilitate the acquisition and sharing of information and knowledge; appropriate structures for the development of staff are available; the utilisation of information and communication; ensuring the right technology to support the organisation’s KM objectives.

  • Encouraging all staff to participate in the building, utilisation and protection of the organisation’s knowledge base.

  • Identifying and integrating other support services relevant to the support of the organisation’s knowledge management system.

According to a FT survey[3], individuals who take on the role of CKO need to be able to wear many hats: entrepreneur (willingness to champion risky new initiatives), consultant (able to match new ideas to business needs), technologist (fully IT literate) and environmentalist (able to design settings and processes to maximize knowledge building). It is not surprising then, given the demands of the role, that the more successful CKOs are often hybrid people, who have had a broad-based career, and have a broad-range set of skills and interests.

Information Officers/Information Services Officers

The amount of information that people might possibly need to access in their jobs has grown enormously in recent years. Many people now suffer from information overload, i.e. not being able quickly to locate and access the information needed to do their jobs.

As mentioned earlier competitive advantage in today’s business world is not just about having the right products, it is about speed to market and also being able to respond quickly to the needs of customers. Thus speed of access to the right information has become critical. With customers becoming more and more demanding businesses need to make sure that they have the right infrastructure in place to capture, search and disseminate information.

Having now realised what a skilled job information sifting is, many organisations have created new roles, to ensure that it is able to access and manage its information sources. While the label that organisations give to these new positions varies, the role is essentially the same. In essence the people in these roles act as intelligent search engines for others in the organisation. They are skilled in different search technologies, as well as which search engines to access for different types of information. They also have an educational function in that they help to educate other employees on how to get the best out of tools such as the intranet and the Internet.

Accenture, the global and mobile consultancy firm, have established a Knowledge Centre Network as part of its overall knowledge management approach. This team is responsible for gathering and sifting critical business intelligence, making it easily accessible to colleagues. Around twenty people work in the Knowledge Centre Network within the UK. As well as gathering key business intelligence by scanning information produced by business information providers, such as Gartner, the team also carry out bespoke searches for client-facing teams within the rest of the organisation. As some of these requests come from colleagues working in other parts of the world the Knowledge Centre Network offers a 24 hour service, 7 days a week.

The NHS is drawing on the skills of its librarians to help build an environment in which clinicians and other healthcare professionals can gain access to the critical information that they need to do their jobs. At a national level one area of development has been creating a National Electronic Library for Health. But there are also local initiatives taking place within the NHS too.

[2]More details about TFPL can be found on their website www.tfpl.com.

[3]Mastering Information Management Survey: The role of the chief knowledge officer. Financial Times, 8 March 1999.




Managing the Knowledge - HR's Strategic Role
Managing for Knowledge: HRs Strategic Role
ISBN: 0750655666
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 175

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