Chapter 4 - Conceptualizing Knowledge Emergence

GATEKEEPERS, INFORMATION, STARS, AND BOUNDARY SPANNERS

A substantial body of research has been developed on the transmission of information within organizations, particularly R&D organizations. The “information stars” were central to information flow both within the organization at large, and within their project or projects. The characteristics that distinguished these stars were:

• · extensive communication with their field outside of the organization

• · greater perusal of information sources, journals, etc., information mavens

• · a high degree of connectedness with other information stars, one can infer that their utility was not just having more information at their fingertips, but knowing to whom to turn within the organization for further information

• · an above average degree of formal education compared to their project teammates

RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AND KNOWLEDGE

The productivity measure was, at base, simply the number of approved new drugs (new drug applications or NDAs) per millions of dollars of R&D budget. This measure, however, was refined by weighting the NDAs in regard to:

1) whether or not the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) judged the drug to be an “important therapeutic advance,”

2) the chemical novelty of the drug, and

3) the filing company’s patent position in regard to the drug, an indicator of where the bulk of the research was done.

The more productive companies were characterized by:

• A relatively egalitarian managerial structure with unobtrusive status indicators in the R&D environment,

• Less concern with protecting proprietary information,

• Greater openness to outside information, greater use of their libraries and information centers, specifically, greater attendance by employees at professional meetings,

• Greater information systems development effort,

• Greater end-user use of information systems and more encouragement of browsing and serendipity. Increased time spent browsing and keeping abreast,

• Greater technical and subject sophistication of the information services staff.

LACK OF RECOGNITION OFTHESE FINDINGS IN THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY

a subset of an even larger problem - the lack of recognition of or even obtuseness to the importance of information and information related managerial actions in the business community. The three most important characteristics are all related to the information environment and information flow – specifically:

1) easy access to information by individuals;

2) free flow of information both into and out of the organizations;

3) rewards for sharing, seeking, and using “new” externally developed information sources.

It analyzed various aspects of the behavior of research project managers as perceived by their staff and team members, and it found that in the more productive organizations (as defined by rates of growth and return on assets), the managers were perceived to be significantly more characterized by three aspects of their behavior, all information related:

1) they routed literature and references to scientific and technical staff,

2) they directed their staff to use scientific and technical information (STI) and to purchase STI services, and

3) they encouraged publication of results and supported professional meeting attendance and continuing education.

Particularly striking was the finding that not only did information related management behavior tendstrongly to discriminate between “high-performance” and “low-performance” companies, but also that none of the non information related management behaviors measured had any discriminatory value. Here, given the inability to find any significance for other managerial factors, the failure to remark upon the importance of information and knowledge factors can truly be described as remarkable.

COMMUNITY-BASED MODELS

The Community of Practice (CoP) is not necessarily department-based nor centered in one organization.ACoP can consist of those in charge of human resources training, for example, in a number of organizations.This model is based on the premise that organizational members with similar interests or practices meet to discuss issues of mutual concern and to help each other solve problems. The meeting can often happen in electronic-based forums, and these online discussions are usually self-managing. Group Decision Support Systems (GDSSs) were originally conceived of as collaborative tools where groups came together, participated in brainstorming and then, through human facilitation, voted on items and issues important to the organization. Generic Decision Support Systems (DSS) that act more like expert systems with the added feature of suggesting decision options are well suited to the Web, and they are proliferating as the Web becomes the ubiquitous information and communication platform for information storage and retrieval, and for interaction as well. The GDSS has not migrated easily to theWeb, however, some web-based systems are available and have adapted to an asynchronous situation.

ACTIVITY-BASED MODELS

The model was implemented with limited workflow functions at a global telecommunications company.While repositories and workflow support have largely developed with limited integration, designs such as this, grounded in case implementations, provide some empirical validity as to the appropriateness and value of incorporating activity as context for knowledge reuse.