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Designing Knowledge Organizations

A Pathway to Innovation Leadership

Joseph Morabito, Ira Sack, and Anilkumar Bhate












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Acknowledgments

We want to thank our students for their participation in our graduate course on knowledge and organizations. Through their questions, participation in class exercises, and experiences in their respective organizations, we have been able to test ideas, create unique problems, and shape thought‐provoking diagrams and text.

We deeply appreciate several faculty colleagues for their feedback on selected chapters that correspond to their respective areas of expertise.

We also express our sincere gratitude to our research assistants. In particular, we thank Rishikesh Bhosale, Priyam Mishra, Prannoy Pal, Shamanth Umesh and Anisha Vappala.

Introduction to Knowledge Systems

In his last book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, management guru Peter Drucker asserts that the most important issue for 21st century organizations is the improvement of knowledge worker productivity. Drucker (1999) goes on to claim that knowledge management (KM) is not merely another management idea or tool but the harbinger of a new economy that will fundamentally change society and organizations. We only need to look around us to see how knowledge and technology are transforming the world.

More than a 100 years ago, Frederick Winslow Taylor, an alumnus of Stevens Institute of Technology, transformed the world with Scientific Management: the scientific analysis of work and the separation of work from worker—all elements of mechanical design. In fact, Scientific Management is largely responsible for the flourishing of industrial economies. However, the 21st century requires that we solve a new problem: the design and management of organizational knowledge and knowledge work. What is needed, in effect, is an approach that does for knowledge work what Scientific Management did for industrial work.

I.1 Machine Versus Art Metaphor

In his lectures at Harvard University in 1932, John Dewey, widely acknowledged as the foremost American philosopher for cultural criticism and aesthetics, compared a machine with a work of art. The machine is an outcome of imagination—there are many imagined possibilities, but one is selected to produce a final result. The machine operates in the physical realm, arranged by human contrivance. In contrast, “the work of art … is not only the outcome of imagination, but operates imaginatively rather than in the realm of physical existences. What it does is to concentrate and enlarge an immediate experience.” The machine–art metaphor accurately contrasts data and information with knowledge as well as industrial and knowledge societies. As with a machine, data and information are of the world; as with art, knowledge is of the mind. Whereas the machine is a tangible thing that gets diminished with use, knowledge is imaginative and enlarged with application. Hence, in contrast to the machinery of the industrial society, the knowledge society is characterized by intangible assets and resources. Finally, as with the machine, the industrial society is of the imagination; as with art, the knowledge society is in the imagination.

Continuing with the machine–art metaphor, Dewey (1934) states: “The formed matter of esthetic experience (art) directly expresses … the meanings that are imaginatively evoked; it does not, like the material brought into new relations in a machine, merely provide means by which purposes … may be executed. And yet the meanings imaginatively summoned, assembled, and integrated are embodied in material existence…” Similarly, unlike an industrial or service organization, the design of the knowledge organization is tied to the human imagination and the character of knowledge itself—this makes it substantially different than designing a manufacturing or information processing organization. Designing the knowledge organization requires that we formulate the elements to summon the imagination and create knowledge, assemble and integrate the new knowledge with other knowledge threads, and embody the outcome in a physical world. Such elements are the “stuff” of design.

The machine–art metaphor encapsulates our research into knowledge and the organization. The knowledge economy is handicapped by its industrial history—our education, management, and legal systems carry the legacy of the industrial era into the modern era. For example, a performance review is an artifact of industrial work where performance is compared to a predetermined specification or set of goals. The performance review still exists today—complete with forced distribution quotas and rankings. How is this useful in an organization which makes its living by thinking?

(We borrow from the title of Davenport’s (2005) book Thinking for a Living—a good metaphor for knowledge work, which we elevate to include the knowledge organization as well as knowledge work.)

The knowledge organization concentrates, enlarges, and embodies its imagination into physical products and not‐so‐physical services. Knowledging, as with art making, is an imaginative endeavor that operates imaginatively, concentrating and expanding itself with use. In the knowledge organization, everything we design and manage should promote imagination and thinking, concentration and enlargement, integration and application.

I.2 Design and the Ordering of Ideas

How, we may ask, do we design a knowledge organization? Is it really different than designing traditional organizations? As we will see in subsequent chapters, one anecdotal solution is to “do the opposite.” If the factory system requires control, the knowledge system (KS) demands autonomy; if the factory system requires the formal implementation of strategy and knowledge (i.e., top‐down, early knowledge binding), the KS demands that we first gather or create knowledge and then implement through lateral relations (i.e., bottom‐up, late knowledge binding); and so on. Of course, as interesting as “doing the opposite” may be, a formal approach to design is required.

In this regard, it is instructive to continue with the art metaphor. In 1908, Henri Matisse described the actual process of painting: “If, on a clean canvas, I put at intervals patches of blue, green and red, with every touch that I put on, each of those previously laid on loses in importance … It is necessary that the different tones I use be balanced in such a way that they do not destroy one another. To secure that, I have to put my ideas in order; the relationship between tones must be instituted in such a way that they are built up instead of being knocked down. A new combination of colors will succeed to the first one and will give the wholeness of my conception.”

How do we select and order our ideas so that each reinforces rather than undermines the other? In our previous book, Organization Modeling, we introduced several artifacts for the formal selection and ordering of organizational design elements (Morabito et al. 1999). Our approach to organization design included the idea of “organization molecules” for the domains of organizations—process, information, culture, and other domain‐specific molecules. Organization molecules give structure and order to the domains and may be considered organizational building blocks. In Chapter 4, we introduce a “knowledge molecule” for the domain of organizational knowledge work.

While we finished Organization Modeling with a short discussion of knowledge (K), in this book it is appropriate that we concentrate fully on K. Despite the recommendation of our students, we never developed a “knowledge molecule.” This is because designing KM carries with it the weight of knowledge itself—it is inherently different from, say, designing a business process. As with Matisse painting a picture, the colors and tones must be selected and balanced to bring out a larger whole, even when neither the goals nor the colors are fully known in advance. In fact, as we will subsequently see, the colors of knowledge are everywhere in our society. Furthermore, the colors and tones are in the hands and mind of an artist—they are not mechanical pieces readied for assembly according to a blueprint. Hence, we think of K design more as an artistic rather than as an engineering endeavor, operating dynamically in the imagination, much as Matisse painting a picture.

I.3 Organization of the Book

Despres and Chauvel (2000) have observed that KM is “intuitively important but intellectually elusive”; hence, from a management perspective KM is “everything and nothing.” This is a critically important observation because, indeed, KM is everywhere and thus cries out for the structure—that is, the ordering of ideas—necessary to bring coherence to the discipline. The world is surrounded by knowledge—the impact of KM is everywhere (see Figure I.1a).

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Figure I.1 (a) Impact of Knowledge Management. (b) Extending the Discipline of Knowledge Management.

Whereas most approaches to KM concentrate on the organization, we have extended the discussion to the very small and the very large (see Figure I.1b). Again, KM is everywhere and demands an integrated line of thinking.

This book is based on our graduate course delivered at Stevens Institute of Technology, “Design of the Knowledge Organization.” In this course, we discuss the discipline of KM from a variety of perspectives. Accordingly, the organization of this book is as follows:

  1. A targeted literature review. This book draws a linkage between KM and organizational design. Since the book is based on a graduate course, our aim is not to provide a complete summarization of the literature but to present a foundation for our approach to design and KM.
  2. Enriching principles. We do not undo existing ideas on organizational design or KM but enhance and elevate each through assimilation with concepts from other disciplines. Our discussion of philosophy, for example, is not merely a historical review, but an argument for shifting our view of K from a technical perspective to one based on moral behavior and social action, ethics and justice, and conscientiousness and altruism. From philosophy, we develop a model of a K practice as a mediated interaction between theoretical K and social K that is foundational to K work in and out of organizations.
  3. Knowledge systems. KS exist everywhere in the world. Every human being is a KS, as is everything he or she creates and builds. In this book, everything we discuss is a KS of some sort. Naturally, we are selective, but by intertwining several disciplines, we are better positioned to accommodate new K waves or KS, such as social networking and big data. Accordingly, our approach is to elucidate the construction of knowledge competencies throughout the organization, from the small to the large—this is illustrated in Figure I.1a and b. We believe that an integral design approach represents the natural evolution of KM into both a more rigorous and a practical phase.
  4. This book consolidates several years of research, teaching, and experience with graduate students from a variety of industries. In fact, we can argue that the seeds of this book lie with our students.
  5. The pedagogy we employ is to follow a course‐like structure with graphics and accompanying text. This is not the common course‐book, but one organized around a classroom setting with extensive discussion, board‐work, examples, our questions and student responses, and visual representations. Rather than using standard cases, we use student exercises that represent real‐world applications of KM.
  6. Chapters 1–7 begin with food for thought questions that are suitable for student reflection and classroom discussion. Also, each chapter ends with class exercises that take the form of questions and projects that require a certain level of analysis. Several of both the food for thought and class exercise questions are suitable for research. We conclude our last chapter (Chapter 8) with a final exam that includes both new and existing food for thought questions that have been selected to allow the student to pursue his or her future knowledge work.
  7. We started this book with an outline of 12 or more chapters. As we progressed in our writing, we made an important observation: we could not untangle the ideas we were discussing. Several concepts had an affinity for each other, though they were part of different topics. In effect, they were integral in forming a larger whole. For example, we discovered that knowledge work and technology were better understood in light of each other; social networks, office design, and culture belonged together; and so on. Moreover, these topics peek into each other, so that a discussion of one (in a given chapter) may appear with a discussion of another (in some other chapter).

Knowledge is an integral construct and a discussion of K is better understood as such. This is in contrast to modular thinking, which characterizes mechanical design. Indeed, knowledge design is more like painting a picture than designing a machine—writing this book illustrated this point to the authors.

Our solution has been to combine topics into a handful of themes, each of which is somewhat dense and can be expanded into a separate book. We believe our organization will promote its use by students, faculty, researchers, and practicing managers. This is illustrated in Figure I.2.

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Figure I.2 Themes of Designing Knowledge Organizations

I.4 How to Read This Book

The chapters in this book are organized around “themes.” Themes have an architectural flavor and remain comparatively constant; only their content changes. In the new and dynamic discipline of KM, we believe it advantageous to establish stable themes. Each of these “territories” of KM contains a variety of ever‐changing topics. Furthermore, since knowledge is like a spider web where everything is connected to everything else (in addition to being recursive), several topics require discussion in more than one context (i.e., territory). An obvious example is knowledge creation, a topic with a stand‐alone discussion in KM literature but also one that manifests itself in every context—business process and strategy, for example. Accordingly, we recommend that you read each theme or chapter in several sittings and cross‐reference other chapters when necessary:

  • You may read this book as you would any other book—in sequence, starting at the beginning.
  • You may reference a specific topic or territory and use the embedded backward and forward references to establish a fuller context.
  • You may combine the discipline of reading a traditional book with a wiki‐like reference experience.

I.5 A Journey Through KS

Culture, strategy, work, conversations—virtually every human activity or endeavor, even the layout of your office or school, is a K system. This book is a journey through such systems from the perspective of the organization. Again, we do not cover every possible KS, but we invite the reader to join our journey as we explore several of the endless possibilities. Also, we ask that you consider for yourself the KS with which you have experience—even your personal culture—and how it fits into the new world of knowledge organizations.

References

  1. Davenport, T.H. (2005), Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performance and Results from Knowledge Workers. Harvard Business School Press.
  2. Despres, C., and Chauvel, D. (2000), “A Thematic Analysis of the Thinking in Knowledge Management”. In Knowledge Horizons: The Present and the Promise of Knowledge Management. Eds. Despres, C., and Chauvel, D. Butterworth Heinemann.
  3. Dewey, J. (1934), Art as Experience. A Perigee Book, The Berkley Publishing Group.
  4. Drucker, P.F. (1999), Management Challenges for the 21st Century. HarperBusiness.
  5. Morabito, J., Sack, I., and Bhate, A. (1999), Organization Modeling: Innovative Architectures for the 21st Century. Prentice Hall.