How Knowledge Enabling Avoids the Pitfalls

It is understandable that members of organisation to be obsessed with the information tools and technologies and the boundaries that staff workin. As many of these systems are expensive and based on the cost a business case is derived, and basic outcomes can be predicted. Executives who take this route usually are not fools, careless or uninformed, but they may be short sighted. Focusing on the part that is easily defined and described is a natural process, but the sustained production of knowledge requires more.

Knowldge enabling is founded on basic human skills, that is being effective, caring experts and activits the following three premises indicate why this is so:

1. Knowledge is justified true belief, individual and social ,tacit and explicit. Knowledge is closely attached to human emotions, aspirations, hopes and intentions.
   
2. Knowledge depends on your perspective. Despite efforts to come up with general measurement tools that apply across many situationtions, knowledge is scalable (von Krogh and Roos, 1995a). It depends on an individual's perspective and a given context.


3. Knowledge creation is a craft, not a science. Knowledge activists and COPs (Community of Practices) share in the craft of knowledge creation it is not the responsibility of one staff member.

Premise 1

Knowledge is not simply information stored in the latest professed Knowledge Managment system. These systems are simply information managment and do not have much to do with the creation of Knowledge. Knowledge which is tacit and shared with other COP members is more difficult to capture and it is the processes of enabling which will assist with this task. When companies put information and knowledge into the same category, they neglect the very particular nature of knowledge and its creation; at worst, their elaborate information systems and measurement tools may leave out the creative aspect of knowledge. The real challenge is for managers to enable the creation of knowledge; capturing its by-product, information is the easy part.

Premise 2

Everything known is attached to a particular scale of observation; change the scale and knowledge of a situation changes. For example you can describe your current environment, but if you were in a helicopter your view would be of the building and its environment. This view offers a better understanding of the overall context. Going the other way a researcher using a microsocpe reduces the scale of observation, going inward and investigating the microbs.

Within an organisation a new employee starts with a general overview and as they become more aware they then delve further into a topic and detail of the subject at hand. So in Business acknowledging a range of perspectives is essential, even if general tools can help define what kind of knowledge are most relevant to the company.

Premise 3

Managers may want clearly defined responibilities and tasks, but the ebb and flow of knowledge in any company requires a more expansive approach. Individual and organisatioinal barriers are inherent to knowledge creation:

• lack of understanding
  
• lack of agreement


• lack of common language
  
• company myths


• failure stories, and


• rigid procedures.
  

Yet even if an overly scientific attitude contributes to these barriesrs, we do not mean that knowledge creation happends by default; it has to be carefully enabled throught an aware and sensitive managemnt practice. It is hard to achieve from scratch but this is not impossible especially if boundary-braking managers are in place.

(These insites are from my reading of 'Enablling Knowledge Creation' by Georg Von Krogh - Kazuo Ichijo - Ikujiro Nonaka - 2000)