& Editorial

Knowledge Management and KnowledgeSharing

In the last few months I have had the opportunityto listen to a number of very insightful peopletalking about Knowledge Management. Thesehave included David Snowden of the Institute forKnowledge Management, individuals from theWorld Bank and a variety of other organizationsincluding Arthur Andersen and Cisco Systems.The opportunity to bene®t from these individuals'insights was afforded by my teaching a course onKnowledge Management with them in France.Many of the stories that they told (particularlyDavid's wonderful brand!) gave a pause to anyidea that Knowledge Management is straightfor-ward to develop or easy to implement. Much aswe learnt with Process Reengineering it is some-thing that cannot be carried out in isolation andwhich is likely to have a profound effect on allaspects of an organization and its relationshipswith the external environment.

The second lesson is that the development andimplementation of Knowledge Management is acomplex dance that is sometimes structured andsometimes unstructured. We have to design orga-nizations that are capable of responding andsupporting this rich performance. Too muchemphasis on structure sti¯es innovation and ¯ex-ibility. Too little structure at worst promotes chaosand at `best' prevents focus.

A ®nal lesson relates to the topic of knowledgesharing. Partly, I suspect, as a result of theorganizations that were represented at the courseit was generally assumed by my colleagues thatknowledge sharing was a good thing. For example,in the context of the World Bank there would seemto be little dispute that sharing knowledge withthe goal of reducing world poverty is a good thing.However, I think that the issue of knowledgesharing is much more of an issue with otherorganizations. Let me look at this from a numberof different perspectives. In the ®rst place there isthe individual perspective. Many of us work veryhard to develop our knowledge and must con-tinuously strive to keep up to date. In many waysthis is a basic cost of being a knowledge worker(and, some of the time very stimulating too).Sharing this knowledge is not necessarily in mybest interest or an easy task!

To the extent that I undertook a professionwhere knowledge sharing is an integral part of myjob I may be in a somewhat different situation tomany of my colleagues in the business world.However, even as an educator there are de®nitetimes when I am reticent to share my knowledgeas when I am developing my research or workingon a consulting project. Knowledge is my stock intrade and its creation and assimilation is wheremuch of my self worth comes from. Organizationsmust be sensitive to a value equation where theyprovide the environment and conditions for know-ledge creation for their knowledge workers. The`easier' they make the knowledge creation processthe more realistic and successful will be know-ledge-sharing processes. There are intrinsicrewards to sharing knowledge but this value isalso often highly correlated with the quality andself-identi®cation with the knowledge beingshared.

Is Process Engineering Dead in a World ofE-business?

At conferences I am often over careful not to usephrases like `process reengineering' or `businessprocess reengineering'. Indeed, even if I use themit is often in a humorous way. But processengineering is not dead. It lives on, newlyenvigorated, through the auspices of e-business.We are being forced to question the ways in whichalmost all organizational processes operatebecause of the power, simplicity and ubiquity ofthe Internet and, in particular, the Web. Theredesign of processes through the implementationof Information Technology is hardly new but, formany processes we are at a break-point. Suddenlythe cost/bene®t equation of Information Technol-ogy allows for markedly different levels of quality,service, agility, and value to be achieved.

Without doubt there is still far too much hypesurrounding the potential of e-business and itscapacity to cause revolutionary change. However,this hype itself demonstrates one of the truths ofthis revolution and other potential revolutions. Atthe centre of revolutions are people. Revolutionsdemand revolutionaries. These are people who areprepared to take risks, who have passion andcommitment. For these revolutionaries to succeed

Knowledge and Process Management Volume 7 Number 2 pp 63±65 (2000)

Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

they have to convince the rest of us that they havethe answer. To do this they will use techniquesthat are not far removed from those used byancient orators. Careful selection of examples,simpli®cation of problems, development of newlanguages, are often necessary for stimulating andsustaining revolutions. Revolutions are also gutwrenching (to get this point across to my studentsI toy with the idea of getting them to read one ofthe excellent novels about the Cultural Revolu-tion). They shake us up, make us feel insecure.They rede®ne the past, disconvolulate us in thepresent, and they make it even more dif®cult tobelieve or interpret the future. At some stage,however, there must be a time for sober secondthought, the masses, as it were, must take owner-ship of the revolution. At least, in terms oforganizational and business revolutions, unthink-ing acceptance of the revolutionary creed will notbe a path to long term success.

There must be a time when the hype comes toearth. I think that we have come down to earthwith respect to the process engineering andprocess management revolutions. Many organiza-tions involve themselves with process reengineer-ing without fanfare and with an excellent grasp ofthe complexities of the issue. The same is not yettrue of knowledge management or e-businessthough there are signs that knowledge manage-ment is somewhat closer to earth than e-business.Let me relate this to e-business.

We are told that e-business will have a massiveeffect on the costs of doing business. Business tobusiness exchanges will drastically change therelationships of organizations with their suppliers.Procurement processes will be streamlined, cycletimes slashed and inef®ciencies eliminated. Whatare we forgetting here? First that history counts.Organizations have built up process and relation-ships over long periods of time. Processes mayappear to be inef®cient but, in many cases, theseinef®ciencies are the source of the value ofprocesses to (some of the participants). Think, forexample, of pricing strategies or many strategiesthat seek to differentiate on type of customer fromanother. A wonderful European example concernsthe pricing of cars. It is dif®cult to argue that lackof transparency in pricing was to the bene®t of thecar companies. Thus, as we seek to restructureinterorganizational processes we must be sensitiveto the structure and value of the present arrange-ments to the existing participants. History alsocounts from a narrower standpoint. Those of uswho are extolling the virtues of e-business woulddo well to revisit the lessons that were learntduring the ®rst round of reengineering.

The second lesson is, of course, that peoplecount ± I will not belabour the point. The thirdlesson is that we must understand the biggerpicture ± we must grasp the way value is createdfor individuals, groups, in organizations, indus-tries and, indeed society as a whole. To success-fully implement e-business we must understandhow it impacts on traditional and non-traditionalvalue equations.

The third lesson, to bring this section back to itssubtitle, is that much of the value of e-business isin the way in which it allows us to radicallyredesign (design) process. Much of what we didwell in process reengineering is available forapplication in the e-business revolution. Similarly,many of the mistakes that were made withdeveloping and implementing process reengineer-ing are being made again.

As I often do in the editorials I have onlyscratched the surface of a number of critical issues.In subsequent issues of the Journal I plan toexpand these concerns.

The Contents of this Issue

The cases presented in this issue offer interestingglimpses to two very different environments forknowledge management. Albert provides insightsinto knowledge management at the World HealthOrganization and the World Meteorological Orga-nization. These cases are fascinating examples ofglobal organizations that have been in the know-ledge management business for decades. Newtechnologies have provided them with radicallynew ways of managing their knowledge. The othercase that we present in this issue, by Godbout,relates to the impact of knowledge management tothe human resources area. This is a fascinatingaspect of knowledge management ± it can help usmanage knowledge about human resources andalso help us manage the knowledge that ourhuman resources represent!

In the research paper section we have provideda set of papers that concentrate primarily onorganizational transformation and strategy formu-lation. deBruin et al. provide a comprehensiveapproach to analyzing business processes.Although much has been written about analyzingand modeling business process their approach hasmuch new to offer. Wolfenden and Welch providea more strategic analysis providing us with a wayof linking strategy to business architecture. Again,providing a higher-level view Kakabadse andKakabadse discuss the implications of sourcingstrategy for organizations and organizational

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strategy and structure. Finally, Bhatt elaborates theresource-based approach to understanding strat-egy formulation.

Upcoming Issues

In the next issue (7.3) we will be publishing theexcellent papers that were submitted for a SpecialIssue of the Journal on The Business ProcessPhenomenon: Into the Era of E-business. I am veryexcited about these papers and the link that they

provide between knowledge management, processmanagement and e-business.

Issue 7.4 will have some interesting caseslooking at knowledge and process managementin the Construction Industry. There is clearly littledoubt that this is an industry that could bene®tvery signi®cantly from the application of know-ledge and process management but has been heldback because of the fragmentation of the industry,the ruggedness of the business environment andmany other interesting factors.

Anthony Wensley

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