>One of the main issues in the "knowledge-based" company seems to be how to
>keep the competence. Naturally many companies become sceptical towards
>investing in the "human factor" to increase the company's knowledge if the
>person invested in can leave the organization at any time, taking the
>investment with him/her.
>We ask ourselves to what extent this is really a
>problem. Isn't it really a matter of trying to convert much of the
>individual capital into structural capital so that it stays in the
>organization independently of its actors?
These are great questions which every knowledge-based company must answer.
I think the answer to this first questions is "partly". The knowledge
must also be invested in the people in the organization otherwise it
really isn't available to the organization in a productive way (i.e. work
is accomplished by people, not structural capital).
>Doing this however raises a new question: Are the individuals interested
>in "giving"
>their knowledge to the organization? Today discussions about virtual
>organizations and
>networks aren4t too rare, but the basic idea here is that individuals have
>much more flexible couplings to organizations. Instead of belonging to
>only one organization, they see their own personal knowledge and
>competence as their possibility of competing with others in any
>organization. Logically they would not at all be interested in
>organizations trying to absorb their competence. The answer might instead
>be to create organizations that are built to survive and be strong having
>a high rotation of personnel. If this is the case many of the traditional
>views on how to satisfy and motivate people in organizations such as tying
>them up with e.g. company-cars, and social benefits would maybee not work
>in the future since people are not interested in having these kind of
>couplings to the organization.
There are a lot of issues here. Why would anyone be interested in sharing
their knowledge, regardless of what their relationship ("coupling" was the
term used in the original posting) is with the company? I think the
answer is WIIFM (what's in it for me?). There has got to be a rationale.
I can think of several:
1. Predisposition to sharing because of values and beliefs held
2. Sharing (especially with subordinates) in order to offload to them
work that is no longer interesting or challenging
3. The organization gives rewards (recognition, financial) for
demonstrating and sharing knowledge.
Company cars in themselves are probably not effective in retaining staff,
since their value can easily be translated into money equivalents. People
stay with companies if they PERCEIVE that the rewards they receive are
more or else the same as they would receive elsewhere. These rewards need
not only be monetary - they could also include "social benefits" such as a
sense of purpose or working with people they want to associate with or
personal/professional development.
Patrick Sue
Toronto, Canada
psue@inforamp.net
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