Wing, Dentico, Southon and Nickol all bring home critical issues at the
KM/LO interface. They raise the issues that have really been troubling
to me and I really would like help in puzzling through this. Let me
list some points of condern, in the business world, particularly in the
corp domain where stock is public:
1) Knowledge or Intellegence is supposedly the measure of the difference
between the hard asset value and the stock price- All the accounting
organizations are trying to "measure" this, yet everyone that I talk
with, in the arena, deep down inside, does not believe it. It seems like
the drunk searching for the keys under the light on the corner
2) Knowledge or intellegence needs to be captured and turned from
"tacit" to "explicit". There seems to be a two fold rationale. First,
from the legal department (which needs work, like the accountants
above...grin...) and secondly, so that it can be shared with whoever needs
it (the IT rationale as discussed by Wing)
Which brings me to an observation, as discussed by the contributors
above: The KM arena seems to be moving back to treating the work force
like little biocomputers. If we can download and distribute the contents
of the cerebral hard drive and decode the wetware, then the human
element, the uncertain part, the affective part, can be discounted,
eliminated or made interchangable. this would seem to not matter whether
we are talking about line workers, researchers, marketers or
administrative officers.
It seems to me, in a dogmatic sense, that we have a metaphysical issue
to resolve. It seems that at the KM/LO interface we are having to come
to grips with the traditional objective, reductionist, scientific model
vs the softer systems approach. In the management arena it seems we are
confronted with , at one extreme, the issue of virtual communities where
persons can be assembled like pieces in an erector set and then
deconstructed vs a more permanent organization where the sum is greater
than the parts.
Insights, thoughts and ideas would be most helpful
thanks
tom abeles
phn 612 823 3154
tabeles@ibm.net
--tom abeles <tabeles@tmn.com>
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