Critical Capabilities and Competencies for Knowledge Organizations

Alexeis Garcia-Perez, Juan Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro, Denise Bedford, Margo Thomas, Susan Wakabayashi

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781789737691
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Information Management
• Index: Business

Failed knowledge management projects have one element in common: they fail to focus on the organization's core business functions and instead choose functions that are easy or might produce 'low-hanging fruit'. As a result, often even successful knowledge management projects add little value to the organization as they fail to address the pain points of the heart of the business.
So how can knowledge management professionals position themselves for greatest success? In this practical guide, expert authors Alexeis Garcia-Perez, Juan Gabriel Cegarra-Navarro, Denise Bedford, Margo Thomas, and Susan Wakabayashi demonstrate how professionals can map knowledge resources to support business critical capabilities, and increase the impact of knowledge management projects. They also explain how to avoid investing in resources with low value, and how to develop strategies and action plans for different types of resources.
Providing practical guidance for professionals, and including mini-case studies of successes and failures, this is an essential book for any knowledge management professional, researcher or student.

SECTION 1

THE NEW WORLD OF WORK AND WORKERS

1

THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE OF WORK

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Chapter 1 focuses on the changing landscape of work by explaining how the economy has changed over the past 70 years and how work has changed, specifically who works, when and where we work, who we work with. This chapter also defines knowledge capital and considers the role that knowledge capital has played in shifting focus and priorities in the new economy. This chapter raises the reader’s awareness of how their organizations have responded to the economic changes, how those organizations view knowledge capital, what these changes mean for how organizations manage labor and work. The changes have implications for management – who manages, what they manage, and how they manage. The management culture built around command, control, and direction are shifting to collaboration, coaching, and mentorship.

CHANGING ECONOMIC LANDSCAPE

Change is inherent to economies. Over the past 500 years we have experienced shifts from agrarian to industrial and now knowledge economies. Each new wave has brought change and synthesis. The previous economy remains in place but is affected by the new one. The agrarian economy was changed by the industrial economy, and the industrial economy is being changed by the knowledge economy. Each new wave takes decades to centuries to evolve. Over the past 70 years the U.S. economy has been shifting from an advanced industrial to a knowledge-based economy. Over the past several decades, economies in the United States and across the developed world have increasingly become knowledge-driven. This shift was first observed by Machlup in the 1950s, and has been further chronicled and characterized by other leading economists and researchers. Since the 1950s economists have attributed the shift to the rise in importance of services, information, an increasingly educated and trained workforce, technology, an increasingly virtual work environment, and increases in artificial intelligence and automation. The common element to all of these perspectives is the increased value of knowledge as capital. In the 21st century, knowledge is now a primary factor of production. It is equivalent to financial and physical capital in the industrial economy, and to land and physical labor in the agricultural economy.

Knowledge capital is defined to include the tacit knowledge of individuals, their skills and competencies, and their attitudes and behaviors. Knowledge capital is also an aggregate – the collective human capital of all members of a group, a unit, an organization, their collective explicit knowledge and information, their collective knowledge of what they do and how they work together, and their collective culture – their fundamental assumptions and beliefs, their values and behaviors. Additionally, knowledge capital includes all of the interactions, flows, connections, and reputations of individuals who comprise the internal and the external networks. This definition of knowledge capital is inclusive of any and all knowledge that is at the foundation of all types of economies. There is no agricultural crop, no manufactured automobile, and no financial instrument that is not grounded on knowledge. No product or service has ever been produced without knowledge – as an input, a defining factor in a process, or as an output. The change over time – with each successive wave – is the role that knowledge plays and the speed at which that knowledge advances. Knowledge is the differentiating factor in the 21st-century economy. Knowledge is what fuels our 21st-century economic systems. Knowledge has always been part of our economic systems, but recent events and advances have made it more visible and accessible. Increased knowledge capacity in populations has increased our awareness of its value and its power to change economic relationships.

A knowledge economy is so named because the core commodity – the primary factor of production is knowledge. The definition of knowledge itself presents challenges. Knowledge is a term that has meaning in many and perhaps all fields. It is treated in some as a human process. In other fields it is a tangible or intangible thing. And, in others it is an attribute of a person. For the purpose of this text, the authors define knowledge as a core capital asset of individuals, of groups, and of organizations. Knowledge is inherently human – it is an attribute of people. This view of knowledge is central to how we view people. Traditionally, organizations have viewed people as resources assigned to business processes, managed as cost factors, and commodities to be acquired or disposed of as our business needs change. In the knowledge economy, this view shifts to people as capacity building resources, as critical capital we invest in and develop over their association with the team and organization. In the knowledge economy, every individual is perceived as a source of knowledge. And, in the knowledge economy we have a broader view of an individual’s knowledge beyond the tasks defined in a job description.

ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL IN CHANGING LANDSCAPE

Knowledge capital is referred to in different ways by business managers and accountants, economists, human resource professionals, and technologists. Business managers and accountants treat knowledge capital as an intangible asset. This perspective compares the tangible and quantifiable attributes of physical and financial capital to the intangible attributes and hidden value of knowledge capital. Business managers and accountants have long recognized the value of human capital – the way they refer to knowledge capital. From this perspective knowledge capital includes reputation, know-how, process knowledge – no business process or operation can function without some working knowledge. Business managers also understand the value of knowledge to an organization’s competitive status in a market, to the role it plays in redefining or remaking those markets, and the composition of those markets.

We can already see the impact of businesses that have realized the value and leverage that knowledge capital offers.

Economists frame knowledge capital as intellectual capital (Bassi & Van Buren, 1999; Bontis, 1996, 1998, 1999; Bornemann, Knapp, Schneider, & Sixl, 1999; Edvinsson & Malone, 1997; Roos et al., 1997; Sveiby, 1997) (. In fact there is a high-profile journal focused entirely on intellectual capital – Journal of Intellectual Capital. Economists treat knowledge as an asset that can be used to produce wealth, multiply output of physical assets, gain competitive advantage, and/or to enhance value of other types of capital. Recently, economists have begun to classify intellectual capital as a true capital cost because (1) investment in (and replacement of) people is equivalent to or greater than the investment in machines and plants and (2) expenses incurred in education and training (to maintain the shelf life of intellectual assets) are equivalent to depreciation costs of physical assets.

Human capital and intellectual capital researchers focus on people as a form of capital. These researchers seek to look the economic growth and capacity that results from investments in human capital (Aliaga, 2001; Becker, 1993; Benhabib & Spiegel, 1994; Engelbrecht, 2003; Hendricks, 2002). Human capital theory holds that investments in human capital are a primary source of economic growth. In the 21st century, individuals are challenged to grow their human capital. In the 21st century, organizations are challenged to invest in and leverage their human capital. Human capital theory shifts our understanding of people as billets and “job seekers” to primary sources of economic growth, innovation and productivity. Human capital theorists and researchers explore learning as a deliberate investment that increases the capacity of individuals and organizations.

There is some discussion of human capital within the human resources domain. While there is discussion among professionals and in the literature, the concept of human capital, human capital investments and human capital growth has only translated into practice in selective organizations. Within the human resources field the discussion of human capital tends to focus on what have traditionally been characterized as “soft skills” or “non-technical competencies.” There has been progress in recognizing that some of these soft skills have a formal grounding, i.e. social skills, social capital, emotional intelligence, etc. There is growing recognition that these non-technical skills have a significant effect on an individual’s productivity, on a teak or unit’s ability to collectively generate knowledge, and the organization’s overall knowledge capacity.

The prevailing view, though, continues to see people as a resource that needs to be managed in the context of how we work and what we do today. On a practical level, people are managed from the perspective of their salaries, their job classifications, skills and competencies. Today, human resource management is a support function – it is a set of activities and tasks focused on identifying, procuring, retaining and disposing of resources to support a business process. Knowledge organizations competing and thriving in a knowledge economy need to shift their focus on human capital to a business and an operational perspective. Human capital is managed and leveraged every day – at every interaction, in the way people work, what they bring to the task, and how they grow and learn each day. The focus of human resource management must also shift away from high performers, high skilled individuals, and technical competencies to the full knowledge capital and capacity of all individuals. In the past 20 years, organizations have begun to realize that it is the full scope of knowledge capital – tacit knowledge, skills and competencies, attitudes and behaviors, explicit knowledge, procedural knowledge, cultural registers, and relationships – that contributes to economic productivity. It is no longer sufficient to expect that an individual’s qualifications and competencies at on-boarding represent his/her full potential. Knowledge capital grows with use, based on opportunity and depending on exposure. Managing and leveraging knowledge capital is now a core business function – a new responsibility of each individual, of each manager – in every business context.

CHANGING NATURE OF WORK

The shifting economy also has affected the nature of work. The internal operating environment of an organization is what has been most dramatically impacted by the rise of knowledge capital. The greatest impact, though, is to the nature of work, the workforce, to individual workers, and the effect this change is having on how organizations relate to workers. Labor economists, sociologists and human resource researchers have chronicled the shift in work – from physical labor to knowledge work, from labor that supports a predefined business process to one that leverages capabilities. Knowledge work has been characterized as work that requires educational credentials and leverages “thinking.”

In the agricultural and the industrial economy, work has been defined by the business processes and operations it supports. The work that people do is defined by how they support those processes. Given the focus on process, work has been codified as job streams or classes and job descriptions. Job classes are developed around the qualifications required to support the process. Qualifications have been broken down into two ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Section 1. The New World of Work and Workers
• Section 2. Managing Organizational Capabilities
• Section 3. Managing Individual Capabilities
• Section 4. Changing Landscape of Human Resource Management
• Appendix. Pulling it All Together
• Index