KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT #5

Compound UK [Pseudonym] Case

  • Medical company: Pharmaceutical sales
  • Clinical trials of new drugs w/ participating doctors in GB + Northern Ireland
  • 300 Employees
  • Lotus Notes
  • A historic case, but still relevant. The findings are human issues, not technology specific
  • Intention to share info + knowledge across functional + geographic boundaries

Compound UK : KM Repositories

  • Email
  • Strategic Selling System: To enable sales, marketing + medicine staff to input their views and info in a structure way w/ the aim of bringing together the employees' shared knowledge so that they might contribute to a successful sale
  • Contact Recording System: Enable employees to record requirements of particular doctors -- outcome of meetings, personal + medical interests, + their involvement in clinical trials
  • Discussion Databases: To enable employees to review the thread of discussions on a particular issue -- issues, products or a particular role to encourage employees to discuss issues

-- Employee could account for their actions and make explicit their sales and medical work [sales-making]
-- Also make sense of + utilise the accounts of others [sense reading]

Findings

Positive

  • Local "mastery" achieved through databases + regular face-to-face meetings

Negative

  • At a less local level the databases were the only communication method
  • "Can't put this level of detail into a Notes database, + much of what I do input must be meaningless to others"
  • Simplistic representation
  • Reps didn't understand what ppl wanted, + why they sought clarification
  • This feedback put them off recording - it didn't seem to be working

Separate Functions

  • Sales, marketing + medical sectors all overlap [venn diagram style]
  • Not much shared understanding
  • Uncertainty about what other functions wanted from them
  • Fear of appearing stupid/irrelevant
  • Lack of time to contribute to databases
  • Normally only accounted for their actions when things went wrong
  • Accounts on the databases lacked the background [histories, activities + assumptions] in each discipline
  • This form of codifying knowledge often failed. Social network development might have been more effective, to allow social processes to develop between staff

Political Issues in Compound UK

  • Notes was used as a surveillance system
  • Reps responded by recording what they thought managers wanted to hear, but kept doing it bc that was being checked on [so must have been communicating in back channels too?]
  • On forums, careerists used it to gain attention
  • Non-careerists kept quiet if they didn't agree w/ what others said
  • Homogenizing of views [reflecting management's views]
  • E.g the commercial director developed a league facility based on how many contact records + strategic selling sheets had been completed by each rep
  • Some senior managers would regularly review detailed comments and observations that reps had recorded, + feedback to managers
  • Thus strengthened hierarchical control + reduced trust/cooperation
  • Saw it as a waste of time
  • Some quieter forums were helpful
  • Fewer careerists bc they were no use for advancement
  • Were used to mentor junior staff
  • They were all: domain specific; optional; senior managers not privy to these forums
  • These are 'people problems'. Making the IT better wouldn't solve them

Entreprise 2.0

Future Directions

Many of the issues are 'people issues'. It's possible artificially-intelligent agents could help by:

  • Choosing relevant content
  • Tagging and organising knowledge
  • Knowledge representations of the world allow logic to highlight inconsistencies + logical conclusions from minimal facts [or assertions]
  • Some robots can learn by doing [transfer tacit knowledge?]
  • 3D printing to transfer some kinds of tacit knowledge

Social Networking could also help as it works by connecting ppl, so knowledge transfer issues may be reduced

  • Entreprise Knowledge Management based on Web 2.0
  • Attempts to use social networking style systems in work contexts
  • Overall, advocates of E2.0 technologies claim that they more readily lend themselves to becoming a part of everyday work and, thus, they're more representative of what ppl are doing + who they're doing it with
  • By tagging, users are more likely to categorise contributions that are related to what they're doing, + thus result in more meaningful search requests and retrievals
  • Viewed more critically, and in relation to the case specific literature, such claims are technologically deterministic
  • Further, while the use of Web 2.0 technologies may provide some of the benefits claimed, the use of such technologies in the form of E2.0 within a specific organisational setting will vary greatly
  • KM can view technological determinism as negative, too optimistic about technology. Much KM work assumes the ability to transfer knowledge, later work is about getting the right ppl together to allow their social processes to allow creation of knowledge
  • Tagging
  • Rating
  • Feeds
  • User comments + discussion
  • Open creation + editing policies
  • Network connections
  • Ranking of content
  • Integration [linking] across systems + platforms