Page 251 -

240 MANAGING KNOWLEDGE WORK AND INNOVATION

seen in relation to BankCo, where individual departments were not willing
to engage in global knowledge sharing because in the short term this would
distract from the goals and objectives against which they, as a department,
would be judged. Similarly a common outcome in the Oakland Furniture
role-play is that individuals representing different departments fail to share
relevant knowledge, or even conceal knowledge, because it is in their par-
ticular interests, and/or in the political interests of their department, to do
so. On the other hand, in Buckman Labs, global knowledge sharing occurred
because this was promoted from the top by a powerful CEO and managers
were rewarded for this activity, rather than simply for improving the profit-
ability of their own particular unit.

Codifying knowledge
Having highlighted many of the problems associated with codified knowledge,
there are contexts where codification is a very useful process and an efficient way
to exploit individual and organizational knowledge. So, for example, a group of
software engineers who have already developed a common language for soft-
ware development may well be able to rely entirely on e-mail to jointly develop
a new software program. They may have little requirement for any face-to-face
contact in this process. Many large, global consulting firms have successfully
introduced KMS where codified knowledge around projects and clients is stored
and continually updated and maintained. It is important to recognize however
that these KMS require significant support in order to ensure that the knowl-
edge is up-to-date and relevant. Thus most of these firms employ a specialist
group who are solely tasked with this activity. Global consulting firms largely
compete on the basis of the solutions they develop for clients and knowledge
about clients. Whilst they clearly do not rely solely on codified knowledge, it is
strategically critical that project and client knowledge is codified to some extent
and they typically invest significantly in developing and maintaining KMS. Firms
in other sectors, however, may not have the resources necessary to maintain
up-to-date KMS or be able to so clearly identify exactly what knowledge needs
to be codified.
Similarly documentation strategies in LiftCo were quite useful at the point
where the innovation had become sufficiently well-routinized and a common
set of languages and understandings had developed around the innovation.
This meant that the documentation could be interpreted. This can be con-
trasted to the Midlands Hospital case where there was a significant need to
meet face-to-face to overcome knowledge boundaries in developing the pro-
cess innovation. In this case then codification was de-emphasized and when the
re-designed process was codified in order to be shared with other Trusts, the
necessary shared perspective on the issue did not exist and there was therefore
very little value placed on the codified knowledge made available to other hos-
pital trusts. It was also highlighted in Chapter 2 that different groups of knowl-
edge workers rely more or less on codified knowledge in their work. Lawyers

6/5/09 7:21:37 AM
9780230_522015_11_cha10.indd 240
9780230_522015_11_cha10.indd 240 6/5/09 7:21:37 AM