4.1 GATE KEEPERS ,INFORMATION, STARS, AND BOUNDARY SPANNERS
In
the context of KM, this tradition relates very directly to the development of Communities
of Practice (CoP). Given the relative non-alignment of organizational
structure and information flowand sharing,CoPs can be seen as the setting up of
an alternative structure to facilitate information flow and sharing.
The
seminal work was that of Thomas J. Allen of MIT [Allen and Cohen, 1969,
Allen,T., 1977] who conducted a number of studies relating to information flow
in industrial and corporate R&D laboratories. Allen’s most ingenious
contribution to the field was to seize upon the phenomenon that in many cases in
the context of military R&D and procurement, the same contract is awarded
to two different organizations to achieve the same end, typically in the case
of a critical component of a larger system. Duplicative development contracts
may, in fact, be very worthwhile insurance against the failure of a key
component of a system. This duplication provided a wonderfully robust context
in which to examine information flows and what distinguished the information
flows in the more successful projects from the less successful.
The
terminology is understandable, given that context, but a bit misleading just
the same, and rather too narrow, for the gatekeepers did much more. They were
also the channels for information sharing and exchange within the organization
and within the project. Allen himself, in fact, in developing and explicating
the role of gatekeepers introduces and explains his gatekeepers with the term
“sociometric stars.” “Information stars” a term emerging later [Tushman and
Scanlan, 1981a,b],
Furthermore,
the “information stars” were central to information flow both within the
organization at large, and within their project or projects. The
characteristics that distinguished these stars were:
·
extensive
communication with their field outside of the organization
·
greater
perusal of information sources, journals, etc., information mavens
·
a
high degree of connectedness with other information stars, one can infer that
their utility was not just having more information at their fingertips, but
knowing to whom to turn within the organization for further information
·
an
above average degree of formal education compared to their project teammates
These
characteristics of information stars were further corroborated by Mondschein,
L. [1990] in a study of R&D activities across several industries.
Another
finding was that the information flow structure was not at all closely related
to the formal organizational structure, and that the information stars did not
map onto any consistent pattern of organizational placement or level. The
relationship between formal organizational structure and the information flow
structure also seems to be in part a function of the larger corporate culture.
For
example, Frost andWhitley [1971] adopted Allen’s techniques to examine
information flow in R&D labs in the U.K., and they found a somewhat higher
overlap between formal organizational structure and the information flow
structure than Allen had found in the U.S. There is a suggestion here that the
more rigid the organizational hierarchy, the more the information flow
structure is constrained to adapt itself to the formal organizational
structure.
Tushman,
M. [1977], Tushman and Scanlan [1981a,b] further extended the Allen tradition.
Tushman examined development activities, both at the departmental level and at
the project level, at a medical instruments company, and very much confirmed
Allen’s conclusions. He introduced and added the concept of “boundary spanning”
or boundary spanner to describe verymuch the same phenomenon that Allen
described as gatekeeping He extended Allen’s work by distinguishing between two
types of communication stars, “internal communication stars” and “external
communication stars,” and defining boundary spanners as those who were both
internal and external communication stars.The emphasis is clearly directed to
projects and project management, and the “take home” theme is that boundary
spanners should be recognized, utilized, and nurtured for facilitating project
success.
4.2 RESEARCH PRODUCTIVITY AND KNOWLEDGE
The
study is compelling because of the high face validity of the measure of
success, the successful introduction of new pharmaceutical agents, since that
is what pharmaceutical companies are about after all, and because of the
statistical robustness of the results, a consequence of the fact that the more
successful companies were found to be not just twenty or thirty percent more
productive than the not so successful companies, they were two or three hundred
percent more productive. The more productive companies were characterized by:
·
A
relatively egalitarian managerial structure with unobtrusive status indicators
in the R&D environment,
·
Less
concern with protecting proprietary information,
·
Greater
openness to outside information, greater use of their libraries and information
centers, specifically, greater attendance by employees at professional
meetings,
·
Greater
information systems development effort,
·
Greater
end-user use of information systems and more encouragement of browsing and
serendipity. Increased time spent browsing and keeping abreast
4.3 LACK OF RECOGNITION
OF THESE FINDINGS IN THE BUSINESS COMMUNITY
a
subset of an even larger problem - the lack of recognition of or even
obtuseness to the importance of information and information related managerial
actions in the business community. For example, one major study that reviewed a
large corpus of work on R&D innovation, [Goldhar et al., 1976], concluded
that there are six characteristics of environments that are conducive to
technological innovations. The three most important characteristics are all
related to the information environment and information flow – specifically: 1)
easy access to information by individuals; 2) free flow of information both
into and out of the organizations; 3) rewards for sharing, seeking, and using
“new” externally developed information sources. Note the ‘flow in and out’ and
the ‘sharing, seeking, and using’. Number six is also information environment
related, 6) the encouragement of mobility and interpersonal contacts. Yet in a
remarkable oversight, the studies’ authors never remarked on the dramatic win,
place, and show finish of information and knowledge factors.
Another
similarly rigorous study [Orpen, C., 1985] examined productivity in R&D
intensive electronics/instrumentation organizations. analyzed various aspects
of the behavior of research project managers as perceived by their staff and
team members, and it found that in the more productive organizations (as
defined by rates of growth and return on assets), the managers were perceived
to be significantly more characterized by three aspects of their behavior, all
information related: 1) they routed literature and references to scientific and
technical staff, 2) they directed their staff to use scientific and technical
information (STI) and to purchase STI services, and 3) they encouraged
publication of results and supported professional meeting attendance and
continuing education. Particularly striking was the finding that not only did
information related management behavior trend.
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Knowledge Management (KM)
Processes in Organizations
Theoretical Foundations and Practice
