Knowledge Society: Opportunities and Challenges

Citation

Lara, F.J. (2011), "Knowledge Society: Opportunities and Challenges", Management Decision, Vol. 49 No. 2, pp. 297-302. https://doi.org/10.1108/00251741111109179

The knowledge society has been treated by many authors during the last years. In the twenty‐first century the society will be a knowledge society, base on the concept of the knowledge worker (Drucker, 1957). Knowledge workers are those whose jobs require knowledge‐intensive skills. In this context, human resource practices will play a significant role in shaping, influencing and enhancing the capability of knowledge workers. The issue is really relevant nowadays; this book makes a SWOT analysis of the topic. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats are presented from a particular perspective, but with a very interesting output.

Knowledge Society: Opportunities and Challenges provides a comprehensive and critical approach to the study of the discipline. It emphasises the need to integrate human resources effectively with the wider strategic management issues of the organisation. People management is central to the thinking and practice of management today. While human relations are largely shaped by the philosophy of trust and fairness, operational human resource aspects like recruitment, training, appraisal and reward management must be aligned with the operating environment, which is intensely knowledge‐oriented. Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual information and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluating and incorporating new experiences and information (Baggio and Cooper, 2010; Chen, 2009; Davenport and Prusak, 1998; Pechlaner and Bachinger, 2010; Tolstoy, 2010; Warren et al., 2009; Yang, 2009). This collection of articles attempts to focus on how a firm having a higher level of employee commitment can contribute significantly to organisational effectiveness.

The leadership and the style of managing people create the enabling culture. Ultimately, this defines the effectiveness of knowledge management. Thus, there is an urgent need to align human resource policies with the distinctive traits of knowledge workers. Equally, there is an urgent need to link human resource management to knowledge management in order to enhance organizational effectiveness.

The book has three sections:

1. 1.

   Challenges of Human Resources;

2. 2.

   Knowledge Management Issues; and

3. 3.

   Cases.

The first section, Challenges of Human Resources, contains five different articles. The first article, “Managing knowledge work: human resources perspectives” by P.V.L. Raju, describes how in the knowledge society, knowledge serves as an agent for the improvement of companies as an effective competitive advantage. The elementary requirement for any firm is the creation and development of knowledge, which serves as an agent for improvement of the firm. Moreover, the deviations among two or more firms can be analyzed based on their levels of knowledge and their respective abilities in harnessing the knowledge. In this context there lies an implicit need to align human resource policies to knowledge management.

The second article, “knowledge management and role of human resources”, is by G.R.K. Murty. With the advent of knowledge society, there is a shift of business towards “knowledge economy”. This has brought knowledge to the forefront and knowledge management has become an important strategy for organisations. Once knowledge is transformed from an activity status to an object status, it becomes information power. Knowledge management activities are a mix of knowledge and information. Knowledge management essentially aims at value addition to the users.

The third article, “Employee commitment: bridging human resource management with knowledge management”, is by Tapan K. Panda, Tapas K. Panda and Subrat K. Mishra. Employee commitment depends on the sense of belonging of the employee towards the organisation. The article focuses on the element of trust that will help organisations to foster and share knowledge amongst employees. The model of the psychological contract is discussed in the article. It also analyses the factors that mediate the relationship between human resource management and knowledge management.

The fourth article, “Emerging global issues in human resource management”, is written by William J. Rothwell and Tiffani D. Payne. Employment in the knowledge society poses unique challenges to human resources, such as launching and sustaining effective performance management system, building and maintaining effective recruitment system and aligning revised management initiatives with individual preferences. Key challenges in recruitment are building and sustaining effective recruitment efforts in both good and bad economic times, and keeping pace with e‐recruitment issues. The role of training is to build organisational talent. Training should move away from teaching to learning. By learning, individuals are empowered to do things themselves. Rewarding human performance is really much more complex than merely rewarding pay for performance. Reward systems typically fail for several and well‐documented reasons (Spitzer, 1996). Failures in socialisation are closely related to job satisfaction (Amara et al., 2009; Cegarra‐Navarro et al., 2009; Fan and Ku, 2010; Jensen et al., 2010; Saari and Judge, 2004). The real challenge is to provide elegant but simple incentive systems that promise dependable rewards for specific results that matter to individuals. Human resources practitioners must become true leaders for the people side of the enterprise to help employers and workers meet the present and future challenges.

The fifth article, “Challenges for human resource professionals in the knowledge‐driven era”, is authored by Rajashree Vyas. The affairs of the business world such as the rapid growth of innovation, changing legislation, the growing number of lawsuits, etc., are evolving at a faster pace in today's world. Universal access to human resources‐related information and self‐service options will be allowed by new technology that is part of the globalization process. The practice of human resource management is expected to contribute to global networking. The future of human resources is shifting from a support function to more of a strategic partnership, which helps the organization to achieve its objectives.

The second section is about Knowledge Management Issues, and it comprises seven articles. The first article of this section, “Harnessing tacit knowledge in organizations”, is written by Daniel Ashish and S. Senthil Kumar. Harnessing tacit knowledge calls for suitable human resource interventions in organisations. Incentives that can be used by organisations to encourage knowledge sharing must include rewards, creating appropriate conditions and infrastructure. The knowledge map plays an important role in facilitating the right knowledge being transferred to the right person. But building such maps requires an organised effort throughout the organisation. Any successful initiative to harness tacit knowledge needs to break psychological barriers rather than organisational barriers.

The second article, “Recruiting knowledge workers”, is by Karen Unwin. Recruitment and organisational development strategy go hand in hand. The relationship between recruitment, business strategy and organisational culture is so intertwined that the recruiter must adopt a holistic approach rather than treat them as different components. Business success depends on attracting and retaining talented specialists and containing a frequent turnover of employees, as knowledge will also leave along with the employees. As Drucker (1969) says, knowledge workers do not believe they are paid to work 9.00 to 5.00; they believe they are paid to be effective.

The third article, “Retaining talent in knowledge economy”, is by Gurdeep S. Hora. Human resource professionals are responding through deliberate and conscious people management strategies in the present knowledge economy. Recruitment is no longer a one‐time exercise. Companies constantly have to monitor performance and scan the environment for optimal organisational performance. In a highly competitive knowledge society, the performance of an organisation is critically linked to the quality and the performance of its human resources. Companies focus on systematically communicating and keeping in touch with employees. They encourage innovation and ingenuity that provide opportunities to employees to upgrade their skills.

The fourth article in this section, “Managing career in knowledge society”, is authored by Radha Mohan Chebolu. Growing “career consciousness” among young people to pursue a career‐building strategy while working in organisation is found to be the reality today. Employees often interpret tangible signs of progress in the workplace as signals that they are on the right path of progress in their career. The necessity of toning up the abilities and skills required to stay fit in for competition are increasingly realised by the younger generation. The concept of job security has been redefined in the light of the changing paradigms of the economy driven by global competition. To achieve uniformity and synthesis in the implementation of ideas, people need to be trained along multidisciplinary lines with a strong zeal for efficiency and merit.

The fifth article, “Virtual teams in the knowledge society”, is by Sumati Reddy. The knowledge society has brought about a major development where individuals can participate in different kinds of work without actually relocating to the place of work. The management of virtual teams requires paying greater attention to the criterion of team formation, so that each member contributes to the overall effectiveness of the team. It is important to make efforts to build rapport and relationship among team members as this will determine the team's communication and performance.

The sixth article, “Training and development in knowledge society”, is by K. Mallikarjunan. Training programs in a knowledge society dominated by information technologies should be directed towards the fullest exploitation of opportunities that are facilitated by ceaseless progress of technology. The knowledge economy calls for thoughtful strategies to update the skills of personnel. The most distinguishing feature of a knowledge society is its ability to collect, cull and interpret information through properly trained employees. Knowledge management is the framework for synergizing the processes of knowledge production, sharing and application for maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

The seventh and last article in this section is titled “Knowledge management: why learning from the past is not enough!” and is authored by Rogério de Paula and Gerhard Fischer. Traditional knowledge management approaches aim to archive information from the past, which implies that the information needs of the future are expected to be the same as they were in the past. Know‐how versus know‐what (Brown and Duguid, 1998), a dynamic knowledge‐based activity system (Spender, 1996) and social networks as a source of human capital (Coleman, 1988) are now tools for building knowledge (Lee et al., 2010; Martinez‐Fernandez, 2010; McLeod et al., 2010). Knowledge is presented as a commodity to be acquired, never as a human struggle to understand, to overcome falsity and to stumble upon the truth.

Finally, the third section comprises three case studies. The first case study, “Knowledge management at Tata Steel”, is by Ajay Kumar and Sanjib Dutta of ICFAI University. Tata Steel started with a small group of people from within the organisation. In 2001, Tata Steel developed a “Knowledge Management Index” to evaluate the performance of individual employees in a knowledge management initiative. Later, it linked performance evaluation to knowledge management and used a balanced scorecard to monitor the performance of individual employees, divisions, as well as the organization as a whole. Later in early 2003, Tata Steel was recognized as one of Asia's Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE).

The second case, “Knowledge management initiatives in India: key success drivers”, is written by Swati Raman. The research article focuses on the various dimensions of knowledge management and contains a literature survey. Also, it provides a pragmatic view of knowledge management initiatives in Wipro and Infosys.

The third case study, “From community of practice to on demand workplace: IBM's journey in knowledge management” is written by Jayaprada, Minita Sinha and T.R. Venkatesh. IBM began its journey in knowledge management in 1994 with the design of the ICM (Intellectual Capital Management) Asset Web Framework, which supported a community of practice. Research at IBM Global Service led to the design and development of the Lotus Discovery System, which was later withdrawn. In 2003, On Demand Workplace was installed in IBM, where employees could share and transfer knowledge across the globe. IBM reflected on how On Demand Workplace would fare in the market and whether it would be accepted by different organisations.

On the whole, I enjoyed reading the different chapters for two main reasons, which I also consider the major strengths of this volume:

1. 1.

   the knowledgeable overview of the conceptual and methodological contributions that knowledge management could make to business science as a whole; and

2. 2.

   the discussion of a whole range of new and exciting new questions.

The book can contribute to our understanding of what constitutes Knowledge Society their opportunities and challenges, from a holistic perspective and methodology. To sum up: this is an excellent volume for all of us involved and interested in the debate on how to bring relevance to knowledge management.