In this edition of KM by Will we will shift the focus into how organizations deal with knowledge. The first article discussed will be more recent than my past posts which the articles were 10-15 years old. Now don’t let that detract from the content because the information is still relevant and some of which may surprise many of you. Organizations are constantly looking for ways to improve efficiency, morale, and employee satisfaction. Understanding the flow of communication within an organization can result in exploitation that can improve all three mentioned areas of concern and much more.
This article takes this preface and applies it to academic librarians and the way organizational stories are shared. We learn that there are previous studies to support the reasoning behind the study that determined the main ways an organization can share common values, rules, and business practices is through storytelling. This concept also holds true for increasing social capital within communities both physical and virtual, so it adds to the justification for the attention and desire to understand the impact that storytelling will have within an organization.
The article, Knowledge transferred through organizational stories: a typology- by Monica Colon-Aguirre, may be of interest to many people within the class who work in or with a library. The research contained in the article took place at 4 different academic libraries in the Southern US and the interviewees were reference librarians. This author challenges that there are more types of knowledge than just tacit and explicit. Citing a work from Chun Wei Choo in 1998 the article introduces another type of knowledge that exists in organizations and that is what they call cultural knowledge. To support this assertion, they mention data the suggests that storytelling transfers primarily just tacit and cultural knowledge because it centers on social interactions, things that have taken place within the organization in the past instead of explicit-style knowledge of structured business practices or processes.
An example I would like to reference is their use of one employee telling a story about a previous supervisor. We all know and have these stories, so I thought we could all relate. The example is shared to help explain that in this scenario both tact and cultural knowledge are exchanged. I would argue that this is still tacit and explicit knowledge being exchanged, it just so happens to be within an organization. The same story could be told to a friend or neighbor who has no knowledge or concern in the organization. I can see where support could be developed to better understand the storytelling within an organization but to take explicit knowledge and break it apart to re-categorize it doesn’t work for me. I think that the story about a previous supervisor, whether good or bad, is explicit knowledge because the person receiving the story is learning about the positive or negative traits and using those to compare to others. To say this knowledge is cultural to the organization and critical to its survival is to say it has no place other than within the organization. To me, and this is just my opinion, these all can be tied to one word that falls under the basic description of experience. Every supervisor or leadership seminar I have attended all tell a few of these stories, both good and bad, to teach the right way to lead from other’s experiences.
I really enjoyed the second article in this blog, Connelly, C. E., Zweig, D., Webster, J., & Trougakos, J. P. (2012). Knowledge hiding in organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, and at several points I found myself silently chuckling about hiding knowledge. We have more than likely worked in a place where there is that person who has been there since the place had dirt floors and does not want to give up everything they know to the new employees. Whether this is fear of no longer being needed or an unwillingness to give up knowledge they have gained over the years from good and bad experiences, one thing is for certain: most organizations can relate. The Connelly article does a great job of setting the tone and expectations with the summary and introduction.
I respect the knowledge management approach of this article because they are attempting to find out why we are not sharing knowledge in an organization rather than trying to find out how it came to be or how it can be exploited. I think this is a real problem and as technology continues to take over the workplace it will continue to cause problems. Knowledge sharing is one of the greatest asset an organization can benefit from if they develop a way to actively manage it. If there is organizational knowledge within the organization that is not being shared, then the knowledge management plan has obvious holes which makes it less effective. The study brings out one point as future research is described that I believe is key to knowledge hiding and that is context in which the communication takes place.
In the Hara, N. (2009) book, Communities of practice: Fostering peer-to-peer learning and informal knowledge sharing in the work place, (page 63) talks about this exact situation. The attorneys in the text were asked about knowledge sharing and they would share things like the judge is in a bad mood or the prosecuting attorney was giving good deals that day which would help their colleagues out if they were going to that court room. The context here is that giving the heads up to the other attorneys left an implied return of the favor if they came across a comparable situation. There were other examples that fell into the same context but they both share one thing that can help control knowledge hiding. The organizations that are suffering from knowledge hiding or a lack of knowledge sharing must find a way for it to benefit the person sharing. When a person feels pressure to give up knowledge that may be something they worked hard to learn it creates a situation in which they feel threatened. Now if an organization worded the knowledge request in a way that would recognize the employee or reward them for the contribution then the situation could be better controlled. Exploitation of individual motivators may be the missing ingredient in the recipe to increase knowledge sharing in organizations.
The selection of this article from Lucas was an easy selection as it transitions nicely from the previous article that attempts to understand knowledge hiding in organizations. I believe that knowledge sharing has a tremendous amount to do with trust between the employee and employer. More specifically, what will happen to the employee when they reveal their knowledge. The title of this article, “The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices”. I was excited to see that Lucas took it much further and referenced knowledge sharing failure, divided into four different categories: absence of ancillary resources, embedded qualities of knowledge that cannot be duplicated elsewhere, the ignorance of the social context in which knowledge is created and shared, and my personal favorite – individual behavior.
The introduction paragraph has one of the most succinct explanations as to why knowledge sharing is important in organization: “employees in different areas know what type of knowledge exists, where it exists, and what possibilities exist for it to be transferred from one place to another”. Knowing why knowledge sharing is important to an organization is easy to conceptualize. Breaking it out into a clear and concise statement can let the person or team (with knowledge to share) contemplate their individual understanding and inherent benefits to sharing. Emily make a great statement that applies in both articles (Emily Collier )” Reputations based on past performances/experience are also important because it prompts full disclosure”. This reflects the importance of reputation in an organization and just how much it can impact trust. Lucas pins the knowledge transfer success on developing an environment in which the employees see the action as a company business practice, rather than an action used to improve their individual department. Each individual’s knowledge sharing perception is paramount in every organization. When a positive discernment is attached to knowledge sharing as a business practice that improves the organization, combined with trust in the leadership, then the environment has been established. From this point an organization can begin to build their knowledge sharing infrastructure.
Colon-Aguirre, M. (2015). Knowledge transferred through organizational stories: a typology. Library Management, 36(6/7), 421-433. doi:10.1108/LM-06-2014-0073
Connelly, C. E., Zweig, D., Webster, J., & Trougakos, J. P. (2012). Knowledge hiding in organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(1), 64–88.
Hara, N. (2009). Communities of practice: Fostering peer-to-peer learning and informal knowledge sharing in the work place. Information Science and Knowledge Management (Vol. 13). Berlin: Springer-Verlag
Lucas, L. M. (2005). The impact of trust and reputation on the transfer of best practices. Journal of Knowledge Management, 9(4), 87-101. doi:10.1108/13673270510610350
KM Blog by Will 
Hi Will, I’m Will. 😀
One of the things that irked me about Connelly et al.’s (2012) article is its cynicism with regard to the intent and how disclosure is conceptualized. The examples they provide (which you extend) paint knowledge hiding as intentional, and in the case of your example, a result of an experienced individual that does not want to relinquish their power to new workers.
I would argue that hiding has the potential for strategy, a learning experience, and perhaps for positive future benefits. For example, when we’re taught statistics in school, we’re taught the nitty gritty pen and paper equations at first, even though we have tools in our pockets that can calculate our stats problems faster. Our instructors essentially hide “the easy way” to encourage us to understand mathematical logic.
What are your thoughts on the “hiding” of knowledge? Is it as nefarious as alluded to?
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are times when the knowledge is deliberately hidden – salary information would be hidden generally. However, if you had the aggregate statistics – average pay per grade, for example – you could see if you were above or below average. Or if women generally were. But we hide stuff like that.
Another one is bad website design. One deliberate technique is the offer, blinking in your face and a tiny little button that says, “No Thanks” way off in the corner. All this is intended to separate you from your money and it really works.
Or, take the Monty Hall problem (you might be too young to remember Monty Hall – it was a game show kind of like the Price is Right but they’d have choices: door number 1, curtain #2, etc. You had to pick one). See this website for a good explanation: https://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-the-monty-hall-problem/
Essentially, the show hides information from you because they know the predilection is to stay with one’s first choice – which is typically wrong – and that’s why they play you.
Remember, if you don’t know who the sucker is at the poker table, it’s you.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, making it extremely difficult to deactivate an account or cancel an automatic renewal of something is always way more difficult than it needs to be. Of course, this results in the user/consumer/customer losing trust in the company, so if the company ever needs honest user feedback…well, forget it. I’ve learned to simply do a Google search on things like, “How to deactivate my Amazon account.” It’s just easier.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Will I see your point and there is a lot of value in the strategical hiding of knowledge in your example, however, it would have to be examined in the context of an organization and the inherent benefits of the knowledge being shared. I have encountered knowledge hiding many times from experienced personnel and (when it is intentional) it is usually not as much of a nefarious-concentric orientation as it is fear of being replaced. I can understand some knowledge hiding in this aspect but not condone it. I could be found guilty of knowledge hiding a few times in my career and my situations always revolve around an arrogant approach without a plan of usage. The approach is everything, in my opinion, and the too often it becomes the deciding factor to gather years of experience without any regard for the people or the process. I do not want to promote organization knowledge hiding in any scenario but rather change the approach to the gathering of such knowledge.
Also, I appreciate your blog responses that create conversation.
LikeLike
I do not think that hiding knowledge is necessarily always nefarious. In fact, if trust is lacking in an organization in the sense that sharing knowledge may benefit the organization at the expense of the person who shared that knowledge, then it is perfectly reasonable for that person not to share that knowledge. This also depends on how high the stakes are for not sharing the knowledge. If not sharing the knowledge would lead to the space shuttle Challenger disaster, then one is obligated to share that knowledge. However, if sharing that knowledge results in losing out on a promotion or being sidelined on future projects for being a Cassandra, then one must adopt a whistleblower mindset in order to take action if and when such a disaster does happen. Of course, such a disaster may never happen, and in this case sharing the knowledge, while morally the right thing to do, did not benefit the sharer.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Stephen, I completely agree – not all actions taken to hide something are nefarious nor are they always pure. Your input about the context of the action and the results are spot-on; that context is often lacking in any sort of historical review and may lead to one drawing an erroneous conclusion (often matched with the statement, “well, you had to be there”). It is this context that leads to issues associated with the knowledge repository design and recall.
LikeLiked by 1 person
What about when knowledge hiding occurs simply because people think it’s already known? Is that a thing? I feel like it is a thing. People may not be hiding knowledge out of nefarious purposes or even out of a strategic desire to stay ahead or to encourage others to find the knowledge themselves. Is this a situation where common sense isn’t all that common? Suppose someone thinks people already know and have discounted an idea or they thought they already shared a piece of knowledge and so don’t want to share it again for fear of coming off as “that guy”?
LikeLiked by 2 people
Carolyne, In the Army, I have seen leaders limiting their knowledge sharing because they don’t feel that they have a voice or are tired of repeating the same thing. To your question – I think that it is a thing, and I have been “that guy” many times in my military career. Some people do think that the knowledge already exists among the group or platform but when actions take place that do not support the knowledge shared. I tend to be the guy to raise the flag and pause the conversation when experience gained isn’t used in the decision making. Sometimes the group needs an actor to keep everyone honest and remove personal interests from decision making.
LikeLiked by 2 people
There’s also the “need to know” basis, where someone is given just the pieces of knowledge they need (or that the knowledge owner thinks they need) to do their job, with the idea being that the rest of the knowledge would just be a distraction. Of course, here I may be confusing knowledge with information…
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Will, I was just reading this today: How to Prevent, Reverse Cynicism in the Ranks (https://bit.ly/2FajhaJ) and thought of you. Many times I had guys bring stuff up to me that we could not fix – you have to deal with that – but a lot of it we could. So we did. They were still cynics – our situation was not fixable and I never expected them to re-up but many did – but they were one of the highest performing teams in 3rd Fleet.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’m drawing a blank on whether this has been studied in the way that you’re describing it, but under one view, it’s simply tacit knowledge itself.
LikeLike
This a long-winded story with an unhappy ending. I will shorten it somewhat. My pilot buddies were embedded with a Marine A-6 unit about to deploy on an aircraft carrier. Marines might deploy 2x a career on a carrier – although all of them are carrier qualified they don’t do it often to be proficient enough. The reason they were embedded was that they were supposed to transfer the necessary knowledge to survive being deployed on a carrier. Some of the preflight checks for an A-6 get modified if you are on a carrier. For example, pull on the radar to see if it is effectively screwed in. Otherwise, during a catapult launch, it will end up in your lap, pinning your arms and preventing you from flying the aircraft or ejecting.
Which happened to one Marine team. They died. My friend always worried that he had forgotten to tell them. It eats at him to this day but he’s learned to deal with not knowing.
LikeLiked by 2 people
Thank you for your reply Stephen. I think the key to your statement is two fold: first is your quote – “or that the knowledge owner thinks they need” which alludes to one entity restricting knowledge / information. The second point is the goal determination of the knowledge being shared. Just like Matthew mentioned earlier in his example of individual salary being knowledge that does not need to be shared. There are situations in which sharing knowledge can be counter productive. I think the best way to conduct knowledge sharing workshops would be to align the knowledge sharing goals with organizational goals. This will help to develop a shared understanding of intent and any inherent benefits to the individual or organization when the goals are met. Great points!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I really like the blog title. I will say that job security is a bit of a misnomer, since it used to imply security at keeping one’s job. I don’t think anything can improve security at any one company; instead, one’s knowledge is the job security that you can always find a job. It might not be at the same company but one’s knowledge is what makes one valuable. Companies might fold and knowledge won’t prevent that but it does make you transferrable.
So be confident in yourself and job security will follow.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Matthew, I agree that the term “job security” is a misconception, even more today with advances in technology, and those who withhold knowledge are holding a false sense of security. I would argue that tacit knowledge within an organizational actor would only guarantees them the ability to find another job when they hold a generalized position. Knowledge sharing across digital media that is accessible via the Internet should increase knowledge sharing within an organization. In my opinion, those organizational actors who are aware of technology platforms that allow/promote knowledge sharing will use the influence of recognition to share. Those who are not aware are the ones who are in danger of becoming obsolete and their fear is well-founded. The ability to find a job is on your ability to sell yourself and I think the organizational actor who involves themselves into the problem solving equation by sharing their knowledge would receive more recognition and therefore create even more “job security”. Sadly there are many who still hold on to knowledge within an organization until the technology outgrows their experience and knowledge.
LikeLike
Interestingly, I think that this is all a form of Social Capital – one’s reputation should help one find and land a job. Therefore, willingness to participate and assist others without seemingly to want something in return should actually help one change jobs.
No?
LikeLiked by 1 person