Case Studies in Knowledge Management

Governance of Strategies to Manage Organizational Knowledge 89

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CASE DESCRIPTION

The STDO Informants revealed a number of factors that led to the development of
their strategy to manage organizational knowledge. These included the following:

1. The external impacts of KM activity in the Department of “Operations.” The
   Department of “Operations” had previously appointed a senior officer as a chief
   knowledge officer (CKO) who had commissioned the STDO to conduct a prelimi-
   nary study into the state of KM in defense as a research task. Simultaneously, the
   STDO was part of a major “Operations” change management program which
   resulted in STDO officers designing a change program with a number of strategies.
   One of those seven strategies related to KM.


2. The serendipitous impact of KM research commissioned by the Department of
   “Operations” that had been carried out by the STDO was an influence on their own
   activity. The results of this research were influential in the STDO recognizing a need
   to articulate and implement its own KM strategy. “STDO had therefore registered
   some skills in or at least conducted research into knowledge management and this
   was then picked up by STDO” (Informant 6). Thus the STDO developed a
   knowledge base of its own in KM which was subsequently pursued by the STDO
   as an impetus toward what was seen as a worthwhile and productive activity in
   harnessing its knowledge resources.


3. The anticipated threat of knowledge loss due to the age profile of senior research-
   ers within the organization. The third motivation for the implementation of a
   strategy to manage organizational knowledge was the average age of the research-
   ers. “In the STDO the average age of the workers — most of them come here just
   after they finish their PhD and then stay for life.... They just won’t retire. Our
   average age in some divisions was above 60 for the top-two levels” (Informant 2).
   Many staff have been employed for a very long time and much of their knowledge
   is locked in their memories, has changed as they progressed up the bureaucracy,
   and may be published in long-forgotten documents. “And we’ve got piles of stuff
   and they say, ‘You know, back in ’64 you wrote a paper on thermonuclear dynamics’
   and they go, ‘Yeah, I know the one’ — what happens when that person retires? So
   there were some real issues in access to information that were tied to succession
   planning” (Informant 2). Thus the threat of high-level knowledge loss through
   employment attrition is very real for this organization.


4. The impact of government in challenging the management practices and organi-
   zational arrangements in the public service. Control mechanisms presently in
   place for a public sector with devolved authority and enhanced responsibility are
   now manifest in internal control, responsibility for risk management, internal audit
   and audit committees, responsibility for budgeting, for financial management, and
   for staffing (Barrett & Sotiropoulos, 2001). These factors appear to be borne out
   in the structures and control mechanisms at the STDO.

The STDO is an R&D organization. It sees itself as a knowledge producer. This
knowledge is produced in explicit forms as documented research in its raw form, research
papers, and knowledge embedded in technology that is produced. The concept of
knowledge that underpins its KM strategy incorporates both explicit and tacit knowl-
edge.