Case Studies in Knowledge Management

58 Corbitt

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Survey Results

Table 1 shows the response rate of the questionnaires for both Colorado Springs
and Atlanta. The organizations of WWFS (World Wide Financial Services) for HP and
the GFS (Global Financial Services) for Agilent both have employees in Colorado and
Atlanta. Separate needs assessments were canceled for Europe and Asia Pacific in the
interest of completing the knowledge transfer activity in a timely manner. While
questionnaires were distributed via interoffice mail in Colorado, they were hand delivered
in a meeting environment in Atlanta.
In addition to the respondent analysis, Table 2 is included to show that skills,
abilities, and knowledge considered to be core competencies are not the same as those
skill, abilities, and knowledge needed to advance in one’s career. This difference
suggests that the way the questions are worded and the purposes of the data can produce
vastly different results. The list of items developed from the focus groups was validated
with the managers and is believed to be accurate for current core competency assess-
ment. All managers agreed with the content of the list and, except for the addition of 15
items added during the survey portion of the study, the list did not change in content
from the original list developed by the focus groups.
The ranking of the items by criticality, however, did vary from the ratings made by
focus group participants. Since the detailed data are not important to the results of the
expertise database and are company specific, the rankings are not reported in this study.
In addition to the analysis of the skills by type, there were five levels of skills
identified. Levels were determined by comparing topics from the list to topics suggested
for new hire versus basic ability training. These levels vary by intended audience and
have been assigned arbitrary levels that roughly correspond to the order that the
knowledge transfer should take place. Note that these levels are most significant to the
training aspect of knowledge transfer but can also be applied to documentation, Web-
based material, and mentoring. (Interestingly, at a corporate meeting held in February
2000, three other groups within HP had conducted similar studies and all identified four
to five levels of knowledge transfer. While the topic content did vary from one
organization to another, the definition of levels and the inclusion of core competency at

SAP

Implementers

Process

Engineers

Production and

System Support

Systems

Developers

Atlanta

Total Sent* 12 15 15 11

Total Return 6 10 6 6

% Returned 50% 67.7% 40% 54.5%

Colorado Springs

Total Sent 33 26 30 16

Total Return 21 7 10 7

% Returned 63.6% 26.9% 33.3% 43.8%

Table 1. Response rate by location

*Total Sent for Atlanta is an estimate because questionnaires were hand delivered and the actual
count could be off by a few in each case.