Process a waste of time? LO13550

t.struck (t.struck@bham.ac.uk)
Thu, 08 May 1997 14:57:19 -0700

Replying to LO13498 --

Dear Orglearners,

Edward quoted At as follows
>However, they were never made conscious of the fact that it was tacit
> knowledge, that they have an immense resource of tacit knowledge,how to
> articualte this tacit knowledge and lastly, how to apply this tacit
> knowledge.

>Facilitators and mangers will do much better if they as
>soon as
>possible set this facit dimension of knowledge into operation.

I think, this will prove tricky.

The tradition of learning inside a lot of companies, at least in
manufacturing, stands in direkt opposition to such an approach. FW
Taylor's scientific management asked to remove knowledge from the worker
to knowledge centers. As far as I can see it, this is still true in quite
a lot companies (manu.). Knowledge is power. As any explicit or NOT TACIT
or codable knowledge can be removed form the workforce IMO people tend to
increase their tacit knowledge, which is still removable, but that adsorbs
an enormous effort. Through increasing their tacit knowledge people
increase their personal power, they try to become unexchangable, to
increase their job security, to reduce the power of management.

Therefore job security and the willingness to share power (democracy
inside a manufacturing company?)might be crucial.

>Facilitators and mangers will do much better if they as
>soon as
>possible set this facit dimension of knowledge into operation.

I think it is not the managers who should set this tacit dimension into
operation. I think managers should support workers in gaining knowledge,
but should not control it. This is certainly tricky. If people become
redundant (at the end this is a competitive world some will win, some will
lose), their knowledge is what they got and what makes them attractive to
other companies. A company might have to avoid a strong dependancy. To
adjust the level of dependancy to benefit the individual worker as well as
the organisation is the tricky thing.

All the best

Thomas Struck, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom

-- 

"t.struck" <t.struck@bham.ac.uk>

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