Shoud KM be more psychology than management?

Dr Michael Olsson recently presented at the NSW KM Forum on the topic “Is Knowledge Management an Oxymoron?“. The range of theories proposed for discussion was very impressive: information behaviour research, philosophy, discourse analysis, communication theory, and sociology of knowledge. I was sad that, being in the ACT with the flu, I couldn’t attend.

The style of Olsson’s presentation outline reminded me of my time studing for my Masters of Knowledge Management and how I brought my organisational psychology background to the table. It surprised my lecturer when I suggested that “to share or not to share” knowledge could be explained (in part) in terms of the social and psychological group dynamic and even by tall-poppy syndrome. The feedback from my lecturers also surprised me: that I had successfully drawn on what some would have considered disparate theories to explain much of the behavioural aspects of knowledge management.I shouldn’t have been surprised really. I had always been dissappointed at how little management theory really dealt with human behaviour and even more frustrated that theories were hypothesised, never truly tested and yet became the basis for someone elses theory. This approach has a lot to answer for because I think it is the very core of why KM is so missunderstood.

Snowden [1] described first generation knowledge management as epistemologically naïve, grounded in an implicit assumption that knowledge was a ‘thing’ to be ‘captured’, rather than about how people think about the information and knowledge in ther heads, and understanding their knowledge sharing (or knowledge hoarding) behaviour. To me, this fundamental difference describes as much about the gap between management theory and the science of psychology as it does about why people continue to missunderstand knowledge management.

In his book, The Witch Doctors, Adrian Wooldridge, makes clear his skepticism about the value of management theory. In an interview with Psychology Today [2], Wooldridge says:

The faddishness of the [knowledge] management field is both fascinating and disturbing. As the boundaries betwen managemet and self-help blurr…managers run from one guru or theory to the next like headless chickens…

Here Wooldridge implies that much of management is about fads and certainly KM is held by many in that regard. Unfortunately, I think that so long as KM continues as a part of management theory it’s still going to be considered by “non-believers” in this way. For me, the heart of the problem goes beyond KM as a management fad. I see it as management’s failure to produce reliable, robust and well-tested theories. Essentially, modern management only has two core and incompatible models - that people are stupid and need to be managed by incentives (i.e. “Taylorism“), or that people need to be let free to be creative [2].

To me, none of these models take into consideration the complexities of how people behave, how people think, how people’s behaviour is influenced by their envionment, and especially important for a science practitioner like myself, why. Until we see a move in the direction of science theory we’re still going to see KM enslaved with thoughts that just as SAP or CRM software can help with the management of ‘things’ like clients and people, that just as you manage people’s performance with performance management and Sigma Six processes, you can manage knowledge with software by IBM or emerging from the popular Web 2.0 movement like they were beans being canned in a factoty.

So, should KM be more psychology than management? Yes!

Let’s see more discussion by people like Olsson. Let’s see more theories and tested hypothesese on how people create, store and share knowledge. Let’s explore what knowledge is and what it means to people. And let’s see less self-help-styled management gurus, their theories and their books telling us and spreading falsehoods about what KM definitely isn’t.

M

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[1]Snowden, D J. “Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-Awareness.” Journal of Knowledge Management, Special Issue 6, no. 2 (2002): 100-11

[2]Publication: Psychology Today, 2004. Management Madness? Management Theory. Online at: <http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=pto-19970301-000027&page=1>, accessed on 24 April, 2007.