The real McCoy — how important is knowledge work for business 2.0?

“The real McCoy” is a funny statement. One theory suggests it comes from the days when Elijah McCoy, a Black Canadian inventor, was selling lubrication systems for steam engines. Supposedly, after failed attempts by competitors to make counterfeits of his lubricant, the phrase “real McCoy” was used to refer to his authentic product [1].

Over the last few decades we’ve seen different sorts of management theories saying they’re the real McCoy. I’ve studied aspects of TQM in my psych degree. I’ve read theories of time- and performance management (if you can really call them theories at all that is). Then, of course, knowledge management came into vogue along with claims of better productivity and if you only buy this ACME KM Software Suite, knowledge management and protecting the intellectual capital of your organisation comes with it like a set of steak knives.

But are any of these real? Do any of these products of theories actually give the modern workplace any competitive advantage?

Most of these ideas are just common sense wrapped in pretty cellophane and are largely untested in empirical terms. But as we all know, common sense is hardly common. Even Drucker’s work on productivity for knowledge workers, that sharing what you know, had very limited empirical data to back it up … until probably quite recently that is.

I’ve been enjoying Haas and Hansen’s [2] research into knowledge work and the different productivity benefits that can be gained from sharing knowledge in modern organisations — something vital to the success of businesses evolving toward 2.0 to take advantage of the Knowledge Economy and advances in social software. Specifically, Haas and Hansen asked the questions:

• does sharing knowledge save time?
• does sharing knowledge improve work quality?
• does a knowledge worker’s level of experience improve the signaling of their competency?
• does a knowledge worker’s lack of effort decrease the signaling of their competency?

Here’s what they found:

“our results demonstrate, knowledge sharing clearly has costs as well as benefits, including the investments required to rework documents and secure assistance from colleagues”

“because the costs of knowledge sharing may sometimes outweigh the benefits, using electronic documents and personal advice from colleagues around the firm does not necessarily help — and sometimes actually hurts — task-level performance”

“high quality documents offered greater benefits for saving time than for improving work quality in this study, while lack of effort by colleagues imposed greater costs on work quality than on time”

“electronic document usage primarily saves time but does not improve quality or signals of competence suggests that a firm’s repositories of codified knowledge can be viewed as an efficiency play”

“firms that primarily compete on quality can benefit most from emphasizing personal advice usage … and perhaps downplaying electronic document usage”

Even while ACME pushed KM until it killed it, knowledge management is still alive and has important lessons, real lessons, for us to learn. While other management theories have very little basis in reality, knowledge management is the real McCoy.

M

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[1]. Wikipedia. The Real McCoy. Online at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Real_McCoy

[2]. Haas, M. R. & Hansen, M. T. Different Knowledge, Different Benefits: Toward a Productivity Perspective on Knowledge Sharing in Organizations. Online at: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/…/3b154e913b7c5a40, accessed on 15 Dec, 2007.