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Does Knowledge Sharing Deliver on Its Promises?: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1841)
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Does Knowledge Sharing Deliver on Its Promises?: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1841)
"The concept of 'slack' refers to the availability of resources that go beyond the requirement for regular
activities," notes Haas. "Slack time is the amount of time and attention the team members can commit to
the project beyond the minimum required." Studies have found that "time famine" -- or a feeling of
having too much to do and not enough time in which to do it -- can reduce team productivity.
Teams with insufficient slack time may download large quantities of documents from a database without
checking their quality, skim the papers on their desk superficially -- missing important information -- or
fail to solicit sufficiently diverse views by only consulting close colleagues who will return their phone
calls promptly. These shortcuts can reduce the benefits of the knowledge inputs they obtain. In contrast,
Haas points out, "slack time increases processing capability because team members have more time and
attention available to allocate to knowledge-related as well as other task activities."
In ambiguous situations, meanwhile, team members face multiple interpretations of the information,
know-how and feedback they obtain, and they must engage in a continuous process of sense making to
construct meaning from these inputs. The level of prior work experience possessed by team members may
also create absorptive capacity that facilitates the assimilation, interpretation and application of new
knowledge, Haas and Hansen note in their paper.
Research points to the conclusion that prior experience generates tacit knowledge that enhances a team
member's ability to interpret external knowledge appropriately and apply it effectively, notes Haas in a
2006 paper titled, "Knowledge Gathering, Team Capabilities, and Project Performance in Challenging
Work Environments." Additionally, prior experience tends to help team members move up their own
learning curves, helping them to build on past successes and avoid past mistakes when they interpret and
apply external knowledge.
Consequently, teams with members who have more years of work experience -- with the focal
organization or with other companies -- possess greater capability to make sense out of chaos. Further,
Haas suggests, team members with longer organizational tenure can make better judgments about how to
interpret and apply external knowledge in ways that are appropriate in the particular organizational
setting, compared with team members who are relatively new to the organization.
In addition to staffing teams with experienced members, if possible, and giving them sufficient slack time,
Haas argues that an organization's project teams should be given sufficient autonomy to make their own
decisions. "While many outsiders who provide information, know-how and feedback to team members do
not attempt to influence the team unduly, others may promote their own agendas and interests through
distortion or manipulation," she says. "If a team cannot buffer itself against efforts to excessively
influence its decisions, its project may be derailed by these external agendas and interests."
As Haas notes in her earlier paper, "the buffering capability of a team is greater if it has more autonomy,
or collective control, over critical decisions about its objectives, resources, design and processes. When
team members have the ability to make independent decisions, they can reject influence attempts that
might harm the project and resist giving in to potentially harmful external demands about critical
task-related decisions."
In turn, she adds, outsiders tend to interpret greater autonomy as a signal that a team is more capable,
making external interference less justifiable. Finally, the buffering advantages of autonomy also can
enhance the processing and sense-making capabilities of project teams by freeing the team members to
focus more energy on their activities.
Leveraging Knowledge Successfully
Early organizational design research in the 1970s focused on arrangements that increase exchanges of
information across internal boundaries, such as official boundary-spanning roles or cross-functional
taskforces, Haas points out in her earlier research. Subsequent research on project teams emphasized the
importance of going beyond the team's boundaries to find valuable information for the task.
Recent studies of social networks have further illuminated the types of interactions that facilitate
information exchanges in organizations, she adds. These examinations of the social side of knowledge
sharing have been complemented by research on knowledge management technologies, including
electronic database systems and communication innovations ranging from e-mail to teleconferencing.
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Does Knowledge Sharing Deliver on Its Promises?: Knowledge@Wharton (http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1841)
But for the most part, according to Haas' earlier paper, studies of knowledge gathering have overlooked
the costs involved, as well as the difficult problems faced by teams in environments characterized by
overload, ambiguity and politics. Yet even if teams manage to gather knowledge successfully, the benefits
of gathering that knowledge may be limited by such costs and problems, especially if the teams fail to
match their knowledge gathering efforts to the task requirements or lack the capabilities to utilize the
knowledge effectively.
Haas' most recent research efforts draw upon studies in the consulting and financial industries, but she
says the underlying issues may be found in many organizations that depend on knowledge sharing efforts,
including research and development teams in consumer goods, pharmaceuticals and other manufacturing
settings, as well as legal, accounting and other professional service firms.
A central concern that these environments usually share is that their projects are non-routine, according to
Haas. The difficulties inherent in performing successfully on innovative projects are increased further by
the rapid pace of change in many knowledge-intensive industries, she adds.
Overall, research by Haas and Hansen suggests that organizations that care about knowledge sharing must
look beyond intermediate goals -- such as promoting knowledge capture, search and transfer -- when
setting up and supporting initiatives in this area. To effectively leverage knowledge sharing activities, they
must consider the costs as well as the benefits of knowledge sharing processes, and make sure they
understand the implications for task-level performance outcomes.
Moving beyond a focus on knowledge sharing itself as the outcome that firms are trying to maximize,
Haas and Hansen's research has identified three dimensions of task performance -- work quality, time
savings and signals of competence -- that are often critical to the productivity of knowledge work.
The first key implication is that it is unsafe to assume that more knowledge sharing is always better. In
fact, the researchers note, using too much of the wrong type of knowledge can harm project performance
because there are costs as well as benefits involved. The second key implication is that it unsafe to
assume that the net effects of using even the right type of knowledge are always positive. Instead, the
design of a project team affects its ability to achieve the desired advantages of knowledge sharing. It is not
uncommon for organizations to install costly knowledge management systems, such as document
databases, or to spend time promoting knowledge-sharing forums among employees and others.
"These are big investments," says Haas, "and organizations need to understand how to take advantage of
them most effectively if they are to fully deliver on the tantalizing promises they offer."
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