Knowledge as Corporate Power

In his oration ‘The American Scholar,’ Ralph Waldo Emerson, American author, poet and philosopher, who lived between 1803 and 1882, states that power is gained through knowledge. Michel Foucault, French philosopher and social critic, in his writing ‘Panopticon,’ believes that the longer a person is in charge as well as how much he observes the more power he/she gains.

A society comprising many men and women with diverse talents is destined for success (Scott Bremann 2000). According to Emerson you “must take the whole society to find the whole man.” Knowledge is believed to grow upon experience and you begin to see your place in society by observing society and acting on such observations.

‘Common knowledge’ is the knowledge that employees learn from doing the organisation’s tasks; it differs from book knowledge or from lists of regulations or database of customer information (Nancy Dixon 2000). This view is similar to Emerson’s that each person must learn for himself by experience. What gives the knowledge gained from experience its potential to provide an organization with a competitive edge is the fact that common knowledge starts with “how to”; it is actually the same as the “know how” that is unique to a specific company.

Knowledge as justified true belief infers that it is a construction of reality rather than something that is true in any abstract or universal way. It is therefore safe to say that knowledge is both explicit and tacit. While explicit knowledge can be put on paper, formulated in sentences, or captured in drawings, tacit knowledge is tied to the senses, skills in bodily movement, individual perception, physical experiences, rules of thumb, and intuition (G. V.Krogh et al 2000).

Knowledge creation cannot endure in an uncaring atmosphere where organisational members do not take an active interest in applying the insights provided by others. The purpose of organizational learning is the ability of the organization to utilize the amazing mental capacity of all its members to create the kind of processes that will improve its own learning capacity. Transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another enables companies to save millions of naira.

Categories of knowledge transfer, according to Dixon, are: Serial Transfer- where a team does a task and then the same team repeats the task in a new context; Near Transfer- moving knowledge from a source team to a receiving team that is doing a similar task in a similar context but in a different location; Far Transfer- moving tacit knowledge from a source team to a receiving team when the knowledge is about a task that is non routine; Strategic Transfer- moving very complex knowledge from one team to another where the teams may be separated by both time and space; Expert Transfer- a technician who “emails” his network for ideas on how to increase the brightness of an outdated monitor is a good illustration of how to transfer explicit knowledge about a task that may be done infrequently.

Intellectual capital is fast becoming America’s most valuable asset and can be its most potent competitive weapon. Dr. Roy Vagelos of Merck and Co had once said when one has knowledge no one else has access to, that is “dynamite.” Merck, voted five years in a row America’s most admired company in Fortune’s annual survey, has invented more new medicines than any other United States Pharmaceutical company (T. Stewart 1991).

A good illustration of intellectual capital at work is the IDS Financial Services, the financial planning subsidiary of American Express Co. which codified the expertise of its best account managers in a software programme called ‘Insight.’ According to the company’s Chairman, Harvey Golub, even the worst of Merck’s 6,500 planners was better than its average planner used to be. In four years the percentage of clients who left the company dropped by more than half.

Practical steps in knowledge transfer include: selecting a unit that has interesting knowledge sharing; establishing a steering committee; conducting a knowledge assessment; establishing a framework for knowledge transfer; identifying an organizational goal and corresponding knowledge component; identifying the appropriate transfer process for each type of knowledge; locating current informal systems that can be enhanced; identifying resources and; developing an integrated system of knowledge transfer.

For Golub there is something about intellectual mysteries that gives the organization skills way beyond the talent of the people; it is not just the knowledge but the way it is applied. Thomas Stewart buttresses Golub’s view by submitting that when skills belong to the company as a whole they create competitive advantages that others may not be able to match; the organization becomes more than the sum of its parts.

The stories of organizations like Bechtel, British Petroleum, Buckman Labs, Chevron, E&Y, Ford, Lockheed Martin, Tandem, Texas Instruments and the U.S. Army are examples of how well utilized common knowledge can increasingly enhance the effectiveness of the organization. According to Nancy Dixon, associate professor of administrative sciences at the George Washington University, U.S.A, these organizations have saved enormous amount of money and achieved high productivity through fruitful ways of transferring common knowledge across time and space.