There is an oriental tale in which several people touch an elephant with a blindfold, but logically they can only cover a part of the elephant. Everyone claims that what they touch is an elephant, and they are right, but only he who does not have a blindfold can see "the elephant" as a whole.
In the world of knowledge management, there are many people with bandages, who, as in our history, play parts, and claim to be engaged in knowledge management, but only really cover part. Some professionals who share this thought even think about organizing a club with this name, the Elephant Club, to spread in all areas a more comprehensive and transcendent notion of Knowledge Management.
There is no doubt that Knowledge Management has burst onto the managers' agenda as a promise of improvement for companies and organizations. Taking advantage of people's knowledge and intellectual capacity so that this talent becomes a competitive advantage is a message that few dare to answer. Saying that people are key in the company falls within the “politically correct”, although it is not so frequent to see important changes in the employer-employee contract, what has come to be called “the new social contract”.
Contrary to what has happened with other management phenomena, companies have launched themselves to experiment in this field, without waiting for a solidly constructed theory. Many human capital intensive industries embrace this concept with open arms, while information technology and telecommunications promise unlimited connectivity. The ideal of knowledge and information exchange seems to be finger-touched.
If we ignore those who consider knowledge management to be a passing fad, time will decide, the real problem lies in those who consider knowledge management to be a project - program and therefore achieve only small benefits from its implementation. The latent danger for those of us who share the thoughts of the Elephant Club is in quickly shutting down the knowledge management movement with quick fixes. We believe that knowledge management is observed with evident signs of myopia and this in itself constitutes a problem for both the applicator, the companies, and those committed to developing the virtues of this approach, consultants and academics generally.
We think that Knowledge Management is a starting point that opens the doors of the company of the 21st century, because it breaks with the experience of using physical resources, the basis of all management so far, and also what is really interesting is that it returns people have a fundamental role, since they are the ones who possess knowledge in its entirety, which alters or will alter a whole way of understanding organizations. Therefore what opens up is a broad research agenda about what the knowledge company should be like.
Manage the processes of creation and exchange of knowledge, the stimuli for exchange, the creation of value, etc., that is, articulate organizational systems that take advantage of the capacity and knowledge of all people, compared to the old hierarchical organization that squanders the Knowledge in an unintelligent way is the challenge of Knowledge Management. Taking advantage of the intellectual capacity of all people is not only more feasible today, it is more necessary if what we want is to provide the company with flexibility and adaptability, that is, intelligence.
The company appears, if it manages to promote these processes, as a living entity, which will generate virtuous spirals of development and competitiveness, in fact there are good examples of impressive growth, once these capabilities have been unleashed.
What is really interesting is that knowledge management, considered as a movement or a trajectory, not a project in the short term, leads to a different way of seeing business management, and of seeing individual - organization relationships, and from this perspective We propose to approach knowledge management in the spirit of those who undertake a long journey, in the spirit of those who have opened a door to a different world. It is about proposing an important field of research - action, opening our eyes to observe how events unfold, knowing that we are an integral part of them.
In the Knowledge Cluster we are on this path, and everyone interested is welcome in our Elephant Club.
