Organizational Design for Knowledge Management FOCUS SERIES Series Editor Jean-Charles Pomerol Organizational Design for Knowledge Management Mona Ben Chouikha First published 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: ISTE Ltd John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 27-37 St George’s Road 111 River Street London SW19 4EU Hoboken, NJ 07030 UK USA www.iste.co.uk www.wiley.com © ISTE Ltd 2016 The rights of Mona Ben Chouikha to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Library of Congress Control Number: 2015959667 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISSN 2051-2481 (Print) ISSN 2051-249X (Online) ISBN 978-1-84821-922-9 Contents Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Part 1. A Systemic Approach to the Organization Based on Knowledge Management and its Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Chapter 1. Theoretical Anchoring of Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 1.1. Individual knowledge and skills . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1.1. Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1.2. Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 1.1.3. Knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 1.1.4. Skill . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.2. From individual learning to organizational learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.2.1. Individual learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 1.2.2. Organizational learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 1.3. Knowledge management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 1.3.1. Knowledge acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1.3.2. Knowledge storage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 1.3.3. Knowledge transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 1.3.4. Knowledge application . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 1.3.5. Creation of new knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 1.4. Knowledge management systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 1.4.1. Information systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 1.4.2. The characteristics of a knowledge management system . . . . . . . 24 1.5. Communities, teams and knowledge management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 1.5.1. Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 1.5.2. Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 1.6. Knowledge management and cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 1.6.1. National culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 vi Organizational Design for Knowledge Management 1.6.2. Organizational culture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 1.6.3. Professional culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Chapter 2. The Design of the Learning Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.1. From the systemic approach to the organizational design . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.1.1. Systemic approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 2.1.2. The “organizational design” school of thought . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 2.2. Proposal of an organizational design for knowledge management: “learning organization design” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 2.2.1. Classification of works pertaining to knowledge management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 2.2.2. The learning organization design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 Part 2. Emergence of a New Design: that of the Learning Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 Chapter 3. Real-World Access Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.1. Methodological choices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 3.1.1. Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64 3.1.2. Participant observation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 3.2. The field of research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 3.2.1. Presentation of the research area . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.2.2. Stitching together of operational activities into occupational processes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 3.3. Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.3.1. Theoretical sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85 3.3.2. Data collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 3.4. Processing of the collected data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.4.1. Thematic content analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 3.4.2. Multi-angular analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 Chapter 4. Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 4.1. Design of the learning organization SCCC (before the merger) . . . . . 99 4.1.1. Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 4.1.2. Incentive systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 4.1.3. People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 4.1.4. Technology: KMS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 4.1.5. Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107 4.2. Design of the learning organization SCCC (period of merger with N) . . 108 4.2.1. Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 4.2.2. Incentive systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 Contents vii 4.2.3. People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110 4.2.4. Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111 4.2.5. Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113 4.3. Design of the learning organization NSN (post-merger). . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.3.1. Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 4.3.2. Incentive systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 4.3.3. People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 4.3.4. Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 4.3.5. Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121 4.4. Overview of the three phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122 Chapter 5. Emergence of a New Organizational Design . . . . . . . . . . 127 5.1. Emergence of a design of the learning organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 5.1.1. Flexibility through integrative devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 5.1.2. Consistency/inconsistency in regard to the domain “strategy” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 5.1.3. Consistency/inconsistency in regard to the “incentive systems” domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 5.1.4. Consistency/inconsistency in regard to the “technology” domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 5.1.5. Consistency/inconsistency in regard to the “structure” domain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 5.2. Emergence of a new organizational design in view of the impact of culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 5.3. Emergence of a new organizational design when faced with knowledge boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 5.3.1. Knowledge boundary management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 5.3.2. Design of the learning organization in the face of knowledge boundaries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171