Unit 2,Knowledge and Change Management,Knowledge Management Para 1 In 1988 Peter Drucker (Page 10-11)wrote: Para 2The typical business of the future will be knowledge-based, an organisation composed largely of specialists who direct and discipline their own performance through feedback from colleagues, customers and headquarters (Page 12). For this reason it will be what I call an information-based organisation.,Para 3In such an organisation, the management of knowledge and information becomes a key to gaining competitive advantage. Para 4 “Business today”, echoed Charles Handy (Page 14) in 1992, “depends largely on intellectual property, which resides inalienablyineilinbli in the hearts and heads of individuals.”(Page 13) Both writers were reflecting a growing awareness that companies had moved far from Victorian times, when they were (as Handy put it) “properties with tangible assets worked by hands whose time owners bought”(Page 15). They had become properties whose most valuable asset was intangiblethe knowledge which exists in the heads and hearts of employees or in formal databases, patents, copyrights and so on.,Para 5Knowledge was seen as the key to the creation not only of business wealth but also of national wealth(Page 16). In the British governments 1998 White Paper(Page 17) on the competitiveness of the nation, it said: Para 6Our success depends on how well we exploit our most valuable assets: our knowledge, skills and creativity they are at the heart of a modern knowledge-driven economy. Para 7Lester Thurow (Page 18), an American management professor, went so far as to suggest in a 1997 article in Harvard Business Review that intellectual property rights had become more important than manufacturing products or dealing in commodities. Once companies realised this they became aware of the need to find out how to manage that knowledge, how best to use it to create extra value. This was not an issue they had addressed systematically in the past.,Para 8Information technology helped in their efforts to introduce good knowledge-management practices. Developments in it advanced the science immeasurably. Data warehousing (the centralising of information in vast electronic databases) enabled companies to be more sophisticated and customer-oriented in their business. At last the left hand knew what the right hand was doing(Page 19); the marketing department knew who was already a customer of the company, and for what product or service.,Para 9Knowledge management has been considered as four separate activities: Capturing information. Companies need to ensure that they are not suddenly bereft bireft of vital information when an important individual moves to another employer. Generating ideas. All employees should be encouraged to come up with new ideas, through ideas boxes or by being rewarded for ideas that make or save money for the company. Storing information. Data warehouses have to be structured so that the information in them can be accessed by everybody who needs it. Distributing information. Organisations must encourage the spread of information to others. The hoarding of information has historically been seen as a source of power.,Change management Para 10Businesses are torn between a desire to define for all time their organisations structure and strategy, and a recognition that their world is in a constant state of flux flks(Page 20). For the larger part of the 20th century they were more focused on the static elements of this dichotomy daiktmi(Page 21). But in recent years changes have become more frequent and more dramatic, so much so that a whole branch of management is now devoted to the subject of change itself. Para 11In a classic analysis of the dilemma dilem, Henry Mintzberg(Page 22-23), a Canadian business academic, described how a student asked him whether he “was intending to play jigsaw puzzle(Page 24) or Lego(Page 25)” with the elements of structure and power that he described in his books and that he put together to make a number of configurations knfijurein of different organisations(Page 26). Mintzberg wrote:,Para 12In other words, did I mean all these elements of organisations to fit together in set waysto create known images the static stateor were they to be used creatively to build new ones the dynamic state? I had to answer that I had been promoting jigsaw puzzles, even if I was suggesting that the pieces could be combined into several images instead of the usual one. But I immediately began to think about playing organizational Lego. Configuration is a nice thing when you can have it. Unfortunately, some organizations all of the time, and all organizations some of the time, cannot. Para 13Lego stands you in better stead in an ever-changing world(Page 27).,Para 14Rosabeth Moss Kanter(Page 28-29) is probably best known for her work on change management. Her book “The Change Masters” was labelled as “the thinking mans In Search of Excellence”(Page 30), the more popular title