Case Study - Barriers To Knowledge Sharing

A Case in Point: Javelin Development Corporation

Javelin Development Corporation, a real but disguised engineering and construction company, developed a plan to make knowledge available across projects in hopes of reducing construction times and costs. The idea was to apply existing design solutions to new situations. The centrepiece of the initiative was an on-line knowledge ‘warehouse’ that engineers could draw from as they developed their designs. A year after implementation began, less that 5% of the planned features were in place and support for the initiative seemed to be fading.

We can analyse these disappointing results in terms of knowledge market inefficiencies. Chief among them was the lack of a clear price paid to individuals who shared their knowledge. Having been through a period of layoffs and fearing more were coming, employees saw their unique knowledge as a source of job security and felt that sharing it would weaken their position. Like many engineering cultures, Javelin’s also valued the creation of new knowledge over the re-use of existing designs. Although management supported knowledge sharing in a general way, its actions did not communicate assurance that sharing knowledge was genuinely important and would be rewarded. For instance, employees were expected to learn on their own time, not during office hours, a company norm that implied that acquiring knowledge wasn’t ‘real work.’ The knowledge initiative had verbal support but managers did not back it up with a sufficient investment of money and personnel. Some designated knowledge facilitators spent only 10% of their time on the project. No one created a mechanism for evaluating knowledge sharing in performance evaluations. As a result of all these signals, trust in the genuineness of corporate commitment to knowledge exchange remained low.

In addition, Javelin’s knowledge warehouse was a bust as a marketplace. Potential sellers felt they gained little from adding to the stock of on-line knowledge. Potential buyers did not like the organisation of the warehouse content. Project designers had favored a rather loosely structured organisation so that knowledge would not be forced into old categories. But the engineers who were the intended users of the system favoured a hierarchical system that would make it easy for them to find just the information they needed to solve a specific problem.

With uncertainty and scepticism about the value of offering or acquiring knowledge, lukewarm management support, and a marketplace poorly matched to the habits of potential buyers, the knowledge market at Javelin could not function efficiently. The company’s serious localness problem was perhaps best exemplified by the experience of a very senior executive who had recently joined the firm. In his previous position at another organisation, he had been the primary champion for a very successful knowledge management initiative, yet the organisers of Javelin’s knowledge project knew nothing of his interest and expertise. Overall, the company has not yet begun to see the benefits it hoped to get from its knowledge project.

From, ‘Working Knowledge: How organisations manage what they know.’ by Thomas H Davenport & Laurence Prusak. (1998) Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, pp 41-42.