People-focused knowledge management

Comments: By monitoring situation-handling effectiveness,
Bob Taylor found that employees needed better approaches.
Bromley undertook a thorough analysis to determine the under-
lying factors behind the lack of balanced decisions and found
that corrective actions were needed to help employees use better
methods. By observing their decisions, it was found that people
needed educational support to develop better strategies to
improve multiple objective situation-handling.
The knowledge-related aspects in this case included the need to
help employees understand the enterprise strategy and direction.
They also needed to build automatized methodological mental
models to deal competently with situation-handling dilemmas.
Enterprise Governance Competence and Perspectives
The perspectives and competence of enterprise governance cover
a very wide range, stretching from monitoring the ethical governance
of the enterprise’s societal responsibilities to monitoring its treatment
of its employees and the effectiveness of its internal operations. In all
cases, the effectiveness of governance is a reflection of management’s
philosophy, breadth of insights, and ability to determine practical
ways of achieving the desired behaviors. One area that often is indica-
tive of management’s posture and perspectives becomes apparent
when a situation requires damage control as in the following 
illustration.
Effective Damage Control after Product Failure in
the Marketplace
Luis Galvis, president of Fancy Foods, received a late evening
phone call from Stirling Way, his vice president of sales with bad
news. Several people in Chicago had developed food poisoning
apparently from eating Fancy Foods gourmet liver pâté. The
potential link between the liver pâté and food poisoning had
been determined by the Chicago Department of Public Health
(CDPH), which was continuing to pursue the matter. The
CDPH had not verified contamination in the pâté samples
acquired from stores, but that did not exclude the fact that other
batches could have problems. At the time, it was not clear which
batches had been sold in Chicago or which batches might have
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caused the problems. Nor was it clear that Chicago was the only
location of food poisoning.
Luis decided to spearhead the situation-handling to determine
what Fancy Foods would do. Although it was not clearly estab-
lished that the pâté was to blame, any doubt about the integrity
of the company’s food would affect its image in the marketplace.
Hence, Luis wanted to be proactive, pull whatever products
were at risk, and let the public know what was being done to
assure that its products were safe.
The Georgia plant was the only source of liver pâté, and Luis
immediately contacted the plant’s manager, laboratory director,
and logistics manager. Together, they began to check if any
recent pâté batches had shown even marginal signs of contam-
ination. They identified the batches that had been sent to
Chicago and started the recall process. Just after midnight, Luis
wrote a short press release that described the steps Fancy Foods
was undertaking to prevent further illness and transmitted these
to Chicago newspapers and as a general press release. The press
release stated that although a firm link between the pâté and
food poisoning had not been established, Fancy Food had taken
immediate preventive steps. Fancy Foods also asked anyone who
had experienced illness after eating its pâté to let them know
about it and, if possible, submit the packaging and any rem-
nants for examination.
Over the next days, Luis and his team collaborated with
CDPH and reported to the press what steps were being taken.
As for the source of the food poisoning, it was discovered that
indeed it had been caused by Fancy Foods liver pâté. But the
pâté in question was an old and outdated batch that a small
food store had discovered in its warehouse and sold by mistake.
No contamination was found in the regular product. Fancy
Foods received positive press and market responses for its
actions.