People-focused knowledge management

In Complex Businesses, Better Practices Are Required
Many people question why integrative management has surfaced
at this time as an important issue. There are several reasons. Glob-
alization has forced the need for greater enterprise effectiveness.
Increased sophistication and customer demands place new require-
ments on customizing products and services. Work is becoming more
complex, and that requires greater integration among entities and
more expertise at the point-of-action to make the enterprise operate
smoothly and to deliver quality work with desired competence. New
complex work environments require hands-on knowledge manage-
ment by innovation, knowledge gathering, organizing, deployment,
and so on. On a larger scale, constructive coordination of operations,
departments, and business units is also required.
One major requirement for integrative management is the need to
identify, design, and implement shared capabilities, facilities, and
systems and procedures that individual entities either cannot identify
the need for or justify by themselves. Examples include shared IT
capabilities and a shared incentive system that foster and influence
the desired integrative management mentality, culture, and behavior.
Previously, organizations pursued practices that increasingly were
considered outdated by proactive organizations. Bureaucratic opera-
tional and management practices led to suboptimizing and “silo 
operations,” often indirectly through continued use of inappropriate
incentives and performance measurements. These practices need to
be changed to prevent enterprises from falling behind (Quinn et al.
1996). Many business schools have traditionally prepared managers
to make quick, narrow, and simple-minded “dominant factor” deci-
sions based on the rote-learning of archetype concrete case examples
that isolate the decision space to operational areas such as market-
ing, manufacturing, or finance. Future managers are not taught to
“think strategically,” according to Professor Martin of the University
of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management (Anonymous 2000). To
prepare students better, the school teaches “integrative thinking”
rather than focusing narrowly on specific methods and operational
actions. Other business schools now offer courses in integrative man-
agement as well. Students develop a general understanding of under-
lying mechanisms and their interactions in the business world. In the
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People-Focused Knowledge Management Expectations
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process, they also develop mental strategic action models of govern-
ing principles and general approaches to guide their handling of 
business issues, although that is not discussed by Professor Martin.
Cognitive science researchers have recently pointed out that such
models are the foundation for our decision behavior, and their proper
development by necessity is becoming required for survival in today’s
business environment. The implications of how we train and educate
our workers are significant.