Facilitating knowledge exchange in a game room

Power Struggle found an interesting article from Kevin Desouza, a Ph.D. student at UIC. Kevin sounds like someone I need to read more. No blog, but he does keep his papers at his UIC student page. He's written a few intersting-sounding things about tacit knowledge exchange in game rooms and over coffee.

"Facilitating Tacit Knowledge Exchange" but nothing beats personal contact

Desouza also understands that all management can do is create the environment. "Let nature take its course," he writes. He also cautions against the normal condition in management:
In organizations there is a tendency for some people to over or micromanage. Knowledge management cannot be fostered under these settings . . Secondly, changing to a [KM] culture does not happen overnight."

2 Comment(s)

Lucy said:

Nice article. Knowledge is a human concept and must be studied as such...Are there any other articles out on the topic.

January 11, 2004 10:42 AM

Jack Vinson said:

You'll want to look at Kevin Desouza's page - it has a number of his own articles. It's linked in that blog entry: http://jackvinson.com/archives/002420.html. There are also plenty of references in his papers, so you might find something that way.

There has been much more anecdotal discussion of this idea than actual research. There is the general understanding that if we get people to talk to one another more, they will tend to talk about their common interests, from sports to the day's topics at work.

It's not all anecdote. Community of practice researchers have shown the power of having people talk to one another. There is also a long discussion of loose connections vs. strong connections and the power of technology to help us make many more loose ties with people, such as this email, over a loose interest link. Mathamegenic has a recent discussion: http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2003/11/23.html#a849.

January 11, 2004 4:31 PM