Your blogging obligaton
Mopsos has written an interesting piece on knowledge management (via blogging) in the corporate world, Blogging to become a legal obligation? In it he describes a conversation with a lawyer who suggested that all of an employee's knowledge belongs to the company. While that seems rather extreme, it has some interesting implications.
On a practical note, this [discussion] has quite simple implications. Let's ask ourselves what happens when an employee leaves a company to develop his ideas in another one. Well, if it is proven that he withheld information from his former employer to do that, he should be sued. But if he had this great idea and shared it in the company, but nobody cared (happens all the time!), is there a good reason why he shouldn't be allowed to leave and maybe start a company with this idea?
In the end, it might well be that the best interest for both parties is to have every employee keep written logs - one per community - of everything they do. The employee can then use the blog records to prove that he did not withhold information from the company. If he cannot, well, too bad for him.
Scary implication, but an interesting proposal. Mopsos has also followed this post with additional thinking on the implications of this and some other good stuff about knowledge management in general.
[originally posted on 12/22/2004 04:12:56 AM]
And of course we can (theoretically) all carry our "knowledge" around on jump drives or flash memory, taking it with us where we go ... plug n' play at the next job.
Seriously though ... two things:
1) it would be one hell of a lot of administrative work, I think, to be chasing around many many many former employess and trying to salt down whose knowledge is whose ... plus the explicit acknowledgment that all the "knowledge" one constructs while in the employ of a corporation ... looks and smells almost like slavery for me ... I don't want anyone controlling my thoughts, or even occupying my head ... or claiming that they can, legally.
2) if such a practice became widespread, I don't think I'd much like the accompanying aspects of society that would have moved to similar positions in other realms ... and i also imagine that an awful lot of bright. creative, energetic, engaged people would seriously balk at entering such a relationship. After all, in a knowledge-based era, the knowledge workers own the means of production ... brain nd motivation "strikes" would be the next big thing ;-)