Summary and Conclusion

This article was written to outline ways to master the challenge of retaining and building Knowledge Capital in this new era. In the old days, in simpler times, this may have meant, “How do you keep good employees from quitting their jobs and moving to another employer?” Today, and in the era we are just beginning, it means something entirely different.

To succeed in maintaining and growing the Knowledge Capital of an enterprise, old structures – like jobs and management – and the principles that support them must be reinvented and replaced. Some “new age” enterprises, which had the advantage of starting with appropriate structures and philosophies, are already better able to recruit employees and retain Knowledge Capital. If older institutions fail to do that, they won’t be able to keep the valuable people whose contributions they need to stay in business.

Knowledge Capital is generally found in the heads of employees, but it can be collected in an organization’s information systems. Thus, an organization can stand (even thrive on) higher turnover rates in employees.

If we are to replicate and capture the growing Knowledge Capital found in employees, the employees must cooperate and actively participate in the process. To earn that co-operation, organizations must create entirely new relationship structures with – and between – employees. Organizations must completely reassess their policies and approaches to knowledge in light of the new “natural laws” of the knowledge economy.

While the employee’s brain is not the best repository for a company’s Knowledge Capital, knowledge is best-utilized, synthesized and grown within – and among – employees. Therefore, to aggressively develop this asset, business enterprises must create new capabilities to optimize the retention and turnover of personnel. Those new capabilities are not merely the application or extension of traditional human resources processes.

The most likely candidates to take responsibility for stewardship of a company’s Knowledge Capital are its managers, whose work is rapidly being made obsolete by radical technical and social changes. While a central staff of information professionals is not the best structure to manage and grow Knowledge Capital, it may be the best structure to develop and maintain systems that store and disseminate that capital.

Though the world has changed, we may be lulled by temporary, cyclical and transitional events. For example, the recent dramatic increase in management jobs, a cooling of the economy and the misfortunes of dot.coms in the stock market. In his 1986 seminal work, Mastering Change, Leon Martel recounts that the technology of sailing ships never improved faster or more radically than after the introduction of steamships. Sailors surely felt they had the situation under control. We can choose to bet on the steam-ships or on sailing technology. And, today, we bet our enterprises on just such a choice.