Knowledge Matters™

Frederick Winslow Taylor is commonly called the father of scientific management, and is recognised as a thought leader in the American efficiency movement. But can we also call him the father of knowledge management? Already I can feel some of you recoiling in horror at the thought. After all Taylor is often associated with the dehumanisation of the workplace, but I think we falsely dishonour him, judging him by the standards of today rather than the standards of his time.

Taylor’s sole interest was in maximising output. Knowledge management in turn seeks to maximise output.  Taylor was the first efficiency expert. He introduced time studies to shop floors, and introduced discipline to processes. How often have you heard knowledge management described as “enabling the right knowledge to be delivered to the right people at the right time using the right processes”, or words to that effect? If that’s not Taylorism I don’t know what is!

Taylor tried to make tacit skills explicit. Indeed he said:

“Required is the deliberate gathering in … of the great mass of traditional knowledge, which in the past has been in the heads of the workmen, and in the physical skill and knack of the workmen, which he has acquired through years of experience” (quoted in Kanigel 1997, p. 473).

Again to me this looks like the 1990’s attempts at knowledge management, and many initiatives that still try to do the same today.

Next time someone asks you who is the father of knowledge management I suggest it isn’t Karl-Erik Sveiby, Karl Weik, Larry Prusak, Tom Davenport, or Ikujirō Nonaka. Before any of these people were born, and more than 100 years ago, Frederick Winslow Taylor was making the first attempts at organised knowledge management in a business context. No matter how unpalatable it may be we should acknowledge him. Understanding the origins of our discipline matters.

Regards Graham

Reference:

Kanigel, R 1997, The one best way: Frederick Winslow Taylor and the enigma of efficiency, Penguin Books, New York.