Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Chapter 13. Realignment of the Organizational Culture and Reward System

Richard A. Kleinert, global practice leader of the human resources strategy group that specializes in human capital advisory services at Deloitte & Touche LLP, nicely sums up the new role that organizational knowledge has assumed in the management of an organization:

To me, knowledge has three Ms: message, medium, and motivation. Message—you have to define the business critical information in your organization. Medium—you need some sort of system to provide the right type of information to the right people at the right time. But most important, I think, is the motivation side. You have to motivate people both to populate a system and to use it. And that gets into the amorphous cultural area comprised of rewards, both monetary and non-monetary; communications, both pull and non-pull; measurement; and finally, but not least, leadership. (Haapaniemi, 2001, p. 73)

The unique characteristics of knowledge described in Chapter 2 ("Knowledge as a Capital Asset") mandate a holistic approach to its harvesting, transfer, and acquisition. Preceding chapters have examined many of the complex, interrelated factors that affect continuity management implementation and practice. This chapter examines another crucial factor: the organizational environment within which operational knowledge is transmitted.

Two environmental influences have a direct—and even decisive—effect on the implementation and effectiveness of continuity management ...