At the Core of a Knowledge Base
Wendi Bukowitz, Director of the Next Generation Research Group, Arthur Andersen Knowledge Enterprises
As organizations have become increasingly effective
at reducing costs and improving efficiency in their
operations, their attention has shifted to revenue
growth. Tapping the collective creativity and know-
how of employees is emerging as one of the best ways
to anticipate customer needs and grow new markets.
Typically, when companies set out to create
knowledge bases, the first issue that they tackle is
technology. In many cases, resources and patience
are exhausted by the time they have resolved
technology issues. This paper reviews Arthur
Andersen’s experiences in developing knowledge
bases – focusing on content; knowledge sharing; and
culture change.
CONTENT DRIVES VALUE
As organizations have become increasingly effective
at reducing costs and improving efficiency in their
operations, their attention has shifted to revenue
growth. Tapping the collective creativity and know-
how of employees is emerging as one of the best
ways to anticipate customer needs and grow new
markets. As a result, there has been intense interest
in building organizational knowledge bases which
store and share employee know-how and ideas.
Typically, when companies set out to create
knowledge bases, the first issue that they tackle is
technology. Why? Because organizations are
infatuated with technology. But caution is advised,
and it is advised from what may seem to be a very
unlikely source – Michael Bloomberg, who as CEO
of the Bloomberg organization made his fortune
marrying information technology and financial
information. Yet, as cited in a recent New Yorker
article, when Mr. Bloomberg addressed the
audience at the Consumer Electronics Show in
January, 1997, he cautioned them about the
horrendous blindspot that came with their love of
technology. The audience was composed of brilliant
engineers who develop state-of-the-art electronics
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
gadgets that are deeply appreciated by other
engineers, but that do not begin to truly meet the
needs of customers. In Mr. Bloomberg’s opinion,
losing track of this overriding imperative –
delivering value as defined by the customer –
plagues the technology field. And organizations
that install technology platforms for knowledge
sharing are not immune to this blindspot.
By the time organizations have resolved technology
issues surrounding knowledge bases, which are
many and complex, resources and patience have
been exhausted. What happens all too often is that
the real value driver of knowledge bases – the
content in them – gets very short shrift. Skimping
on content produces knowledge bases that are
unable to achieve the ultimate aim of creating
intelligent-acting organizations. Arthur Andersen
came perilously close to being waylaid by this
technology blindspot when creating the Global Best
Practices KnowledgeSpace. But the organization
managed to get focused on content and this focus
has been a key factor in the successful integration of
the Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace into its
work processes.
Arthur Andersen is a $4.1 billion global professional
services organization that offers its clients audit, tax,
business advisory, and specialty consulting services.
In a professional services organization the central
importance of knowledge creation and management
is a given. There is almost universal agreement that
knowledge creation and management is the
business. So, while there was some resistance to the
idea of building knowledge creating and sharing
systems at Arthur Andersen, there was not as much
as had been experienced when making other
significant changes to work processes.
The value proposition of knowledge creating and
sharing systems seems to have been clearer and
more readily accepted by the organization. Arthur
Andersen believes that its knowledge creating and
sharing systems deliver value to the organization
and its clients in two fundamental ways:
© 1998 Wendi R. Bukowitz
215
 1. Transferring the ‘best information’
available anywhere in the organization
directly to the point of need in order to
promote the ‘best thinking possible’.
2. Helping the organization to learn earlier
and more creatively than the competition in
order to develop a sustainable edge.
There are as many ways to achieve these outcomes
as there are organizations, but other organizations
in the process of building knowledge creating and
sharing systems should be able to adopt and adapt
elements of Arthur Andersen’s approach as they
launch or grow their own knowledge bases.
ARTHUR ANDERSEN’S KNOWLEDGE CREATING
AND SHARING SYSTEMS
At Arthur Andersen, knowledge creating and
sharing systems are segmented into two basic
categories: organizational forums and codified
databases. At the simplest and most simplistic level,
organizational forums expand access to people and
codified databases expand access to information.
Organizational forums provide electronic
connectivity to specific individuals in a combination
of one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many
settings. At Arthur Andersen the forum is
unmediated by analysis and framed within a broad
context. Arthur Andersen’s organizational forum is
called AA Online. AA Online is a Lotus Notes-based
platform of discussion databases that connects
15,000 professionals to one another in 30
communities of interest. AA Online’s environment is
constructed so that all 15,000 participants can pose
and respond to questions, post information, and
access archived resources. But organizational
forums constitute one-half of the knowledge
sharing and creating system’s conceptual whole.
Codified databases are the other component.
At Arthur Andersen, codified databases seek to
amass a wide range of organizational knowledge –
from effective approaches to executing business
processes to plain old good ideas about how to
serve customers. They can also serve as
clearinghouses for basic organizational information
such as policies and procedures and for more
esoteric information, such as highly specialized
computer-based training modules.
The Global Best Practices (or GBP) KnowledgeSpace
is one of Arthur Andersen’s codified databases. It
recently has been rechristened as a Knowledge-
Space in recognition of the total cyber-space
environment that will ultimately be created, but
216 Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
today GBP is still functionally a codified database or
what Arthur Andersen refers to as a knowledge
base. The Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace
codifies information about how leading companies
achieve and sustain world-class levels of
performance in the execution of 100 business
processes. While it is one of a dozen knowledge
bases within the organization, the Global Best
Practices KnowledgeSpace has been in formal
development for the longest period of time, since
1991. As a result, it has provided Arthur Andersen
with a deep understanding of the benefits and
challenges that go hand-in-hand with creating
central repositories of knowledge. It is also one of
the only knowledge bases in Arthur Andersen that
currently serves the entire business unit. These
attributes make it a particularly strong case example
for exploring the major challenges most companies
face when developing knowledge bases.
FIVE CONTENT CHALLENGES
When companies set up knowledge bases they
typically make a large investment of time
considering the technology platform. Unfortunately,
there are two other broad sets of overlapping
challenges that they invariably tend to under-
estimate:
1. How to develop and maintain content.
2. How to draw people into the system and
use it as an environment for learning and
generating knowledge assets.
The reason for addressing content challenges before
technology platform issues is based on six years of
experience with the Global Best Practices
KnowledgeSpace. The conclusion: knowledge bases
will only be used (can only deliver value to the
organization) if the content in them is relevant and
accessible to the people who do the work. In
addition, the way that an organization develops
and maintains content has a direct impact on its
ability to use knowledge bases as an environment
for learning and generating knowledge assets.
When the Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace
project was initiated, five content challenges
confronted the development team:
1. Identifying the right content.
2. Obtaining it.
3. Packaging it.
4. Placing it in the right environment.
5. Maintaining its relevance.
Exploring the nature of these challenges and how
Arthur Andersen’s Global Best Practices
development team met them can provide clues for
other organizations as they grapple with their
knowledge base building efforts.
IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT CONTENT
Some companies start out building knowledge
bases with the idea that if they can just find
sufficient resources, almost everything anyone in
the organization has ever written can be archived
and become part of an institutional memory. At the
other end of the spectrum, others believe that all
they need to do is create a robust technology
platform and they will unleash the pent-up need of
their stakeholders to share which has been thwarted
primarily by time constraints since telephones and
faxes have been around for decades. Even at more
moderate positions, neither of these fantasy types
seems to pan out. That is because the first thing that
organizations need to do to stimulate a flow of
knowledge into their systems is to identify the right
content.
To identify the right content for an enterprise-wide
knowledge base that is used by large stakeholder
segments to share strategically important
information, organizations need to ask two
foundation questions:
1. What is the core competence of the
organization?
2. What kind of content will reinforce the core
competence and create competitive
advantage if people have access to it?
Arthur Andersen’s responses to these questions
profoundly shaped the development of the Global
Best Practices KnowledgeSpace. Arthur Andersen
offers its clients a set of standard professional
services that are differentiated by a deep knowledge
of its clients’ industries and a wide-ranging set of
experiences and formal training that ground the
judgment of the professionals who deliver these
services. Its core competence lies in the ability to
bring these three bodies of knowledge together –
service methodology, industry expertise and
professional experience – at the point of contact
with the customer to create a valuable relationship.
The Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace was
initially conceived as a way to build on the industry
expertise component of the organization’s core
competence. The Global Best Practices
KnowledgeSpace would disperse highly relevant
industry-specific information throughout the global
organization so that it could be leveraged directly to
the point-of-need.
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
However, in the course of planning for the
prototype version, two external forces converged
that pressured the Global Best Practices
development team to re-think the decision to
develop industry-specific content. Back in 1991,
Arthur Andersen’s market intelligence revealed that
a new way of achieving competitive advantage was
rapidly gaining currency among leading companies.
When seeking breakthrough improvements, these
organizations were looking outside their industry,
beyond best-in-class, to best in the world. To be able
to promote the best thinking possible, the Global
Best Practices development team realized that its
knowledge base would have to contain this sort of
‘out of the box’ information.
At the same time, the Global Best Practices
development team was collaborating with a not-for-
profit organization that was founded in response to
the growing need for generally accepted
benchmarking practices and information. With this
group’s membership, Arthur Andersen was
working to establish a standard language and
framework for thinking about business processes
that would apply to all organizations – for and not-
for profit, in any industry, and of any size.
These two forces – market intelligence and Arthur
Andersen’s collaborative research activities –
influenced the Global Best Practices development
team to shift its focus away from industry-specific
to process-specific content. The process-specific
content was viewed as a way to not only build on
industry expertise, but to expand this element of the
firm’s core competence. Process-specific content
delivered via a knowledge base also had the
potential to create competitive advantage by
allowing Arthur Andersen to offer a new kind of
information to its clients in a way that its
competitors could not.
For Arthur Andersen’s Global Best Practices
development team, the right content was process-
specific information which could both enhance a
core competence and differentiate the organization
in the marketplace.
OBTAINING CONTENT
Another reason that organizations focus so
intensively on technology platforms when they
build knowledge bases is that many secretly
harbour a hope that if they can figure out how to
build the perfect knowledge base, one that is
seamlessly integrated into the flow of everyday
work, then contribution will become virtually
effortless. However, a set of gaps prevents people
from sharing their ideas within a knowledge-base
217
 environment: awareness, communications skills,
and culture gaps.
Awareness Gaps
For most people, a tremendous gap exists between
what they know and what they are aware that they
know. On a day-to-day basis they bring a diverse
body of knowledge to bear on the activities they
perform. In the current operating environments of
most organizations, decisions must be made very
rapidly. People often do not have the time to reflect
on, let alone articulate, the complex set of
information that they use to make decisions. In fact,
it might not even be organizationally desirable for
them to spend their time in that way.
However, by identifying the right content for
knowledge bases, organizations prompt individuals
to consider what it is that they know in relation to
what the organization needs to know. In Arthur
Andersen’s case, the Global Best Practices
KnowledgeSpace content framework com-
municated that the organization needed to know
how leading organizations achieved world-class
levels of performance in specific business processes.
This meant, for example, that people who had
worked on a consulting engagement originally
framed as ‘salesforce effectiveness’ could now see
how part of what they had helped the client to
accomplish might be thought of as improving
performance in a process such as ‘monitoring
changes in market or customer expectations’. In this
way, Arthur Andersen professionals became aware
that they possessed process-specific information
that was useful to the organization.
Communications Skills Gaps
Promoting awareness of what individuals know by
identifying the ‘right’ content for a knowledge base
is necessary, but it is not sufficient, to stimulate idea
sharing in a knowledge base environment. The lack
of strong communications skills at all levels of the
organization creates another gap that interferes
with knowledge sharing.
The communications skills gap is experienced as a
disconnection between what people are aware that
they know and what they are capable of expressing
to others. Most of the examples that spring to mind
illustrating this gap are those that involve skills
learned as children. Adults know how to tie their
shoes. But just try teaching that to a child. It’s hard
to describe it using words or illustrations. While
some people are able to manipulate these symbols
better than others, either because of talent or by dint
of skill acquisition or both, most experience a
218 Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
breakdown. This inability to communicate
effectively operates not only in the personal sphere,
but also in the professional one.
At Arthur Andersen, a basic set of journalism and
publishing skills (research, analysis, writing and
editing) were needed to create and maintain the
content for the Global Best Practices Knowledge-
Space. While these are related to the core skills of
Arthur Andersen professionals, they are not the
core skill sets of the organization. Just because one
gathers information doesn’t mean that one is a
researcher. Just because one writes doesn’t mean
one is a writer. Just because one recognizes a
pattern here and there doesn’t mean one is an
analyst. And very few people are editors.
Arthur Andersen has opted to import these skill
sets into the Global Best Practices development
team using a mix that is light on Arthur Andersen
employees, because a career track for employees
with these skill sets does not exist, and heavy on
outside contractors – fortunately the publishing
industry has a tradition of freelancing so there is a
rich talent pool from which to choose.
The right way to close the communications skill gap
will vary from organization to organization.
However, most will have to consider how to bring
publishing and journalism expertise into their skill
mix, either by outsourcing or importing it.
Culture Gaps
The third gap that must be closed to create a viable
knowledge sharing environment is the most
difficult to achieve. For most of us, the imperative to
share on a large scale is not woven into the fabric of
our daily organizational existence. People will
rightly ask, “Why should I share? What is in it for
me?” Internal competition for fewer and fewer
executive slots pits managers against one another,
and in some companies withholding critical
information is still an excellent strategy for getting
ahead. Even if people are not jockeying for
executive slots, it is clear to most workers that what
they know and know how to do still plays a very
large role in how they are evaluated. It is equally
clear to them that sharing this know-how doesn’t
appear to count for much on performance
evaluations as they exist today. When this is the
organizational reality, the ‘business case’ for
sharing is far outweighed by the ‘personal case’ for
not doing so.
In stark contrast to this reality are companies like 3M.
At 3M, products belong to the divisions, but ideas
belong to the company. For such an organization,
knowledge bases may facilitate knowledge sharing,
but they do not cause it. This is true for most organ-
 The Process Classification Scheme is the basic framework for
organizing best practices content in the Global Best Practices
KnowledgeSpace. The Process Classification Scheme proposes 13
core processes that all organizations, regardless of size or industry,
Figure 1: Process Classification Scheme
izations. Knowledge bases are tools, not a set of
values. The best that they can do is reflect a set of
values. At 3M, the value of sharing is deeply
embedded in the culture. It is simply how work gets
done. Organizations with a long-standing tradition
that values sharing have a tremendous advantage in
a knowledge-based economy. Most are not that lucky,
organizationally speaking. The vast majority of
organizations possess sharing-reluctant cultures and
must figure out how to work around them and within
them because cultures are not transformed overnight
and organizations have to get on with the business
of enhancing the value they create for customers.
The Global Best Practices team, which is not in a
position to alter the organization’s formal
recognition and reward system, has been able to
encourage expert contributions by working within
and around the Arthur Andersen culture. The
Global Best Practices team promotes the idea that
once experts have contributed their insights to the
knowledge base, the quantity of direct requests they
receive for basic information should go down while
the quality of the requests they get for specific
insights should go up. Once an expert’s thinking is
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
profit or not-for-profit status, must manage to create value for
customers. More than 200 subprocesses are grouped under the 13
core processes to create a complete and detailed picture of an
organizational system.
in the knowledge base, she can ask people to review
the content in the knowledge base first and then call
if there are more specific questions. This is a
tremendous time-saver for Arthur Andersen
professionals. But more importantly, it is a face-
saver that allows them to honour a cultural norm of
sharing that has become almost impossible to honour
as the organization has mushroomed in size.
In addition, as an incentive to take the time to
contribute to the knowledge base, the Global Best
Practices team will often barter a fixed amount of
research assistance to experts at no charge,
providing them with an edge in their proposal and
client work. This inducement is a tempting one for
professionals looking for any advantage in an
extremely competitive marketplace. Finally, the
Global Best Practices team makes sure that it
recognizes contributors by crediting the people who
have provided content for each business process
section in a directory listing them as ‘expert
contributors’. In these small ways the Global Best
Practices team works to close the culture gaps that
prevent people from contributing their insights to
the knowledge base.
219
 Content is designed so that people can drill down to the level of detail
they require and make connections to related pieces of information.
About 100 processes within the Global Best Practices
Figure 2: Ten content categories
PACKAGING CONTENT
Once organizations have identified the right content
for their knowledge bases and have considered how
they will shrink the awareness, communications
skills and culture gaps that impede their ability to
obtain it, they are ready to think about how they
will package it.
Organizing Framework
To package content, a framework or several
frameworks must be designed which rationalize the
body of knowledge and serve as a map to locate its
components. At Arthur Andersen, the Global Best
Practices KnowledgeSpace has used a Process
Classification Scheme as the basic framework for
organizing content. The Process Classification
Scheme proposes 13 core processes that all
businesses, regardless of size or industry, must
manage to create value for customers. More than
200 subprocesses are grouped under the 13 core
processes to create a complete and detailed picture
of an organizational system from a process
perspective (see Figure 1).
220 Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
KnowledgeSpace are populated with best practices information.
Version 10.0 of the KnowledgeSpace contains more than 20,000
‘pages’ of information.
For each of the 100 business processes that are
populated with information, the Global Best
Practices KnowledgeSpace segments content into
ten categories (see Figure 2):
1. Process Definition – Since there are many
different ways to understand a business
process, the definition describes the
activities that start and end the process, so
that people can determine if this is the
content area they seek.
2. Best Practices – A set of practices which, taken
as a whole, describe the state-of-performance
as achieved by leading organizations.
3. Best Companies – Case studies of organizations
that are recognized as exemplifying
excellence in particular practices.
4. Relevant Engagement Experience – ‘Best of the
best’ engagements that demonstrate how
Arthur Andersen has assisted clients in
moving toward world-class performance.
5. Performance Measures – Metrics and results
published by various sources which can be
 This screen capture from the Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace
shows how a four-frame environment is used to ‘chunk’ one content
category of information – best practices – into topics (the main frame)
Figure 3: Best practice content chunks
used as benchmarks for understanding
how leading companies gauge performance
and the levels of excellence that they target.
6. Best Control Practices – A look at how
leading organizations manage the risk
inherent in the performance of a process.
7. Studies and Articles – The top ten studies
and articles which when read as a body of
literature provide a basic understanding of
the process and its practices.
8. Diagnostic Tools – Proprietary software
applications developed by Arthur Andersen
to facilitate metric benchmarking in selected
processes and qualitative assessment tools
that promote inquiry into the state of
performance relative to best practices.
9. Presentations – Job aids used by Arthur
Andersen professionals to communicate
with clients and as internal training tools.
10. AA Experts – A directory of Arthur Andersen
professionals who have contributed content
to this process.
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
and how people are directed to explore related areas (the three
surrounding frames at the side and bottom).
Within each of these categories, the content is
designed so that people can drill down to the level
of detail they require and make connections to
related pieces of information.
Content Chunks
Chunking content to create linkages both to detail
and related topics is the critical step that can help
people make creative connections between bodies
of knowledge that they may not have previously
considered. It is the primary way that the Global
Best Practices KnowledgeSpace stimulates ‘creative
insight’ and promotes a ‘systems mindset’ for
thinking about organizational problems.
For example, each best practice within the knowledge
base is chunked into sub-categories of (see Figure 3):
1. Benefits – The outcomes which can be
expected from implementation of the
practice.
2. Approach – The basic activities in which
leading companies engage to operationalize
each practice.
221

Example of linkages to detail and related
information
Drilling down into the Best Practices area for the
process, ‘Purchase Materials and Supplies’, under
the Best Practice, ‘Optimize the number of suppliers
and develop close vendor relationships that achieve
total delivered cost targets and meet specific
customer needs’. Linkages to detail and related
knowledge are created as follows:
One of the first approach steps to this practice
indicates that leading companies:
Certify suppliers through a formal programme. In
several places, the literature states that the
strength of a vendor base optimization
programme is directly related to the quality of a
company’s vendor certification programme.
These programmes usually contain tough
standards for reliability, quality, unit price, on-time
delivery, and other factors driven by product type.
Linkages to other bodies of knowledge are indicated
by underlined and bolded text:
This subject is covered in greater detail in Best
Practice: Develop strategic business alliances with
core suppliers.
See also Process 5.1.1 Select and Certify
Suppliers, under Related Areas.
Selecting these areas displays approaches in the
related practice and a set of practices in the related
process.
Chunking, content to create linkages both to detail and related
topics is the primary way that the Global best Practices
KnowledgeSpace stimulates ‘creative insight’ and promotes a
‘systems mindset’ for thinking about organizational problems.
Figure 4: Content linkages
3. Performance Measures – The metrics that
leading companies use to monitor perform-
ance and some of the results that they have
achieved.
4. Roles and Responsibilities – An overview of
the roles that must be created or modified
in order to implement the practice and the
major tasks that these people perform in
world-class companies.
5. Expert Commentary – A distillation of tips in
the form of ‘do’s and don’ts’ from Arthur
Andersen experts who have been involved
in implementing these changes within
client organizations.
Within each of these sub-categories, drilling down
provides more detail and linkages to other bodies of
knowledge that should be considered when
implementing this practice. Figure 4 illustrates how
these connections are made within the Global Best
Practices KnowledgeSpace.
222 Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
It is tempting to let technology lead the way when
thinking about how to package content, but
knowledge base developers should not put the cart
before the horse. They need to consider how content
should be chunked and organized first and then
turn to technology to find the application that will
meet those specifications.
PLACING CONTENT IN THE RIGHT
ENVIRONMENT
Once organizations have dealt with the first three
challenges, they are ready to take on the fourth.
This is the stage in the process where content
challenges intersect with technology platform
decisions. The right environment for content is one
that permits easy, universal access, and rapid
identification of the desired information.
Back in 1991, for the Global Best Practices
KnowledgeSpace, CD technology supported by a
proprietary search engine was the right environment.
In 1991, most Arthur Andersen professionals had CD
players and the software application was part of their
standard desktop setup. They routinely used the
software to access reference materials in the course of
audit and tax work. The Global Best Practices team
decided to piggyback on this existing platform in
order to focus organizational learning on applying
content rather than manipulating technology.
However, the landscape of options in 1998 has
dramatically changed. Exposure to the Internet has
grown at a phenomenal rate. The Global Best
Practices development team recognized that an
Internet-based platform could link Global Best
Practices content not only to other internal Arthur
Andersen knowledge bases but also to external
sources. As a result, the Global Best Practices team
made the decision to transition the knowledge base
to an intranet platform.
When Arthur Andersen professionals want to find
information today, they no longer have to worry
about which CD to pop in the player or to access via
the network. They now enter the Arthur Andersen
KnowledgeSpace where they may choose to
navigate toward the information they seek using a
variety of frameworks – the Process Classification
Scheme or service line-, industry-, methodology-, or
issue-related frameworks. Wherever that content
exists – within Arthur Andersen knowledge bases
or on external publicly available sources– it can be
accessed via the Arthur Andersen KnowledgeSpace
(see Figure 5).
Today, the right environment not only permits easy,
universal access and rapid identification of desired
information, but must also serve as a bridge to a
 The Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace is housed within Arthur
Andersen’s KnowledgeSpace, a repository that will ultimately hold all
Figure 5: Arthur Andersen KnowledgeSpace
widest possible universe of information sources that
the organization requires.
MAINTAINING RELEVANCE
At this stage in the knowledge base development
process, the prototype will be ready for release.
Developers need to pause and consider what they
will do next because the final content challenge is as
difficult to deal with as the other four combined.
Technology has transformed the perception of
relevance with respect to information. Relevance is
now conflated with the date on which information
was authored. Within most organizations, the
tolerance for what is perceived to be outdated
information has sunk to zero. The dilemma is that
the authoring date is not a reliable indicator of
‘relevance’. For example, in the case of the Global
Best Practices KnowledgeSpace, a ‘classic’ article
that lays a conceptual foundation for understanding
a particular process may have been authored two to
five years ago. However, this article is still relevant
and belongs in the basic reading set.
Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
of the organization’s Knowledge Management systems and provide
linkages to related external web sites.
While technology has changed the perception of
relevance, technology alone cannot deliver relevant
information. Purging information based on
authoring date is tantamount to using an axe when a
scalpel is called for. At this time, only a human
being with subject matter expertise can decide which
information is relevant and should be retained in the
Global Best Practices KnowledgeSpace. Arthur
Andersen, like many other organizations has
responded to this need by forming a group – the
Global Best Practices development team – one of
whose ongoing jobs is to monitor content in the
knowledge base and, in conjunction with other
subject matter experts, maintain its relevance.
Many organizations are evolving a new role as well
– the knowledge manager. The knowledge manager
currently runs the gamut from basic electronic file
clerk to sophisticated research partner, but in most
cases the role has emerged in response to the
demand for maintaining relevant content. The
bottom line on maintaining relevant content is that
organizations will need to establish a new group
within their organizations, one of whose major
223
 responsibilities will be monitoring content for
relevance.
KNOWLEDGE WITHOUT PEOPLE ...
As development teams meet and deal with the five
content challenges and introduce the knowledge
base into the work environment, they will invariably
encounter push-back from their organizations. This
is because introducing a knowledge base into the
daily work process has the potential to initiate
profound cultural change. Knowledge bases have
the potential to diffuse the power base. By
democratizing access to information they can foster
independent, decentralized decision-making.
For most organizations, spreading the ability to
make decisions in response to market opportunities
is recognized as a positive change. But that doesn’t
make it any easier to live through the experience.
When more people are rapidly responding to
market opportunities, the organization can feel out
of control. The instinctive response to this sensation
is to push back against the change that is
responsible for the discomfort. Being aware that
building a knowledge base means embarking on
culture change is critical to successful integration of
the knowledge base into the work process.
Although culture change should not be boiled down
to a bullet point list, it is otherwise difficult to frame
issues. So, for the sake of clarity, the following list
represents the major challenges that Arthur
Andersen continues to work through and which are
undoubtedly common to most organizations:
● The long road to changing work process, even
for the better.
Using a technology-based tool, even a very
well-designed one, requires learning new
skills. This means investing upfront time for
initially minimal results. It takes a while for
the knowledge base to deliver first order
time-savings and even longer before it can
deliver higher order value-boosts to the work
process. At the outset, many people never
get started. In the interim, without ongoing
support, many people in the organization
simply give up. To move the process along,
the development team must be infinitely
patient and prepared to tirelessly educate
people about how to use the knowledge base
to boost the value of their work.
● The political process of securing broad
leadership support.
In organizations where leadership still
means senior executives, encouraging
224 Journal of Knowledge Management Volume 1 Number 3 March 1998
leaders to advocate use of a knowledge
base by using it themselves and by
providing recognition for those who do, is
an extremely time-consuming, very
delicate, person-by-person proposition. An
ambassador with stature, position and
strong interpersonal skills is needed to
successfully lead this type of initiative.
Knowledge bases are not just about making
a business case, they are also about the art
of personal persuasion.
● The tension between the need for the people who
do frontline work to participate in the
development of the knowledge base and the
continued real demands of their day-to-day work.
Until the knowledge base is integrated into
the flow of daily work, developing and
using it remain two highly separate
activities. At first, the tension is very great
and almost unbearable. It is almost
impossible to get people who do the
frontline work involved. The development
team’s task is to manage the tension down
to a level at which it is a productive force
that permits their involvement at the same
time that it keeps the development team
honest about the knowledge base’s true
value with respect to the organization’s
daily work process. The people who do the
frontline work must be involved, but
building and maintaining knowledge bases
will never be their primary task.
If these change management issues are not
addressed, no matter how good the content, no
matter how elegant the technology platform, the
knowledge base will not have a sufficiently
hospitable environment in which to develop to a
point from which it can sustain itself. That flashpoint
occurs when the information in the knowledgebase
becomes knowledge embodied in people who know
how to use it to create value for customers.
For most large organizations, building knowledge
bases is a foregone conclusion. The good news is
that organizations can look forward to using new
technologies and a deeper and more profound
understanding of how adults learn and how
organizations foster trust to build knowledge bases
and design content that stimulate individual
creativity and achieve the ultimate goal – an
intelligent-acting organization. ❑
Wendi Bukowitz may be contacted at Arthur Andersen, 370
Roup Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15232, USA. Tel: +1 412 361
5860, Fax: +1 412 361 1532, E-mail: wendi.r.bukowitz@
arthurandersen.com.