Handbook of Corporate Communication and Public ... - Blogs Unpad

cesses and model building understanding,
including sensitive analysis; and operational
definitions of concepts and design
of appropriate measurement techniques
development that lend themselves to
decision making and process intervention.
3 New technologies. Emerging computerbased
technologies offer enormous
potential for efficiency, innovation, and
value creation to society. Value derives
from knowledge, and human capital is the
most critical corporate asset. Vital competences
include hardware and software
development, problem solving, encryption
and communication.
4 New time horizons. The environment in
which today’s organizations exist is in a
continual state of flux. Complex changes
occur at an ever-increasing pace. Given
the rapidity of change, corporations
must invest heavily in lifelong learning
skills to enable individuals to maintain
current knowledge, skills, and essential
competences to facilitate agile response. It
is necessary that continuing education
emphasize intellectual capacity and professional
development.
5 New competition. As information becomes
accessible across national boundaries,
global markets are becoming dominant.
Organizations need to develop the ability
to understand emerging problems, and to
rapidly develop and deploy cost-effective
services. Required competences include
marketing and selling, understanding
stakeholder needs, problem solving,
designing and deploying effective solutions,
and communicating.
Communication, and therefore language, is
an important competency implied by each of
the five factors described above.
There is considerable interest in the study
of organizational design for effective knowledge
creation and management. Blackler
(1995) has reviewed concepts of knowledge,
classified them, and examined processes for
generating, storing, and applying knowledge.
He has developed a typology of knowledge
organizations. Other writers have discussed
various aspects of management of knowledge
(Peters, 1992; Skyrme and Amidon, 1997;
Sveiby, 1997), including designs of work systems
for knowledge workers (Pasmore and
Purser, 1993), organizational learning in
knowledge-intensive firms (Starbuck, 1992),
and power and control of expertise (Reed,
1996). Unfortunately, the relationship between
language and knowledge in the context
of organizational design has not been studied.
Let us examine the role of language in knowledge
management.
For effective management of the knowledge
creation process, it is important to
comprehend the difference between knowledge
and understanding. Schwandt (1999)
expresses the difference between knowledge
and understanding in German through the
questions, ‘Woher weibetat du das’ and ‘Wie
verstehen Sie das’ In English one would ask,
‘How do you know that’ and ‘What do you
make of that’ It may be argued that to effectively
use or apply information, as knowledge,
to strategic advantage, an organization should
understand the knowledge, as evidenced by its
making something of that knowledge. To compete
effectively, a multinational corporation,
operating at a global scale, must acquire the
ability to make something of its knowledge,
through its core competences, including communication
in different historical, cultural and
linguistic milieux. In the 1990s, 97 per cent of
US export growth came from small- to
medium-sized businesses, but only 10 per
cent of these companies were exporting
© 2004 Sandra Oliver for editorial matter and selection;
individual chapters, the contributors