The idea that business operations should depend heavily upon ‘knowledge management’ appears at first to be vague, nebulous. What is knowledge and its relationship with skill, experience, expertise, know-how? How can knowledge be managed? Can knowledge be captured absolutely, transferred and shared unambiguously, valued, codified, commoditised, sold?
Oshri et al., (2007) don’t engage in understanding and theorising knowledge or knowledge management, instead they shift focus slightly towards the apparently less problematic idea of ‘expertise’. They characterise the desire to manage knowledge in terms of expertise as a personal characteristic, a characteristic that is evident as a resource both of the person and of the organisation.
“Expertise is a specific type of knowledge. It is dynamic, it evolves, and it consists of embodied knowledge and skills possessed by individuals. For our purposes, it refers to ‘knowing in practice.’” (Oshri et al.:54, 2007)In this case study they present Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) ‘global delivery model’ (GDM) as a system of knowledge management, a system for managing dispersed expertise between pairs of organisations and multiple sites of labour (on-site, off-site, offshore). However while the article is located conceptually within knowledge management the global delivery model, its practices and dynamics address governance.
TCS's GDM is a project oriented view of the outsourcing business world. It requires a minimum 6 person management team, with three or more others (HR, QA). The GDM presents a set of recommended structures, processes, values and other mechanisms to shape or manage social processes surrounding knowledge and expertise development. Ultimately the GDM appears to be an organisational model, a simplified synopsis of TCS's own organisational structure and operational capabilities that contribute to its success as a kind of 'organisation of organisations'. The idea of an organisation of organisations captures TCS's situation where it manages multiple outsourcing relationships with many client firms. The first practice "implement an organizational structure that is a mirror image of the client's structure" imposes organisational flexibility upon TCS. The second, "implement a knowledge transfer methodology follows. Transfer commences between client staff and TCS onsite staff and continues from TCS onsite to TCS offsite (and remote) staff. Once 'internalised within TCS the GDM mandates codification, sharing, and reuse. Importantly though this is practice-centric human system rather than a static codification. They link projects with organisational capability as evidenced through personal development, career profiles and project records. The whole GDM as a process is reinforced by organisation-wide cultural conditioning, explicit 'values' to invest in continuous learning and knowledge sharing. While TCS's view of the work world is project centric, due to the continuous commencement and conclusions of project 'relationships', its success is dependent on its capability to share, bridge, and use learning 'across relationships'. The tetrad of interactions between TCS's four key capabilities (project management, quality assurance, digitisation, and centers of excellence) is central to the resilience of knowledge within TCS, despite the strangeness of TCS adopting the same multi-various organisational forms of its clients organisations.
It might be said that TCS is a purely knowledge organisation, one that is imminently adaptible yet consistent because of its reliance on the 'global delivery model’ (GDM).
References
Oshri, I., Kotlarsky, J. & Willcocks, L. P. (2007) Managing Dispersed Expertise in IT Offshore Outsourcing: Lessons from Tata Consultancy Services. MIS Quarterly Executive, 6.
