The Knowing‐Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action

Citation

van Hoek, R.I. (2000), "The Knowing‐Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action", Supply Chain Management, Vol. 5 No. 5, pp. 261-261. https://doi.org/10.1108/scm.2000.5.5.261.1

Pfeffer and Sutton (both professors in organizational behavior at Stanford) have made a relevant contribution to the rapidly enfolding knowledge management literature, which is of specific relevance to the supply chain management discipline, because of its focus on action and operationalizing knowledge. O’Laughlin (1993) has already pointed at implementation and change management as critical elements of supply chain management. That notion provides the starting point for Pfeffer and Sutton: even though we know so much and are smart in developing great concepts we often benefit from it only marginally, because of failure in putting knowledge into action. Perhaps this is a Taylorist distinction between knowing and doing in the organization of labor? Interestingly, Pfeffer and Sutton explain how typical knowledge management practices may make knowing‐doing gaps wider. A focus on technology and transfer of codified information, limited possibility to transfer tacit knowledge using formal systems and lack of understanding of the actual work among knowledge managers (staff department, etc.) are among the most common practices driving a wedge between knowing and doing. Thus, knowledge should be a responsibility of everybody and basic ICT infrastructures are not enough.

A central underlying notion in the book is that knowledge is not easily transferred within and across firms, which represents a major challenge to supply chain management. How often do we see suppliers as the “other” party, whose role it is to act to our understanding of the supply chain? Consider third party logistics services, who suffer from the general perception of these companies that they are operators of low interest transport and warehousing operations while logistics management is maintained in house. Yet, there is a clear tendency to involve third party logistics service providers in supply chain engineering during or even before a tendering process and to open up to informed suggestions for improvement based on their expertise throughout supply chain relationships. These efforts make the book worthwhile material.

The main content of the book is formed by a series of chapters that explain how factors such as talk, memory/heritage, fear, measurement, and internal competition hamper putting knowledge into action. Indeed, we need to adjust third party logistics evaluation if they are to become joint knowledge providers in the supply chain and we are to move away from the heritage of arm’s length relationships with fear of contract discontinuity and divide and rule use of the highly competitive, price‐only biased marketplace for third party logistics services. The analysis is very much organizational behavior biased. Using examples from companies such as the SAS Institute, GM, and HP, clear sets of dos and don’ts are presented.

Even though the focus is on closing the gap and tapping the human potential the analysis covers somewhat more don’ts and how things go wrong than it offers guidance. Most chapters offer a short final section with dos, most of which are repeated in the final chapter “Turning knowledge into action”. Still, given the clear analysis and the relevance of the material presented, this book gets the “thumbs up”.