Knowledge-driven organisational change: a framework

Contemporary enterprises, particularly emerging ones, must break with traditional, Industrial Age organisational structures, processes and, particularly, mindsets in order to build sustainable competitive advantage in the boundaryless, volatile and innovation-driven market-place of the 21st century. The first section of this work lays out a framework for understanding the role of knowledge in the 21st century firm. A second part of the paper reports on key findings of this framework as drawn from several knowledge-intensive, international firms. Finally, we look at the organisational development/human resource implications of the comparison between two leading-edge companies vs. two lagging companies. The major premise of current thinking is that knowledge is becoming the key source of competitive advantage in the 21st century firm, requiring that many of the traditional approaches to building competitive advantage need to be reframed. In particular we will see how, as the Industrial Era evolves into the Network Age and the scarce resource is shifting from capital to knowledge, traditional authoritarian structures need to be dismantled and the roles and tasks of each manager and knowledge worker needs to be radically changed.