Knowledge and Process Management Volume 12 Number 4 pp 247–258 (2005) Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI: 10.1002/kpm.235
& Research Article
ICTs and Knowledge Codification: Lessons from Front Office Call Centers Ce´cile Clergeau*,y CRGNA and LEN, Department of Economics and Management, University of Nantes, France
This paper investigates human resources management in call centers. Three case studies of call centers focusing on information exchange show that, even if Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) result in the displacement of the basis of a firm’s core competencies from those that may be attributed to individuals to those which may be attributed to a collective, the employees’ strengths, customer pressure, environmental competitive pressure, and the specificity of the service production process all exert influences on the organizations so as to limit or even prevent such a collectivization of knowledge. In order to maintain a dynamic process of knowledge management, human resource managers have to re-equilibrate the basis of the firm’s core competencies. In the following paper, we introduce the concept of re-equilibrating human resource management. It is through this process that management promotes a harmonious dialogue between tacit knowledge and codified knowledge and succeeds in maintaining a dynamic flexibility in skills. Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. INTRODUCTION As an emblematic phenomena in the industrialization of the service production process, the significant development of call centers questions both human resource management theorists and practitioners about the impact of the Taylorization process (Taylor, 1947) permitted by ICTs on knowledge creation in firms, especially with respect to the learning process and the subsequent management of knowledge. Prior research focusing on call centers has shown that ICTs have made firm competencies less dependant upon individuals, (Clergeau et al., 2002). In other words, setting up a call center involves a process of codification of the specific knowledge relating to the establishment and management of customer relationships.
*Correspondence to: Ce´cile Clergeau, CRGNA and LEN, Department of Economics and Management, University of Nantes, France. E-mail:
[email protected] y ´ Cecile Clergeau is an Associate Professor in University of Nantes, France.
Copyright # 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Knowledge is increasingly embodied in firms and especially in their information system (IS) and therefore less dependent upon individuals. These phenomena are analyzed as a conversion of the basis of the firm’s core competencies from one dependent on particular individuals to one dependent on the firm’s information system. Thus, knowledge is essentially collectivized through the ‘‘extraction’’ and codification and combination of individual knowledge. This kind of ‘‘knowledge collectivization’’ affects the internal learning process equilibrium in such a way that firms might have to re-equilibrate the two components of their knowledge basis, that is, the individual/tacit component and the codified/collective component. We explore three case studies with a view to analyzing the forces weighing on these organizations so that they re-consider their human resource management (HRM), including a re-equilibrating management. We focus our attention on call centers specifically dealing with the exchange of information (i.e., reception, customer information, reservation, and telemarketing). This choice was driven by
RESEARCH ARTICLE the fact that the nature of these organizations (and especially the standardization of tasks and the use of dialogue screenplays) is responsible for a process of knowledge transfer from individuals to an IS taking place in such a way that the front-line workers’ activity is generally said to require no specific skills. We deviate slightly from grounded theory approaches (Glaser and Strauss, 1967) by focusing on interpretation rather than positivistic findings and by interpreting our observations in accordance with existing theories. The methodology is guided by the principles of Klein and Pyers (1999). Despite three case studies typically providing an insufficient basis from which to generalize their key results, our aim is to highlight certain elements leading to HRM change in ICT-based organizations. This paper is structured as follows: the first section raises the question of the impact of ICTs on knowledge codification and HRM; a description of the research methodology introduces the second section and the three case studies demonstrate the four forces that exert influence on organizations, that is, employees’ strengths, customer pressure, environmental competitive pressure, and the specificity of the service production process. The last part of this paper uses resource-based theories of the firm and research by Nonaka and Takeushi (1995) to discuss HRM and knowledge creation in ICT-based organizations. We suggest enriching knowledge management with a re-equilibrating HRM aiming to maintain a balance between the two components of the core competencies’ base of the firm, that is, the individual/tacit component and the organizational/codified component.
ICTS, KNOWLEDGE CODIFICATION AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND QUESTIONS ICTs and the firm’s core competencies transformation Knowledge is a multifaceted concept with multilayered meanings (Nonaka, 1994). Two dimensions of knowledge are distinguished by Polanyi (1966). Explicit (or codified) knowledge refers to knowledge that is transmittable in a formal and systematic language. In contrast, tacit knowledge has a personal quality in that it is both difficult to formalize and to communicate as noted by Polyani (1966, p. 4) when he mentions that ‘‘we know more than we can tell.’’ Tacit knowledge may be embodied in individual agents or teams (Eliasson, 1990). The corresponding competencies that are
248
Knowledge and Process Management ‘built’ on this tacit knowledge are therefore individually based (Balconi and Amman, 2004). However, when knowledge is codified and computerized, it is stored in repositories and workflow systems. As a result competencies essentially become firm-based rather than individually based. As this scenario evolves individuals inevitably become less important. In the specific context of call centers, we can identify five main factors that relate to collective competency (Clergeau et al., 2002): An individual human factor comprising individual competency, motivation, and the will to cooperate. A collective human factor made up of tacit routines created by employees, in order for them to coordinate with each other and to build solutions for unexpected problems. An interactive human factor: communication and negotiation systems designed to build common representations of the problems, and to negotiate an agreement with respect to appropriate solutions. An organizational factor: standardized processes enabling individuals to coordinate their actions in order to respond to the customer’s demands. A technical factor: the organization’s ICTs. Organizational factors are different from collective human factors because organizational factors do not depend upon specific individuals. Processes are stable and codified, and this aspect of the firm’s know-how exists independently of individuals. On the other hand, employees do participate in the construction of the tacit routines that compose the collective human factor. As a consequence, employee turnover may jeopardize the efficiency, stability or even the very existence of these routines. This analysis confirms the idea that the collective component of the firm’s competency is made of tacit knowledge and explicit knowledge, and the tacit knowledge is mostly supported by individuals. We are presently observing a process of knowledge codification by firms utilizing their ICTs in such a way that competencies, even collective ones, are decreasingly supported by individuals. As a result a firm’s core competencies increasingly rely more upon knowledge codified in IS than on individual knowledge. Many authors highlight the fact that even if a given body of knowledge is neither completely explicit nor completely tacit, the introduction of ICTs is likely to shift the balance between tacit and codified knowledge (Cowan et al., 2000; Balconi and Amman, 2004). Foray and Lundvall
C. Clergeau
Knowledge and Process Management (1996) state that information systems provide a strong impetus to a process of codifying certain types of knowledge, in such a way that the boundary between tacit and formal knowledge shifts in favor of codified knowledge. Reix (1999) supports this conclusion when affirming that ‘‘Automation with ICTs requires a previous formalization of the concerned processes, [ . . . ] this formalization aims at stabilizing individuals behaviors.’’ ICTs increase the number of formal rules and encourage the adoption of communication modes that objectify individuals’ interactions (Cohendet et al., 1999), and they tend to reinforce automatic rather than deliberate behavior (D’Adderio, 2003). Caroli (2003) adds that in this context, ICTs are responsible for a serious decrease in the relative value of human capital. Nevertheless, Winter (1987), Johnson et al. (2002), and Lazaric et al. (2003) stipulate that tacit knowledge cannot be replaced with codified knowledge but is complementary to it. For example, codified knowledge has little added value without human intelligence for providing it with a sense and for activating codes in an innovative way. ICT’s and knowledge management The shift in organizational emphasis from tacit to codified knowledge raises a fundamental problem concerning the equilibrium between the main components of the firm’s competencies that must be maintained in order to maintain dynamic flexibility. According to Leonard-Barton (1992), competencies consist of all the knowledge that sets the firm apart from all others. Competencies are specific resources. The firm’s capabilities lie in its ability to deploy its specific resources, usually in combination, applying organizational processes to effect a desired end (De Saa-Perez and Garcı´a-Falco´n, 2002). Competencies are accumulated and developed through a learning process. Some authors emphasize the central role played by individuals in the learning process. Nonaka (1994), for instance, maintains that the driving force in the process of competencies accumulation is the individual. In contrast, other authors think that learning is primarily collective. This view is held by Teece and Pisano (1994) who note that learning involves both organizational and individual capacities but emphasize the social and the collective features of the learning process. Faced with these two approaches of the learning process, a more integrated analysis would suggest that firms organize individuals into competent teams, adding organizational and collective knowledge to individual knowledge. Dosi and Marengo (1995) take this argument and assume that a firm’s competencies
ICTs and Knowledge Codification
RESEARCH ARTICLE and those of the individuals co-evolve through a process of mutual adaptation. We assume here that this ability to make the competencies co-evolve is one of the main feature of the firm’s capabilities. Competencies ‘‘are always conjectural’’ (Loasby, 1998) and have to be managed strategically (Teece et al., 1997) in order to ensure a dynamic flexibility (Cohendet and Llerena, 1989). ‘‘Dynamic flexibility’’ refers to ‘‘sequential time’’ (Arrow, 1957), a temporal interdependency of decisions, that is, the fact that today’s decisions affect the initial conditions of tomorrow’s decisions. Within this framework, two kinds of flexibility are combined, namely, an internal flexibility (the organization is able to react), and an external flexibility (given a technology, the decision maker is able to discern information from the environment and to adapt his or her decisions according to environmental changes). Finally, this flexibility is the firms’ ability to stimulate and to guide their learning processes in order to preserve—or to enlarge—the scope of their fields of maneuver according to environmental changes (Favereau, 1989) and to build on their strategic advantage. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) show that this dynamic learning process is conducted through a balanced dialogue between tacit knowledge and codified knowledge: ‘‘The organization is ( . . . ) an entity that creates knowledge through action and interaction. In the process the binding interaction among the agents and environment offers possibilities and also initiates limits’’ (Nonaka and Toyama, 2003, p. 3). Ancori et al. (2000) share a similar view, underlining both the key impact of individuals’ learning abilities upon the process of firm’s competencies development and the embodiment of individual learning processes into collective ones. Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) description of this dynamic learning process is graphed in Figure 1a. Considering the two dimensions of competencies and learning, one individual, the other collective, we assume that a dynamic learning process requires a balanced dialogue between the two components of knowledge and competencies. Whether competencies lie more or less in individual determine the sustainability and the nature of the learning process. A shift from tacit/individual knowledge to collective/codified knowledge may affect this dynamic process (Figure 1b). Our research into call centers show that the collectivization of firms’ competencies is likely to affect the learning process and the firms’ dynamic flexibility. Individual learning and individual knowledge disappear behind the collective component of knowledge. This might become a factor of organizational rigidity. And this rigidity might make it more
249
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Figure 1
Knowledge and Process Management
Shift from tacit knowledge to codified knowledge and the learning process
difficult to respond to customer demands or to environmental changes. In order to maintain a dynamic approach to knowledge management, human resource managers have to re-equilibrate the firm’s competencies base. Our case studies show that identified forces, customers and clients, employees, the specificity of services production technology, and the competitive environment, may well exert pressure on firms and organizations leading them to reintroduce flexibility.
CASE STUDIES Methodology Our investigations into the call centers partly confirm the previous research. Call center HRM practices were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively (Clergeau et al., 2002). In order to construct a quantitative analysis of the HRM, we sent more than 900 questionnaires to French call centers. The 150 replies were a representative samples of the estimated overall structure of this sector in France (CESMO, 2002). Ten case studies were also conducted over a 1-year period. Klein and Pyers’ (1999) principles were used to reflect our interpretative work: A principle of the hermeneutic tradition: our research took place in call centers. We examined how the employees accomplish their work (the part), this practice was analyzed as an integral part of the productive process. In addition, the employees’ situation was analyzed and compared to that in the many other call centers (the whole). A principle of contextualization: we examined the call centers according to their organization historical background and we analyzed the interviews according to the particular situation of each interlocutor.
250
A principle of interaction between the researcher and the subjects. In other words, for each call center, the researcher stayed several days in order to observe the employees and held round table conferences in which employees could express themselves. In addition, the researcher met the supervisors and the managers (HR manager and business manager) several times. A principle of abstraction and generalization: our interpretation is anchored in Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) research. When observing people at work and when interviewing, the researcher kept in mind the four stages of the learning process (socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization), and tried to identify the very elements that may participate in each stage of this process: individuals, routines, rules, tacit knowledge, codified knowledge, tools, information systems. A principle of dialogical reasoning. During the meetings, successive interviews made it possible to confront actors in order to facilitate the emergence of new issues and further considerations. During the first interview, we examined the hypothesis of ICT-based Taylorism (i.e., an intensive knowledge codification), and subsequently we examined assertion by Ancori et al. (2000) about the use of a body of tacit competencies required by ICT’s practice (i.e., individual competencies do participate to the construction of the firm’s competencies). Further to this, the last interviews made it possible to reconsider this ICT-based Taylorism from the point of view of its counteracting factors. Multiple interpretations: we encountered different viewpoints. According to the first one, relationship competencies are essential in call centers and firms implement training courses in order to develop these skills: contrary to Caroli’s (2003) assessments, individual competencies are
C. Clergeau
Knowledge and Process Management
RESEARCH ARTICLE
essential, ICTs do not result in a decrease in the value of human capital. Nevertheless, when we observed the employees at work in front office call centers, we identified an incongruity between this point of view and the degree of task standardization, as well as the rigidity in dialogue screenplay. Firms attempted to capture most of their competencies in their ICTs. This standardization confirmed an ICT-based standardization and a knowledge collectivization that gives no place to individual competencies. However, a more accurate observation led us to consider a third viewpoint, that is, the re-equilibrating viewpoint according to which some call centers try to balance between these two competencies components in order to react to external and internal pressures. The principle of suspicion: There were 10 case studies, and we opted for describing three critical case studies of front office call centers, commonly known for requiring low competencies. Figure 2 classifies call centers according to their involvement in the production process: front offices are only concerned with information exchange while service producers are directly concerned with value creation. Our previous researches demonstrate a correlation between HRM and the call center’s involvement in the production process (Clergeau, 2003): the more the call center is involved in the production process and is directly concerned with value creation, the more human capital is viewed as core to the call center, the more HRM practices promote knowledge sharing, individual and collective learning, and prioritize stable employment and long-term labor contracts. The front office call centers case: a first approach Our survey shows that, in many call centers, the tasks are divided and standardized. This confirms other related research conducted in other countries
(Frenkel et al., 1998; Gans et al., 2003; Adria and Chodhury, 2004). The question of an ICT-based Taylorism is further analyzed in the case studies. Analysis of these case studies confirms the lack of a knowledge-based organization of tasks, especially in front office call centers: workers’ skills are not viewed as unique and the organization of work do not promote learning. First of all, these call centers focus on customer relationship management and especially the personalization of this relationship. There are two ways to consider a personalized relation in that the customer knows someone in the company (and is used to interact with him/she) and the customer is recognized by everyone in the company. Front office call centers typically adopt the second point of view. The knowledge about customers do no longer depend upon employees but upon the classification into consumer types that have been made by the company. All information about the customer is computerized. Employees’ tasks are standardized, the dialogue is limited in time and guided by a screenplay, and employees do not have any autonomy in decision making. The relationship process is guided by IS, its quality is incorporated into IS and is directly related to the quality of the information represented in the company’s IS. In addition, employees neither participate in the design of tasks nor in the design of dialogue screenplay. Their scope of intervention is really limited. They have to transfer the case to the back office very quickly, in such a way that they sometimes do not know if the customer’s problem has been solved. The customer recognition system is standardized and codified. This means that a complex set of data concerning the customer is converted into an easyto-use codification and the employee’s own perception or his experience are of secondary importance. Finally, knowledge and skill about consumer relationships and a large part of the commercial relationships are integrated into IS. Therefore, in these cases, individual knowledge has been transferred from individuals to the firms IS.
Figure 2 HRM in call centers
ICTs and Knowledge Codification
251
RESEARCH ARTICLE A public social insurance call center: the bureaucratic case This call center focuses on providing information about family allowances and recording information about the beneficiaries. It was set up to reduce the number of disturbances to back office workers caused by customer calls. The employees were recruited 2 years ago. During round table conferences, each of them said he(she) wanted to become ‘‘back office technicians,’’ ‘‘a job (that) requires expertise.’’ Everybody, in this organization, thinks that the core competencies are located in the back office. Call center jobs are a port of entry to the Internal Labor Market (Doeringer and Piore, 1971) but are reputed to be bad at making use of workers’ skills. Employees state that ‘‘working in the call center is not like carrying out a trade.’’ This organization has many typical Weberian bureaucracy characteristics (Weber, 1922). In fact, the legitimacy of Weberian bureaucracy’s stands in its rational organization, in its ability to prevent autonomous knowledge creation and in its efficiency. In this bureaucracy, activity is essentially administrative and centered on document throughput. Processes have to be standardized in order to treat recipients in a standardized way. In other words, family allowances have to be attributed equally and do not depend on pecularities of the individual recipients. Employees are professionals in the service of the organization and not professionals in the service of the recipient. In this context, even if an up-to-date discourse attempts to develop a ‘‘customer-service’’ culture, the call center mainly aims to attain the best productivity ratio that is, to reply to the most calls. Indeed, when we asked the manager to classify his objectives, productivity and efficiency were widely specified before quality or resolving customers’ problems. The activities of the employees are monitored by a supervisor and a back office technician. When they answer questions, they do not use a dialogue screenplay but they have databases or procedure manuals which act as inflexible guides. Generally, when a difficult problem is to be solved or when an ambiguous question is to be answered, employees ask for help from the supervisor or from the technician rather than turning to their colleagues for help. In other words, the learning process is essentially hierarchical. It is focused on standard procedures and routine learning, that is, the supervisor and the technician teach employees the best way to enhance back office work efficiency. They do not allow them to spend more than 2 minutes with their interlocutors and then require them to
252
Knowledge and Process Management rapidly hand over the recipients’ problems to the back office. The supervisor practices proximity management and enjoys very good relationships with the employees. This proximity facilitates hierarchical learning. However this kind of learning tends to lead this organization to a way of reproducing the bureaucratic model. Cross and Baird (2000) observe that ‘‘one way to make organizational learning more tractable is to consider it as the development of an organization’s memory’’ (p. 69). In this case, the team does not develop its own memory and do not create its own tacit routines. Employees find knowledge repositories in the supervisor and the technician’s memories. The collective human factor and the interactive human factor that participate to the constitution of collective competency are guided by hierarchy’s rules. In addition, the team probably has no incentive to develop an autonomous creative social bonding. This means the technician thinks he has to maintain back office supremacy and employees wishing to belong to this back office want to learn more about his job. When an individual employee transgresses procedures, changes something in the regular way to operate, decides to introduce himself or herself differently because he or she thinks it might be more pleasant, he or she never shares his/her ‘‘innovation’’ with colleagues. Many employees say that this kind of improvement is ‘‘not important.’’ The organization neither implements incentives nor reward mechanisms as recognition mechanisms for this type of innovation. In addition, neither quality sessions with the back office nor internal meetings are scheduled to encourage a knowledge sharing process. A telemarketing agency: how do clients exert pressure to develop organizational learning? This agency’s activity is mainly centered on shortterm telemarketing campaigns. An uncertain and fluctuating demand is said by the manager to be responsible for a very flexible and compliancebased HR configuration (Lepak and Snell, 2002), more than 50% of the employees are temporary workers. Tasks are quite simple, with limited scope and duration and they do not require idiosyncratic skills. As a result the limited continuity of employment has been seen as a rational response to a hazardous business situation. Tasks organization is Taylorian: marketing campaigns are designed by specialists and with the client, employees are not associated with any stage of the marketing campaign production process, not at the conception stage or at the implementation stage or at the
C. Clergeau
Knowledge and Process Management evaluation stage. Individual employees have a script to follow, dialogues are limited in time. Further, employees have no autonomy and their activity is closely controlled with supervisors monitoring the calls and continuously evaluating workers. Gradually, business is developing and this telemarketing agency is subcontracting long-term missions such as relationships with newspaper subscribers, freephone numbers and so on. The stabilization of the business has significant consequences. Employment is moving towards longterm contracting relationships. Individual are specifically employed to work on these long-term missions. They request task enrichment, meaning they want to participate in certain stages of the marketing campaign conception, development, and implementation. Moreover, they want to be listened to when reporting a problem in the screenplay, or they want to be informed about the results of their activity. Concurrently, the telemarketing agency’s clients increasingly come into the call center to gauge a campaign’s progress, they talk to employees, listen to calls, monitor performance, and behave like a second hierarchy. The clients request the agency management to associate employees more closely with the conception of both the marketing campaigns and the dialogue screenplay and they ask for systematic information about the campaigns result. As a matter of fact the clients have adopted a by-project management and they want to integrate this with the telemarketer. As mention by the agency managers, ‘‘they introduce step by step their own way of working into our agency.’’ An insurance company: employee pressure to enhance organizational change This insurance company has an inbound call center and an outbound call center. In the first center, half of the staff has been re-graded, and have been working in this company for about 20 years. In the second one, the staff is made up of very young employees whose placement is a first contractual job. The study of this company shows that long serving employees react to the knowledge codification, and fortunately, this reaction will lead the call center to develop into a multiservices production center. The longest serving employees resist what they call ‘‘their dwindling job interest’’ and a ‘‘loss of professionalism.’’ They cannot stand seeing their scope of intervention or their time of dialogue being limited. They want to give ‘‘a professional purpose’’ to their job and to enrich their tasks. They
ICTs and Knowledge Codification
RESEARCH ARTICLE transgress the rules related to their scope of intervention and try to solve more problems than they have to. When referring every problematic case to the back office they send a lot of emails to the back office technicians to make sure that the problem has been solved. Time is no concern for these employees when they think that they have to talk deliberately, and correlatively they are able to answer very quickly when the case is not a problematic one. They help the customer to make a diagnosis of his or her insurance policy and try to make commercial proposals, even if the latter task is the job of the sales staff. The same phenomena can be observed in the outbound call center. Employees wish to participate in elaborating the dialogue screenplay and they ask for ‘‘their’’ campaign results. They also want their activity to be valued ‘‘not on a productive basis (i.e., the number of call per day) but on (our) real contribution (i.e., the number of insurance policy that will be really taken out).’’ Long serving employees have a thorough knowledge of customer relationship practice and they try to transfer it to the younger employees. The primary training is probably not sufficient to develop consumer relationship practice and young employees encounter difficulties in answering every question. Moreover, they have difficulties in managing a courteous dialogue with aggressive respondents, and when they do not know something, they ask their oldest colleagues for help. The learning process is essentially collateral. As noticed in Cross and Baird (2000) ‘‘who you know affects what you know.’’ During this training period the oldest employees incite their younger colleagues to transgress the rules in order to become ‘‘professional.’’ Paradoxically, this behavior has no negative consequences on productivity. The manageress, who knows the transgressions, allows them because customers appreciate them a great deal. She tries to develop a quality management. She decides to organize coordinating meetings front office/back office, during which employees inform the back office about typical demands that have not previously been taken in account, or when employees take stock of problematic demands and so on. She associates employees with producing the dialogue screenplay. It is increasingly common that employees think that they are the interface between the company and its customers and they feel themselves ‘‘real professionals,’’ trying to fill the gap between the service expected and the company’s perception of consumer expectations. The call centers are becoming a cornerstone in service development. In the future, the two centers will
253
RESEARCH ARTICLE merge and will have to promote new services such as legal assistance.
AN EQUILIBRATING STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT OF COMPETENCIES Lessons form case studies: equilibrating forces weighing on organizational change The last two case studies reveal an organizational change. The telemarketing agency and the insurance company are evolving an organization of tasks that promotes employees’ skills. The competencies of the call centers are recognized as being supported by individuals as well as the IS. What is important to notice is that this re-organization is being implemented under pressure from customers, employees, and the specificity of service production which are all influencing organizational change (Figure 3). The bureaucratic case shows that when the organization does not undergo any competition, it does not have a strategic intention for development and, in this case, Taylorism matches bureaucracy. In all the call centers that we visited, employees begrudge ‘‘a professional disqualification’’ and this frustrates them. This kind of frustration may lead to transgressing behavior that we could interpret as the manifestation of the well-known ‘‘resistance to change’’ encountered in ICTs implementation projects (Majchrzak, 1991). We saw that some of the transgressions might be positive but some of them are really negative. Indeed, one of the main manifestations of those negative transgressions is the frequent use of the famous ‘‘call again,’’ meaning that the employee is not very concerned by the resolution of the customer’s problem. This resistance to change is interpreted here as a resistance to displacement of the core competencies based in
Figure 3 Re-equilibrating forces
254
Knowledge and Process Management favor of the collective codified component. The case studies show that an appropriate management is not incompatible with productivity when valorizing employees’ skills and encourages employees to entrust each other with their missions. Ancori et al. (2000) point out that the interpretation and the use of codified knowledge always require the development of tacit competencies. Firms may lean on skilled employees to enter for a dynamic learning process leading to a real professionalization, and may benefit from the employees’ experience. The strategic intent for this approach to knowledge management is a matter of external dynamic flexibility. This means that it depends on the managers’ ability to perceive information from their environment and to take appropriate decisions. The telemarketing agency shows that in a business to business context, clients might give signals to the call center’s hierarchy. Our case reveals a process of organizational isomorphism, in that clients want their subcontractors to adopt by-project management because they are used to it and because it guarantees what they call ‘‘a professional way to work.’’ In a business to consumer context, the insurance company shows that the call center’s manager does not interfere when observing transgressing behavior because it leads to enhanced customer satisfaction. This customer satisfaction is related to the employees’ ability to fill the gap between customer-driven service designs and standards and expected customer service (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2003). Cass and Vandevelde (2003) point out the dangers of an excessive standardization of the customer relationship process leading to a misunderstanding of the customer’s expectations. Business to business and business to consumer contexts share the same characteristic, that is, the clients and the customers’ will to interact with a professional who is able to help them when they have a problem, even if this problem has not previously been listed in either dialogue screenplays or in databases. The pressure from customers and clients is particularly strong because of the specificity of the service production process. Services are produced and consumed simultaneously, the consumer participates in and affects the transaction, employee affects the service outcome and they directly influence customer satisfaction. In other words, the technology requires an optimal interaction between customer and contact employee. Service production very much exacts relational skills in that contact employees reflect on the organization they represent. Their ability to ensure good service quality depends on their ability to create confidence; on
C. Clergeau
Knowledge and Process Management their ability to identify their interlocutor beyond the easy-to-use customer codification; on their ability to perceive the customer’s reality, his willingness and expectations; on their ability to react quickly and to take autonomous decisions; and their ability to avoid conflicts. An exhaustive list of the relational skills involved in service production is probably too long to be made here, but its length indicates the critical importance of contact employees’ skills, and those competencies that are mainly tacit and supported by individuals. Zeithaml and Bitner’s (2003) service triangle, when speaking about the interactive marketing, recommends the empowerment of employees. That is giving them ‘‘desire, skill, tools, and authority to serve the customer’’ (p. 333). Employees’ competencies are the lynchpin in the service profit chain (Heskett et al., 1994) and an excessive knowledge collectivization via IS is likely to counteract value creation (Clergeau, 2003). Valorizing employees competencies and giving them desire, skill, tools, and authority are all more important as the characteristics of a company’s demand function changes. The bureaucratic case shows that the more stable and predictable the demand the less the company has to be flexible. This is especially true for monopolies. However, when demand is unstable, and/or the environment is competitive, the company has to keep customers and to adapt its services to the shift in demand. As an interface between the company and its customer, contact employees are a very good information source and their relational competencies are a paramount factor in customer loyalty. The human resource re-equilibrating management For a long time, economics and management science have been analyzing organizational equilibrium from the standpoint of power and coalition (Cyert and March, 1963). However, resource-based and evolutionary theories of the firm (Foss, 1933, 1996; Nelson and Winter, 1982; Conner, 1991; Dosi et al., 1992; Barney, 1996; Conner and Prahalad, 1996) propose another approach to organizational equilibrium that is, equilibrium becomes a matter of dynamic trajectories in evolutionary environments. De Saa´-Pe´rez and Garcı´aFalco´n (2002) add that, in this context, ‘‘firms can develop a sustained competitive advantage only by creating value in a way that is rare and difficult for competitors to imitate—resource-based view of the firms argument is that bundle of resources—lie at the heart of a firm’s competitive advantage’’ (p. 124). However, a firm having many resources
ICTs and Knowledge Codification
RESEARCH ARTICLE and competencies is not enough in itself, the ‘‘competitive advantage emerges from distinctive resources or capabilities that firms control’’ (p. 124). Both the need for dynamic flexibility and for control demand, the strategic piloting of the firm’s core competencies. When analyzing innovation, Hedberg (1981, p. 19) points out that the firm has to learn and unlearn, but this unlearning might take a long time and might be costly. In short, the firm has to find a balance between learning and unlearning: ‘‘balances between organizations’ ability to learn and to unlearn appear necessary for long-term survival’’ (p. 19). Chiva-Gomez (2003) points out that the learning process depends on the state of equilibrium between formal and informal structures. As mentioned by Boulding (1956) ‘‘knowledge must itself be regarded as a structure, a very complex and frequently quite loose pattern’’ (p. 153), a bundle of intangible assets (Teece, 2000), mixing tacit, and codified knowledge, partly supported by individuals and partly incorporated in the firm itself. The firm’s specific knowledge combines tacit and explicit knowledge, individual and collective knowledge (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) and evolves owing to a dialogue between tacit knowledge and codified knowledge. We suggest defining a re-equilibrating human resource management strategy as follows: a reequilibrating human resource management strategy aims to maintain a balanced dialogue between tacit/individual and explicit/organizational knowledge when affected by knowledge codification. It has to re-establish an equilibrium as the balance between tacit and codified knowledge changes in a way that can affect organizational dynamic flexibility. The re-equilibrating management is considered here as a process of re-construction of an equilibrium in the way that Piaget (1970) coins this term. This means it is a cognitive structure whose main characteristic is reversibility, that is the ability to react to environmental pressures and to find regulating mechanisms. Equilibrium is not a state but a process, and a re-equilibrating management is a matter of ‘‘piloting’’ and ‘‘controllability.’’ Drawn from dialectical theory, Sabherwal and Newman (2003) analysis of IS development focuses on a dynamic process of persistence and change relative to the thesis operating at that time. Their works show the cognitive transformations at work in IS development and suggest the need for a permanent controllability. Lorsino (1997) suggests that the firm’s piloting aims at continually re-building a cognitive equilibrium. This piloting has two components:
255
RESEARCH ARTICLE the first aim to preserve the existing cognitive structure to benefit from experience, the second aim to create new knowledge. Finally, the re-equilibrating HRM strategy aims to pilot the articulation between codified knowledge and tacit knowledge so as to find a balanced compromise between skills borne by individuals and skills that are embodied in firms, so as to benefit from experience and to create new knowledge. Strategic intent is a key factor both in this process of knowledge creation (Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995) and in this re-equilibrating management because of its stability and consistency (Hamel and Prahalad, 1989).
CONCLUSION, LIMITATIONS, IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT While discussing the evolution of Actor-Network theories, Latour (1998) stated that ‘‘Network at the time clearly meant a series of transformations—translations, transductions—now on the contrary, it clearly means a transport without deformation, an instantaneous, unmediated access to every piece of information. The double click has killed the last bit of critical edge left in the notion of network.’’ In a similar fashion can we say that ICTs will kill the dynamic knowledge creation processes by displacing the basis of the firm’s core competencies from individuals to a collective and codified component? The cases we have presented of front office call centers show forces that are likely to limit organizational change. When taken into account in the strategic intent these forces call for the implementation of a reequilibrating HRM in order to restore a level of organizational flexibility. The main limitation of this research relates to the number of case studies we have used in the research. Another limitation derives from its scope, in that it focuses on medium sized front office call centers. Similar case studies are now being conducted in other call centers especially in larger centers and in service producer call centers, in order to provide a more in depth analysis of the consequences of ICTs on the firms’ competencies base and on the learning processes. Whatever these limitations, this study has several implications for the managers. First, it suggests that a strategic management must incorporate a reequilibrating HRM strategy in order to create and control a harmonious dialogue between tacit knowledge and codified knowledge. Second, it demonstrates that the need for this re-equilibrating
256
Knowledge and Process Management HRM strategy arises as a result of internal pressures (especially from employees) and external pressures (especially customers). It may very well be the case that a re-equilibrating HRM strategy might be a key source for value creation for organizations facing dynamic environments. Third, this study emphasizes the need for a negotiation process between every actor (top and middle management, employees, customers . . . ), for frequent meetings back office/front office, for the inclusion of skilled front office employees in the design and development of dialogue screenplay, for management to actively listen to their experiences, and for the delivery of information about the results of organizational actions and processes to employees. They call practitioners to consider the need for ascribing responsibility to employees and for enhancing their expertise. Finally, the study should stimulate practitioners to question the approach they adopt to their strategic management of the internal labor markets and about the need to maintain a strong individual base of the firm’s core competencies by stabilizing the work force. Apart from expanding the number and range of case studies this research would benefit from an enlargement in the field of technochange management (Markus, 2004) to gain an insight into the organizational design (Galbraith, 1973) and the HRM that produces performance (Brynjolfsson et al., 2002; Batt, 2004). It would be interesting to study the impact of a re-equilibrating management on the economic performances of the call centers and to study its implementation as a coherence instrument ‘‘between strategy, organizing mode, and individuals’’ (Galbraith, 1973, p. 5), especially when firms are involved in organizational change pushed by ICTs development.
REFERENCES Adria M, Chowdhury SD. 2004. Centralization as a design consideration for the management of call centers. Information and Management 41: 497–507. Ancori B, Bureth A, Cohendet P. 2000. The economics of knowledge: the debate about codification and tacit knowledge. Industrial and Corporate Change 9(2): 255– 287. Arrow KJ. 1957. Statistics and economic policy. Econometrica, October. Balconi M, Amman F. 2004. Codification and the modes of knowledge transmission. International JA Schumpeter Society, 10th ISS Conference, Milan, June. Barney JB. 1996. The resource-based theory of the firm. Organization Science 7(5): 469. Batt R. 2004. Who benefits from teams? Comparing workers, supervisors and managers. Industrial Relations, a Journal of Economy and Society 43(1): 183–212.
C. Clergeau
Knowledge and Process Management Boulding K. 1956. The Image: Knowledge in Live and Society. University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor. Brynjolfsson E, Hitt LM, Yang S. 2002. Intangible assets: Computers and organizational capital. Working Paper no 138. [WWW document] http://ebusiness.mit.edu/ erik/ (accessed September 09, 2004). Final version in Brooking Papers on Economic Activity. Macroeconomics. 1. P. 137–199. Caroli E. 2003. Internal versus external labor flexibility: The role of knowledge codification, LEA working paper no 0310, Artois University. Cass K, Vandevelde P. 2003. Encountening the electronic other: Ricoeur’s contribution to the retrieval of the self in IT. 2nd pre-International Conference on Information Systems, Academic Workshop on French Speaking World, Seattle WA, December 14th. CESMO Consulting. 2002. Cartographie 2002 des centers d’appels en France. [WWW document] http://www.cesmo.fr (accessed January 2003). Chiva-Gomez R. 2003. The facilitating factors for organizational learning: bringing ideas from complex adaptive systems. Knowledge and Process Management 10(2): 99–114. Clergeau C. 2003. IT, human resource management and sources of value creation: An analysis of the call centers’ case. 2nd pre-International Conference on Information Systems, Academic Workshop on French Speaking World, Seattle WA, December 14th. Clergeau C, Marciniak R, Rowe F. 2002. Les centers d’appels et la coordination dans la relation de service. Report for the French Ministry for Employment. DARES. Cohendet P, Llerena P. 1989. Flexibilite´s, risque et incertitude dans la the´orie de la firme: Un survey. In Flexibilite´, Information et De´cision, Cohendet P, Llerena P (eds). Economica: Paris. Cohendet P, Kern F, Mehmanpazir B, Munier F. 1999. Knowledge coordination, competence creation and integrated networks in globalised firms. Cambridge Journal of Economics 23(2): 225–241. Conner KR. 1991. A historical comparison of resource based theory and five schools of thought within industrial organization economics: do we have a new theory of the firm? Journal of Management 17: 121–154. Conner KR, Prahalad CK. 1996. A resource based theory of the firm: knowledge versus opportunism. Organization Science 7(5): 477–501. Cowan R, Foray D. 1997. The economics of codification and the diffusion of knowledge. Industrial and Corporate Change 6(2): 595–622. Cowan R, David P, Foray D. 2000. The explicit economics of codification and tacitness. Industrial and Corporate Change 9(2): 211–253. Cross R, Baird L. 2000. Technology is not enough: improving performance by building organisational memory. Sloan Management Review 41(3): 41–54. Cyert RM, March JG. 1963. A Behavioural Theory of the Firm. Prentice Hall: Engelwood Cliffs, NJ. D’Adderio L. 2003. Configuring software, reconfiguring memories: the influence of integrated systems on the reproduction of knowledge and routines. Industrial and Corporate Change 12(2): 321–350. De Saa´-Pe´rez P, Garcı´a-Falco´n JM. 2002. A resourcebased view of human resource management and organizational capabilities development. International Journal of Human Resource Management 13(1): 123–140. Doeringer PB, Piore MJ. 1971. Internal Labor Markets and Manpower Analysis. D. C. Heath: Lexington MA.
ICTs and Knowledge Codification
RESEARCH ARTICLE Dosi G, Marengo L. 1995. Some elements of an evolutionary theory of organizational competences. In Evolutionary Concepts in Contemporary Economics, England RW (ed.). University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor; 157– 178. Dosi G, Teece DJ, Winter SG. 1992. Towards a theory of corporate coherence. In Technology and the Enterprise in a Historical Perspective, Dosi G, Gianetti R, Toninelli PP (eds). Clarendon Press: Oxford; 185–211. Eliasson G. 1990. The firm as a competent team. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 13(3): 275–298. Favereau O. 1989. Valeur d’option et flexibilite´: de la rationalite´ substantielle a` la rationalite´ proce´durale. In Flexibilite´, Information et De´cision, Cohendet P, Llerena P (eds). Economica: Paris; 121–182. Foray D, Lundvall BA. 1996. The knowledge based economy: from the economics of knowledge to the learning economy. In Employment and Growth in the Knowledge Based Economy. OECD: Paris. Foss N. 1993. Theories of the firm: contractual and competence perspectives. Journal of Evolutionary Economics 3: 127–144. Foss N. 1996. Knowledge-based approaches to the theory of the firm: Some critical comments. Organization Science 7(5): 470–476. Frenkel S, Tam M, Korczynski M, Shire K. 1998. Beyond bureaucracy? Work organization in call centers. The International Journal of Human Resource Management 9(6): 957–979. Galbraith JR. 1973. Designing Complex Organizations. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company: Reading, MA. Gans N, Koole G, Mandelbaum A. 2003. Telephone call centers: Tutorial, review, and research prospects. Manufacturing and Service Operations Management 5: 79– 141. [WWW document] http://www.math.vu.nl/ koole//articles/msom03/art.pdf (accessed August 2004]. Glaser BG, Strauss AL. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine: Chicago. Hamel G, Prahalad CK. 1989. Strategic Intent. Harvard Business Review, May–June. Hedberg R. 1981. How organizations learn and unlearn. In Handbooks of Organizational Design, Nystrom PC, Strabuck WH (eds). Oxford University Press: New York. Heskett JL, Jones TO, Loveman GW, Sasser WE, Schlesinger LA. 1994. Putting the service profit chain to work. Harvard Business Review, March–April. Johnson B, Lorenz E, Lundvall BA. 2002. Why all this fuss about codified and tacit knowledge? Industrial and Corporate Change 11(2): 245–262. Klein HKK, Pyers MD. 1999. A set of principles for conducting and evaluating interpretative field studies in information systems. MIS Quarterly 23(1): 43–79. Latour B. 1998. On recalling ANT, Actor Network Theory and After, working paper, Keel University, 1997, final version in John Law and John Hassard (eds). Actor Network Theory and After, Basil Blackwell. Lazaric N, Mangolte PA, Massue´ ML. 2003. Articulation and codification of collective know how in the steel industry: some evidence in the French blast furnace. Research Policy 32: 1829–1846. Leonard-Barton D. 1992. Core capabilities and core rigidities, a paradox in managing product development. Strategic Management Journal 13: 111–125.
257
RESEARCH ARTICLE Lepak DP, Snell SA. 2002. Examining the human resource architecture: the relationships among human capital, employment and human resource configuration. Journal of Management 28(4): 517–543. Loasby BJ. 1998. The organisation of capabilities. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 35: 139– 160. Lorsino P. 1997. Les deux fonctions du pilotage de l’entreprise: Coordination et e´quilibration. Economie de la Connaissance et Organisations, Guilhon B, Huard P, Orillard M, Zimmerman JB (eds). L’Harmattan: Paris. Marjchrzak A. 1991. Management of technological and organizational change. Handbook of Industrial Engineering, (Salvendy ed.). John Wiley and Sons: New York. Markus ML. 2004. Technochange management: using IT to drive organizational change. Journal of Information Technolgy 19: 9–19. Nelson RR, Winter SG. 1982. An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA & London. Nonaka I, Takeuchi H. 1995. The Knowledge-Creating Company. Oxford University Press: New York. Nonaka I, Toyama R. 2003. The knowledge-creating theory revisited: knowledge creation as a synthesizing process. Knowledge Management Research and Practice 1(1): 3–10. Nonaka I. 1994. A dynamic theory of organizational knowledge creation. Organization Science 5(1): 14–37.
258
Knowledge and Process Management Piaget J. 1970. L’e´piste´mologie ge´ne´tique, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, coll. Que sais-je? Polanyi M. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Routledge & Kegan Paul: London. Reix R. 1999. Les technologies de l’information, facteurs de flexibilite´? Revue Franc¸aise de Gestion, March–May, 111–119. Sabherwal R, Newman M. 2003. Persistence and change in system development: a dialectical view. Journal of Information Technology 18(2): 69–92. Taylor FW. 1947. Scientific Management. Harper and Row: New York. Teece DJ. 2000. Managing Intellectual Capital. Oxford University Press: New York. Teece DJ, Pisano G. 1994. The dynamic capabilities of firms: an introduction. Industrial and Corporate Change 3(3): 537–555. Teece DJ, Pisano G, Schuen A. 1997. Dynamic capabilities and strategic management. Strategic Management Journal 18(7): 509–533. Weber M. 1922. Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Tu¨bingen, Mohr. English translation: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, London, Hodge, 1947, due to AM Henderson and Talcott Parsons. Winter S. 1987. Knowledge and competence as strategic assets. In The Competitive Challenge: Strategies for Industrial Innovation and Renewal, Teece DJ (ed.). Ballinger: Cambridge, MA. Zeithaml VA, Bitner MJ. 2003. Services Marketing (3rd edn). Mc Graw-Hill: Irwin.
C. Clergeau
