I. Introduction

These days, managers worry about the lack of knowledgeable employ­ees. They worry because knowledge-intensive work is now considered the source of an organisation’s effectiveness. That makes sense. Jobs are becoming more complicated. Employees should know what they’re doing. If I were a manager without a knowledgeable and talented workforce, I’d worry too. No controversy there. But many managers have a strange way of talking about human knowledge.

Notice the wording. Some talk about the need for more knowledge transfer. More transfer is said to be good. Get the knowledge moving. But we’re told the knowledge isn’t flowing throughout the organisation efficiently enough. There are barriers and bottlenecks. Pockets of knowledge build up. So there’s a distribution problem. If the right people don’t have the right knowledge at the right times, then knowledge can’t be leveraged effectively. Occasionally, I’ll hear a bean-counter mention the need to take stock of an organisation’s brain power. A decade ago they would’ve used the term “intellectual capital” or “knowledge assets” … or a mix of those words.

Stock … flow … transfer … distribute … leverage … asset …

Do these words really convey how we learn new knowledge? Think about the last time you learned to do something that is very complicated. Do these words adequately describe the learning experience? Was it such a simple transaction? Probably not.

It’s common in management circles to reduce organisational complexity to a discussion of assets and resources. In many cases, this mindset is perfectly reasonable. It makes sense to talk of financial assets, stockpiled inventories, and the factor inputs of production. But there are cases in which that mindset is problematic, such as when we label people as “human resources”. Can people really be equated with the raw materials of a production process? Or the inputs of a machine? It’s certainly possible. Some forms of economic analysis rely on this abstraction. But it’s important to realise that it is an abstraction, one which affects the way we see and think. When we forget, we are committing the fallacy of misplaced concreteness (also called reification). And we start treating people as if they actually have the qualities of an asset or resource.

If a metaphor or analogy is used often enough without a periodic reality-check, people forget that it’s an abstraction. Too many managers have stepped over that line when discussing knowledge. And this mindset is having real consequences for the way we apply our intellect at work. These are not beneficial consequences, I hasten to add.

II. The Lump of Knowledge Fallacy

I’m coining a new term: the lump of knowledge fallacy. It is a lapse in reason whereby knowledge is treated as if it were (a.) an easily exchangeable and fungible object that (b.) remains intact as it passes from one person to another. Knowledge isn’t like a lump of some substance that can be picked up and moved from one place to another. It’s more complicated than that.

Three big qualifications are in order.

First, some knowledge can be easily exchanged, to be sure, depending on what you mean by the term “knowledge”. Knowledge can take the form of declarative statements. That simply means that knowledge is articulated using language and is understandable to others. The ideal for organisations is knowledge that is codified. If something is codified, it isn’t simply written down. Codification means that knowledge as been written down or recorded with a purpose in mind. How does this type of knowledge differ from information? Some philosophers of knowledge (epistemologists) say that there is no difference. Another word for information is “declarative knowledge”. Knowledge contains insight that helps us understand (Sparrow, 1998). This can be insight about the way ideas, objects, and events can be understood, including how they operate (“semantic understanding”). This insight can also be about how to do something (“how-to understanding”). And we encounter this type of knowledge all the time in books, speeches, videos, and other codified forms. And, yes, this knowledge can be exchanged in a straightforward way.

Just because something is exchangeable doesn’t mean that it is interpreted according to the author’s original intent. As George Bernard Shaw put it, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.” Miscommunication occurs. Misinterpretation occurs. Misremembering occurs. Cognitive biases and political beliefs skew the way knowledge is interpreted. Expertise is required to interpret highly technical knowledge and the level of expertise varies from one person to another. Meaning can degrade or build-up over time. Meaning can shift as knowledge is converted from one medium to another. Thus, knowledge often changes as it’s shared. It does not necessarily remain intact.

Second, some knowledge can’t be easily exchanged. It is difficult, and in many cases impossible, to separate knowledge from an individual person. It is embodied. For example, some knowledge is difficult to articulate (it is “tacit”). We’re often unaware of some of the knowledge we use (it is “intuitive”). Understanding how to do something may require a range of human senses (it is “felt”). It may also require practice (it is a “skill”), such as when a good golf swing is achieved after many hours of building “muscle memory” (it becomes “second nature” or entrenched within lower-order functions within the brain). Some knowledge can only be understood if a person has had particular experiences (it is “subjective”). Or it’s understandable in a particular time or place (it is “context-dependent”). Moreover, as Fritz Machlup (1962) observed, knowledge can be embedded within machines or processes. Such knowledge can be difficult to see (it is “hidden”) if the machine or process operates like a black box. Even if observable, such knowledge can’t just be plucked from the machine and transplanted into a different kind of machine (it is “function-dependent”). The same applies to processes.

Even when embodied knowledge is communicated, that communication is far from perfect. Teaching is often done badly. Good teaching requires the ability to reflect on what you know. Reflections then have to be turned into lessons that can be taught. That requires technique and skill. It often requires using visuals and activities, not just words. Unfortunately, good teachers are rare. And some learning is very hard to do; a lot of effort and ability is required from both the teacher and the student. Again, knowledge does not remain fully intact in the process.

Third, knowledge may not be substitutable. It may not be fungible. When we understand how to do something, that understanding may be infused with a personal style. That includes preferences, techniques, quirks, and aesthetic choices. As Seely Brown & Duguid point out, “retrieving” knowledge isn’t about “detaching” it from one knower and “attaching” it to another (2000, p. 124).

To recap, knowledge doesn’t behave like an asset or resource. Treating knowledge like an asset or resource is a very limited way of thinking. How so? Let’s take a look.

III. The Implications

Two big problems are likely to happen when committing the lump of knowledge fallacy.

First, workplace knowledge tends to be viewed in purely functional terms. What will this knowledge do for me? What is it’s value for the organisation? Thus, knowledge is viewed as a unit of currency that everyone in an organisation can recognise for its value. That mindset tends to downplay the political nature of a lot of the knowledge we have. Much of our knowledge is not politically neutral. Meaning evolves within a messy web of social relations. Indeed, the value and meaning of knowledge can be hotly contested. Knowledge can be underpinned by ideological assumptions or assumptions that best serve a particular interest. Yet, when committing the lump of knowledge fallacy, the person tends to think in terms of simplistic formulae of application: if I apply this knowledge to that problem, how will I benefit?

Political value may be acknowledged but only in a narrow sense. In the world of office politics, people may horde knowledge or control access to it (e.g., limit access to experts). In that world, many assume that “knowledge is power.” And it can be. But knowledge bestows power not simply because its scarce and you have some. Knowledge can be imbued with political messages, assumptions, and ways of framing issues. And these bestow power in the way they manipulate and persuade others. Those who commit the lump of knowledge fallacy rarely notice that. To them, knowledge is merely a “resource”, meaning it serves a function, or is an “asset”, meaning it has an economic value. Controversies are assumed to have been settled. Or if controversies still exist, those controversies can simply be solved by acquiring more knowledge. It is not a coincidence that technocrats are particularly susceptible to this fallacy.

As an aside, journalists often commit the lump of knowledge fallacy when reporting about science. Journalists who don’t have a strong scientific education, which is most of them, often think of science as a big lump of knowledge. Physics is considered one lump. Chemistry another lump. Biology yet another lump. The bigger the lump, the more “settled” the scientific issue is assumed to be. But science is not a lump of knowledge. It is (a.) a method of inquiry and (b.) a long-term, institutionally-bound process of determining the empirical validity of claims. Just because there is more knowledge doesn’t mean scientific debates are easier to settle. More knowledge often raises more questions than answers. Unfortunately, as scientifically educated journalists are becoming scarce these days, the lump of knowledge fallacy is being committed more and more.

That brings us to the second big problem. Even though the fallacy causes us to emphasize the functionality of knowledge, that functionality tends to be understood in a superficial way. If knowledge is only the stuff that can be exchanged easily, then we are ignoring the sophisticated, embodied knowledge that takes a long time to learn. We are selling-short deep expertise. We are ignoring the contribution of fuzzier and less tangible forms of knowledge, such as tacit knowledge. Such forms can be integral to the refinement of a skill … or the solving of a complex problem … or the application of good taste … or the empathetic treatment of others … or, or, or. There are countless ways that fuzzy knowledge contributes to judgement and technique.

Given that only the most tangible and tradable forms of knowledge are valued, they tend to be the forms that managers invest in. We’re told to forget apprenticeships. Forget long periods of understudy. Forget field visits and regular face-to-face dialogue between workers. Forget job mirroring, job monitoring, and overlapping jobs. These are all learning methods whereby a person is able to learn all sorts of subtle lessons by observing others and working under guided supervision. These methods are also expensive, at least in the short term. And they seem redundant, which is thought of as inefficient (and therefore wasteful). Why would a manager approve an investment in these learning techniques if they don’t see the value? So managers spend money on those learning methods that offer the most obvious gains, such as those which involve documentation and information technology. These have the most short-term “bang for the buck.” Unfortunately, exchanging codified knowledge only gets you so far. Investment in deeper forms of learning may be better investments in the long run because it produces more sophisticated, more creative, and nimbler thinkers.

Also, this fallacy causes us to underestimate the amount of time, effort, and commitment it takes to master an occupation, job, or skill. It’s assumed that the knowledge can simply be “downloaded” into your brain. But mastery is more than just acquiring a big quantity of lucrative information.

To recap, the lump of knowledge fallacy causes managers to overvalue the most superficial learning activities and undervalue deeper learning. And the knowledge that is acquired is assumed to be apolitical and useful in a plug’n'play sort of way. Both of these problems dumb-down an organisation.

IV. Why Do We Treat Knowledge This Way?

These days, we’re used to leadership and management gurus emphasizing the importance of good people: the loyal, productive, and creative employee—the talent. But it wasn’t always this way. A hundred years ago, the gurus talked a lot about removing the flawed and troublesome human from the equation. Dealing with people is messy. Each individual has personal quirks. Human-all-too-human foibles get in the way. So there was a push to dehumanise the practice of management in order to make it a technical profession—something that could be tweaked and refined with machine-like precision. Management was to become a “hard” technical discipline, not a “soft” wishy-washy one.

The lump of knowledge fallacy was born out of this impulse to dehumanise the vocation of management.

As Matthew Stewart points out in his brilliant book The Management Myth (2009), this approach to management isn’t so much a vocation as it is a religion. It’s the knee-jerk desire to control. Stewart looks through the history of management gurus and their drive to dehumanise work and create a dryly technical profession. The gurus he talks about can be placed on a timeline from Frederick Taylor to Gary Hamel, by way of Elton Mayo, Chester Bernard, and Douglas McGregor. I won’t go into the details. But it was McGregor who emphasized that human conflict tends to come from misunderstanding. If only people have more knowledge and more awareness, he assumed, harmony will follow. We now call this the agreeability illusion. But it’s part of the lump of knowledge fallacy: the impulse to treat contentiousness and intellectual disagreement as a flaw, not as a natural source of new knowledge; not as an integral part of the human quest for truth.

I’d like to build on Stewart’s train of thought.

The lump of knowledge fallacy got it’s biggest boost in legitimacy from the 1950s and ’60s. That is the period when management scholars were trying to make their discipline more academic. They looked to the discipline of economics for inspiration. One of the results is the resource-based theory of the firm (by Philip Selznick, Edith Penrose, Alfred D. Chandler Jr., and others). This is the notion that an organisation’s performance can be reducible to the valuable resources that management has at its disposal. The firm has a greater market advantage if it has “resources” that are valuable, rare, and difficult to replicate by competitors. It was only a matter of time before humans and their intellect were counted among the resources. This idea reached crescendo with the intellectual capital movement of the late-1980s and 1990s (led by Karl Erik Sveiby, Leif Edvinsson, and Thomas A. Stewart). At this point, knowledge was not just treated as a resource and asset, but as objects that could actually be measured and tallied on a company’s balance sheet. These authors acknowledged the often intangible nature of knowledge. And yet they chose to treat it as a tangible asset nonetheless.

All of these writers and consultants helped create a mindset that revels in the lump of knowledge fallacy. But I don’t want to get too carried away with explaining the fallacy as the result of an ideology. The fallacy is committed so often, not because of the popularity of these theories, but because of something more basic. And that something is called laziness.

Managers live in a world of budgets, balance sheets, and organisational charts. This work has a lot to do with stocks and flows. It’s a common mistake to treat everyone else’s work as being like your own. Managers are no different. So when managers realise the importance of human intellect to the success of their organisation, it isn’t such a stretch to treat it like everything else they’re used to dealing with.

The vendors of information technology further reinforce this way of thinking. I just Googled the term “knowledge management software” and clicked on the first advertisement that drew my attention. Here is what it said:

Practical knowledge management. Share what you know. Discover what you don’t. Organisational knowledge is scattered everywhere … in email, on network drives and inside people’s hard drives. Confluence [the name of the software being sold] is so easy to use that it quickly becomes people’s preferred place to store information. Before you know it, your organisation’s knowledge is accumulating in a searchable, organised repository. (Atlassian, 2010)

Notice the way the problem is being framed. Knowledge is reduced to its most portable, shareable form: information. Gathering it and storing it is said to be easy. It’s about moving the knowledge around: from the employees to a central repository and then, presumably, to other employees. This sales pitch is on a web page devoted to software called Confluence. I couldn’t help but notice the product slogan: “Confluence: Everyone on the same page.” Thus, knowledge is treated as fungible: everyone can have exactly the same stuff. This sales-speak fully demonstrates the lump of knowledge fallacy.

So is it any wonder that managers are treating knowledge this way? The pedlars of easy answers are telling managers that this is the way to “take control” of an organisation’s biggest “asset”: brain power. Unfortunately, managers are being sold high-tech snake oil.

V. Conclusion

It’s time to recognise the true nature of knowledge, which has a lot to do with human psychology, socio-political relations, and the anatomy of the brain. Data and information are important for organisations. But some knowledge can’t be shoe-horned into portable and pliable documentation. We have to avoid the lump of knowledge fallacy because it’s causing managers to ignore important sources of insight and creativity. And it’s causing managers to fund learning activities that promise a quick-fix instead of those which produce the long-term intellectual growth of employees. As I said before, the prevalence of this fallacy is dumbing-down the organisations our society relies upon.

By Peter Stoyko

Update (15.01.11)

I’m often asked for my opinion about the term “knowledge mobilisation”. It’s quite a fashionable term of late, although I didn’t mention it in the essay.

The term means …. uh, well … what does it mean? There seems to be some confusion here. One interpretation is that it’s a military euphemism applied to knowledge (with mobilisation referring to the organisation of troops on the battlefield so that they’re ready to fight). Another interpretation is that a transportation metaphor is being applied (mobilisation as the efficient and systematic mass-movement of goods). If you’re using a metaphor or analogy, and it’s not even clear what parallel you’re drawing, that’s probably not a good sign. Plus, we should all be suspicious when metaphors only convey the gist of something. Metaphors are fine when we lack a vocabulary to communicate an idea precisely and with the right emotional tone. Metaphors are not fine when used to cover up a lack of rigorous thinking. And we should be very suspicious of euphemism because it prevents the mind from conjuring up the most appropriate image. The term “knowledge mobilisation” seems to fail these basic tests.

My suspicion is that the term “knowledge management” is getting a bit old. It’s carrying a lot of unwanted baggage. When that happens, proponents look for a more fashionable term, one which reflects the current preoccupations. Given the prevalence of the lump of knowledge fallacy in shaping thinking, it’s not surprising that the new term emphasizes movement. There is no obvious meaning beyond that. And that’s rather the point. Big, bold, and vague concepts are useful for management gurus, pundits, and other “thought leaders”. They can define these concepts any way they wish, loading them up with all sorts of subsidiary ideas and pet theories. It’s easy to redefine the concept from time to time to evade criticism. When evasion is no longer possible, the term can be abandoned in favour of a newer, fresher one.

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