CCSU professors of management and organization Dr. Steven A. Cavaleri (left) and Dr. David S. Fearon (right) are at the forefront of the emerging, multi-disciplinary discipline, Knowledge Management, commonly abbreviated KM.

Their mutual interest in organizational learning, systems thinking, experiential thinking, leadership, and innovation led to their collaboration on the book Managing in Organizations That Learn (Blackwell, 1996). Their individual and joint research on learning and sharing knowledge in organizations led them to begin work on Knowledge Management subjects.

In response to the most obvious question—what is Knowledge Management?—the CCSU colleagues emphasize what KM is not: "It is not information management or information technology, although both can play a role in the effective use of KM in an organization."

They emphasize that "management is the focus of our research, not knowledge. Serendipitous things may happen, but, by and large, managed activity is what makes a business successful. That managed activity forms sets of practices, which, as they occur, produce the business result."

Fearon explains further: "We manage by what we know. Comparing the business results that flow from the most recent hire and the senior experienced person, one would expect the newcomer to produce a quality of results that is less valuable to the customer and the enterprise than that of the senior person. We look at how the rookie reaches a point of competence and confidence in a span of time much less than it took this seasoned veteran. The business imperative is to move fast, change fast, and be able to anticipate or solve problems that have yet to emerge. We have found that, while the seasoned expertise of the veteran is needed, sometimes the rookie displays a much keener need to learn and change."

Having studied these phenomena in a variety of business settings, Fearon and Cavaleri agree that "performance for these individuals is to always move toward a higher 'ground' of overall comprehension of the business, the practices that form the business, and what it will take next to keep the organization running."

So, how do two people work together on such a broad field of research? Cavaleri notes: “Collaborating with another person is a matter of give and take. David and I have known each other for about 15 years, and one of the ‘secrets’ to our successful collaboration is choosing projects that can be built around our complementary skills. David and I have written one book together, so we are familiar with each other’s styles of working. I tend to be more analytical, and David is more of a creative kind of person. On the current project, I focus on the theoretical foundation, and David centers on the writing. As long as we remain open to each other’s ideas, we usually function with each other quite effectively. Also, we both happen to be patient people.”

Currently working on another book about KM, Professors Cavaleri and Fearon have found that business practices must continually change to be in accord with what works, and that "those individuals whose work enacts an organization’s business processes—from the front lines to the executive suite—are the primary agents of changes in practice. The primary work of leaders is to provide an enriching social and physical context within which individuals may freely learn from their experience and employees should interact with others to create knowledge for organizational and personal effectiveness."

Fearon and Cavaleri are among the few professors of organizational and managerial behavior to investigate naturally occurring interactions between learning, knowledge, practice, and organizational/business performance, all of which they consider to be "the underpinnings of knowledge work." During these studies, they have determined that "most jobs in developed nations are now classified as knowledge work. This shifts the paradigm of productivity from engrained concepts derived from the transformation of raw materials into tangible products, and then to those which predict and explain productivity in terms of transforming information into profitable, intangible customer benefits in various forms of customer experience."

They have much more work to do, as Fearon notes: "There is a paucity of information in the management literatures on how and why to extend this knowledge-enabling context to those who must learn in order to continually innovate and improve performance. Indeed, there is a paucity of information directed at workers themselves as to how and why to manage the quality of their own knowledge for business performance. We are interested in producing books, articles, programs, and courses of study and engaging in the international electronic conversations to contribute to the closing of this gap."