Questions & Answers
1. Why do you think this is an important story to tell company executives and managers? What is the main point of the story?
The reason why this is an important storty to tell management and executives is that it shows the need for knowledge to transferred in whatever means necessary in order to keep the proper and established business flows going. It shows how something as small and simple as a few emails at a key time in the year could save the complany millions of dollars in lost revenue and customer dissatifaction. It also shows a need for Knowledge and Best Practices to be documented, observed and re-issued at key phases of the process to deliver a quality product.
2. What kind of knowledge is most relevant to understanding the incidents in the case? What does the case tell us about the role of knowledge in organizations?
This case is a example of Tacit knowledge learned from experience not being transferred during the attrition of an employee. This kind of knowledge that was not transferred durring a employees retirement cost the company millions in lost revenue and bad customer relations. If GM would have had some type of Knowledge Management System, this knowledge would not have had to come the hard way, it could have been gathered in a variety of different ways such as an exit interview, job sharing/rotation and job shadowing.
3. Organization mishaps like those reported in this case appear to be common occurrences. A traditional organization might blame or attribute the causes of them to a number of different sources. What reasons might be given for such mishaps?
A Traditional Organization could blame these occurances on variety of different thing, such as:
• Individual learning, and not sharing outcomes
• No exting invterviews being held
• No job sharing/training for next in line of succession employee
