Communication Relevance

Communicating professional knowledge is a key activity for today’s specialized workforce.

The efficient and effective transfer of experiences, insights, and know-how among different experts and decision makers is a prerequisite for high-quality decision-making and coordinated organizational action. Situations of such deliberate knowledge transfer through interpersonal communication or group conversations can be found in many business constellations.

Experts from various domains need to share their views and insights regarding a common goal in order to agree on a common rating of risks, requirements, industries or clients. Project leaders need to present their results to the upper management and share their experiences of past projects in order to assess the potential of new project candidates. Scientists who work as drug developers present new avenues for future products those business unit managers must assess.

Market researchers present their statistical analyses of recent consumer surveys to the head of marketing. Strategy consultants present the findings of their strategic company assessment to the board of directors in order to devise adequate measures.

What these diverse situations all have in common is the problem of knowledge asymmetry, which has to be resolved through interpersonal communication. While the manager typically has the authority to make strategic or tactical decisions, he often lacks the specialized expertise required to make an informed decision on a complex issue. Because of the wide scope of decisions that need to be made, a manager frequently has to delegate the decision preparation to experts who – based on their professional training and previous experience – can analyze complex situations or technological options in a more reliable manner. The results of such analyses then need to be communicated back to the manager, often under considerable time constraints.
The knowledge communication challenge, however, begins long before that, at the time when the manager has to convey his or her knowledge needs and decision constraints to the experts in order to delegate the analysis task effectively.

Links:
http://www.knowledge-communication.org/Research%20Note%20on%20Knowledge%20Communication%20and%20Management%202.0.pdf