Automating Knowledge Creation: A Critical View

With the increasing pace of change and global competition that dominates the services market a demand for an efficient and lean structure, but at the same time a creative organisation is called for. Organisations within the services market referred to as professional services organisations (PSOs) are therefore eagerly searching for improved ways of managing these rather contrasting issues. Professional services automation (PSA) is the new breed of ICT that is emerging as a response to PSOs’ demand. Through advanced automation, PSA seeks to increase efficiency and knowledge worker productivity. Knowledge worker productivity is automatically and continually measured and evaluated on objectivistic measures such as time spent on e-mail, billable hours, and number of spreadsheets created. In effect, this introduces the questionable assumption that knowledge work can be automated. Knowledge creation is a fundamental element of knowledge work and is necessary to facilitate and ensure effective and innovative services critical to gaining and sustaining a competitive edge. So how will automation of knowledge work affect knowledge creation? With outset in the theoretical framework of knowledge creation proposed by Nonaka (Nonaka 1994), I will analyse the extent to which significant and leading PSA solutions may support and automate knowledge creation. The findings show severe limitations to the support of organisational knowledge creation and imply that PSA solutions may even have a negative impact on fostering creativity and utilising tacit knowledge. Due to the limited academic attention given to the PSA concept, a secondary aim of this paper is to present this interesting notion and to illuminate relevant issues that may be subject to future research.