Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Implications for Big Firm KM and Law Librarianship

Amar Gupta, University of Arizona, Eller College of Business and Public Administration, and Satwik Seshasai, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, have deposited a three-part series on the "24-Hour Knowledge Factory." Implications for large law firm KM specialists and law librarians are readily apparent. See Law Firms Going Global, Strategic Legal Technology (Sept. 18 2007), citing How Teams Can Work Well Together From Far Apart ,WSJ Online (Sept. 17, 2007); Success Factors for Working Virtually Strategic Legal Technology (June 20, 2007), citing Working Together...When Apart, WSJ Online (June 16, 2007)

The Critical Role of Information Resource Management in Enabling the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory.

The 24-hour Knowledge Factory is introduced as a global work environment where work is passed between individuals in other time zones on a daily basis. The evolution of this model is described, from foundations in manufacturing to current implementations in software development. The effective management of information resources is critical to the success of this environment. A pilot study, conducted at IBM, utilized a set of advanced tools for gathering social and technical data from repositories as diverse as source control systems and team meeting minutes. This pilot study provides good insights into how the 24-hour Knowledge Factory concept will operate in a commercial setting. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for leveraging information resources to achieve the ideal 24-hour Knowledge Factory.

Towards the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory: Offshore-Onsite Team Dynamics.

Globalization and the spread of advanced information and communication technologies have encouraged a transition to distributed, virtual work practices. By reducing the costs of communication, these technologies now make it possible for more people than ever before to collaborate and compete in real time on different kinds of work from anywhere in the world - using computers, email, networks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software applications. Thus, according to Thomas Friedman in his book, The World is Flat, "The global competitive playing field has being leveled" (Friedman, 2005, p.8). Connected to the flattening of the world is the increase in the diffusion of offshoring of knowledge intensive work towards emerging countries, such as India, China, and Romania. Although offshoring is becoming a part of our everyday social lexicon, we find little empirical evidence in the academic literature on the implications of offshoring for organizations and knowledge workers, or on the disruptive forces that offshoring brings to local, day-to-day work practices. Certainly, the literature on geographically dispersed or globally distributed teams (GDTs) shows the many organizational challenges of distributed collaboration, exploring issues like compatibility with existing hierarchical structures, awareness of other team member's activities, increased coordination costs, trust between distant members, status differentials, and leadership (e.g., Mohrman, 1998, Paul and McDaniel, 2004, Metiu, 2006, Weisband, in press). Moreover, previous studies explain how distance limits some of the important benefits that come from collocation, such as spontaneous conversation, collaborative social environments, mutual learning and influence (e.g. Hinds and Kiesler, 2002; Cummings, 2004). Some of this research was conducted in situations involving offshoring, but much of it reflects distributed work that remained onshore and does not distinguish between different types of globally distributed work arrangements (Saunders and Ahuja, 2006). Many of the conclusions and insights from these studies, therefore, may apply to the case of offshoring, but more work is needed to better define the specific upsetting effects of offshoring on knowledge workers and organizations.

Toward the 24-Hour Knowledge Factory - A Prognosis for Research.

The term "24-Hour Knowledge Factory" connotes a geographically dispersed team of workers in which members of the team are able to work on specific endeavors on a round- the-clock basis. A professional could work in the US on a standard 9 am to 5 pm basis. At the end of his or her workday, the activity is transferred to a colleague in China who works during daytime in that country. At the end of the latter's workday, the work is transferred to a third colleague in Poland or Romania, who in turn will pass the baton 8 hours later to the first worker in the US. Each member of the team works during the normal workday hours that pertain to his or her time zone. The use of sequential workers that underpins the concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory has some similarity to the shift-style workforce that evolved in the manufacturing sector as an adjunct to the industrial revolution. Just as the latter concept had a profound impact on the entire manufacturing sector, we argue that the concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory will have a major impact on the entire field of information systems, and that more research is needed in this area. The concept of 24-Hour Knowledge Factory is relevant for semi-structured work in both the IS arena as well as in other professional arenas such as finance, product development, marketing, and medicine. The proposed areas of research can help to create the IS infrastructure for supporting applications in these diverse arenas.