Nucor Steel

Nucor Steel

The Nucor Steel philosophy incorporates
the knowledge spiral framework and
interprets such with human capital.
The social, internal, external and
combination which takes tacit knowledge
and converts it to explicit knowledge
is the key to a profitable business
venture.

The "knowledge is power" ideal is still
prevolent because people will take
advantage of their position to maintain
relevence. Sharing of knowlwdge is a
noble but unrealistic concept. Only 29%
believe in this ideal. Knowledge creation,
aquisition, retention, identification,
outflow, transmission and inflow are key
for the upward spiral of knowledge to
provide company growth. This concept can
boost the competitive advantage but it
is an idealistic point of view.

The social ecology concept tries to raise the
bar for a new standard in knowledge sharing.
The thought of incorporating slack time along
with a sandbox aproach is admirable but unless
you have the right work force, this is only
a pipe-dream.

Separating what is real and what is ideal
creates a conflict with many companies due to
existing corporate cultures. Knowledge can
be obtained via many avenues. Many of these
are hard to measure. Nucor Steel's structure,
millmining, raw material, location, distibution
and market power shows no need for external
factors. They took advantage of human capital
to sustain their competitive stance. The
accumulation of knowledge (created, aquired and
retained) creates a solid foundation. For many
companies, this is a hard sell. Most people
will not give away their knowledge (power) to
a company unless there are some type of incentives.

The elimination of knowledge hoarding can only
be achieved by an incentive program. The upward
spiral which Nonaka refers to can only work
in a team enviroment of human capital. People
need to know they are valued.

It's the transition from tacit to explicit
knowledge which transforms a thought to reality.
Corporations need to understand that there is a
fine line between idealistic thought and real
achievable goals. Knowledge management skills
should transform the way most companies approach
their goals but I do not see this philosophy
taking hold as quickly as many would wish.

Greg Burrow