The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action

The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton Harvard Business School Press Cambridge, MA 2000 ISBN 1-57851-124-0 $27.50

Keywords Knowledge management, Supply chain, Logistics

Pfeffer and Sutton (both professors in organizational behavior at Stanford) have made a relevant contribution to the rapidly enfolding knowledge management literature. Which is of specific relevance to the supply chain management discipline, because of its focus on action and operationalizing knowledge. O'Laughlin et al. (1993) already pointed at implementation and change management as critical elements of supply chain management. That notion centers on a starting point for Pfeffer and Sutton: even though we know so much and are smart in developing great concepts we often benefit from it only marginally, because of failure in putting knowledge into action. Perhaps a heritage of the Taylorist distinction between knowing...