A Design Option for Optimising Knowledge Worker Expertise in a South African Shared Services Centre

Organisations continue to be structured according to the Industrial Age control model which restricts the optimisation of knowledge worker expertise. Knowledge assets are ingrained in knowledge workers, however, on exit, knowledge assets are lost. Therefore, current organisational design methodologies should place emphasis on the optimisation of knowledge worker expertise. The general aim of the research was to determine whether organisational design can optimise knowledge worker expertise in a South African shared services centre. More specifically the research sought to determine whether organisational design optimises knowledge worker expertise by enabling knowledge workers to share their existing and newly created knowledge through cross-learning with other knowledge workers. The study further sought to determine whether organisational design optimises knowledge worker expertise as the output of the knowledge worker and incorporates it into business processes and routine operations. Qualitative research was conducted with data gathered from six focus group sessions (N=25). Results showed that the organisational design of the shared service centre does not enable knowledge workers to coordinate their activities nor did it allow knowledge workers to expose themselves to knowledge from different perspectives and departments. Results also indicated that the organisational design does not enable knowledge workers to interpret and optimise expertise to innovate and improve performance levels. Therefore the shared service centre's organisational design may be eroding its competitive advantage by not enabling the optimisation of knowledge worker expertise. Further results indicated that the organisational design at the shared service centre does not make the new knowledge created by knowledge workers available for re-use across the organisation. Consequently, knowledge worker expertise is not harnessed, since the organisational design does not effectively document that expertise to enable other knowledge workers to perform the work activities at a higher performance level. In sum, the research findings have confirmed that the organisational design of the shared services centre does not have the capability to optimise knowledge worker expertise. Valuable insights were provided into the theory of organisational design and which highlighted the need for an organisation design to institutionalise existing and newly created knowledge.