Continuity Management: Preserving Corporate Knowledge and Productivity When Employees Leave

Part III. Knowledge Asset Management

Brett's journal in Part II, "Confessions of a Continuity Manager," is a literary device through which to study the principles and concepts of continuity management as they might have been developed in an American company. Its chapters describe the continuity management processes through which critical operational knowledge could be harvested from incumbent employees in an efficient, effective, and comprehensive way, yielding benefits for incumbents, their successors, and their organizations.

Part III departs from the format of Brett's journal and returns to the voice of the authors. While it continues with the practical implementation of continuity management, its subject matter is knowledge transfer and acquisition rather than knowledge harvesting. In other words, it explores the processes through which operational knowledge harvested from incumbent employees can be effectively transmitted, internalized, and acted on by their successors. Knowledge transfer and acquisition is the final set of processes in continuity management. The process of identifying critical operational knowledge and harvesting it from incumbents is incomplete and, ultimately, unproductive unless that knowledge can be successfully transferred to, and applied by, successor employees. We use the term knowledge acquisition in conjunction with transfer in Part III to emphasize that the transfer of knowledge from one employee to another does not constitute continuity management ...