Power from the C-Suite: The Chief Knowledge Officer and Chief Learning Officer as Agents of Noopower

Abstract

This essay critically considers two corporate executive positions: the Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) and the Chief Learning Officer (CLO). I argue that these positions are key instantiations of noopower, or power over thoughts, perceptions, and memories. Theorized by Deleuze, Arquila and Ronfeldt, and Lazzarato, noopower is an assemblage of older forms of power such as sovereign and disciplinary power into a new form that is prevalent in a time where knowledge, perceptions, and images are the hegemonic forms of value. This essay traces the CKO and CLO literatures' theorization and suggested deployment of this form of power in global corporations.

Keywords:

• Chief Knowledge Officer
• Chief Learning Officer
• Noopower
• Knowledge Economy
• Critical Organizational Studies

Notes

[1] The sources for this work are discussions of CKOs and CLOs as they appear in books, journals, magazines, newspapers, and Web sites between the 1990s and today. My archive is approaching 200 items and I can share it with others upon request. My method supporting my theorization of power is inductive, close, critical reading of these sources.

[2] Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas S Rose. (New York: New Press, 2003), 138.

[3] Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power,” in The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954–1984, ed. Paul Rabinow and Nikolas S Rose. (New York: New Press, 2003), 137.

[4] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage, 1979).

[5] Foucault, “The Subject and Power.”

[6] Gilles Deleuze, “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” October 59 (Winter 1992): 3–7, doi:10.2307/778828.

[7] John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Emergence of Noopolitik,” 1999 Product Page, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033.html.

[8] John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Emergence of Noopolitik,” 1999 Product Page, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033.html, 29.

[9] John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, “The Emergence of Noopolitik,” 1999 Product Page, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1033.html, 4.

[10] Maurizio Lazzarato, “The Concepts of Life and the Living in the Societies of Control,” in Deleuze and the Social, ed. Martin Fuglsang and Bent Sørensen (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006), 171–90.

[11] Gabriel Tarde and T. N. Clark, On Communication and Social Influence: Selected Papers (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969); Gabriel Tarde, Monadology and Sociology (Victoria, Australia: re. Press, 2012).

[12] Warren Neidich, “Neuropower,” Atlántica: Magazine of Art and Thought, Spring 2009, http://www.warrenneidich.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Warren_Neidich_Neuropower_Atlantica1.pdf, 135.

[13] For a recent overview of this literature, see Walter W. Powell and Kaisa Snellman, “The Knowledge Economy,” Annual Review of Sociology 30 (2004): 199.

[14] Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962).

[15] Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (New York: Random House, 1970); Alvin Toffler, The Third Wave (New York: Morrow, 1980).

[16] Daniel Bell, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (New York: Basic, 1973).

[17] Powell and Snellman, “The Knowledge Economy.”

[18] Key texts here include Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotake Takeuchi, The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998).

[19] Ernest Holsendolph, “The CKO: Channeling a Torrent of Information, Chief Knowledge Officers Are Helping Corporate America Work Smarter,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution (1996); Leah Beth Ward, “In the Executive Alphabet, You Call Them C.L.O.'s,” New York Times, February 4, 1996; Martha M. Hamilton, “Managing the Company Mind: Firms Try New Ways to Tap Intangible Assets Such as Creativity, Knowledge,” Washington Post, August 19, 1996.

[20] See for example Chief Learning Officer magazine's CLO symposium, now in its 13^th year. Also, a wide range of knowledge and learning management papers get presented at conferences centering on information technology, health, law, business, and economics.

[21] See, for example, George Mason University School of Public Policy's Master's in Organizational Development and Knowledge Management or Kent State University's Knowledge Management program.

[22] For example, see a recent overview of knowledge management in the law: Elana Zeide and Jay Liebowitz, “Knowledge Management in Law: A Look at Cultural Resistance,” Legal Information Management 12, no. 1 (2012): 34–38, doi:10.1017/S1472669612000126.

[23] Amrit Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit: Practical Techniques for Building a Knowledge Management System (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall PTR, 2000), 64, http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id = 323909.

[24] Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 5.

[25] Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 6.

[26] Mats Alvesson, Dan Karreman, and Jacky Swan, “Departures from Knowledge And/or Management in Knowledge Management,” Management Communication Quarterly 16, no. 2 (2002): 285, doi:10.1177/089331802237242.

[27] Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 5.

[28] Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit, 67.

[29] Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 3.

[30] Jeffrey T. Child and Michelle Shumate, “The Impact of Communal Knowledge Repositories and People-Based Knowledge Management on Perceptions of Team Effectiveness,” Management Communication Quarterly 21, no. 1 (August 1, 2007): 31, doi:10.1177/0893318907301987.

[31] Timothy T. Baldwin and Camden C. Danielson, “Building a Learning Strategy at the Top: Interviews with Ten of America's CLOs,” Business Horizons 43, no. 6 (November 2000): 5, doi:10.1016/S0007–6813(00)80016–6.

[32] Karen Barley, “Corporate University Structures That Reflect Organizational Cultures,” in The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program, ed. Mark Allen (New York: AMACOM, 2002), 43.

[33] Tamar Elkeles and Jack J. Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer: Driving Value within a Changing Organization through Training and Learning (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2007), 7.

[34] Len Sherman, “Lies about Corporate Learning Officers,” in Lies About Learning: Leading Executives Separate Truth from Fiction in a $100 Billion Industry, ed. Larry Israelite (Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development, 2007), 71.

[35] Len Sherman, “Lies about Corporate Learning Officers,” in Lies About Learning: Leading Executives Separate Truth from Fiction in a $100 Billion Industry, ed. Larry Israelite (Alexandria, VA: American Society for Training and Development, 2007), 71.

[36] Laree Kiely, “Measurement in Corporate University Environments: Is It Gonna Show? Do We Wanna Know?,” in The Corporate University Handbook: Designing, Managing, and Growing a Successful Program, ed. Mark Allen (New York: AMACOM, 2002), 165–95.

[37] “Lies about Corporate Learning Officers,” 73, my emphasis.

[38] Elkeles and Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer's Critical Role, 18.

[39] Elkeles and Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer's Critical Role, 18.

[40] Lazzarato, “Concepts of Life,” 186.

[41] Lazzarato, “Concepts of Life,”, 187.

[42] Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit, 53.

[43] cf. Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, x.

[44] cf. Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 72.

[45] cf. Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 75.

[46] cf. Davenport and Prusak, Working Knowledge, 85.

[47] Kimiz Dalkir, Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 42.

[48] Angela Trethewey and Steve Corman, “Anticipating K-Commerce: E-Commerce, Knowledge Management, and Organizational Communication,” Management Communication Quarterly 14, no. 4 (May 1, 2001): 621, doi:10.1177/0893318901144005.

[49] Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit, 83.

[50] Dalkir, Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice, 42.

[51] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I: A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production (Moscow: Progress, 1965), chap. 23; Jason Read, “Primitive Accumulation: The Aleatory Foundation of Capitalism,” Rethinking Marxism 14, no. 2 (2002): 37.

[52] James R. Barker and George Cheney, “The Concept and the Practices of Discipline in Contemporary Organizational Life,” Communications Monographs 61, no. 1 (1994): 19–43; Angela Trethewey, “Disciplined Bodies: Women's Embodied Identities at Work,” Organization Studies 20, no. 3 (1999): 423–50; Dennis K. Mumby, “Theorizing Resistance in Organization Studies A Dialectical Approach,” Management Communication Quarterly 19, no. 1 (August 1, 2005): 19–44, doi:10.1177/0893318905276558; Stanley Deetz and Dennis K. Mumby, “Power, Discourse, and the Workplace: Reclaiming the Critical Tradition,” Communication Yearbook 13, no. 1 (1990): 18–47; Stanley A. Deetz, Democracy in Age Corporate Colonization: Developments in Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life (New York: SUNY Press, 1992).

[53] Trethewey and Corman, “Anticipating K-Commerce,” 624.

[54] Tiwana, The Knowledge Management Toolkit, chap. 11; Debbie Richards, “A Social software/Web 2.0 Approach to Collaborative Knowledge Engineering,” Information Sciences 179, no. 15 (July 4, 2009): 2515–2523, doi:10.1016/j.ins.2009.01.031.

[55] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 152.

[56] Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 153.

[57] Elkeles and Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer's Critical Role; Donald L Kirkpatrick, Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels (San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler, 1994).

[58] Kiely, “Measurement in Corporate University Environments,” 186.

[59] Sherman, “Lies about Corporate Learning Officers,” 72.

[60] Deetz and Mumby, “Power, Discourse, and the Workplace.”

[61] Lazzarato, “Concepts of Life,” 186.

[62] David Savat, “Deleuze's Objectile: From Discipline to Modulation,” in Deleuze and New Technology, ed. David Savat and Mark Poster (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 59.

[63] Robert W. Gehl, “What's on Your Mind? Social Media Monopolies and Noopower,” First Monday 18, no. 3–4 (March 2013), http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4618/3421.

[64] Elkeles and Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer's Critical Role, 11.

[65] Steve Kerr and Mike Prokopeak, “A Conversation with Steve Kerr: CHIEF LEARNING OFFICER Magazine Catches up with the First CLO,” Chief Learning Officer 6, no. 10 (October 2007): 54.

[66] Juan Gabriel Cegarra Navarro, Frank W. Dewhurst, and Steve Eldridge, “Linking Chief Knowledge Officers with Customer Capital through Knowledge Management Practices in the Spanish Construction Industry,” International Journal of Human Resource Management 21, no. 3 (February 15, 2010): 389–404.

[67] Foucault, “The Subject and Power.”

[68] Alvesson, Karreman, and Swan, “Departures from Knowledge And/or Management,” 288.

[69] Rene Tissen, Daniel Andriessen, and Frank L. Deprez, Creating the 21st Century Company: Knowledge Intensive, People Rich, Value-Based Knowledge Management (Amsterdam: Longman, 1998), 28.

[70] Zeide and Liebowitz, “Knowledge Management in Law,” 35.

[71] Child and Shumate, “Impact of Communal Knowledge Repositories.”

[72] Savat, “Deleuze's Objectile,” 54.

[73] Patricia T. Clough, “(De) Coding the Subject-in-Affect,” Subjectivity 23, no. 1 (2008): 144.

[74] Jason Read, “The Fetish Is Always Actual, Revolution Is Always Virtual: From Noology to Noopolitics,” Deleuze Studies 3, no. 2 (2009): 91.

[75] Kiely, “Measurement in Corporate University Environments,” 166.

[76] Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “The Emergence of Noopolitik,” 4.

[77] Sarah Fister Gale, “For Some Chief Learning Officers, One of the Goals Is Job Insecurity,” Workforce Management, October 2003.

[78] cf. Baldwin and Danielson, “Building a Learning Strategy at the Top,” 8.

[79] cf. James Tucker, “Everyday Forms of Employee Resistance,” Sociological Forum 8, no. 1 (1993): 25–45.

[80] Tissen, Andriessen, and Deprez, Creating the 21st Century Company, 95.

[81] Sally Davenport and Shirley Leitch, “Circuits of Power in Practice: Strategic Ambiguity as Delegation of Authority,” Organization Studies 26, no. 11 (2005): 1603–1623; Michael G. Murphy and Kate Mackenzie Davey, “Ambiguity, Ambivalence and Indifference in Organisational Values,” Human Resource Management Journal 12, no. 1 (2002): 17–32.

[82] Navarro, Dewhurst, and Eldridge, “Linking Chief Knowledge Officers with Customer Capital.”

[83] Alexandros Soumplis et al., “Learning Management Systems and Learning 2.0,” Web-Based and Blended Educational Tools and Innovations (2012): 197; Manuel London and M. J. Hall, “Web 2.0 Support for Individual, Group and Organizational Learning,” Human Resource Development International 14, no. 1 (2011): 103–13; Bill Sherman, “When the Bird Tweets, Does Anyone Learn,” Chief Learning Officer 8, no. 8 (2009): 36.

[84] Elkeles and Phillips, The Chief Learning Officer's Critical Role, 54; Cushing Anderson, “The Road to Recovery,” Chief Learning Officer 36 (September 2011): 7.

[85] Gehl, “What's on Your Mind?.”

[86] Karen Lee Ashcraft, Timothy R. Kuhn, and François Cooren, “Constitutional Amendments: ‘Materializing’ Organizational Communication,” The Academy of Management Annals 3, no. 1 (2009): 5. doi:10.1080/19416520903047186.

[87] Trethewey and Corman, “Anticipating K-Commerce,” 621.