Mopsos

Hideo Yamazaki, CKO of Nomura Research Institute, wrote a very interesting article in the KM Review, also published on the Knowledge Board called Knowledge Communities in Japan: A Case Study - 10 Mar 2004. The paragraph on anonymity struck me:

Another feature is that in some top-level companies, knowledge communities are operational on an employee-nick-name basis (knowledge exchange based on handle name). Actually, this trend is a big surprise even to me, though I was born and raised in Japan. Use of multiple identities such as handle-name on internet had been considered incompatible with Japanese traditional culture for a long time.
However, it is being gradually accepted in business community that the use of a nickname enables employees to exchange knowledge more easily, irrespective of organizational hierarchy. Interestingly, use of nickname revived altruism, another Japanese tradition of collectivism, in the new form.

I hadn't thought about this. Until I read this, I considered pseudonyms as a tool for the web-based hide-and-seek chat of teenagers, and irrelevant in a business setting where trust is essential.

On second thought, this only holds in the world of business decisions, and not necessarily in the world of business advice. I usually can detect whether a new idea is relevant and worth applying to my current job, even if I know nothing about its origin. I trust the organisation (brand name) that sits behind this idea to do its job as a filter of bad ideas.

In Japan, the sense of belonging to an organization is strong, and the employee trusts the company he or she works with much more than we do here in the West. An idea "brought to you by Mitsubishi Electric", even an anonymous one, is worth considering.

Maybe this could work here as well, at least in companies with a very strong and positive brand name, where employees take pride in being part of the gang, like in a fraternity. Back in 1982, at Dassault Aviation, at a time when Marcel Dassault was still alive, I can say that this would probably have worked, because we were very proud of our company, and we trusted it to hire good people.

Also, Angela Nobre was referring yesterday during the KnowledgeBoard SIG leader meeting in Lisbon to the GemEva experience at Gemplus where a virtual character, GemEva, could be called upon by assistants for any question regarding administrative issues. Behind this character was a hot line rotating organization staffed by a community of assistants. In that case, the pseudonym is shared and represents (embodies) the entire community.

Interesting...

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