Faculty of Engineering, Built Environment and Information Technology
School of Engineering
Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
Accounting systems are usually designed to reflect the state of an organisation’s tangible assets. Such an approach – which is known as balance sheet accounting – is limited in that it does not take into account abstract entities such as knowledge, skills and management processes.
The significance of this omission derives from the fact that, in a knowledge-based economy, such intangible assets might sometimes be worth much more than an organisation’s physical assets.
While some progress has been made toward the development of knowledge management, workforce-capability management and process improvement systems, the prospect of combining these domain-specific tools into an integrated model has received relatively little attention to date.
Such a model would represent a significant improvement over its predecessors, as it would capitalise on the synergistic capabilities of the various domains.
Research was undertaken to develop the theoretical basis for such an integrated accounting model. Several maturity models from the process improvement, knowledge management and workforce-capability management domains were compared and the overlaps between them identified.
Additional dimensions were then incorporated to address issues not adequately captured in existing models. The integrated model thus produced offers several advantages.
For instance, it defines a manageable number of process areas that require increasingly sophisticated effort as an organisation matures. By doing so, it outlines a fixed growth path for progressive organisational improvement.
The model was subsequently validated by applying it to a single management consultancy organisation. The insights gleaned from this research have the potential to add significant value to the performance improvement practices of management consultancy organisations.
Ms M De Vries
Industrial and Systems Engineering
+27 (0) 12 420 2038
marne.devries@up.ac.za
|
