Assignment 4

Blog Assignment #4 (Due: Feb 16, 11:59 pm): Discuss how the knowledge spiral framework interpret the knowledge creation activities in Nucor Steel.

Nucor Steel is a great example of a compnay that knows how to use knowledge. In a failing industry, Nucor Steel has been a success. Nucor Steel has used superior human capitol by placing plants in rural areas that have an abundance of hard working people. They offered top of the line compensation which allowed them to attract many interested people. 1200 people applied for 8 positions at Nucor Steel which gave them the opportunity to be extremely selective. Nucor Steel also uses continuous on the job training and multifuncitonal training. They also use an incentive program for every employee which helps Nucor Steel gain more knowledge from their employees.

Nucor Steel was able to successfully use the incentive program for new ideas becasue of the great rewards for the employee with the new idea. The first incentive was the only way for employees to earn a bonus was to come up with a new way to increase productivity. The second was that the employees only got the bonus if their idea worked properly so this lead to ideas working right the first time. Finally there was no upper cap on how large an employees bonus can be so employees keep coming up with new ways to increase productivity.

Whenever employees are encouraged to experiment there will always be some failure. Nucor Steel tolerates this failure in hope that a succcess will follow a failure. Nucor Steel also used breakthrough technologies before their competitors. This was risky but it paid off because they were able to get ahead of their competitors. Nucor Steel's social ecology allowed them to excel with sharing and mobilizing knowledge.