Biography

Kelly Slaughter is a PhD candidate in Information and Decision Sciences at the University of Minnesota. He earned a B.B.A from The University of Texas at Austin with majors of Management Information Systems, Finance, and Accounting, and earned an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago with concentrations in Strategic Management and Economics.

Background: “I worked for Price Waterhouse’s Management Consulting Services (and the later PricewaterhouseCoopers MCS, now part of IBM) for seven years, primarily participating in client ‘strategic information system plan’ development, re-engineering projects, and ERP implementations.  While I held PwC in the highest regard, upon completion of my MBA I left PwC to join Deloitte Consulting with the intent to learn more about the operations of what William Starbuck terms ‘knowledge intensive firms.’  The most significant professional experience with respect to my current academic interests was participating in one the first SAP R/3 installations.  During the project the team’s challenge was to identify how to best structure our interactions to coordinate and apply the extensive learning that took place.  Upon completion of the project, the firm’s challenge was to leverage our ‘privileged’ learning to gain a ‘first movers advantage’ in the burgeoning ERP implementation market.  The choices for knowledge dissemination, delineated by Linda Argote as ‘moving or modifying people, technology, and structure,’ each had different strengths and weaknesses that were poorly understood by all those involved."

Research Interests: “As suggested above, my primary area of interest is the management of knowledge, particularly with respect to organizational choices in knowledge intensive settings such as IT consulting.  As we continue to transition towards a knowledge based economy, the nature of these organizational choices is changing and the need to understand these choices is becoming more compelling.  One manifestation of this transition is the increasing need to coordinate experts.  This need arises as many firms in seeking to provide unique value propositions to clients are ‘encouraging’ their knowledge workers to develop deeper expertise.  This depth of knowledge is necessarily achieved at the expense of breadth in any one individual.  For example, the knowledge required to understand the advances in neurology precludes the development of concurrent expertise in cardiology.  Developing an understanding of the valuation of options such that an accountant can advertise herself as an “expert” precludes the concurrent development of expertise with respect to accounting for international mergers.  Nevertheless, these increasingly narrow specialists are still working towards common goals that are as broad as ever.  The neurologist and cardiologist together contribute to the same organizational goal of preserving a patient’s health, the accountant specializing in the valuation of options is still working with other specialists towards the organizational goal of financial disclosure.  As Peter Drucker noted a decade ago, increasingly specialized experts working towards progressively broader goals will find an increasing need for coordination.  The firm has both process and structure choices to enable and encourage this coordination.  Researching the implications of these choices is one such example of the organizational choices in knowledge intensive settings upon which I am directing my research.” 

Current Research Project: “I have had the fortunate opportunity to research one manifestation of this need to coordinate expertise occurring in a high technology firm, where specialists in hardware, software, business processes, and implementation services attempt to develop coherent client oriented technology enabled business solutions.  My advisor Mani Subramani and I have recently concluded extensive field research inside this firm, observing teams in a range of industries in cities in the US and South America.  In this field work phase we sought to identify initial constructs of interest.  The next phase of this research involves quantitative methods to both validate and extend the field work findings.  Ultimately we hope to build theory that is also compelling to practitioners.  In fact, this project has been particularly gratifying in this respect as we have developed both academic and client ‘deliverables.’”

General Impressions: “Of the many University of Minnesota merits that have been mentioned in other biographies, we students have ironically failed to note what I believe is a significant strength that only a few programs can match - the opportunity to interact with one another.  The University of Minnesota possesses a large doctoral student body composed of students with diverse backgrounds and varied interests.  Interacting with students within our department as well as with those in other well respected departments provides an informal, friendly arena in which to hone our research ideas.”