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26 August 31, 2006 2:53 A Strategic Assessment of Six Sigma
3. The processes of knowledge management and knowledge worker involvement
are significantly different from those in repetitive operations and administration,
the targeted areas for Six Sigma applications.
4. Knowledge workers, such as research scientists, urban designers and music com-
posers, tend to resist or detest structured approaches, and enjoy the freedom of
exploring the unknown.
5. Knowledge workers conceptualize, design, execute and improve their work with
their own experience and judgment; spontaneity and autonomy could add to their
performance.
6. Many knowledge workers are motivated by the process more than the outcome,
and could even be rewarded on the basis of their input rather than output.
7. It is impractical to set targets such as ‘X times better’ or calibrate improvements
in terms such as sigma levels in knowledge management; large portions of the
achievements of knowledge workers could be intangible in nature.
8. As an economy develops, accompanied by changes that come with technology
and globalization, there is impetus for migration of human resources from the op-
erational and administrative arena -- fertile grounds for DMAIC -- to knowledge-
based activities and organizations.
9. Knowledge workers and knowledge societies sustain themselves through contin-
uous learning and self-renewal, with constant changes in processes and process
outputs.
10. Ultimately, it is the acquisition, creation and application of knowledge that would
fuel the competitiveness of a knowledge organization or society.

The rise of the knowledge worker and the emergence of the knowledge society,
as well as the consequent impact on the delivery and assessment of performance,
have been well discussed in the context of management; 59 it was pointed out that
formal education and theoretical knowledge, not adherence to standard operating
procedures or apprenticeship, are prerequisites for an effective knowledge worker.
Expressing the level of performance and its improvement via some definitive metric
would fail to make sense in a knowledge-based organization such as a university.
Thus, for example, one would be hard put to calculate a meaningful sigma score in
each of the following cases:

ratings from student feedback on the content and delivery of a course;
graduation or drop-out rate of a given program of study;
average time taken by fresh graduates to get suitable employment;
number and nature of continuing education programs offered as a community ser-
vice;
sizes, facilities, nature and range of services of libraries;
proportion of submitted research papers accepted for publication in journals;

number of patents filed out of X million dollars of research funding;
Number of successful industrial collaboration projects in an academic department;
annual turnover of administrative staff in a university;
proportion of tenured faculty in a particular college;
service rendered by faculty to professional organizations;
reputation of the university as perceived by international peers.