Where does institutional knowledge reside? (#1398)

Topics/tags: Rants, Grinnell

Last week, I was dinged for not following two policies. In one case, it was a policy that I had no clue about and that none of the other faculty I knew seemed to know about. In the other, it was one I thought I understood, but I was told I didn’t. It’s frustrating to be dinged for something you got wrong.

In the first case, I looked at the documents that supposedly laid out the policy that I was violating. As far as I could tell, they discussed something similar, but different. I hadn’t known about them (at least I don’t think I knew about them), and they apply to things I’ve done in the past as well as things I plan to do in the future, so I’m glad to know that they are there. But the particular thing? Nope, not in those documents. At least not obviously in those documents. The Academic Assistants in Science didn’t know about those documents, either.

In the second case, it’s an issue that had come up before. And I thought I’d understood the policy. I even sent an email to verify that I understood the policy. But it seems that the policy had changed. The problem is that the revised policy doesn’t seem to exist anywhere that I can find. And no one I talked to (email with) seems to be able to identify one, either; at least they haven’t told me, and it’s been a week.

Why haven’t I given the specifics of either case? Because I don’t want to get anyone in trouble. I’m hoping things will work themselves out.

There are, unfortunately, dozens (if not hundreds) of instances in which the College has policies about things that aren’t readily available or may not be available in any written form. There are big-P Policies that can currently be found on a Policies page and that will reside in our proper place for Policies [1]. Those include things like our Faculty Travel Policy and our Nondiscrimination Policy. But the things I’m encountering are also about smaller issues that have not yet reached the level of big-P policies. I call those little-p policies. And, of course, we also have procedures for doing some tasks. I’d say that both The Faculty Handbook and The Staff Handbook [2] contain both big-P and little-p policies.

Last week, I tried to reserve a study room in the Humanities and Social Science Complex (HSSC). I couldn’t find information online, and I searched on both the Web and our local SharePoint [3] site. Eventually, I gave up and asked one of our Academic Assistants (AAs). They taught me that you could set up a meeting on Outlook and choose one of the rooms, which then reserves it. I suppose that makes sense. But the rooms have locks. How does one get the code? No one seems to know. I had to ask the HSSC AA’s to let me in.

When taking students to a conference, I asked about the capacities of the various buses [4] and vans. Again, nowhere to be found online. In this case, my AAs needed to email someone in Facilities Management.

All of this got me thinking:

Where does institutional knowledge reside?

More precisely, How and where are we supposed to find the little-p policies or procedures? And how are we even supposed to know that they exist?

My answer to the first question is usually straightforward, or somewhat straightforward. I look in the natural places (e.g., on Benefits pages for things related to benefits, on the Dean’s office pages for things related to faculty activities, on ITS pages for things related to technology). When that fails, I do a Web search and a SharePoint search. When that fails, I ask the AAs. When that fails, I try to figure out who else to ask. I suppose I could start my search with people, rather than end with them. But it would be more efficient, at least for the AAs, if information were gathered for easy access. And AAs aren’t always available. What if I have a question at night or on the weekend?

Perhaps part of the task of rewriting The Faculty Handbook can include gathering faculty-related policies in one or a few places.

What about the second question? What about policies that we don’t even know about? You don’t go looking for something if it doesn’t occur to you to worry about it. For some things, such as FERPA and Data Privacy, our annual training sessions remind us about policies. But for others? I suppose we count on people noticing and politely informing us.

Is there a better solution? Probably. Am I wise enough to suggest one? Probably not. All I can suggest is that we will be more likely to notice policies and procedures if they are easy to find. However, there are so many that we may still not notice them. For example, our IRB policies have always been readily available. However, I recall a time when many faculty didn’t know that they needed IRB approval for human subjects research. Folks in traditional IRB disciplines, like Psychology, knew. But someone in, say, Computer Science? [5] Probably not.

That returns us to the moviting question: Where does institutional knowledge reside? The answer, all too often, is in someone’s head. That applies to the knowledge that policies and procedures exist, knowledge about written policies and procedures, and knowledge about unwritten policies and procedures. So much knowledge!

I suppose that suggests a good first step. Perhaps we should document all policies and procedures and make them readily available. Wouldn’t that be nice? As a first step, perhaps we could document unwritten knowledge when we discover that it’s unwritten.

Fingers crossed.

[1] I hope that those will remain public.

[2] Unfortunately, our Staff Handbook is not public. I don’t know why we made that decision.

[3] -less

[4] No, not busses. Bussing is for Valentine’s Day.

[5] No, not me.

Version 1.0 of 2026-03-13.