Grant, Robert

2006-06-13

Grant, 1996, 2002: firm as an institution for integrating knowledge, which use coordination mechanisms to integrate specialist knowledge of members. For Grant, knowledge is in the individual. Also, focus on knowledge application rather than creation. Implications: hierarchy/market balance, authority and modularity, distributed decision-making, firm's boundaries. Coordination mechanisms: rules and directives, sequencing, routines, group problem solving and decision making. Integration depends on the existence of common knowledge, language, symbolic communication, common specialized knowledge, shared meaning, recognition of individual domains.

Grant argues that the recent surge of interest in knowledge is not primarily the result of external changes in the business environment, but mainly due to the recognition of knowledge as a productive resource and the rediscovery of writers as Hayek, Polanyi, Arrow and March and Simon. He argues that the interest in knowledge has certainly been stimulated by the accelerating rate of technical change, particularly ICT, but it is not the primary force. -- If it is not, which force is? He doesn't say. However, Grant says that a perspective based on knowledge can augment and extend, possibly even transform, existing theory and management techniques.

Key assumptions about knowledge: it is a key productive resource, there are different types of it (basically tacit and explicit), it is subject to economies of scale and scope.

Grant mentions two types of knowledge-based activity in the economy: increasing stocks of knowledge (exploitation, March, 1991, or knowledge generation, Spencer, 1992) and deploying knowledge in goods and services (exploitation or knowledge application). Exploration involves knowledge creation and store, and is more effective if individuals specialize. Exploitation involves knowledge transfer and application, and requires integration and coordination.

An interesting insight: Leadbeater (2000) says that as the total stock of knowledge within society increases, the proportion that lies within the knowledge domain of each individual must diminish. The reverse of the knowledge society is pervasiveness of ignorance. Very, very true. Must use that. As more knowledge is available to society, the economy, and companies, less is possible to retain and control. So, more partnering is needed, more collaboration, more decentralization, less control, less hierarchy, and so on. So, modularity and integration.

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