KM research

| KM | information- | people- | strategy- | computing- |

2006-04-12 

Schultze and Stabell, 2004: ...the premise of most knowledge management initiatives and research is that knowledge is an important, if not the most important, resource in post-industrial organizations (Bell, 1976). Hence it must be managed, which typically implies generating, organizing, storing, transferring and using knowledge. ... Defining knowledge management research is challenging because a complete and agreed-upon definition of knowledge remains elusive. Typically knowledge management is defined as the generation, representation, storage, transfer, transformation, application, embedding and protecting of organizational knowledge (adapted from Hedlund, 1994, p. 76). It is also suggested that knowledge management encompasses the establishment of an environment and culture in which knowledge can evolve (Davenport and Prusak, 1998). Bierly and Chakrabarti (1996) define knowledge management in terms of strategic choices organizations make regarding the information sources for their learning processes, the style and speed of those processes, and the depth and breadth of knowledge bases to be built. ...concepts like organizational learning..., organizational memory..., information sharing...and collaborative work...are closely related to knowledge management.

Schultze and Stabell, 2004: ...referring to them as ‘discourses' (rather than ‘paradigms') in order to highlight that each of them is plagued by internal debates, that the edges between the worldviews are not well demarcated, and that debates in one worldview influence debates in the others. ...we focus on two attributes to help us describe each discourse succinctly. These attributes, which are the metaphor of knowledge and the role of knowledge in organizations, help us focus on the assumptions of knowledge and its management,... we also identify theories that reflect these attributes. ... Our intent is not to place specific authors into one discourse or another. Instead, we seek to illustrate each discourse by locating concepts and theories in them.

Alvesson, 2004, p. 168: KM is...not easy to delimit. ... It can be argued that KM calls for a broad conceptualization,... ...the concept is broad and ambiguous enough to be appropriated in different ways by professional groups seeking to advance their own knowledge domains and claims to legitimacy

Schultze and Stabel, 2004, p. 558: ...society is stratified and made up of antagonistic factions, i.e., a powerful group that is evil and guilty of oppression and a powerless group that is pure, innocent and helpless. The social system thus exhibits ongoing conflicts of interest, dissonance and tension between powerful and powerless groups. ...views knowledge as an object that can be owned, bought and sold. Its assumption of social conflict however adds a power polarity to this object: in the hands of the powerful class, the knowledge object is a tool of domination, whereas in the hands of the underprivileged, it is a tool of emancipation. Knowledge thus takes on a political dimension rendering it neither neutral nor value-free. In short, knowledge is power. ...the role of knowledge is to raise awareness of the prevailing social injustices, to unmask the structures of domination and to empower and emancipate the abused and mistreated. ...normative positions and...utopian ideals... ...viewed as exploitative efforts on the part of managers, who, at the service of the owners of capital (Smith and Willmott, 1991), are interested in owning all knowledge relevant to the labour process. In a work system divided into adversarial sides, knowledge about the labour process is a coveted prize. ...struggle for power among professional grouping. ...professionals are weary of disambiguating, standardizing and routinizing their expertise because this weakens their position vis-à-vis other professions. ...it aligns itself with the interest of the workers against management. ...knowledge as an entity separate from the individual knower and knowledgeable action; as such, it can be extracted from one social grouping and appropriated by another, thus becoming a means of exercising power and control.

Schultze and Stabell, 2004, p. 557-558: ...all phenomena - both social and technical ... - are complexly intertwined and mutually constitutive. In other words, organizational phenomena construct each other. ...systems of distributed cognition..., in which the challenge is to coordinate actions among multiple and potentially conflicting views expressed by individuals who are interested in developing and maintaining their autonomy as well as their unique, personal identities. The metaphor of knowledge is mind (Weick and Roberts, 1993), where mind signifies mindful action taken by interdependent individuals who have only partial knowledge. ...challenges the notion that knowledge can be managed as an object separate from human action (Cohen, 1998). ...'the locus of the agent's knowing is not in his head but in practice, that is to say, his understanding is implicit in the activity in which he engages' (Tsoukas, 1996, p. 16). ...there can be no separation either between individual and social knowledge, or between knowledge and action (Pentland, 1992, von Krogh and Roos, 1995). ...knowledge is continuously shaping and being shaped by the social practices of individuals in communities. Thus knowledge is both the outcome of situated action as well as the input to it (Weick and Roberts, 1993),... It is an ongoing accomplishment (Kogut and Zander, 1996), which implies that there is no finite fund of knowledge of which scientists and knowledge workers in organizations can take ownership. ...an organization's knowledge is thus ‘never complete' but ‘inherently indeterminate and continually emerging' (Tsoukas, 1996, p. 22).

--05.7.31--

• What is knowledge
• Data, information and knowledge
• Product (codified knowledge) and process (sense making, knowing)
• Tacit and explicit
• Human, social and structural
  
• Knowledge as economic resource
  
• Innovation management
• Knowledge-based view
• Intellectual capital
• Knowledge strategies
  
• Knowledge as a human process
• Organizational learning, communities, reflection
• Organizational memory, organizational knowledge
  
• Social capital
  
• Knowledge as unstructured information
• Knowledge processes, knowledge cycle
• Knowledge management systems
• Knowledge as machine thinking
• Knowledge-based systems
• Knowledge discovery

--05.5.19--

Notes on:

• Spender, John-Cristopher
• Romer, Paul

• encourage individuals to interact: to work together on projects, or to share ideas on an informal basis.
• systems are needed to codify the knowledge of individuals so that they can be used by others.
• access to new knowledge from outside its boundaries, as a means of updating and renewing its knowledge base.

• IT systems: essentially repositories of codified knowledge
• formal and informal structures: facilitating the natural interactions between people (physical layouts that encourage social interaction, formal structure around key knowledge flows, communities of practices)
• specific KM tools: best practice transfer, centers of excellence, etc.

• firms do not perceive they are already doing it
• IT is seen as a substitute for social interaction (excessive codification)
• KM focus too much on existing knowledge
• most KM techniques look like traditional techniques
  

• perspectives on knowledge: tacit vs. explicit
• KM purpose: knowledge vs. learning