Spender, John-Cristopher2006-06-13 Spender, 1996, 2002: firms as enduring alliances between independent knowledge-creating entities, be they individuals, teams or other organizations. Firm as a dynamic, evolving, quasi-autonomous system of knowledge production and application. Strategy making is the creation of a coherent body of organizational knowledge. Knowledge as a response to uncertainty, epistemological uncertainty. As competitors cannot replicate the firm's knowledge, the firm itself may not understand it well enough to exploit it effectively. 2006-06-12 Spender, 2002: ... knowledge as an asset has special properties. [which ones?]. Extensible [not consumed], maintained and often enlarged by its application [conventional assets are depreciated and replaced], ...further economic value without further investment. Replicable. Imitable [or not]. Fluidity. Protection. Stickyness. Spender, 2002: strategy making is the creation of a coherent body of organizational knowledge. Knowledge as a response to uncertainty, epistemological uncertainty. Coherence, sense of self, identity. Common knowledge, integration knowledge, self knowledge. Emergence [of common knowledge] (not simply knowledge sharing), emerging from interactions among the firm's parts and context. Spender, 2002: ... Durkheim ... differentiates what is collective known, as evidenced in collective behavior that is not readily explained by any of the individuals making up the collective, from that which is individually known and can be explained by such individuals (Spender, 1998). Spender, 1996. this version of the KBV is becoming conventional. Resources are transformed into higher-value products and services, amplified by knowledge members apply in the process (Penrose, 1959; Conner, 1991; Grant, 1995). Spender, 1996. knowledge-based in which organizations are enduring alliances between independent knowledge-creating entities, be they individuals, teams or other organizations. Spender, 1996. discussions of organizational knowledge. Individual knowledge shared by all the organization's members; or some kind of objectified knowledge that, embedded in the organization's rules and routines, acts as a Hobbesian constraint over its individual members. Spender, 1996. a positivist theory of knowledge. Knowledge is tested by checking its predictive power. Universal knowledge, true at all times and in all places, is the highest grade of knowledge. As realists, we assume reality exists and is knowable; as empiricists, we assume that our knowledge corresponds to reality; as rationalists, we assume reality's structure is logical. Spender, 1996. a KBTF goes beyond the production-function and RBTF. It is a view of the firm as a dynamic, evolving, quasi-autonomous system of knowledge production and application. Nelson & Winter, Nonaka & Takeuchi open up dynamic processes [of evolution, knowledge creation]. ...there must be some means of closure. ... whether this closure is external or internal, static or dynamic. Our solution, which depends on an emergent internal closure is a synthesis of socio-technical systems theory and self-regulating biological systems. Spender & Grant, 1996. the dilemma for management is that, for the same reasons that competitors cannot replicate the firm's knowledge, so the firm itself may not understand it well enough to exploit it effectively. --05.5.19--
--Spender, 2003, Knowledge Fields--
KM may help pull together ideas about corporate culture, networking, trust, and social capital. But it is clear that KM literature is neither homogeneous nor well integrated. ther is no single set of terms or theoretical concepts, or even phenomena to be explained.
... separating the KM field into several different areas, each of which promising some level of coherence. ... each stands on rather different epistemological axioms. ... focus especially on 'meaning'. ... move from abstracted knowledge to culturally contextualized activity.
... the rich promise of research into KM is less to do with trivial issues of collecting, storing, and communicating data, than with a new impetus to examine, and perhaps manage, the meaning and context of our work and organizational activity.
KM and IT
The bulk of the KM literature is about computer systems and applications. ... typically about the collection of data into a single coherence database. The objectives are greater efficiency and effectiveness, improved innovation, and better utilization of the knowledge already present in the organization.
... thoughts about responsiveness, efficiency, etc. are located in a specific theoretical and epistemological context - that of classical organization theory. the underlying model is mechanistic, classical writers like Taylor and Weber. the information being collected and transmitted is unproblematic in the sense that things mean what they say. The emphasis is on the organization as an entity whose existence is tankes fro granted and whose objectives are clear, in a context that is factual. ... the organization's structure is part of the information system, it is designed as a rational way of collecting and processing objective data, of moving it around the organization and enabling it to address its given goals. ... strategic gap analysis and accounting variances are part of this widely adopted approach to management. he includes process-oriented view, and intellectual capital here too. uhmm, not sure about it.
KM and organizational assets
Teece (2000) ICT, liberalization of markets, and international financial flows are striping away the traditional sources of competitive differentiation, and exposing organizational knowledge as the strategic foundation of the new business model. this model focuses on managing organization's knowledge assets.
There are companies that build more traditional types of competitive differentiation through new IT applications (amazon.com, sabre, and others), but in industries where competitors can easily imitate everything firms do with IT, the knowledge being managed becomes crucial.
Management of knowledge assets differs from the management of traditional assets in several levels. ...creation of knowledge is different from creating goods and services. Innovation studies focus in this area. There may be interesting issues around assembly, transportation, storage of ideas. there may be interesting strategic consequences of the differing modes of consumption.
Leonard-Barton (1995) focused on the creation of knowledge assets. Teece (2000) focused on the difficulties of capturing their value once created. ... intelectual property, global trade, piracy. ... three classes of organizational assets: tangible balance sheet items, intangible items such as goodwill and brand value which can be shown on the balance sheet, and those intangible items such as employees' skills that cannot be captured and concretized.
two characteristics of knowledge: its public nature, and the tendency to increasing returns, deriving from network externalities. the public nature of knowledge is that it is not consumed with its use. it can be communicated to others, applied to production, without diminishing. the increasing returns is when people, initially ignorant and unable to benefit from a product, invest to learn it and become locked in. switching costs are high. the result is a market dynamics that differs from classic economic theory. the market becomes one in which the winner takes it all.
KM and organizational power
Not much KM literature here.
KM consciousness and culture
... our knowledge of the world is not intrinsically coherent. ...our experience of the world is not integrated, in part because our ability to give meaning is shaped by various theoretical lenses and none of these is adequate to explain everything. Nor do we feel the same about everything.We have preferences and opinions about everything we know.
Culture is a collective social response to the uncertainties of human existence. Organizations also develop distinct patterns of knowledge, called organizational cultures.
Conclusions
- ... a purely mechanical approch in shich knowledge, information and data mean the same thing, meaning is not problematic, emphasis is on technology to collect and distribute data.
- ... knowledge as objectifiable asset, concretized as patent or organizational routine, value contingent on the functioning of the social and economic system in which it is applied.
- ... knowledge and the social context, meaning is a product of social power.
- ... knowledge is unavoidably bound up with the actors who make it meaningful. ... knowledge cannot be comprehended as separated from the actors who apply it. A knowledge-based theory of the firm has to deal with the emotional and cultural aspects of integrating actors' activities together into functioning social entities such as firms and organizations. ... a theory that is relativized to the firm's historical socio-economic context. ... we define the firm as an instrument for integrating knowledge and activities so as to resolve uncertainty, rather than as a knowledge repository or a system for minimizing transaction costs.
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