Tsoukas, Haridimos

2006-06-13

Tsoukas, 1996: firms as distributed knowledge systems, decentered, with inherent indeterminate and continually emerging knowledge. Knowledge is in firm's routines, but also in firm's members. Knowledge is inherently indeterminate, firms face radical uncertainty, they do not and cannot know what they need to know. Implications: organizations are in constant flux, novel practices are constantly emerging; coordinated action needs decentralization, since integration happens at local the level, where action is. A firm is a discursive practice, a community where individuals come to share an unarticulated background of common understanding. Integrating distributed knowledge, sustaining a discursive practice on which that can happen.